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Rest period.

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You know you need to take time off when you start to seriously contemplate calling in sick and then you realize that it is your day off. I’ve crammed so much stuff into my days off that they aren’t days off. I still do just as much work – I just don’t get paid for it.

Now, I’ve come to realize how important momentum is for me. If I laze about all day, then I tend to keep doing that. I’m a binge lazy person. Doing nothing is the same to me as eating sugar is to some people. Once I start, I can’t stop.

Well, I can, but I don’t want to.

I think the trick is to set limits. I have to allow myself time to do nothing. From this time to this – say from 12 until 3, I’ll do nothing on my day off. Nothing at all. Lay on the couch and read, or make jewelry. Something for me. Something fun. That sounds like a good plan. Maybe I’ll do it someday.

Right now, I’m playing a bit of catch up. I decided to skip going to my yoga class. The teacher is more challenging than the first one, but she needs to change things up to keep it interesting. I really get bored if nothing changes. I need to be challenged. I need to try different moves. If nothing else, I need to hear different music. I’d like to think that a yoga class with a real live person is different than watching a videorecorded one.

However, even though it is dull sometimes, I need the discipline of getting up and going. I need to be out of the house early on a Friday, otherwise I’ll stay in my pajamas all afternoon long and not get any of my chores done. And then I start to think – is that so bad? Is it bad to rest? Is it bad to actually take a day off?

It is for me. I feel guilty if I rest.

I have a bad relationship with rest. I really am starting to like the idea of the Jewish Sabbath. One whole day where you are commanded to do as much nothing as possible. You can’t feel guilty about doing nothing – you are supposed to do nothing. You are supposed to feel guilty if you do something. You are to rest and recharge and refuel.

We just don’t have that in Christian culture. Sure, we sometimes refer to the day we go to church as the Sabbath, but we don’t treat it with anywhere near the preparation and seriousness the Jews approach their Sabbath. And I think we suffer because of it. Imagine how cool it would be to have a holiday once a week. Once a week you take a vacation from the world, and enter into a special time where there is nothing you have to do except rest. Sounds just like heaven to me.

I have a bit of the “get things done” feeling in part because my parents died young. I feel like it is important to not waste time. I see how quickly time slips by and then you are either too old to do something with your life, or too feeble. Some things take time to get going. Better start now.

But then I am starting to understand that I need to rest too. There are rest periods build into yoga. It isn’t go go go. The human body just can’t handle that. The space between the notes is what makes the music, so says Claude Debussy.

This is why I’ve signed up for another retreat. It is a time of silence and rest. All my physical needs are taken care of. There is a place to sleep, and food is prepared for me. All I have to do is show up and be present. The only electronic device I use is my Kindle – and I use it to write. I don’t check email. I don’t check Facebook. The only input is from God.

I think that I need to do this more than just four times a year. I need to set aside a chunk of time to just listen, and by that I don’t mean little snatches of time. The more I pack into my day, the more God can’t get a word in edgewise. I pray throughout the day, but it all seems to be in five minute pieces.

Sure, bills have to be paid. Sure, the housework needs to be done. But if I don’t take time off, time to just be, then I’ve become something other than a human. I’ve become an automaton, a robot, a thing. I’ve become a human doing, and not a human being.

So I still wrestle with this. I feel like I’m in overeaters anonymous. Having a bad relationship with food isn’t like having a drug addiction – you have to eat food. You can give up heroin. You can’t give up food. So how to you create a healthy relationship with something you have to have in your life? I think boundaries are part of it. I can allow this, but not this. I can allow this time to be work and this time to be free. I think it is important to self-police too. I think it is important to not allow my free time to become work time.

I’ll report back on whether this works or not. As of right now, I’m still in my jammies and it is 1:30. I think I have to wrench myself free and go out for a bit, just so I can say I’ve done something. My head gets a little fuzzy with too much nothing.

Emails vs. phone calls

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I dislike the telephone. I’d much rather get an email. Or a letter.

Getting a phone call is like a home invasion to me. It happens unexpectedly. I have to deal with it right then. There is no time to compose myself and make sure I say the right thing.

Emails are slower. I can deal with emails when I feel like it. Emails are like the slow cooker where phone calls are the microwave. But even with the microwave I get the choice to turn it on. The microwave doesn’t suddenly spew out food and say “It is time to eat now!”

Phone calls are like someone showing up at my home while I’m relaxing in my jammies and them saying ok, now it is time to go out to eat supper with your family and your coworkers, no time to get dressed, and we hope you get embarrassed. A lot.

How did I ever survive before email? I guess I didn’t know any better. That creeping, sinking feeling in my gut was just normal. I didn’t have a choice.

It is like life before antibiotics and immunizations. You just had a few (hundred) people die every year. Nothing you can do about it, so sorry. We didn’t have a choice, so we didn’t think about it.

I get tongue tied when I talk on the phone. I get my wires crossed. My point doesn’t go across, it goes sideways.

It is part of why I made a rule that my brother no longer call me. If he wanted to communicate, it had to be by letter. Well, part of that was because he would say I said something I didn’t, so with a letter I had proof I wasn’t going insane, but that is another story. Some of it was to make sure I said what I meant to say.

I had a coworker once who got really frustrated with me that I got tongue-tied. She said “But you have a degree in English!” Right. I do. I don’t have a degree in talking. I write. With writing I can think about what I want to say. Then I can go over it and make sure the words say what I think they say. But with speech I don’t have that luxury. It is right then, no waiting.

I don’t text. Not really. They are too much like phone calls. They are a lot like emails, but more immediate. I don’t get the point of texts when there is something already like them around that works. I turned off the texting on my phone because I don’t want it and it costs extra. People still try to text me anyway and sometimes it goes through. When it doesn’t, they get upset that I didn’t answer. Texts aren’t like emails in that way. At least when an email doesn’t go through you get a message saying so.

Let’s being back letters. They can be personalized. They can have pictures and doodads inside. They can have glitter too. And for the paranoid among us, letters aren’t that interesting to the bogeymen.

A punch to the head woke me up.

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If you have told someone that something they do makes you uncomfortable, and they keep on doing it, then it is up to you to terminate the relationship.

That may sound harsh.

But it is as if you’ve put up your feelings for a vote. Who wins? Their needs or yours? Ideally, you’d both win. Ideally, everybody would be happy.

But if they feel they need to continue doing something that you have said is distressing or harmful to you, then they have voted. Their needs are more important than yours.

I went to a gathering once and I brought a jewelry project to work on. It is like a security blanket to me. I like having projects because it makes me feel more comfortable. I feel more exposed when I have nothing to work on.

A lady there wasn’t comfortable with me working on a project. I wasn’t right next to her. The project wasn’t loud or big. It wasn’t like I was taking notes. But she felt that in order for her to share her thoughts she needed me to not be doing anything and to look right at her.

She didn’t ask me directly. She mentioned casually, to the air it seemed, that she would rather each person pay full attention and not work on anything. It took me a little bit to understand that she meant me, she was so vague.

So I had a choice. Make her feel comfortable, and me feel uncomfortable, and stop working on my project. Or, pretend I didn’t hear her and keep on working. I’d feel a little comfortable because I’d have my project, but a little less than before she spoke because I would know that I was making someone else feel uncomfortable.

But really, I wasn’t making her feel uncomfortable. That was her choice.

I put my project up. And I developed a small amount of resentment to her, and a little bit to myself. I was upset that I didn’t stand up for myself. I was upset with her that she confronted me at all, and that she did it in such a passive-aggressive kind of way. It was my choice not to tell her how I felt. It was my choice to let her needs be more important than mine.

I had a coworker who thought it was funny to hit me on the back of my head when she walked by. She wouldn’t hit hard – she would often just catch my hair. That is an invasion of my personal space. That is a violation of social rules – we don’t touch each other unless it is mutual.

Now, I hate having people walk behind me anyway, but there is nothing I can do about it at work because of the arrangement of the desks. I don’t have an office. I don’t really even have a desk. I have a space that I usually work at when nobody else is around. It is a little discomforting to work in a place for many years and not really have a “place” to be, but that is for another post.

I first thought she was getting a rise out of it, out of getting in my personal space. So I dealt with her like I dealt with my big brother – pretend that I liked it. I figured that she’d stop because that works with big brothers. Don’t let them get the satisfaction of seeing you upset. Pretend it doesn’t bother you. It didn’t work. I had to tell her to quit, and in telling her I learned something very telling about my boss.

She laughed at me for telling this lady to quit hitting me. I should have seen that as the sign that it is. Hindsight is 20/20 they say. I learned this lesson later – don’t trust her with anything real. She isn’t really human.

I knew a guy in college named Carson who hurt me badly. He and I were sitting in a friend’s dorm room. I was sitting on the bed and he was sitting in a chair facing me. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but at some point in the conversation he reached over and pushed me sideways. My back was against the wall, and being pushed sideways meant that my head caught the part of the doorjamb where the doorknob was. It hurt a lot. I pulled forward, turned around, and saw what had caused the pain in my head. I told Carson to be careful – I’d gotten hurt from his shove. I figured it was an accident.

The second push wasn’t an accident. He took my shoulder, pulled me back to see where the doorjamb was, and then shoved my head sideways into the doorjamb.

Without thinking, I hit him as hard as I could right between the eyes. Every bit of energy and force I had in me was directed into that punch. I’m grateful that I didn’t hit him anywhere where it could have caused actual damage. I could have bloodied his nose, broken his teeth, bruised his eye. I could have killed him if I’d hit the right spot with that much force. It was an instinctive punch, and it did the job.

We stared at each other for what seemed like ten minutes. I’m sure it was only a minute, but time had slowed down. It does that when crazy things happen.

He broke the silence. “Don’t ever do that again.” He glowered at me.

“Don’t ever do that again.” I responded, indignant. He’d hurt me intentionally. There was no reason for it. I’d never done anything to him to deserve that. I’d never done anything to anybody to deserve that.

The first time is free. The first time is an accident. Once you’ve been told that you’ve harmed me, and you do it again, everything is over.

If they hurt you and you don’t tell them, then it is on you. If you tell them and they continue to hurt you, then they have made their choice. It is on you if you stay after that.

Repress – self-care, and boundaries

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At what point do you stop being yourself so that somebody else can feel comfortable? All the time? Half the time? Never?

Is it antisocial to do your own thing? Is a violence against your soul to not?

I’ve suppressed myself a lot throughout my life. I’ve been taught directly and indirectly that everybody else’s needs are always more important than my own. Perhaps some of it is just part of the training that every woman gets. Perhaps part is what I learned out of self defense from being raised in a house with a father who wasn’t emotionally there. We either walked on eggshells or just walked around him. We never really knew who he was going to be from day to day. Perhaps part of it is from having a brother who was the master of manipulation. The only trips he took me on were of the guilt variety.

I remember when I went to college in another town I realized I could be anybody I wanted to be. Nobody knew me. I didn’t have a history. I wasn’t Ian’s kid sister. I wasn’t Joan’s daughter. I wasn’t Pat’s kid. All of them had gone before me in that town and in that high school. They’d either taken classes there or had worked there. I had a sort of hand me down life, a sort of leftover existence, a sort of filtered reality. My life was not my own. People judged me based on what their experiences were with my family.

When I moved to another state I realized I could be anyone I wanted. So I decided to be myself. I stripped away everything that didn’t serve or suit me, and grew a new me from the inside out.

I’m doing that again now. I’ve been recreating myself over the past several years.

I deleted my sister in law as a “friend” on FB in part because she was always disagreeing with me. She often felt that my posts were going to upset her husband, or my husband. She asked me to delete the posts.

She reminds me a lot of how my brother tried to control me. Shame. Family honor. Secrets. Guilt. Don’t air the family business. Keep a stiff upper lip. Hold it in. What will “they” think?

I found myself thinking before many posts – what would she think? Would she censure me? Would she censor me? I took to posting some posts on my blog only, rather than on my FB page. I still got to speak, I just didn’t have to worry about her reading it.

Funny, she never commented on anything that she agreed with. It was always “I disagree” or “I respectfully disagree”, as if saying “respectfully” takes the sting out of the slap.

I can handle constructive criticism. I just can’t handle constant criticism.

So I had a choice. Her or me. Make her happy, or make me happy. I chose me.

It made her go a little spare for a bit.

It was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while. Reminds me of when I deleted my brother. It was a little terrifying and a little bit exhilarating at the same time.

She now thinks I’ve gone mental, that something is wrong with me. She’s a therapist, so she should know, right? I think she’s putting the blame on me because it takes it off her. If she’d asked me privately if there was a problem, and listened to my feelings when I answered, then it would be different. Her reaction just proved to me that my decision was right.

Self-care is a sign of mental health. I will no longer allow abusive people into my life, regardless of who they are. Family members do not get free passes. In fact, I expect better from them.

I chose my husband. I did not choose his family, or who his family chose.

Disagree – words and food

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I’m OK with people disagreeing with me, just not all the time. I certainly don’t want people around who only agree with me. That isn’t healthy. It is important to have friends who can help keep you from doing something stupid.

But it also isn’t healthy to have people around who constantly disagree, even if they try to soften the disagreement by saying they “respectfully” disagree. This is like saying I’m going to hit you, so brace for it. It is for your own good.

People who constantly disagree are like food that disagrees with you. If you know that eating pepperoni always gives you heartburn, you will (hopefully) stop eating pepperoni. The pain and discomfort just isn’t worth it. If you go over to your aunt’s house and she always serves you pepperoni, then do you eat it, out of respect to her? What if eating pepperoni was part of her childhood and serving it is how she shows love?

Yet eating it makes you sick. Do you tell her, and break her heart, or do you eat it, and get heartburn? Somebody is going to get hurt either way.

Does it matter who serves you? Are you more likely to take something disagreeable from a relative, or from a long-term friend?

The same is true with words. If you have someone who constantly disagrees with you, you don’t have to take it. Balance is good. If all that person does is disagree with you, you are not obliged to “eat” it, no matter who they are.

Ideally, it would be great if people were thoughtful enough and considerate enough to not “feed” you anything that makes you sick. Ideally, people would be mindful and look out for each other. Ideally, we wouldn’t have to tell people to stop hurting us.

Sometimes they don’t know they are being harmful. Then it is on us to tell them. Then it is up to them.

Sadly, there are people in this world who know what our triggers are and they ignore them. There are people who just don’t care what our needs are and they do their own thing anyway. There are people who feel that our boundaries are suggestions rather than rules. They are the same kind of people who if you tell them you are allergic to a particular food, they will serve it to you anyway.

Whether they do it intentionally or accidentally makes no difference. They are harming you. They are either being malicious or mindless. The result is the same. You are harmed.

Then it is up to you to decide – continue the relationship, or terminate it? Is it worth getting sick to be around this person? You may love them, but by their actions they are proving that they don’t love you. Is it worth that sick feeling you have in your stomach every time you are around them?

Health advice from near strangers

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There have been several patrons who have asked where I was recently. They noticed that I was gone for a bit. I’m part of the place – I’ve been there since it opened. That was thirteen years ago. Some think I retired. That would be nice, but I can’t retire for at least 15 more years. I try not to think about how much of my life is being spent here. That is partly why I blog.

I tell them that I was on vacation for a week, and I was out a bit before that because I slipped a disc in my back. With the first part they sometimes want to know where I went. I stayed home. I did as much nothing as possible. I read a lot. I played some video games. I meant to collage or paint but instead I read books about image transfer. I still can’t figure it out and I think I’m just going to have to waste a few canvases and try something out.

The second part of my story is the funny part. When they hear I slipped a disc, they have a lot of questions. How did it happen? It happened here, at work. I was just walking along and twisted and boom. Pain. Nothing special. It was just the straw that broke the Betsy’s back. I did a forward fold to try to make things better and it only made it worse.

Sometimes they ask why it happened. I’m in pretty good shape, so they are surprised. I was too. It happened because I have scoliosis. It is very slight, and it has developed over time. Contrary to popular opinion, and the opinion of my coworkers and the patrons, scoliosis can develop. It isn’t always something you have as a child. So my back goes left, and the disc went right.

Then they ask if I am better, and I say I am because I am going to a great chiropractor. Sometimes they ask who. When I tell them, it seems like the majority of them go to him and agree how wonderful he is. Those who don’t go to him or have never been to a chiropractor have further opinions. My favorite – one lady who told me that I should be wearing a back brace. I told her that it is really important to move the discs. If you don’t get movement, the discs will get weaker. OK, she said – then are you doing the exercises your doctor told you to do? This is funny because she went from “don’t move at all” to “make sure you move.” Pick one. I assured her that I do yoga and water aerobics, so I’m good.

Others have said “make sure you don’t go too much.” – going on the popularly held opinion that chiropractors try to get you to come way too much so they can make more money. I point out that when I got braces, it took four years for the doctor to realign my teeth. Why should I expect my back to be any faster? They agree that I have a good point there.

I’m amazed how my business is their business.

That is part of my job. We get to know each other. We have a weird relationship, that is friendly, but we aren’t friends. It is hard to know where the boundaries are sometimes. There are certainly patrons that I have become friends with. I even married one. But there are others who think they are my friend because they see me every week and I smile. But they don’t get that I smile because I have to. It is part of my job. Just because I’m friendly doesn’t mean I’m their friend.

Unfriendly

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It hurts to be unfriended by a family member. But then again, family isn’t by choice. Family is an accident that sometimes works out ok. If he had cared about my feelings he would have just “hidden” me. But he has proven over a decade that he doesn’t care about my feelings at all.

It isn’t as if we had been arguing. I can only suspect that my posts were a little more frequent than he liked. They certainly were more religious than he likes. I can only guess. It isn’t safe to guess what other people’s motives are, I know. In the absence of communication, imagination sneaks in, however.

When I was in England after the death of my Mom, I learned something sitting on the cliffside in Tintagel. It came to me, unbidden, that family has nothing to do with blood.

Sitting on that cliff, on that bright April day, I was surrounded by tiny wildflowers. I was warmed by the gentle sun. I smelled the sea air and heard the crash of the waves below. I was alone. My aunt had wandered off in the ruins, purported to be King Arthur’s castle. The other tourists were away. In that moment the reason for my journey came to me. In that moment of silence the answer to a question I had not asked came.

I wanted to stay there, forever, soaking up that knowledge. When you get that connection, you want to keep it. But sometimes the connection is just a brief kiss on the head, just a handshake from God. Sometimes God just slips you a note, folded up, pressed into your hand, as you are passing in the hall between classes.

We owe nothing to family just because of their blood relationship. We owe nothing to people who say they are friends and don’t prove it by their actions. They may be friendly enough, but if they don’t make time to be with you, then they aren’t really friends. They may be there only when you are happy, but leave when you are sad. They may ignore your birthday. They may forget that you are allergic to certain foods and always serve them. Holidays can be especially difficult because of their actions, or inactions.

Ties between people are bridges that both have to build. If you are doing all the work, walk away.

Are you my “friend”?

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I think we need a new definition of the word “friend”. Or perhaps we need different levels of “friend.” We use the word so loosely these days that it has no real meaning anymore.

One reason we need different levels of “friend” is when we are talking to one about another. I’ve recommended that one “friend” connect in a business relationship with another actual friend. But I don’t know the “friend” very well – and I don’t want the actual friend to think badly of me if the “friend” acts strangely. I can’t vouch for him. I’ve only met him once. I know people he knows, but I’ve not personally spent much time with him.

I think Facebook has blurred the lines of what “friend” means. There are plenty of people who I think of as friends who I only barely know. I only know about their lives virtually. With some people this is how I get to know them. I’ll meet them somewhere at some gathering and “friend” them. In reality I know nothing about them. My plan is to learn more about them, and them about me, in the safe near-anonymity of the cyber world.

I’m discovering that this causes a whole new set of problems for me because I’m still working on my boundaries.

Sometimes I’ll keep someone as a “friend” who only posts to complain or argue. Maybe I’ll move them to another page that I only look at every few days instead of every few hours. Then they will comment on my page only to complain or argue. Seems like that is all they do. This reminds me of the coworker who starts of every (rare) conversation with me to say “Now, I don’t mean to complain…” and then she complains. I need balance. I really can’t handle someone who only complains. This gets really old. I’m not paid to be a therapist.

Perhaps I’ll keep someone as a “friend” who never posts or never comments or even “likes” anything. Will they even notice that I’ve unfriended them? Plenty of people have a Facebook page and don’t really use it. Plenty of people lurk too. Perhaps I need to understand that they just aren’t that into me. Perhaps I need to not take it personally.

Maybe I keep some people around as “friends” because I think they may be useful some day. I think that I may need to contact her or him, so I’ll not “unfriend” just yet. Maybe I’m thinking of people like craft supplies.

Maybe I need to edit. I do this, but perhaps not as deeply as I should. I try to keep my “friends” list to under 200, when in reality I only really interact with a tenth of that, at most.

I care, sort of. I feel like I should care. They are “friends” after all, right?

Recently I unfriended two women that I thought I should get along with, but don’t. One I met in my old church. I’ve finally come to realize that she is just an unhappy person, and I don’t care to participate in her angry world. Another person was a girlfriend of a friend of mine. She was really interesting for a while. Then she started being threatening to me. Nothing big, and I suspect she thought she was being funny. Jokes aren’t funny if both people aren’t laughing.

Rather than tell them how I felt, I deleted them. If I really cared about the relationship I would have told them how I felt. But I didn’t really care. And that was a turning point. I realized that I didn’t owe them anything. I may never see them again. And I’m OK with that.

Would it be different if I did see them often? Maybe. It gets really awkward when people confront you for unfriending them. I’d think they should get the clue and not ask, or not take it so personally, but that is probably my desire to not be confrontational.

There is nothing saying you have to be friends with anybody, cyber or otherwise. Being a friend should be a choice, not an obligation.

I have to think of Facebook as like my home. Sure, they aren’t physically there. But they are inside my head, which is far more intimate. Why would I let someone rummage around in my home who doesn’t really respect or resonate with me?

So why would I let that person in my head?

For a while I’d keep my really conservative friends because I thought that I might have a positive influence on them. In fact, they ended up having a negative influence on me. I got more bitter and cynical. I felt really tense every time they would post something hateful. So I deleted them.

I’m getting more and more protective of my space. I’m just glad that I realized that my space also refers to the space in my head.

Poem – ocean dream, and boundaries

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I had a dream I was walking in an alien land,
foreign, unknown, different.
No map, no guide.

I found a necklace, an artifact
that spoke of the souls of the place.
It spoke of the time before,
to the spirits that were there, then.
It was a guide, of sorts,
a map of where I was but not a map
of where to go.

As I walked under an old abandoned building
– under, because it was like an oil rig in the sea,
like a house by the shore built on stilts,
the necklace spoke.

It spoke with the voice of an octopus long past.
She spoke to me of that place
of the history,
of what was there in the time before.

I got a sense of green,
the color green of the light
of a July day married with the sea.
The color green
of seaweed and sand,
of silvery fish and shimmering sharks.

It was warm, yet cool,
and safe only because I wasn’t there at that time.
The octopus spoke to me of the time before the house,
when she was there with her octopus friends,
looking up, seeing the sky through the lens of
ocean water.

Now it is desert.
Deserted.
Dry.
Now nothing swims here,
not even a goldfish in a bowl
swimming round and round and round
with no way out.

People moved in after the sea got smaller.
They had a beachside view.
They built their house on stilts
to protect against the sea’s inevitable rise.
They thought that the sea might attack their house,
never realizing that they were the interlopers,
they were the trespassers.

But there was no clash, no war.
The sea never rose.
The sea slunk away
like a bad dog,
like a shamed child.
The sea retreated,
like an abandoned army.

The people in the house saw the
desert begin to bloom around
their seaside resort,
their former seaside resort,
and they too retreated.
They left for another test of wills
on another shoreline,
another boundary.

Why must we explore only to destroy?
Why must we encounter the other
only to suppress, to dominate, to make docile?

These boundaries of place and people are the same to us.

The other is not the enemy,
whether it be the ocean, a forest,
a religion, a language, a culture.

When we try to shape the other
into ourselves
we both lose.

It speaks to our fear
that if it is not-us,
then either they
or we
are wrong.

Time to change that perception.
Here’s to new glasses, new eyes.

Here’s to boundaries becoming welcome spaces
where we encounter ourselves,
just with different faces.

Amen.