things i find in the dark

On this march morning i am sitting at my table thinking about that really good quote about living your life in ever widening circles.

I can’t remember who it is by. But i like the idea that that life can be framed in that simple way.

Keep moving forward with the circles getting wider and wider.

That’s something I think I tried to live by, continued expansion, before I knew the quote.

But trauma interrupts that process.

I feel like my journey of healing involves process that is similar but opposite. Or maybe it just needs an amendment;

I feel like I am walking a trail that is frightening and unfamiliar

And then I pass a mile marker, a landmark, something I have seen before

And think- oh, I have been here.

In the place where the trail stops. Where it’s dark and cold and I am unable to say anything or make any decision and there is nothing but fear.

And then I climb out and keep walking. I am relieved until I inevitably hit the same spot again and arrive in collapse.

I am always briefly overcome with the worry that I am truly going no where, trapped in a groundhogs day nightmare scenario. Until I notice that each time, I crawl out of the pit a little faster. I walk a little steadier when I’m back on my way.

My hope is that my circles are continuing to widen- and each time I hit the dangerous terrain it will be a shorter and less damaging detour until maybe it’s just a branch on the ground that I stumble over. Or simply note and walk past. Or something I only notice when it is already behind me.

My body is doing strange things as it heals.

And i forget often that my job is to just believe it, honor it. More than examining it or, trying to get it out of my way.

This was much easier at the start of the pandemic when I was briefly doing nothing but stretching my limbs and taking the same walks and learning to make chicken in a crockpot.

The stakes of each choice, of each ripple or clue or new movement in my mind or body felt lower, not so dire. Like they only, finally, effected me and not people who depend on me. Or people want me to be a specific way or dance a certain dance.

My circles have widened in beautiful ways since then. I have a cool work project and a relationship. A new place in a new neighborhood with new neighbors. A new set of goals. New practitioners.

These are all relational. My therapist calls my childhood trauma, mostly, relational trauma. Which makes sense to me.

If the relationships that shaped you from birth required you to shape-shift or disappear, it is hard to break that pattern and learn a new one as an adult. I continued shape shifting and disappearing through my early twenties in ways that served me fine as a worker and student, but slowly eroded my soul, or lured me toward people who should not have been let in so close.

There’s sometimes a blank-ness in place of that old system.

I sometimes I enter new relational dynamics, in work or wherever, with the overwhelming sense that I forgot my keys or my wallet, or something important but oh no- I have to progress anyway. But the thing is my sense of who I am, where I begin and end and where others begin and end. The border between my emotions and theirs, my needs and theirs. The things that separate a human being from a mirror- reflecting back whoever is in front of them. When I hit the ground running without this ME-ness, I eventually crash. Not that I should be able to do better yet. I am a toddler learning to walk.

I try to build up this self when I feel it- by myself, or with certain people who make it clearer to me and not more foggy. People who share enough values and priorities and see me distinctly enough, so that being a bit of a mirror isn’t so bad.

Matt Kahn, a spiritual author who calms me like no other has a theory that the ego is basically the result of an overstimulated nervous system.

That feels so inherently right to me. I’m so different when I am doing things from a place of calmness- but I often forget that’s what I want. I forget to try to choose that over 4 espresso shots and more work. Over too much political podcast content and too much staring at instagram.

Part of valuing myself is remembering I can step away from all that when I want to. And that will get easier as the other things I’m building get stronger- the things that serve me where anxiety and vigilance and hyper ness and workaholism and people pleasing once were. And sometimes still are.

Last night I went to bed at 8:30 and today I got up at 6 and did my pelvic floor physical therapy exercises in bed and relaxed for 2 hours. Then I went on a 45 minute walk and got a *decaf* latte and came back here to write.

I guess I can’t promise I will do things this way every day but it sure helped me feel like myself again. I get mad at the idea of rigidity but giving myself structure - and stickers on my calendar for taking a walk, meditating, etc have helped in the past.

Some of these things, I must remember, are just me. Not negative attributes of a chronically ill person that deserves ridicule “lame, not fun, old woman.”

This is the point of this time in my life, even- to unearth who i am and accept it, unconditionally, while the circles widen slowly, slowly, slowly.

This is my favorite. This pocket of early morning time. 

The light outside my windows is dim and peaceful. The cars and the shoppers and the restaurant goers, the dog walkers and the groups of unhoused neighbors are not yet making their sounds a block away on Vermont Ave. 

And I feel safe. Because no matter what anyone might ask of me, when my phone lights up on Saturday at 8:00 am, it feels within acceptable societal norms to say no. 

“I will do that later.” Or to simply put off a response. 

I love doing this- the not answering. The waiting. The saying no. 

In fact I am doing it more and more. Even when it’s not my secret alone time.

It feels like a magic power that I have only recently obtained-  via some mystical experience.

“While walking home after her first day of junior high school, she is nearly hit by a truck from a chemical plant, and during the incident, she is accidentally drenched with a top secret chemical called GC-161. She soon discovers that it has given her strange powers, such as telekinesis, shooting electricity from her fingers, and the ability to dissolve into a mobile puddle of water. However, her powers prove to be unpredictable (such as when her skin starts glowing brightly when she is nervous).”

That’s from the wikipedia page describing the 90′s Nickelodeon show, The Secret World of Alex Mack. 

Like Alex, I too am clumsily learning to control my new powers, and often dressing like it is 1996. 

The “mystical phenomenon” I keep marveling at is simply the experience of finally showing up in my life. As a person who is possibly just as valid as anyone else. Who knew.

Like so many women and people from traumatic childhoods, I have floated through with life a part of me missing. The therapy and the art and the reading and the forgetting and avoiding and the coming back and the crying has left me looking at it this metaphorical way- if metaphorical is the right word. 

Anger is the feeling that gives us strong backs and safe boundaries- walls of the right height. It burns when injustice shows up, when our souls feel violated. It is the alarm that sounds to let us know how we feel - that something is not right. 

But anger is not in fashion for women in the south. Or women in general really. And instead of each human body having a rich emotional inner life, where the ups and downs are ridden like ocean waves, pulling each other out of the surf when we crash, my family, like many, divided it all up. 

Anger belonged to one person. And it was not for me. It was distasteful. An emblem of a bad person. An imperfection. It had to be socialized away.

But it has almost felt like it was surgically removed from me- or redirected down a different pathway. It’s been a blocked off section of the interstate and the detour I have been forced to drive through is self loathing and anxiety. Self destruction, a force that was steadily building toward implosion. 

My therapist says I have a lot of anger that is justifiable to aim outward. At the world, at specific people in it. Even if I never tell them or show them. Even for me to just know in my own head. To journal, to tell her. To punch out on the punching bag I bought this year from Walmart that is intended for tall children when I started EMDR therapy and wasn’t sure where my feelings should go. 

But that usually I swallow it. 

She said it is almost like my body has learned to reject it. That makes a lot of sense to me. 

I sometimes think swallowing all that big, swelling anger started burning a hole in my stomach. I started swallowing other things too, entitlement, resilience, outspokenness, all of anger’s sisters and cousins. 

It burned bright, in the pit of my gut. Somehow both an emptiness and an added, distended, burden and weight. 

The sense of myself, my own presence and solidity, the feeling that I too am a person who exists to live a life - on the good days that starts to fill up the burning hole inside. 

I picture it giving off steam - like when I run cool water over a pan I’ve just used for cooking that is still hot and slick with oil. 

It’s a new feeling. It is sensational. It sits like a nourishing meal. Like walking in trusty old sneakers after doing a 5k in wobbly heels. 

It’s like sound of the music coming back. 

But I have had to make room for it. 

All us creatures on this earth are opportunistic- and if I wasn’t going to be using that space in my gut where my intuition and anger and this elusive “self” belong- simpler organisms would.  

Like squatters in an abandon building setting up camp; the GI maps and blood tests and breath tests say “bacteria” “infection” “fungal overgrowth” “opportunistic yeast” “pathogens” “toxins.”

Can I really blame invaders when I wasn’t using that space? 

But now I am. And I clearing them all out. Finding the poetry in what is for the most part a primal, clinical, humbling and often gross experience- has been an unsuspected saving grace. And it is helping me rebuild a place where my soul can rest protected. That is my crowning achievement. 

.....

When you take this on, your first and biggest obstacle will be the voices you seem to hear from the world saying 

“you need too much. 

you and you alone are defective, you are not worth the fight” 

- when you do not yet have ammunition to respond. 

You do not yet have your anger, your protector, the opposing force against the world. It can grow there where you plant it.

Until then, you hear the words and demands and sounds and see the lights and people and the posts and the negative beliefs that crowd your space and just say to yourself “I hear you. I see you. I know.” And keep with you the secret knowledge that you are growing your powers. 

You are making space inside by letting the voices that attack ring out and neither agreeing or hiding from them. Let them echo in he cave of your head. Be a neutral audience. 

And in the same way that the trillions of tiny good bacteria that exist in your gut to help fight away sickness and keep you healthy and emotionally steady can grow back- can live beside the bad and slowly overthrow them just enough - the voices that tell you to take up space, to feel angry when you’re angry, to say no when you mean no, to stop blaming yourself for all things - they will grow louder like a choir and sing harmony with the faint remaining sounds of your painful past that linger only in the background, and sometimes aren’t there to bother you at all. 

And the music comes back. 

There’s some sort of shiver, a tremor, a little earthquake trapped in my body.

I try not to analyze what it is or where it comes from- I try not to wonder which combination of bodily processes, imbalances, dysfunction, ailments is creating this feeling.

A feeling like, I am a container- that is no longer large enough to hold what is inside. Like I am full of waves lapping up against the walls of a pool before eventually spilling over.

It’s hard sometimes to bring my brain to this place- where creative interpretation is welcome and easy and the sensations in my body are neutral - not good or bad.

It is hard to feel my heart rate leaping around and not ask; is it because I put honey in my green tea? Is it tachycardia? Sinus arrhythmia? Anxiety that is so underlying I don’t notice that it is anxiety any longer? Is it from smoking weed? Is it from my rx? Is it—-

Here is the best thing I have found in the dark;

I am building a muscle that allows me to make a choice: sometimes I allow the storm of what if’s, i write them down, i chase answers on the internet, i try new solutions, i make new appointments, I must do this. It is important. It is often productive.

But that is not where I want to live. It is the preparation for having a life, it is not a life.

So I can do this other thing to take a break, I can enter the third door I found through therapy that is not ignoring your symptoms/feelings OR analyzing and trying to fix them.

It is feeling them and letting them speak to you - allowing them without trying to change them or fix them.

The dissented part of my abdomen on my left side feels heavy, something the shape of a fist sits there, inside. It’s tender like a bruise. This is the part of my body I have so often tried to annex, I have divorced it from myself. I have sent my awareness, my breath, the hands of other people, on routes that avoid this place. It feels too delicate to be handled by others. Something wise within me knows that the most fragile and human parts of me exist there - I needed barriers to protect this part. I think my body is brilliant. I enjoy thinking that body has a wisdom it has been guided by that always eluded me. I can make the case for this all being an adaptation. I imagine it falling away, like so many other forms of self protection that no longer serve me that I have learned to slowly shed.

Sometimes it feels like fire, sometimes a swarm of bees, like I’m in a room with the wrong amount of gravity, like there’s a layer between me and everything else, like there’s a rope twisted through the left side of my body.

Coming up with these analogies does nothing “tangibly” productive toward “solving” my illness. But when you stay in the solving mode 24/7 you begin to burn out. I did burn out. When people who aren’t sick, or who aren’t in your body tell you to take a break- there is no way to listen to them.

“If you understood what was happening inside me you would understand this is urgent and desperate and you would not tell me to take a break.”

But this where something akin to spirituality, or maybe just creativity, maybe self compassion, has helped fill the space between science and my human limitations.

Creatively interpretting both your symptoms and your emotions (which live in your body as well) is there for you in the moments when you MUST tolerate the uncertainty and the waiting. When there is nothing else productive to do. It can offer you rest as well as new insight. An alternative to worry. Another tool in your tool box. And once you have practiced it, it has ways of making your symptoms a smidge less alarming (to me anyway)

They are still there and they still hurt, but I am not combatting them so much. I am not at war with them every moment.

I let them happen to me and let them effect me and take note. Like an artist instead of a patient. Like a person whose experience matters right now in this very moment, not just later, not just when I am “fixed.”

This is a marathon for most of us. Try to swim seamlessly between fighting to feel better and learning the cold hard facts, and staying the present moment because your life right now matters too. Embracing your live in the now probably looks different than how it did when you weren’t sick (if you weren’t) or when you were in denial about being sick (like me.)

But start with just noticing. Compare your bodily sensation to something in nature- what does the ocean in you look like today? How rocky are the seas? Physical and mental illness takes so much from us. This is something it can give us - a super power that can be applied to your difficult emotions forever that lets you learn from your experience instead of fighting it, on the days when you are out of fight.

Where can you go from there? <3

Good morning. 

It’s 9:22. 

I woke up hours later than I intended and there are no consequences. 

I think there is a reasonable, humble very human part of me that has slowly been attempting to take the reins. 

This reasonable part of me lives in my body and sees things for what they are and doesn’t take other people’s actions personally. She knows she makes mistakes and isn’t perfect, but also knows she is worthy of love and inherently good. 

She snoozed my alarm 10 times not because she is lazy, but because she knew I didn’t need to get up at 6:00 am today and if my body wants more sleep maybe it needs it.

She is the reason I am writing in bed (well, on my mattress on the floor with my matcha. She grounds me so I can see the very few things that really matter: Love for myself and others, wellbeing of my self and others, creativity and self expression, the desire to grow and evolve. 

She is up against a lot though. Most moments involve a fight. A fight with my brain and my conditioning and the ways I have sought to control my anxiety for 20 years. When my mind drives the car:

I wake up immediately frantic. It may be 6 am but I am somehow late - I am already behind on everything (even though I am working from home at my own pace and have nothing firm except a meeting literally 6 hours from now) that doesn’t matter, I am late. 

The mess around my room viscerally hurts me. It isn’t just the annoyance of visual clutter, the loss of my calming, deliberate aesthetic, it reminds me I’m a failure. Every hoodie I step over, the pieces of my bed frame, still not assembled, in boxes by the wall; they all remind me how far from perfect I am. 

Lately I think a lot about how I am changing on a cellular level. I am creating new neural pathways in my brain, and reconstructing the chaotic content of my gut, where so much of our serotonin and other necessary parts of our emotional existence reside.  

When I live in reality, my feet firmly planted on the earth, I see that for what it is: remarkable and difficult, and enough. Getting through each day in one piece and also finding a way to do some relevant work toward my future and my art is so enough. In fact it’s heroic to decide to change the things that you cannot live with, whatever they may be. 

But nearly every second, I have to push past my wiring- the story my body has always carried around, we all have one, woven so deeply in us that we do not consciously have to think it- it just permeates - often indistinguishable from “reality.” Mine tends to go like this:

“Hurry. If you don’t do it all better and faster, something terrible will happen. Don’t leave any cracks in your day, in your sentences, in your behaviors, because you don’t know what sinister thing could seep in.” 

“Hurry. And don’t show anyone your sweat - make it look easy, because that is what you are supposed to do, and that is the armor that keeps you safe. If you do it all perfectly, no one can ask you questions you might not be able to answer- questions that pick away at this veil and might get at the humanness that is too raw - too uncomfortable to share.”

“The other shoe will drop. Beat it to the punch.”

I am nearly eight years into therapy (a fact I’m proud of) and I recognize that pattern as anxiety and complex post traumatic stress. But its also just a reflection of how we live. I felt like I was better at being a person than other people at times when I particularly skilled at hiding my messy humanness. 

It felt like if I wanted to be admired - I could not truly be known. Now I know the opposite is true - I admire those I truly know the most, those that do not pretend they achieved whatever they have achieved without pain and sweat, without support or privilege if it was there, or without self consciousness and many moments where they were sure they would fail. Without moments shame. 

But I am frustrated that that won’t just fully sink in and sink in quickly. The temptation to pretend I have all figured out is always lurking, despite the rewards and relief I have already felt by sharing my mess. 

It’s a wake up call that I worry makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist- the realization that it will always take effort not to put the armor back on because this world rewards that. And that I will put it on again sometimes and that’s ok. It will be less frequent. It will be at times and with people where maybe a little more armor is called for. 

But I know there will not be an inner war in every interaction - a sticky note taped upside my brain that says “don’t hide” that I look at every 5 seconds. and another that says “you’re safe, you’re safer than you know” and another that says “stop tensing your psoas.” 

It takes a slow waking up, pouring my thoughts into words or music to feel like I am actually here. Not floating somewhere above myself, my brain existing like a buzzing swarm of bees, flying in various directions. 

As I wrap up this writing, I am thinking about the dream I had last night. 

Several times in the past year I have dreamt that I am finding my way toward a beach by way of a twisty, jungle lined back road in a car that breaks down. One time I made it to the beach but then immediately had to leave. I think I had an audition...last night I broke down again on the way there, outside a cafe.

I met a dentist who let me borrow his car. I met up with friends at a museum that was set up to look like the set of a 70′s high school movie that doesnt exist, but was a big deal in the world of the dream. 

I was wearing the leather pants that I, in reality gave away over a year ago, and I was worried that throughout the day they would hurt my stomach. 

Sometimes it felt like an experience I was living, and sometimes it felt like a movie I was watching. 

That feels about right, as a filmmaker learning to live in the present and depersonalize a little less. 

However, books and thinkers I like who combine science and spirituality have made me value the world inside my head and inside my body more - and stop telling myself it is any less valid than what is happening in my “real” life. It may be less tangible, but it is often more meaningful and significant toward my growth and healing than the activities I do during any given day. 

I have worked to tame the anxiety, and in it’s place allow for the noticing of sensations and the creative interpretation of them- the chance to make meaning there. 

I feel safe here now- in the world of my writing- under a blanket, my electric massager pad rolling along against my knotty back muscles, keeping myself connected to my body via sensations other than pain. 

I picture leaving this moment and having to decide how to take on my day, what to do first. The work. The mess. The decisions about food that are filled with dread. The fear about my doctor’s appointment tomorrow. 

My body tenses in the usual places in preparation - preparation to set itself aside, stuff down the feelings that are hard because I never learned to go through them to the other side. They get stored up in my body, like data on an old hard drive. 

I would love to live in slow motion. Staying with every inkling of a feeing that arises throughout the day, giving it the attention and nurturing that a loving mother would give a child, until it is ready move along - to- be expressed, shared, grow into something else, or simply dissipate into the ether. I remind myself I can do that. I can go slower. I can process both what is stored up and what I am newly facing.

The things in the near future (directing two projects, embracing my social life more, a new form of trauma therapy, new doctors appointments and the flashbacks those conjure) they don’t truly require the disassociated version of me that I think they do. In fact they are infinitely better if I am fully present.

They may require me to move quickly, but I don’t have to crank up the adrenaline and disown my body. I may have to do creative work while foggy or in pain, an experience in itself which has become traumatic and re-enforced the idea that to be valuable I must leave my body and felt sensed behind- but I will leave my body or shame it. I will lie to myself about being in pain or smile bigger than I have to. 

 I will say hello pain. You are here. Work is also here. You are both here. You are both real. You will both at some point, fade away again.  

nayyirah waheed (quote and illustration below)

Good morning.

I love mornings. Even though the state of the body I wake up in shifts greatly.

In this moment my eye floaters are at like a 2 (out of ten)

My photophobia (light sensitivity) is at like a 3.

These are good numbers.

But my jaw feels locked up and out of place on the right side.

Which is odd because that’s typically the side of my body that cooperates.

My wandering pains, the tightening grip of stressed tensed muscles, all usually stay on the left half of me.

Is it because my body is systemically trying to rid itself of the tension and trauma it has held on to for ages and its shifting it around in lieu of letting it go?

Is it simply because I forgot to wear my retainer for a couple nights? (Probably)

I like to lean into the idea that whatever is happening, I’m sort of balancing out in important ways. Becoming more even.

I can explain.

I recently told my friend when she asked about my health, that I am healing, but it feels different than I thought.

For a long time, but especially since Covid began I’ve been reading memoirs and realized I was gravitating toward the works of people who have overcome addictions; former alcoholics and drug addicts and folks with eating disorders who have since become my favorite memoirists and self help writers who told the stories of their addictions- Glennon Doyle, Augustan Burroughs, Laura Mckowen, Jen Pastiloff, Gabby Bernstein, Holly Whitaker, more recently Justin Michael Williams.

I see myself in these people. Partly because they are all writers fist and foremost and seem to find so much solace and purpose from writing and sharing their stories. But also the addiction part.

This puzzled me somewhat because I have generally always stayed safely within societal norms with all substances. I have never really forayed into drugs aside from weed which I don’t find addictive, but does help with chronic pain and sleep sometimes. I have definitely overindulged in alcohol plenty and did not enjoy who I was or how I felt when I inevitably sometimes ended up sad-drinking, or resentment-drinking and not happy-drinking. But even that was not in a way that put me too far outside of the norms of what my peers were doing, in LA in our twenties.

And that right there is the issue. This is how we measure these things. We compare as if that can show us the way. As long as we aren’t destroying our lives or hurting other people we can assure ourselves we can stay the same. That’s how I measured it anyway. With alcohol, with food, with how much of my free time I spend taking on extra work; what are my peers doing???

When I started reading these books I had already stopped drinking (at first begrudgingly) as part of healing my digestive system for 8 months and was used to it, by that point I didn’t miss it. I have occasionally had alcohol since then and even though I have kept it in moderation, very minimal by anyone else’s assessment, my body still hates it. I will have a great time and feel ok drinking one glass of wine while zooming with a friend and then think its fine to do that again a day or two later and my body, already overworked trying to heal is like “no more bitch!” It’s been hard to respect that. It’s still a door I am generally happier keeping closed for the time being.

Anyways, it was less about a particular substance and more about the way I existed moment to moment that made me recognize myself in these addiction stories.

I had found a clarity and sense of well being in March that I have not been able to sustain. But I feel it came from reading these works of people who found peace by living in the present moment and decidly stepping away, ruthlessly, from any habits I used to numb or distract from the present.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong, on the surface, with bingeing TV or drinking a lot of caffeine or scrolling your social media. Especially if you are doing those things consciously and then get back to your life and are present. Everyone’s capacity is different.

Those of us who have trauma that occurred early on in our stories especially, I think, can become overachievers at avoiding the present moment.

I wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t dating terrible unavailable guys, I wasn’t over-working obsessive, partying or self harming or binge eating or starving myself or over exercising, or avoiding responding to anyone who reached out to me, or buying a bunch of skin care products I didn’t need, none of the various toxic ways I have dabbled in over the years in an attempt to regulate my emotions.

But there will are still socially acceptable ways I was fighting to leave the present moment. And I wanted to get underneath to the habits.

How many of us are addicts without a substance? I had a rotating list of bad habits waiting in the wings to help me cope in a bad way. I never dove deeply enough into any of them to interfere with my work or be noticed or called out for having a problem. That was, in some sub conscious way, by design. That makes it even harder to let go of the toxic habits. They’re not in the way of anything! Except your happiness and mental health.

Living with chronic pain is a bitch. But my life opens up and gives me more space for other things when I stop trying to escape or micromanage the pain. This doesn’t mean I don’t or shouldnt do (positive or neutral) things that help. But I have often lived in a way that when pain (or anxiety or anger or despair) showed up in my life, I wasn’t able to work through it OR self soothe and let it pass.

The quick reactions to distress sent me in the directions of stimulus. Sometimes that helps.

But I got a taste of living more presently. It was when the world had sort of stopped all around me. Nothing difficult was being asked of me. I still had this feeling that we were all going to go through this Covid experience together and come out the other side (in a few weeks, ha) better or something.

I felt supported, and for the first time maybe ever, like I wasn’t falling behind at something.

With the absence of stress, there was more space inside my body and in my mind, and that space allowed me to feel closer and more engaged with other people. To create more. I was finally not running from anything.

I have looked over all my notes at what I was doing so differently during this time with my medicines or my diet and etc, and though that all matters, I think it was, more than anything, the belief that I had enough time, and the ability, to process and handle whatever would come my way that made me feel so much better.

It’s been hard to cope with the fact that I couldn’t keep that. Work, money, all the bad news, and moving, and family and real life all come back. And we have to be able to manage ourselves while engaging with our lives too.

The biggest thing I have been working on is trusting that I don’t have to either react immediately OR suppress/escape from difficult feelings. Trusting that they will pass.

Connecting it back to addiction, I think more than being present and content, my formative years were spent either: on a high from performing, the attention of an audience, praise and adoration - OR a big low, feeling that parts of me and my experience were too much and shame worthy.

It wasn’t until this year I started really looking at my relationship with caffeine. I loved the feeling of being super hyped up after a lot of coffee, that’s when I felt most like “myself.” Also sometimes SIBO made it hard to even feel the strength of a ton of caffeine because I was so foggy. So I used caffeine to counteract it. But it was exascerbating the problem (contributing to the fog it had to counteract, that is how addictions work) and I started to realize that I was using it not just for the feeling that I wanted, but so I could be what I thought I was supposed to be to other people - energetic, happy, peppy and entertaining.

It is a huge relief to let go of having to be that way all the time. No one is that way all the time.

Similarly, I’ve been on all these diets for candida, and SIBO, and Mold and I think I thought at some point I would just stop wanting other “bad” food. Food that’s more fun. Carbs, sugars etcetra. And I would magically be coffee-hyper, happy and super focused all the time.

I thought healing would feel like staying “high” without substances, instead of existing more peacefully with the lows. Instead it means not clinging to happiness trying to force it to stay, just trusting that joy is something momentary that you float through and it passes, but it always returns again.

If any of this resonates, I highly recommend reading Holly Whitaker’s book “Quit like a Girl” whether you have an issue with substance abuses or not, the book really opens up the binary of “some people are alcoholics and other people aren’t.” I think that binary makes it harder for people to look at the role alcohol plays in their individual lives, because the conversation is limited to “you’re an alcoholic or you’re not.” Which is kind of bullshit, IMO. It also talks a lot about the cultural forces at play, advertising and the like, that shove alcohol in our face.

I think there are probably a lot of other people out there like me, addicts- to nothing, or to everything? It’s not easy, but it’s possible to reorganize your mind piece by piece to free up more space, instead of staying stuck in the loop of chasing and avoiding.

Anyway, linked is a new song (well, part of one) “Wandering Pain” about all this that has been on my mind.

Xoxox

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CFpXB-Lp6NC/?igshid=1h8rmj65w3jap

More helpful things I’ve found:

Podcast “The One You Feed”

Book “Never Enough, The Neuroscience of Addiction” by Judith Grisel

Book “We are The Luckiest” Laura Mckowen

Book “Quit like a Woman” Holly Whitaker

Book “On Being Human” Jen Pastiloff

Book “Dry” Augustan Burroughs

Book “Sober Curious” Ruby Warrington

Book “Stay Woke” Justin Michael Williams

Book “A New Earth” Eckhart Tolle

Book “Love Warrior” Glennon Doyle

Book “The Universe Has Your Back” Gabby Bernstein

Book “Everything is Here to Help You” Matt Kahn

Good morning

It’s 11:30 am in Los Angeles and the sky is finally looking blue again even though fires are still raging close by.

Living in the smoke reminded me of winters in West Virginia. When the sky was just a heavy gray blanket from November through April. It felt cruel at the time.

I never got used to that winter.

My moods are so connected to the weather and what I’m looking at outside.

California is the perfect place to live if you’re pretending to be happy all the time.

The weather always tells you you should be hiking, and laughing as you wash your face with some sort of foaming organic cleanser like you’re in a commercial.

Setting aside the horrific reality of the fires, purely for the sake of metaphor, there’s a poetry in being here in this moment.

Just as I learn to make room for anger, and embrace it, and leave the cult of fake positivity, things are going up in flames.

Something that therapy and illness has taught me, is how much freedom and power we have to make sense of certain things creatively in whatever way we want. It’s just hard to let ourselves do it, it feels almost indulgent. Or maybe silly. Or we feel it will take away from our ability to grasp harsh truths or do something about them. I think we need both versions.

The places where I have most desperately wanted certainty and facts but not been able to get them- those are the places where finding meaning with my imagination helps my life.

I remember being in 3rd grade, newly dealing with the reality of being in pain all the time. Something had changed in my stomach.

I was now late for school every single day, a trend that would continue, because of the mixed messages my gut sent me every morning that sent me in and out of the bathroom, or cause me so much paralyzing stress that I would try to talk my out of attending.

My 3rd grade teacher, tired of my lateness, but with good intentions, once told me to picture a cool liquid in a soothing color, to pick my favorite color - I chose turquoise, filling the inside of my stomach. Calming the pain.

I was annoyed. Imagining a color in my stomach was not going to fix me. I needed cold hard data. I needed medication or a replacement set of internal organs. Even if this COULD help, the moment I admitted using my imagination helped my symptoms? That would be the moment doctors took my pain even less seriously and dismissed me outright. Many had already because I was a young girl. If I weren’t a young white cis girl from an upper middle class family i guarantee the dismissal would have been even worse.

So I was defensive to my teacher. The same way I would be defensive for years when people told me to try xyz lifestyle choice or simple solution to address years of pain that had confused doctors.

The same way I would be insulted when I was told it was “just anxiety” by doctors. I was defensive, and I became avoidant of sharing about my life in order to not, inevitably, come off as defensive.

But there is a weird sort of privilege in my being sick this long, over various stages of life; childhood, adolescence, young adulthood. Don’t get me wrong, I would rather not be sick, but what I mean is, this isn’t my first rodeo.

Science may only just now be really starting to understand the microbiome and the conditions that plague it, but I have been here, waiting in the wings, doubled over but still trucking along, learning how to make sense of things where there is not enough information for them to literally make sense.

I’ve found I truly need both the antibiotics AND the stupid turquoise liquid mind exercise, the lab work and the therapy that looks to address my anxiety and traumas. The idea that it was one or the other, in my mind OR in my body has been a barrier to my coping skills for years.

I came by that “either or” idea organically. It’s the way we are taught to think and the way western medicine tends to view things, though that is improving. Trauma also makes it harder to grasp nuance instead of black and whiteness.

I couldn’t have gotten to this point without learning to recognizing the way my brain got organized in childhood: don’t get angry, always appear positive, put others first, men’s emotions and needs are generally more important than yours.

I have a lot of anger. I have anger at my illness too. About the symptoms. About being on a restricted diet (again) and taking all these supplements. About feeling like I have to do everything perfectly or my body will collapse for days.

It becomes so much more livable though, even by simply acknowledging that in writing; I am angry. I am still sitting here calmly on my red velvet pillow on the floor at my short Japanese tea table by the window, but I am also angry.

There is something in anger that is self-preserving. An acknowledgment that you deserve better than what you’re facing.

When I can trust myself to meet my anger, to neither stuff it down or express it in a way that is harmful to others or myself, I feel a new freedom. I don’t have to walk around ready to spring into a defense posture. Because I know how to regulate that emotion and I’ve made room for it to show up. Even though it is still uncomfortable.

When it can’t show up as itself, for me anger shows up as; looping anxiety or guilt, obsession over food and health that leads to tunnel vision, impulsive decisions, various other forms of self sabotage. Oh, and physical pain.

My therapist once told me it was “like my body rejects it, when I feel angry.”

It made sense to me perfectly in a way that is hard to explain, but that I’m sure someone out there reading this also feels and understands. I think a lot of our bodies, women in particular, reject anger. Or maybe reject some other emotion. Whatever you weren’t allowed to feel growing up. Whatever emotion was deemed too much, or was monopolized by a different family member in a toxic way.

But that pain, rage, sorrow- it has to go somewhere. We learn to point it at ourselves for the benefit of other people when we don’t know what else to do.

This is the last thing you probably want to think about if you have a chronic illness. Or even if you don’t, it is not stuff we as humans tend to embrace; trying to better regulate and sit with our least pleasant emotions.

But while you are waiting; while you’re waiting for your lab work to return or your doctor to call you back, while you’re waiting for your new anti depressants to kick in, while you’re waiting for the incessant busyness of your pre-Covid life to return, experiment with stopping yourself from going down whatever avenue it is that you go down when things are out of your control, the one that harms you. The one that is probably fueled by anxiety - constant googling? Obsessing over something small? apologizing constantly for reasons you don’t understand? The list goes on.

Instead, try to feel the physical sensations of emotion in your body. Are your physical pains saying anything to you?

Is there a totally unscientific but spiritual interpretation of what’s going on that can help you get through the day or the hour or the minute, WHILE you’re on the meds, or waiting for the next step?

Here’s mine:

Science: My body has been overwhelmed for years by bacterial overgrowth, pathogenic yeasts, mold spores, fungus, mycotoxins. As I have been wiping out these beasts, I’ve also had to build up my body’s detox pathways, my ability to take in, process and effectively get rid of what is harmful. I’ve had to get my immune system stronger, and build up my good bacteria so it will fight these monsters off and not let them take over again.

Creative connection: My biggest roadblock in relationships, of all kinds, and in my career, aside from being sick- has always been with boundaries. I used to never have them, and feel the need to say yes to everyone. When that burned me out, I was resentful. I’d built up a lot of resentment that wasn’t the fault of others. I let everything in and it built up and I had no methods of getting it out. So I am detoxing here too. I have gotten rid of so much of what doesn’t serve me. And my ability to notice and honor anger as a messenger and protective force will help keep the harm away, just as a healthy immune system and functional microbiome keeps the pathogens away.

That’s an oversimplification of both my illnesses and my point of view on it, but it helps me to find these ways that healing from (and just improving in dealing with) sickness mirror/compliment the other areas of my life. I used to push illness into it’s own separate corner of my brain as if it weren’t really a part of me.

It is. And I both accept that, AND feel certain that I won’t always feel the way I do now, and that I can keep getting better, or at least befriending these parts of me. I’m building a relationship with my illness. Weird as that sounds.

here I am. typing. i’m doing it. 

the same thoughts loop through my mind. the ones that start as curious friendly queries and then grow steadily into a heated, spinning, self interrogation. 

in the past 6 isolated months I have mostly swatted at my looping thoughts - the ones that get in the way of my writing. I’ve been trying to get them away from me. as if they’re the pantry moths that invaded my old apartment. i tried to squash them or catch them in a glue-y trap laced with pheromones and take them out with the trash. 

instead, i’m going to try writing the questions down as they arrive, in real time. 

ready?

Laura, 

why do you need to share everything? what if you share too much? what if you regret what you shared but you can’t take it back? 

what if this makes you BECOME something? like, what if, in the exploratory process of trying on new hats, new paths of self expression, what if you are labeled a blogger or an influencer or a self help guru? or a sick person? 

what if you are labeled anything other than a “real writer” and artist? what if the internet and the world gets to define you before you have fully defined yourself while you were trying to explore?

what if you get a following of wonderful creative anxious folx who could benefit from your words and feel seen in the things you say, and make you feel seen in return? .....

but what if it goes to your head? what if you lose track of the reason you did it in the first place? what if you become an egomaniac? 

what if this new community you’ve started becomes a cult and you didn’t mean for it to become a cult, you were just trying to change the world, little by little, by sharing your vulnerable truths? but what if you get endorsed by a company that sells things like protein powder and you dont wanna be someone who sells something, that’s not who you are. But what if its a product you believe in? i mean, it seems really well made, and you think you’re helping everyone by giving them discount codes? 

but really its a multilevel marketing scam. you had no idea. you wouldn’t have shared it if you’d understood what it was, or grasped that MLM’s are all just pyramid schemes. but now you and everyone else you care about has bought all of these powders and essential oils on a credit card, and you have them piling up in your garages and you know that no one is going to buy them. fuck. you should have seen this coming. you watched “the vow” and “on becoming a god in central florida.” you and everyone you love has been duped by the under-regulated capitalistic system. it was that easy. it was that fast. where did the time go??

what if you want to get out, so you try to abandon ship but it’s too late. you already know too much. the people at the top are watching you too closely. and they’ve got friends in high places if you know what i mean. it’s no longer safe for you in LA, or in the US even. 

you re-activate Tinder plus and find a man who lives abroad, somewhere with pretty water and Mediterranean-inspired cuisine that would still allow American immigration, like Croatia. you meet a dark haired man with kind eyes and unruly facial hair. yes, he is someone that you could see yourself loving, though not in the deeply passionate, thrilling way you’ve always dreamed of, but he’s a good man. he is honest and he will accept you and your secrets. 

you change your name. you get a fake passport and go meet him somewhere in Europe to begin again. 

you tell no one from your old life where you’re going.