Remembering the Dragon

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are but princes that are waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our love.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

5 days

Stop Loss

Okay, let's pause for a moment and review. In the past ten years, I've

*lost my father to suicide
*lost my oldest and dearest friend to a heart attack
*lost another old and dear friend because our relationship had become toxic to me
*lost my Malamute
*lost two beloved cats
*lost my breast
*lost three years of my life to breast cancer

and now I've lost my therapist of 14 years. If the universe is trying to teach me something about loss, I hope I figure out the mystery some time soon. I'm not up for any more losses (as though any of us has a choice).

I really think I get it, though. Life is about loss. Sooner or later, we will lose everything and everyone we love. Refusal to accept that fact is the very definition of suffering. I understand that down to the marrow of my bones.

I'm trying to keep an open mind and open heart so that, if there are lessons I haven't yet learned, they will reveal themselves to me. Of course, I'd just have to move on to another set of lessons I haven't gotten yet. That's kind of scary.

I'd really like to just coast for a while.

How Would You Like To Be Remembered?

Before he died of cancer, one of my heroes (Leroy Sievers) asked his readers to tell him how they'd like to be remembered. I watched a bit of his memorial service yesterday and thought some more about it.

I'd like people to remember all the times when I could have judged, but didn't. I'd like them to remember my warmth. I'd like them to remember the times I made them laugh or shared with them one of those random facts no one else would know.

I wish there were someone who could share, when the time comes, how hard my life has been and how I rose above it, time and time again. That's really the greatest accomplishment of my life. I have thrived in an environment that could have destroyed me. My cousins survived, but I triumphed over bad genes and dismal nurturing.

I hope they remember how brave I've been. Not because I've lived through breast cancer. Not because I lived through my dad's suicide. I've been courageous by refusing let go of compassion, no matter what. It's a work in progress, letting go of anger and resentment, but I continue to put one foot in front of the other.

When all is said and done, there aren't many choices to make in life. You're born into certain circumstances and, as terrible as things eventually may get, all you can do is keep going. As I've said before, no one gets to call in sick to life. We wake up every day and try to get through it, no matter what. That's all we can do.

Getting up and going on doesn't require courage. Maintaining humor, gentleness, compassion and integrity--for those qualities I've had to reach deep inside. I have had to bring my attention back day after day. They've tested my mettle.

I wish people would remember that about me. How would you like to be remembered?

Trying Times

These are trying times. Every day is a test of whether the truths that awakened in me during treatment have been deeply assimilated. I need to embody strength, forgiveness and compassion. I must remember that all of the qualities by which I'm defined are ultimately meaningless. My treatment mantra: I am not my hair, I am not how I look, I am not my intellect, I am not my body.

How am I faring? Intermittently calm, but mostly very stressed. However, I have at least noticed anxiety when it's occurred. I've always had enormous difficulty in recognizing anxiety. During all of my formative years, anxiety was a relentless companion. Of course I never recognized it. Today, I can see it, if even just a little.

Sometimes I'm angry. I'm still mourning the loss of two of my daily friends from Crazy Land.

Fewer people means more encounters with Loathsome. And Golf Pro. And Bags.

Friday morning, we're having a cost-saving initiative meeting, called by Owner. Everyone is supposed to come up with five ideas to cut costs. Owner promises the meeting won't last more than an hour. In Crazy Land time, that will be somewhere around 3 hours, minimum.

I have to share the Loathsome Lexapro anecdote. Unfortunately, once again, I'm too tired for that.

All Quiet in Crazy Land

Wednesday was Receptionist's last day. Owner wouldn't allow anyone to know other than Superhighway, Mr. Moneybags and me. On her final day, I sent Owner an email asking if I could say goodbye to her. He told me I could if I was careful not to let anyone else hear. I said goodbye with tears in my eyes.

Though she doesn't know it, today is Crazy Employee's last day. You know I'm very ambivalent about her. My therapist thinks she's a sociopath; I believe she's probably right. Nonetheless, I'm feeling sad. (I'm also trying to think of how I can be someplace else when Crazy is presented with her personal belongings already packed up and told to hit the road, jack.)

I complained, bewildered, to my therapist last week that it's so unlike me to be so emotional about what happens here in Crazy Land. I make a concerted effort to keep people at arm's length. I make a concerted effort to hide myself from them. It's one of the things I'm very very good at--when at work, I'm in thinking mode. I inhabit a role familiar from childhood. I stand back and watch...then I tell you about the absurdity and humor. I do not emotionally participate.

Therapist told me that part of my transformational experience of breast cancer is that I have less control over the arm's-length thing. She believes it's a manifestation of my true nature. Well, damn. I don't think I like this part of the transformation. Can't I just return to the way I used to be?

The only people here today are Crazy, Loathsome, Foot Lady and me. It's a silent office. The quiet makes my sadness loud.

Something Helpless

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are but princesses that are waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our love.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.
- Pema Chodron, In the Gap Between Right and Wrong

Happy Birthday, Daddy

I almost forgot. Happy birthday, Dad. I'm still angry. I'm still heartbroken. I'm still wounded. I'm still haunted. I still love you, anyway.

You're the only father I'll ever have. I wish everything could have been different, that you could have been different. Nonetheless, without you, there would have been no me. For better or worse.

Thank you for the gifts you gave me, even though they were harsh gifts. Thank you for the many lessons in compassion. You had a terrible life, that I'm sure of. I celebrate your will to survive, at whatever cost. I celebrate your talent and intelligence.

In the infinite, numinous universe, we have always been in agreement. You were the Buddha sent to teach me. I hope I learned those lessons well. I hope you're finally proud of me.

I miss your craziness. I mostly miss the hope that I could understand your pain, that I could heal you of your suffering.

Happy birthday, Daddy.

The New Rules, Reiterated

Hubby and I both forgot our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. It dawned on me over the weekend that we'd missed it...again. I'm not good with the anniversary/birthday/special event thing.

I wonder if that's because, as I was growing up, we never celebrated anything. I'd get a birthday gift and Christmas gifts, I got cards for my Mom and Dad and bought gifts when I could. It always felt like work, though, even (or especially) when I was the recipient. "Celebration" was never a word that had much meaning to me. Observances of that type were onerous and treacherous. Bad things were guaranteed to happen; they were danger zones that cropped up from time to time in the endless, gray progression of time.

As I grew older, I learned how important it is to honor special days or rites of passage. Celebrating became a "should" in my life. If I'm a mentally healthy, spiritually grounded person, I should incorporate some times for rejoicing in my life. That's the rule.

Unfortunately, because it was never a part of my growing-up experience, those observances never became a habit. It feels like something I've tacked onto my life and, when I forget anniversaries or birthdays, I feel like a failure. If I manage to remember and make special arrangements for festivities, it's stressful and joyless. It's a lose-lose proposition.

Every day I get up in the morning and give thanks for all of the blessings in my life, past and present. This is celebration, also. I have to remind myself that I'm not a failure if I forget "special" events (including my own birthday). I have to remind myself that, because every morning begins with prayer, every single day is a celebration.

Hubby and I forget our anniversary on a regular basis. It doesn't mean we don't love each other or that either of us feels unloved because we've forgotten. It's a thing we laugh about together.

I'm trying to learn to let myself be as I am, especially right now as I continue to struggle with fatigue and pain. Learning that lesson and living it is its own challenge. Everything in my life is exactly as it should be, including the consequences of a life I did not choose. I'm officially lightening up.

It's Only Tuesday. I'm Already Exhausted.

Yesterday started somewhere around 4:00 a.m. for me. My mom had a colonoscopy scheduled and was told to arrive at the hospital at 6:00 a.m. Late Friday afternoon, the hospital left a message telling her she needed to pre-register, but by the time she got the message, that department had already closed down for the weekend. She thought perhaps they wouldn't do the procedure unless she pre-registered, so I suggested that we plan on getting there a little early.

I am not a morning person.

We agreed to get there around 5:30, but I was anxious about whether my alarm clock would work, so I woke up around 4:00 and never went back to sleep. There's nothing wrong with my alarm clock. I have issues about being on time and I'm always afraid that the electronic devices that run my life are going to fail me in some critical moment.

I was at the hospital for a couple of hours, then I brought my mom over to my house around 9:00, took a shower and left for work. Things were going as well as could be expected when I got a call from our receptionist saying Crazy Employee wanted me to come downstairs and look after the dog from next door. The dog had been lying by the side of the road and she'd coaxed it to a grassy area between my office and Lillian's house. He was unable to go any farther, unable to stand up on his back legs.

Owner came downstairs with me and we tried to get the dog to stand up. We brought him some water and a couple of large bowls of kitty food. The poor creature wolfed down the water and food. I tried to slide my hands under his hips to help him stand up, but that didn't help, either. There was a high potential for me to get bitten, so I abandoned the effort.

Finally a young man, whom we believe to be Lillian's son, ambled out of the house and over to where we were attending to the dog. I noticed track marks on his arms. The first thing he wanted to know was whether anyone had a cigarette. If I'd had a cigarette, I'd have been smoking it. I explained the problem to Son.

"He can get up. He just doesn't want to," he said. I repeatedly assured him that wasn't the case. Son retrieved a cord from inside the house, slipped it around the dogs neck and tried to get him up. Couldn't do it. I asked if Lillian was around. She was asleep, her son said.

After several attempts, I suggested that maybe the dog needed to rest. I told the son we'd keep an eye on the dog from our upstairs window. He mumbled thanks and walked back to the house. I got the dog more water and more food. I called a number of mobile vets, but no one was able to come. Even if they'd had time, the dog doesn't belong to me and I have no desire to try to get Lillian to agree to treatment (even though she wouldn't have to pay for it). Also, I'd almost guarantee that the dog has never had a single rabies shot. Vets won't work with animals who haven't have rabies shots.

This morning, I was afraid I'd drive up and see the dog, dead where I left him. He wasn't out there, so I got the Golf Pro to look out of my window to see if he was in Lillian's back yard. He was lying in his usual spot. Crazy Employee came in a little while ago to tell me about how they got him back. It's really more than I can think about right now.

Nothing makes me angrier than children and animals being mistreated or neglected. Clearly Lillian has appeared in my life to help me find more compassion in my heart. I have a lot more work to do in that area, apparently.

Everything and Nothing

I've read that everyone we meet has been sent to teach us something. If that's so, I'm hard at work.

I encounter my father, in various guises, everywhere. I'm surrounded by narcissists--at work and at home. Hubby is so self-involved that I'm surprised he even notices I'm in the room. Sometimes I'm not sure that he does.

Stepson doesn't know anything about me. He never asks about what I'm interested in, what my life is like. He knows nothing about my childhood. Our conversations are always about him.

Not everyone in Crazy Land is a narcissist, but we've got more than our share. The Foot Lady, Crazy Employee, Owner, Loathsome, The Golf Pro--for all of them the world is a mirror.

If there's anything at which I'm expert, it's dealing with narcissists. Unfortunately, the way I deal with them is very unhealthy. Being highly intuitive, I'm able to figure out what they want and how they want it, then give it to them. Not so difficult, really. Generally what they want is validation; only preferences for the means of validation differ between individuals. I anticipate their needs. I hide my own. Or I believe the needs I have can't be met by other people.

I'm so chameleon-like that everyone thinks I'm like them, but I'm not, you know. There are a lot of things I have to fake. I don't know what occurs in non-catastrophic childhoods. It's as alien to me as living on another planet. It's such a strange thing, to try so hard to picture what "normal" (for for that matter, dysfunctional) childhood looks like. I won't ever know.

So what am I learning? Apparently, not much. I continue to live with a man who has an absolutely astounding sense of personal entitlement. At work, I shift certain characteristics to the foreground and others to the background, depending on who I'm with at any given time. I'm not pretending to be someone I'm not; I'm merely rearranging parts of my personality. Morphing into someone others find more palatable and easy to understand is probably one of those things I'm supposed to learn not to do.

At the moment, I think the lesson to be learned is to love myself, just as I am. That's a mighty tall order. I've lived my life, dedicated to figuring out how to fit in with everyone else, working on social skills, fixing the things that were wrong with me.

I've decided to stop trying to change myself into someone I'm not. What does that have to do with my dad? Everything and nothing.

Love and Let Go

"...the great need for...loving-kindness toward oneself, and developing from that the awakening of a fearlessly compassionate attitude toward our own pain and that of others."

"...dissolving the dualistic tension between us and them, this and that, good and bad, by inviting what we usually avoid. My teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, described this as 'leaning into the sharp points.'"

"...may we not forget...that 'Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news."

from When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron

Yes, yes, yes.

Heroes

I just spent an hour on the phone with my health insurance provider, straightening out my complex maze of doctor bills. For many years, I've tried to do at least one good deed every day. I recently upped that ante to 3. My second good deed of the day was to be patient and cordial with the insurance guy who helped me get it all cleared up. He was obviously surprised when I thanked him and wished him a good day, even though we came up with another $900 in bills I have to pay. I'm certain he talks with a lot of angry people every day and I hope our conversation makes his day a little better. My previous good deed today was traffic-related. One more to go.

I happened to see Elizabeth Edwards on television over the weekend and was once again impressed with her positive energy and commitment to getting on with life, even though she battles Stage 4 breast cancer. "She's my hero," I thought. Lance Armstrong is also my hero. Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I had absolutely no heroes. Now I do. I have three.

I discovered that I am my own hero.

Lessons and Tasks

Since I changed cable systems, I now have access to the EWTN channel (Eternal Word Television Network). It's a Roman Catholic channel; they have Mass every day, a program on Carmelite spirituality, lots of other RC topics.

It's a little conservative for my tastes (my church of choice is Paulist), but I've been tuning in for Mass every afternoon. I haven't attended Mass in many years, but participating (as much as I can) in the televised version makes me long for that connection.

I have a very broad spiritual philosophy--many paths lead to the same destination. God speaks to us in the multitude of ways we're individually able to hear. Some of us hear the word a little better via Episcopalian doctrine, some Baptist, etc. Some of our paths are not Christian. They're Buddhist, Sufi, etc.

Please don't send me comments about the True Word of God. I'm not interested in debating or converting.

The homily yesterday reminded us that, when "bad" things happen to us, maybe it's God's way of reaching out and getting our attention. God has lessons for us all and sometimes those lessons come through hardship. I'd forgotten that's a valid Christian viewpoint.

I hear a lot more about what God wishes to give to us materially. Or how we can talk God into giving us whatever it is we long for or think we deserve. Did I deserve the life I've gotten? I've been given the life I need, for reasons I don't necessarily understand. It's up to me to keep mind and heart open, to "accept hardships as the pathway to peace...trusting that God will make all things right if I surrender to God's will." (Reinhold Niebuhr) In Buddhist terms, every person I meet is a Buddha sent to help me learn a lesson which will hasten my steps along the path.

The homily warmed my heart. It helped me remember my own spiritual reasons for embracing the life I've been given. May I learn the lessons I've been sent to master; may I complete the tasks I've been sent to accomplish. I may not know what they are; all I have to do is to let go every day. I'm not in charge here. It's been a hard lesson, but at least I've gotten that far.

Where I'm Supposed To Be

this weekend when my husband and i were driving to dinner, i remembered something i just read in a workaholics anonymous book. it said that we should operate on the assumption that we are exactly where god wishes us to be. all of the time. no matter where we are. it was absolutely amazing. i felt so liberated...at that moment i didn't need to struggle anymore. i generally operate under the assumption that, since i was spared the predictable aftereffects of my childhood, i need to do something to pay the universe back. it's like i feel that i need to pay back god for his/her investment. i generally end up feeling frustrated and a little frantic because i have no clue what it is i'm supposed to be doing here. at this moment, i can let that go. i can relax into the present and be grateful for whatever appears in the eternal now.

here's the quote of the day:"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."~Marian Wright Edelman

america held hostage day 1795
bushism of the day:
"I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children."