Hungry, always

Where I live, warmth will continue to blanket most days through October. But the breeze that now comes after dusk is so sweet.

I’m still waiting for three final tomatoes to ripen a bit before picking them and turning them into bruschetta. 

I’ve been meditating on what I need to let go of, things that should naturally fall away with changing seasons. Maybe that’s the point. As I approach a new season, the things that need to go will fall away, without effort. Like leaves. Like everything in nature. 

One of my previous entries was about Stillness. The past three years have been about Stillness, Healing, and Patience. Life is picking up for me again. The patience, the listening in, the letting go and stepping back seem to be paying off. I’m still fucked up over it all. But things are moving. Not necessarily the way I would have wanted them to, but they’re moving exactly the way they’re supposed to.

For so long I shied away from greater responsibilities, I hid from my own capacities, and played small because I was scared. I took pride in working under the radar believing that it was the pathway toward stability. But I’m understanding now that “stability” is not only subjective, but farce. 

If I’m being honest with myself, I just want a good life where I don’t have to worry about my basic needs being met. I’m still in a giant hole, but I can see the light above, and I’m already living the life I’ve always wanted. It’s not exactly what I envisioned, but the truth is, my basic needs are met. My support system is strong. I’m passionate about my 9-5, and I’m good at it. All the doubts that still weigh me down are my own. I know where they come from. And I’m at point now where I can either continue to let them weight me down and keep me small, or, I can finally step into myself. My full imperfect self.

I’m still scared. But now, I’m more scared of staying small. Worrying about things I couldn’t control, and not trusting the process only helped me to dig a deeper hole for myself. So I welcome this movement. Fucking up is part of the process. It’s time to embrace that. It’s time to trust. It’s time to stop clinging to old identities and definitions of myself that were dependent on my usefulness toward others. 

I’ve had to make peace with my attachment and co-dependency issues. My insecurities and ugly traits that resulted from trauma and abandonment fears. I couldn’t control what happened to me as a kid. But I can control what I do about my life moving forward. 

If voting didn’t make a difference, there wouldn’t be such an effort to suppress votes. Voting may not bring all the changes we want, ballots do no reflect all our needs, but voting does make a difference.

i wish I had that. but the anxiety is in my marrow. my mother’s utang na loob gushed into my veins after her death. lives in my father’s silences. the shadow that follows me even in darkness.

I don’t know whether or not I’m going to make a resolutions list for this upcoming year. Things got rough a couple of years ago, and I stopped that practice. I stopped everything. Stopped running. Stopped planning. Stopped dreaming. So when the new year came, I instead focused on embodying one word for the year, “Stillness.”

It was perfect. I had been moving constantly for over a decade. I needed to rest. And I did.

Since the one-word intention was effective that year, I decided to do it again for 2019. For 2019, I chose “Healing.” I had spent the previous year learning how to sit still and pause. Stillness allowed me to feel things. And most things didn’t feel good. I needed to sit with each of my feelings and give respect to all of them, all of me. Most of the time it hurt. So this past year, I needed to learn how to heal. 

For 2020, I am meditating on setting “Patience” as my intention. It feels right. Patience. Because after two years of recovering from exhaustion and trauma, then dressing my wounds, I need to now wait (and heal some more). So 2020 will be about being patient.

I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t tether myself to my [perceived] obligations. I don’t know if it’d be happier.

And maybe that’s the point. I wouldn’t necessarily be happier. Life would just be different. I like to fantasize about life being different because living in the fantasy is more fun than being present in my reality. And that’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. Because the present, really isn’t that bad. Sometimes, it’s pretty damn good.

(1) We suffer because we desire things. (2) We suffer because we have difficulty letting go. (3) Truth is seeing things for what they really are.

I visited a Buddhist temple yesterday, and those were the most salient messages I came away with. I’ve heard them all before. But hearing them again yesterday was timely.

(1) There is so much that I desire. Most of which are superficial, conventional, materialistic things. I am sitting in one of my usual hipster coffee shops right now glancing around at the cute summer outfits, the first dates, and the made-up faces thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. I may not be able to buy a cute summer dress, but I was able to splurge on a chai latte and overpriced toast. I don’t go on dates anymore, but I still date my partner of seven years (even though he’s not the type to sit at a coffee shop and read with me). I can’t afford to buy the only kind of make-up that my skin won’t react to, but these days, I’m so much more comfortable in my own skin.

(2) Letting go has been my biggest lesson over the past year. I had grown attached to my desires, which I mistook for dreams. When I started attending my Sunday meditation class in October of last year, my meditation guide told us first-timers that we would lose everything if we kept coming. He was right. Someone told me once that perspective is everything. I lost my old perspectives once I started meditating. I am far from being centered or monk-like. I’m not too concerned about achieving nirvana or inner peace. But I do know that the things I once strained to reach for and ached to hold on to no longer keep me up at night. Well, most nights. I have my incredibly human moments. I have my moments of suffering. But not like before.

(3) We have our personal truths which are true only to ourselves. But so much of what we experience is imbued by our past traumas. We become beholden to anxious and cynical thought patterns born from negative experiences. It becomes cyclical. I’m starting to understand healing as practicing truth (i.e. seeing things for what they are, not what my traumatized self assumes them to be). One thing that my partner and I have agonized over is my tendency to assume the worst even when his actions and behaviors have proven otherwise in recent months. It’s a survival mechanism. As animals, we have to learn how to avoid danger by sniffing out possible traps. But as humans, we have to realize that not everything is a trap. That not everything is a step back into a deep hole. That sometimes, steps backwards or sideways aren’t necessarily a bad thing. 

Getting to know yourself and learning how to listen to and take care of your damn self is a helluva lot of work. I’m tired.

I have two take-away’s from my meditation today:

1. The answers are in me.

2. Success is how I choose to define it.

Overthinking is a common problem. I’ve experienced, through meditation, that once you learn to sit with yourself, once you stop fighting all of your conflicting thoughts and feelings, that the answers you’re looking for often reveal themselves to you. 

I think that given my circumstances, I’ve been successful. It’s not about my sad bank account, my title, my possessions, or the milestones I’ve hit/missed. Right now, I’m more compassionate and self-aware than ever. I’m on a path where I’m learning how to fuse my talents with my purpose both in my career and personal life. It’s a slow-ass process. Patience as a verb is the biggest thing I’ve learned over the past year. Next to letting go. Losing my attachments has been the best thing for my mental and spiritual health.

1. Reading

2. Journaling

3. Walking my dogs

4. Going to the beach

5. Jogging

6. Cleaning

7. Meditating

8. Making a yummy healthy meal

9. Connecting with friends

10. Treating myself with a good drink/meal/massage/”gift”

Years ago, I went to my first Bikram yoga class. I will never return to Bikram again, because now we all know that Bikram, the yoga “guru,” is one of the grossest sexual exploiters in the realm of health and wellness.

Anyway, I only got through about a third of the poses before spending the rest of the class in child’s pose despite being in great physical health. Why? I forgot to breathe.

This happens throughout the day. I catch myself holding my breath, unconsciously assuming that it will create stillness and balance when I’m in the middle of a challenge. This is the furthest thing from the truth. You can’t halt life, ever. Especially during challenges. You have to breathe through everything.

That’s what I’m learning now.

I had my first feedback-informed therapy appointment last Tuesday. My therapist helped me to understand that part of the resentment in my relationship stems from my lack of communication. Well, assertive communication. I am the classic case of person-who-bottles-everything-up-before-exploding. This came as no surprise. This is how I’ve operated for all of my life. I almost wrote, “this is who I am.” But that’s incorrect. I learned how to operate this way because I grew up with an adult who was unstable, whom I had to avoid upsetting to avoid abuse. I was hostage to her emotional and physical outbursts. So I learned that to protect myself, I needed to hold things in. 

I’m an adult now. I’m in a partnership/love-relationship that has weathered a terrible storm that has left the two of us feeling raw with our own sets of resentment toward various people and circumstances in our lives. And we’re healing from that. 

I went to my meditation class today after taking a month-long hiatus. I feel a little guilty because the reason that I stopped going for a while was that it had become so routine that I was no longer very sincere or intentional about it. For weeks, I allowed my mind to wander off and I had no real desire to focus back on breathing or “oneness.” It was no different today. But our guide’s closing words stayed with me. He said, “People who need to survive are not here. They have to focus on survival. They’re hungry. They don’t feel safe. They can’t meditate. They can’t. You are here because you don’t have to focus on survival. You are blessed.”

I’m glad I went. I’m glad that I’m focusing back on establishing healthy routines for myself even if they’re fleeting. Because this is what I need right now. In June, I didn’t need to meditate. I needed to celebrate. I needed to feel and move my body. I needed to be in community. I needed to enjoy laughter. Lots of it. I did. And it felt so good. Last week, I needed to process. And now, I am returning to practices that support my health, both mental and physical, because this is what I need right now. I think that this is the point, understanding what your needs are “in the now.”  

I have a therapy appointment in two weeks and I’ll be starting a type of treatment called feedback-informed care (FIC). I’m looking forward to it. Even though I feel like I’ve been on a good trajectory, life will inevitably kick you in the ass and fuck you up (as I learned two weeks ago). And I want to be better prepared for when those times happen, because you can’t predict them.

I plan on running again too. To start, I’ll go for a gentle jog on Monday after work, by the water. Running used to be my favorite form of exercise. If I can run at least twice a week, I think that my body will appreciate it. Baby steps.

And of course, meditating. Going to this class every weekend saved me last year as I navigated some of my lowest lows.

As cynical as I am, as annoyed as I get with eternal optimists, I’m a glass is half-full person.

I haven’t googled PTSD yet. I’m going to wait until I see a therapist. I’ll be making the appointment tomorrow during my lunch. My only understanding comes from what I learned from brief paragraphs in Psychology courses taken years ago, and conversations through my work (I’m in a helping profession). But If I had to guess, these would be some of the symptoms:

- Replaying the scenes

- Fixating on what could’ve happened differently

- Paranoia: What if they’re criminals with connections and they want revenge for pressing charges? What if they find me? What if they come for my loved ones? What if this happens again?

- Fear: The world is not a safe place

- Rage

- Sorrow and loss of faith: How can humans be so cruel?

- Shock

- Depression, fatigue, and frustration: I haven’t been able to do shit since that day, it totally derailed my vacation.

Anyway, I’m still grateful because it truly could have been worse. They could have been armed. One of the officers who came to the scene was actually kind. A bystander took a video and turned it in. None of our wounds are irreversible. If I’m being honest, that was one of the worst days of my life. But I truly believe that the outcome was the best possible scenario. We walked away, we went home to our blessed lives, and people supported us. What more do I need? 

Revenge? No. Justice? I believe that the universe takes care of that. 

I don’t know if my partner and his parents would agree. We had different roles. We all process differently. We’ve all been hurt in different ways. And all of it factors in to how we heal. I just hope and pray that in the end, clarity overcomes bitterness.