I dreamt I was at an event and this woman leaned over and started tattooing me. Okay I get that’s weird, but, dream.
So anyway, the tattoo was amazing. It was these long hanging branches with tiny dark red flowers or perhaps leaves at the end, and she interwove it with all my existing tattoos. Very Japanese.
Does anyone out there know of a site where I can look up flowers by appearance? Because I feel like some of the message in the dream had to do with the flowers.
Wow, solved in record time. This was kind of hard to put together, and you all wiped it out in no time. Next week I’ll try to be more challenging.
Last night was my annual mammography. Yay me.
I want to write about how much I hate the experience. I hesitate to do this, because I don’t want to discourage anyone, ever, from doing something so easy and so potentially important. But I hate the experience.
A lot of women bitch about the pain, and while it’s uncomfortable, for a larger woman, it’s not so bad. A small breast gets tugged and pulled and twisted, but a large breast mostly just gets squished, and it’s tolerable. What’s really barely tolerable at all is the anger.
When I got there, I was right away angry. Because they’d moved next door and hadn’t bothered to call or send a postcard; just waited for you to show up and read the sign on the door. And frankly, when they moved 3 years ago (they are expanding, so they’re moving within a larger and larger suite of buildings) they did the same thing. Just let you show up and tell you that you’re in the wrong place. So before I even get there, I’m being shuffled like so much cattle.
So I go next door, and I walk in, and right away the girl (very young) asks if I’m there for a mammo, and she gives me a form to fill out. With all the same info they already have on me. Name, address, date of birth. They also ask for age. Fuck them if they can’t subtract my year of birth from 2007 and figure it out themfuckingselves. Definitely angry.
So then I wait and eventually they call me back up and ask me, verbally, for all the fucking info I just filled in. And want my insurance card. “It hasn’t changed,” I say. “Even so, we need to see it every time you come so that we have a current picture of it on file.” And I refrain from saying that they do have a current picture on file, because it’s the same card and the same damn picture.
Angry.
Angry when I’m changing my clothes, and there I am in the stupid half-gown, and then when they finally bring me into the exam room I go back out to get my sweatshirt because I’m cold, and she (a new she) says “You’re going to have you take it off anyway.” “But I’m cold and I can leave just the arms on.” But no, they want to make sure that no part of the fabric gets in the picture. It can see through flesh, right? So why not cotton?
So yeah, so standing there without any top on, cold, just standing there while she fiddles, and it’s move over, face this way, hold your breath, blah fucking blah fucking blah.
Until finally I can leave in a huff. Get to my car and start asking myself why I’m so angry.
I want to be known. I want someone, somehow, to know me. And this cattle car mammography; no one ever sees me. They see my nipples, my chart, never me. The sign on the door: Impersonal. The greeting when I walk in: Impersonal. And when I say, You have my insurance card, I am really saying, You know me; I’m a regular here. Know me.
But they don’t. Sometimes the technician will remark on my tattoos, and we’ll talk a little, and those are the best mammos, and I’m not angry, and I don’t mind that it hurts a little. But to be this empty pair of breasts, it’s humiliating.
Halfway home (which is to say, a mile or two down the road) I started crying. Cried and cried and could not stop.
When I was a girl and studied the Holocaust in Hebrew School they talked about how shoving the Jews into trains, like cattle, and then stripping them nude, was enough to demoralize them and prevent them from fighting back. And it wasn’t that I didn’t believe my teachers, but I couldn’t picture it. It was too simple, too easy; don’t people naturally want to fight back?
I don’t want to excessively dramatize a really minor experience, it’s just the only analogy I can think of. That in my small way, I know, now, how it is to be demoralized and lose yourself. And it’s only yourself that fights back. And all it took to reduce me to tears was an hour of demoralization; a sign, an officious and uninterested girl at the front desk, an ugly gown, nudity, a disinterested tech. Next to nothing, really.
When you look within, you tend to move through layers. At first look, everything is fine. At second look, everything is hard. At third look, everything is soft.
Suppose you tell a barbed joke. First look, “Hey, it was funny. It didn’t mean anything.” Fine. Second look, “I’m angry and I was lashing out.” Hard. Third look, “I’m terrified and protecting myself with barbs.” Soft.
Last night I stayed fairly late at a party, despite being pretty exhausted. There were a number of different social groups at the party, but I was the last one there among my own social group.
So this morning I asked myself, why did I stay so late? The first answer was that it was a relief to be out of the house. I’ve been too much at home lately, too bored out of my mind supervising Arthur’s home studies. And hey, it was a long drive to get there. Fine.
The second answer was that it was my own ego. I am a competitive, and some part of my mind was treating it as a contest for affection, for being the best friend by staying the longest. Hard.
And finally I reached the part where I saw that I am afraid that I don’t know how to be a good enough friend, that other people are better at friendship than I am. That I am, as a friend, inadequate, and I was staying to compensate. Soft.
This is the nature of inner work. We resist at first because we know the hard part is coming. We don’t want to admit we have an ugly part of ourselves.
But we resist more powerfully because we know the soft part is coming, and we don’t want to admit we have a vulnerable part of ourselves. The hard part of us resists this most of all, and we’d rather stay in the anger and egotism and competitiveness and spite than go there, than be vulnerable and soft.
But there’s another truth, one we can reach when we spend time with the soft part, when we allow ourselves to have that knowledge and those tears. That is, we really are fine. You know what? I really am a good friend and I’m not inferior to others. I have flaws in how I manage my friendships, and because I am not afraid of the dark me, or of the vulnerable me, I am okay with acknowledging those flaws, and wishing I was a better friend, and trying to be. But if I take the plunge, and look three times, I can look a fourth time and say “I am fine as I am.” And I am.
I just found a wonderful new blog called Red Witch, which seems to concentrate on books, articles, and information about the formative era of modern Wicca in the U.S. and England.
Definitely adding this one to my blogroll.
I don’t know why buying sleepwear gives me such inordinate pleasure. Nothing makes me happier than buying sleepwear. New clothes doesn’t do as much for me, and of course, new clothes are harder to pick out. Not as relaxing.
At one time I was very serious about my sexy lingerie, but it feels very pointless when you’re not in a relationship. Besides, I never really slept in the stuff. For actual sleeping you need a soft cotton or jersey or flannel. My lifelong habit has been to sleep in a nightgown, and only wear pajamas when I’m really sick.
Until about a year or two ago, when I had a long, difficult bout of strep. Days and days of being unable to swallow, chills and fever, and pretty much living in my jammies. At the end of which, I had developed an actual affection for pajamas.
Which affection I naturally express by spending money.
May I say that I kind of hate the trend of selling “sleep separates”? First of all, you can’t hardly find a pair of old-fashioned pajamas. Second of all, they’re cleverly getting you to spend twice as much. But it is nice to mix and match.
You know where this is going: Yesterday I bought new jammies. Yay. I had a $10 off on anything at Kohl’s. I tried on lots and lots of pajamas. It made me feel good. Even when it didn’t fit and I didn’t like it, I felt good. Which even I don’t understand.
I got these except in these colors. It was all very complicated because at first I couldn’t find the plain blue top, and I loved the stripes, but a striped top with a striped bottom made me look like a very cute prisoner, whereas the blue bottom…just not as insanely cute. The only blue top in the whole store was on the wrong rack, with other pajamas (and those others didn’t come in my size so I wasn’t looking).
So this is me. I run home and change into my new jammies. And insist on telling Arthur how cute I am. Which gets me that teenage “Yes. Mom. You’re. Cute.” thing. And then he goes upstairs and I call him down for dinner later and I say “By the way, have you noticed my pajamas?” Like that. Like a crazy lady except without the meds or the shopping cart. But with the pajamas.
Your results:
You are Derrial Book (Shepherd)
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Even though you are holy you have a mysterious past.  |
All solved! And here I thought it was tough.
I’m in the process of writing up some Starwood diary stuff, because I know you’re all dying for my event report.
But Starwood isn’t just an event, it’s a magical space. As such, it can have…themes. Meaning in your life. And this year, the meaning for me was about communication. This year, it seemed I was continually in a position where I was standing between two people conveying communication back and forth, often with failure. So-and-so is pissed at whosy-who, and I’m in between. Rest assured, Starwood is a magical place, and all of these communications worked out for the best, and all is well. But I got to be with me as an agent of that communication.
I found myself saying “My worst fear is that the people I love will all hate each other.” I didn’t know I had that fear, but it came from a pretty deep place as I said it. A week later, I suddenly realize that this fear is my childhood entirely.
The message, to a child, of an acrimonious divorce is, “You can’t have all the love you need.” Period. You can have Mommy or Daddy, but not both, and not together, and neither will ever be comfortable with the fact that you love the other. Not, I suppose, inevitable in all divorce, and I believe Isaac and I have made sure it never happened in our divorce, but certainly it is the story of my first divorce, the one I lived with as a child.
I have said twelve thousand times that when we work to create Pagan family and Pagan community, we replicate our families of origin. When we have some experience with therapy, we can create family more consciously and in a way that is healing instead of knee-jerk.
I found, this week, that I have created a family big enough, diverse enough, and loving enough that I can never have all the love taken from me, that I can never end up alone with everyone hating each other. Things are good now, and things can always be less good. Acrimony can happen. Total population of the people I am in comfortable, loving relationships with can be reduced. But I see that in building the Clan, we have given ourselves a gift that cannot be broken. Splintered, okay, if necessary. But not broken. And that is a great comfort.
I will still have my fears. I will always, I think, be a person who can be in a warm and caring crowd and still be afraid I am alone. But I can also shake off that fear, and take in the love.
My ex is a confirmed night owl. At some point, he wanted to coin a term for daylight people, e.g. the opposite of night owls. I tried “normal” but he rejected that and came up with larks.
But the urge to divide people into owls and larks is just one of the many unimportant but ubiquitous examples of the dualism of our culture: Day or night, good or evil, male or female, right or wrong, we divide divide divide and never see the gray areas.
I am not a morning person. Just. Not. I wake up slowly and I don’t do well when the alarm goes off much before 7. Conversation before coffee is sluggish and reluctant.
But I get most of my work done in the morning. I clean the bathroom while I’m getting ready for work. I leave the dishes in the sink after dinner and wash them the next morning while making coffee. Then I get to work, get myself more coffee, and am at peak productivity before lunch.
I could continue with the boring details. I’m most social in the evenings. I have a dead zone around 2 p.m. I’m usually up past midnight but can’t write productively my last hour or so awake. The point is, I’m neither an owl nor a lark. I’m me. I have my own cycles and my own interaction with light, food intake, and the other things that affect circadian rhythms.
And so does everyone else. It’s just one more box we don’t have to squeeze into.
