I have just recently discovered that if I make a big fire, cover the foyer door with a blanket, and flop my yoga mat right in front of the woodstove, I can essentially have a very heated Bikram space to do Kundalini in. Since I start my day with a fire when I can, and often do morning meditations there anyway, I’m not actually sure why it took me so long to put two and two together this way.
Still no boxing here in Ballard, I’m sad to say, no heavy bag for me to work with at home, nor have I found anything doable in outlying areas I can get to by bike or bus per being close enough to get to without losing half a day in travel for a one-hour workout, or being something I can afford. Sure missing that sweet free studio time I got for teaching and co-teaching in Minneapolis, let me tell you.
I did try the local gym for a month, which is a nice place, and totally affordable. However (did I talk about this before?), I cannot for the life of me get a good body/mind workout with fifty gazllion television screens around me. It is the most distracting, mind-jangling thing I know of, and while I can tune out the sounds with my ipod, my eyes have got to go somewhere. I see people reading while they work out, but I don’t get that one: my mind has got to be on my workout, plus, moving around while reading makes me dizzy as hell. The only other places for my eyes are on all the mechanics of the machines or the wall-to-wall carpeting, and that’s not much better. Plus, I bloody hate machines. Ideally, all my workouts would be out of doors, but if I can’t have that, I at least need real things, natural things around me, or, in lieu of that, an austere space with nothing in it at all. having to work on the computer all day is machine enough for me, thanks.
So, it’s been biking for me, or jumping rope, or shadowboxing, or — best of all, really, per being able to do it anytime, no matter the weather — back to my yoga practices. And for now, I’ve decided that’s fine. Earnestly, both my body and my headspace are likely in more need of dynamic yoga and more meditation than punching and kicking things anyway, no matter how much I miss the punching and kicking.
My discovery this week with the woodstove was a very happy one and exceptionally well-timed, to boot. It’s been a weird few weeks for me, very packed, and very up and down. It was beyond awesome to have Mya here for a week, but it also meant I had to try and do my work at double-time (well, I already do that normally, so I guess I meant quadruple-time). I also realize that the older and older I get, the more of a loner I become. We had a great big party here last Friday, which was awesome, but I’m one of those people where big social groups sap my energy entirely. mark is one of those lucky folks who somehow innately knows how to draw energy from big groups, and I envy him that. Me? I’m mentally exhausted for days afterwards.
Sunday night, I had one of the most heartbreaking queries I’ve ever had at Scarleteen. A teenage boy was first posting with big STI paranoia, even though he’d never been sexually active, and was even limited in masturbating. He kept insisting he had real reason to be concerned, and after prodding a bit to try and find out what that was, he confessed that he had AIDS.
But he doesn’t.
Rather, his mother has told him for years he has AIDS (because, as we all know, people with full-blown AIDS and no treatment can be sitting around doing just fine: jesus), that he got it from an immunization shot at his doctor’s office, and that he shouldn’t ever get tested or seek treatment because no one would ever tell him if he was positive.
In short, it’s pretty clear that for whatever utterly fucked-up reason, his mother has sought to scare the crap out of her kid by making him believe he had AIDS. He’s been suicidal, paranoid, socially isolated, on the verge of an eating disorder, dealing with insomnia, terrified to even kiss anyone, the works. Obviously, I went ahead and debunked things for him, got him a list of places he could get free or low-cost testing, and made it clear that that test would be negative, but he clearly needs to see that result. I also gave him the number for DCFS in his area, because I can’t begin to imagine what his emotional process is going to be when he gets that negative result (flatly, I’d be unsurprised if this kid went home and gunned down his whole family), or whatever other forms of abuse are going on in that house. Really, this is one of the cruelest, most insidious forms of child abuse I’ve ever heard, and all Sunday night — date night for Mark and I, no less, as he was going out of town for his day job the next monring — I could NOT stop thinking about it, and anytime my mouth opened, all that came out were the chaotic sounds of sheer overwhelm.
(Much of the time, I’m glad that over the years, Scarleteen has established an ongoing trust that means teens in deep sexual or interpersonal crisis feel safe coming to us. As someone who grew up in crisis with nowhere to really turn, that’s obviously important to me. Every now and then, though, I confess that I look at other sex advice sites wistfully, wishing that we, too, could just hand out pat advice, say something salacious and witty, or tell people what vibrator to use.)
I’ve also been doing some freelance consulting/counseling for the stepparent of a sexually abused daughter: fantastic family from all I can tell, but per usual, it’s challenging work that’s not exactly emotionally easy.
Then the next day, Anne sent the foreword she’d written for the book. It was lovely: more than lovely, really. Totally perfect for the readers, but from a more selfish perspective, it made me feel ungodly good. Everyone gets a rush from hearing someone they admire and respect clearly have the same respect, especially when it’s someone who paved the way for you to do what you do with the work they did. It’s an honor.
But it’s also at times like that, I find myself sitting there floored that someone I respect has good things to say about me and what I do, that creates an uncomfortable reminder. A reminder of how much I’m still stuck in that childhood and adolescent mode of never thinking I’m good enough, never fully believing that no matter how hard I work, I can do as good a job as I feel I could or should, that I’ll never quite measure up, and that it’s this giant gift for someone to recognize my achievement or support what I do without an agenda or ulterior motive. And you know, that’s seriously depressing. Now and then, when I’m counseling abuse survivors and they’re impatient six months, a year, two years after the abuse, asking how long it’s going to take to get 100% over it, it sucks to have to say that that will probably never happen 100%, and it sucks when they observe that [i]I[/i] seem totally over my stuff and I have to tell them that I’m so not. Especially when they know how many years it’s been since I got out of and away from my abusive situations.
Like them (with a good 15-20 years added on), it sucks to know how many years you work at it and how much you do to work through it and to still have shit like this crop up where it’s clear how much baggage you’re carrying around. Obviously, this is hardly something — the pace of personal development, and the ridding ourselves of negative patterns and mindsets — that’s only a given with abuse survivors, and in my case, I don’t think it’s just about abuses, but also about the various coping techniques for a myriad of things I developed early on and kept with, as well as the simple flaws of my own nature.
Eh, well. Like anything else, awareness is the biggest step, anyway. I did used to be far less aware of these patterns and when I fell into them than I have been over the last few years, so hey: that’s something.
Back to the fire with me, per usual.
February 11th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I know what you mean.
*hug*
April 13th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Cool site. Thank you!