One of the things I've been thinking about lately is honest and forthright communication. I've never been the best communicator. I tend to clam up, even when something is really really bothering me. Though sometimes, with certain people, I just let it all gush out like a high-pressure fire hose, and then I worry that I've managed to alienate the few people I feel comfortable with. (Although I suspect that I'm more likely to alienate them with the worrying than the gushing.) I think I can do a better job at finding some kind of equilibrium.
So, I've been trying to be more open with my thoughts and feelings. If something's bothering me, I say something instead of stewing and letting it come out as some finely crafted piece of passive-aggressive assholery, or just swallowing that feeling and letting it eat at my guts until I make myself physically ill.
This is a new thing for me, and I'm starting to realize that it doesn't always work out the way I want it to. I want it to create dialogue and greater mutual understanding. But sometimes the things that have to be said are hurtful. Sometimes they're misinterpreted. Sometimes the reactions I get reveal things I'd rather not see (or maybe they're things I knew I would see, but am disappointed with all the same). And probably lots of other outcomes I've yet to experience or imagine or articulate.
But I'm realizing there's no other way. If I have to say something, I have to say it. If it's going round and round my head and making me feel queasy, it's important enough to get it out in the open. I'm going to step on some toes and fuck up royally, I'm sure, and I probably already have, and I kind of feel like a bull in a china shop, but I have to figure out how to do this sometime and I guess there's no time to start like the present.
In October, I started going to the gym a lot more regularly, at least 3 times per week and sometimes 4 or 5. In late November, I started running on the treadmill, which was rough going for a while. My shins really hurt, to the point where I could run for only a few minutes before I had to slow it down to a brisk walk. I decided to stick it out, though, and I figured I would just get used to it after a while.
I took a little break from the gym over the Christmas/New Year holidays, and finally got back into my more usual schedule last week. And you know what? My shins don't hurt anymore. I'm still taking it a little slowly, walking for about a quarter mile to warm up, jogging for half a mile, running for another quarter, walking for the next quarter, and so on, for about 30 minutes. I'm excited that it's getting easier (though sometimes I get an evil cramp in my side that I can't shake), and I think I'm on track for working my way up to longer (maybe 5-mile?) runs in the spring or summer. I am so proud of myself, which is a good, kind of unusual feeling. Yay me!
On a kind of related note, is it weird that I like the Thursday Power Abs class the best, not for any sensible reason, but because I love how the instructor says "ears"? When she says "Hands behind your ears," it gives me a giggly little thrill, every time. Something about the sibilance of the "s," the way she flattens the "r"...it's so damn cute. Yeah, I don't know. I like sounds.
This weekend, a friend used my bathroom while she was over at my house. My bathroom's distinguishing feature, aside from the hypnotic toilet seat, is my vast array of products. Shampoos, soaps, body washes, scrubs, bath salts, masks, face washes...I have at least 2 of each type of hair and skin product you can imagine. I love stuff like that (which is kind of ironic since I have incredibly sensitive skin and am probably allergic to a third the stuff in there, but I suppose that's just one manifestation of my masochistic streak). It borders on a sickness, and it's not very good for my wallet, but there are worse things. Anyway, my friend promptly declared me Product Queen. "I thought I had a collection, but my god!" she exclaimed. It actually made me feel kind of...proud. (Is that sad?)
A few weeks ago I discovered Lush. Lush Lush Lush. I've known about them for years, they've had a Boston store for a while now, but somehow I never went. Maybe, deep down, I knew it would only stoke the fires of my already consuming product lust. Maybe that's why I held out for so long. (Well, or maybe I'm just lazy and never get over to Newbury St. One or the other.) The sales girls there are like freaking evangelists, and they make me want to buy everything in the store. And everything I've tried so far is fantastic. I've gained fizzy baths and smoother, nicer-smelling skin; they've gained a good chunk of my money and a loyal customer. Especially if they keep giving me free samples. Which they will because, if they're worth their salt, they can see a product whore...er, queen coming from a mile away.
I think the text message I sent to Chris after my trip there tonight says it best: "Lush OWNS me. gah."
These feelings aren't strangers to me. I know them through and through and backwards and forwards. I fight them, half-heartedly. Distressing and confusing, but comforting in their own devilish way. The devil you know.
They aren't dark, though, like they sometimes are. Heady, bright, electrified, like lightning streaking across a hot summer sky. But unsettling. Pulling me this way and that. Jittery and agitating, skittering along the top of my overheated head.
So many things to say, and learn, and experience. So many opportunities to either get it right or fuck it up. And I'm impatient, nervous. I know myself well, I know what I do, I know how I can wreck good things. And I wonder if all the resolve and best intentions in the world are enough. I don't trust myself, not yet.
It's like that recurring dream I have, where I'm driving and about to crash, and I step on the brakes but nothing happens. I try as hard as I can to avoid the crumpled metal and broken bones, but I fail, again and again and again.
Maybe the thing to do is stop worrying about how I might fail and sit back and enjoy the ride. No, I know that's the thing to do. I'm not very good at it yet, maybe this is an opportunity for practice. Maybe I will succeed. Maybe I will learn to let go. And maybe those "good things" I wrecked before weren't so good to begin with. Maybe. Maybe. So many maybes.
I hate the dentist. When I was 10, there was a long stretch of almost-weekly dentist appointments -- five baby teeth pulled (they wouldn't fall out on their own for some reason), a raft of fillings, who knows what else. It sucked, and ever since then, at least a whiff of anxiety hovers around every trip to the dentist. My teeth have been fairly healthy for a long time now, except for the occasional filling (a word of advice to anyone thinking of skipping the dentist for 4+ years: don't). But at my semiannual cleaning last week, the dentist told me I had to have three fillings replaced.
OK, I thought, that's not so bad. The fillings are probably 20 years old, this was bound to happen soon. So I went back yesterday, thinking maybe I'd get them all taken care of at once, no big deal.
I thought wrong. So, so wrong.
She numbed a spot in my mouth, shot me with some novocaine, a little ouchy, OK fine. My tongue started to get numb. However, and this is important, my lip did not get numb, not at all. She started drilling, and it was kind of uncomfortable. Not really painful, but I seemed to feel it more than I should. She stopped and asked me if my lip was numb. "Uh...nuh. Nah rehy." "Oh, well, it should kick in soon," she said, and continued drilling. Until she hit a nerve. At which point I screamed and almost shot out of the chair. (But luckily I didn't move my head because, as she comfortingly told me, the drill would have cut my mouth to ribbons. Super.)
She apologized up and down, and I gripped the vinyl chair of dental doom and took deep breaths and tried to keep myself from freaking out utterly. She gave me a shot of lidocaine, the whole lower left quarter of my face went completely numb, and she finished up the job while I listened to Squirrel Cop to distract me. (It worked, a little.)
I go back in a month, which might be enough time for me to score some Valium.
You know you need your coffee in the morning when you're out of half and half and the only liquid dairy product you have is lactose-free chocolate milk, and you decide to use that, and when you pour it in it fizzes alarmingly, and you say out loud, "THAT can't be good," and then you drink it anyway.
The end of yoga,
"Think of something wonderful..."
I picture your eyes.
I want to let go and just forget about it. The hurt feelings and slights and adolescent behavior. It's not worth my time to dwell on what's past and not all that important, particularly when I've moved on and have a 100% better new thing evolving.
But then I have a dream that wakes up the hurt feelings (and wakes me up at 5 AM), and then I wonder, "Should I let go? Can I?" And I feel such a compelling desire to say my piece, because obviously it's bothering me. But then I think, what would that achieve? Would I feel better? Or would I just feel like a weirdo nincompoop? And why do things like this bother me so much anyway? And it goes round and round my head like an irritating, nauseating, not-so-fun amusement park ride. Kind of like "It's a Small World" at Disney World, it makes me want to run away screaming, but I'm stuck on that stupid little boat.
And all that thinking just makes me cranky, and doesn't get me anywhere good. So fuck it. I'll let it go. It's not worth the energy.
I was thinking today, on this warm winter New England day, how I wish it were spring. With birds singing and trees budding and trickles of rain running down the street. But then I also thought how I wish it would snow so I could go sledding down the big hill in the park across the street. And it seems like so many things I want are contradictory, or mutually exclusive. Not to get too philosophical about it or anything, but this can be a huge pain in the ass.
So I was talking to someone the other day, and I mentioned that I'm very shy. "You don't seem shy to me," this person said. But that's how I see myself, and it made me think about the stories we construct about ourselves, based on a lifetime of experiences and criticisms and failures and triumphs and relationships. We say, "I'm pudgy," "I'm a smart-ass," "I'm lazy," "I'm forgetful," "I'm not good at math," "I'm this," "I'm not that." But what if those things aren't true? Thinking these things, both the good and the bad, becomes a habit and makes them to true to ourselves, even though we change and evolve (or at least mutate?) constantly.
It's good to question our stories, and rewrite them if they no longer ring true.