I respectfully do not care.

 I'm mad. So what else is new? This is the longest Christina and I have gone without speaking after an argument. It's been 2 days and tonight will be the 3rd night. The truth is that I don't want to talk. I spent yesterday and today either doing things with Ari and Mason that needed to be done or things around home or town, but you know what I haven't been? Anxious. I've known that I've been supremely anxious, but I have had a difficult time describing its severity or explaining why it existed at all. Shockingly, now that I've spent 48 hours without giving a fuck what Christina thinks, says, or does, I get it! I had no idea: my anxiety has been related to her perception and judgment of me. Maybe not all of it, but 99% of it! That is shocking news to me. I'm embarrassed that I'm so unable to see myself that I didn't even know this was causing it. It's been the most peaceful 2 days. I made decisions, and these have been the thoughts that have g

My life isn't what I want it to be. I feel guilty even typing that. It's been a year since I was writing a handful of Christmas cards to send to my close friends, and I was writing the same thing....that my life wasn't what it needed to be, and I knew that what I was living was a prelapse existence and needed to be altered. It's 12 months later and although some things have changed, nothing has changed. I have no one to blame but myself. I'm stressed and anxious and triggered and panicked, almost all the time. I don't want my children to grow up with this version of me, but this is who shows up for them. I feel overwhelmed, exhausted and on edge. But I KNOW the things I need to do to change this. That's the most fucked up part - I know how to make this better, but instead of doing it I'm drowning in slow motion. A lot of my day to day existence happens in my head. I don't have people to talk to; not in the way that you do when you work with a group o

I've told Christina a few times now that I am not even trying to be seen anymore; only in moments of exasperation and after she's asked a question that prompts it. She takes that as giving up, I think, and she's mad because I didn't make a declaration about it...but it didn’t happen suddenly. There wasn’t a moment where I made a conscious decision. This has been slowly happening over a long time. Today I realized it's more than not trying to be seen - it's that I actually want to be invisible again. I am angry and resentful. I feel hopeless and helpless inside my own body. I've been holding on to unidentified anger for a long time now, and even when I tried to understand what it was about, I couldn't see it. I believe all this is at the heart of it. I don’t even want to tell her any of this, because what I say doesn’t matter at all. She doesn’t listen to hear me anymore. She only listens to dispute. She loves to say “perception is reality” unless it appl

 My first night in ceremony with aya was violent. Although once the medicine took root I was no longer "in the room," the place I found myself was physically violent and terrifying. I actually wished for death. It would have been merciful. I wanted help, but couldn't ask for it. I would come to long enough to begin the thought, "I need help," but before I could finish it, I would be pulled under again. It felt like what I imagine it must feel like to swept away in a tsunami, suffocating and simultaneously being thrashed about under water with massive amounts of debris presenting obstacles your body slams into with magnificent force, then continuing to rake you forward in the torrent. Sometimes when I awoke, I was vomiting and had no idea how long I had been. I didn't know if I was puking into a bucket, onto the floor, or onto myself. Once I was able to say "help me," but when everyone came over to assist, I couldn't speak. Nothing that they off

My spiritual teacher asked me to write letters to my parents. Honest, if angry, letters about the ways they failed and betrayed me. Perhaps that should be a straightforward task. It doesn't feel that way for me. As a parent myself, I now consider my parents' actions through different lenses, and I worry about the ways I mother my own children. I'm quicker to excuse their behavior (or lack of) and try to explain it away or hold space for their own experiences. But that's not the point.  The point is that I'm profoundly hurt by the lacking relationships I've had with both my mother and father, all my life. I've desperately wanted their love, understanding and approval, but I can't recall a time I ever felt that I had it. My relationships with them have formed impossibly deep beliefs about myself as a person, and none of them are good. I vacillate between grief and anger over these histories. Despite my acknowledgment that neither of my parents can or will

Imagine growing up with plenty of well meaning adults around you. Sharing space with relatives, friends, teachers, and church goers who want nothing more than to help you successfully navigate this world. Imagine the warmth of that safety; the Knowing that everyone wants what is best for you. You grow and learn in a religious and social culture that teaches you right from wrong. You learn that certain groups of people are wicked, depraved and the opposite of all the things God wants us to be. You grow up absolutely sure that your religion is the right one, because your parents believe it. Your family believes it. All the people you know to be good believe it.  Your preachers break down story after story from the Bible into words you can understand, aligning themselves and you with the oppressed and persecuted people in those texts and every Sunday you come out on top. You are the people engulfed in a neverending search for righteousness and saddled with a God ordained duty to share thi