I have had quite the journey since blogging about my mother’s death, though I really don’t know how much of that I’m ready to reveal. Suffice it to say that I’ve been in and out of some major trauma responses–and have experienced some deep healing because of it. I hope to share some of my learning here, though at the moment, I’m going through a remodel in my new home and am exhausted by consistent waves of triggers that I’m confronting like a super hero swashbuckling six foes at once. It feels like I’m earning a doctorate in addressing trauma, and I have the naive hope that perhaps maybe I’ll finally graduate from management of my symptoms to “true healing.”

That belief, by the way, is what has kept me from posting. I’m grappling with whether I want to be identified with trauma as a writer for however long, or live a life that has integrated beyond trauma’s daily invasions. If I could live a life that goes beyond trauma management into one where there is no trauma to manage, also known, to me, as “true healing,” do I want to be associated with it professionally?  The hope that I can heal this once and for all, get over it, is still there. Get over it–the words that piss me off more than most when I hear them given as advice. If only I could. I don’t know yet if it’s possible, and I also know better than to hold out for perfection. For today, management is what I’ve got, and it is serving me. I might as well share.

So, with the hope that my musing may actually be of use beyond pigeonholing me into a label, my intention is at the very least to get a few more posts out. It’s sort of a setup, to go public with that because my computer is in the shop and the next week is going to be very busy in my home, but it also leads me into a future topic–how self-created stress keeps me distracted from what’s really hurting me.

Until the next time, peace.

And, my reaction to this country’s whole reaction to this guy is—WTF?

Is it because he’s part of a powerful team in a lucrative sport? Or because his victims are boys?

One out of 4 or 5 girls, depending on the survey, has been molested by someone they know. Most suffer in silence. Most suffer in silence because if they do bring it up to another trusted adult, they are thrown from their homes, ignored, pooh-poohed, told it wasn’t so bad. Or maybe there is no trust to mention it to another. Ever. So they adjust. Live with the perpetrator. Make do.

So yeah, I’m glad there is press about the allegations. And, this is still America. There is due process and all that. Thank God. I mean that. Seriously.

And, this is only one case in—how many? A million?

It took football to bring this to the attention of America? Puh-lease.

Okay, so the last time I stopped at a fast food joint since before this summer was 1991, so I’m a bit out of the loop. But geez–it’s been forever since you can type a cent sign off a standard keyboard! I wonder what they would have said if I tried to pay with a credit card.

I did question the sanity of refilling 32 ounces of soda, and how often it’s done by the general public. I drank 64 ounces yesterday, and boy, did it feel like it. Crackling headache through the night, restless sleep and waking up periodically feeling paranoid, yet also a sense of extreme exhaustion. The stuff is addictive, though. I forgot how good it is, even though there is absolutely nothing natural in it. If this is what people’s tastes are used to, it’s no wonder why things like real juices are doctored up with flavorings and more sugar. And if people are ingesting 64 ounces a day, no wonder this country is so stressed.

But I have to say, it did make the drive more tolerable. Or, I’m getting used to the long journey up to the res. It was a quick visit for me this time, just a couple of short visits with my friend in the hospital. Love that man. Need to figure out how to make this work without driving myself nuts. And going broke.

I left the hospital much later than I expected, partly to avoid an incoming storm and partly so I wouldn’t have to drive at night for too long. I forgot the time change added an hour of darkness to my trip. Some day, I will drive through the Medicine Bow area when I can actually see it. For now, for some reason, that part of the road in the dark reminds me of Hawaii, of all places. Just as you start going up the hill going East.

Last night I took I80 to I25 because on the way up I got a ticket on 287 just south of Laramie and didn’t want to drive 65 mph on that road to make amends. Had to laugh at that, because when I hit 25, between the wind and the unfamiliar rutted road, I had to slow down, anyway. My air pressure light keeps coming on and I wasn’t 100% sure if there were high winds causing me to veer or if the roads were bad, or if a tire was going flat. It was too dark to pull over and so I basically zenned out with the feel of my car on the road for twenty miles until I got to the first gas station. It would have been a stupid decision if I did have tire issues, but luckily, I didn’t.

Then there was a bunch of construction on I25. It wasn’t going to start until I was long off the road, but all the warning signs were set up for 55 mph anyway. If I drive 80 mph, the drive takes me about 5 hours. At 65 mph most of the way, it takes 6.

The cop tried to tell me speeding wouldn’t make much a difference in time. Wait until his wife has a baby. And his argument about safety is phooey. Doing 75 on 287 feels much safer than doing it on I25, which is much more crowded and uneven.

Sorry for what I think is another boring blog, but with all the drama in my life, boring is feeling rather nice.

Oh my, I sound like one of those old biddies I used to run while with a grandmother. “Oh, I remember you when you were this big.”

Sigh.

I was sad to see, though, that the immense talent of Ellen Page was poorly cast in this movie. She did a great job, don’t get me wrong. I just am not convinced a character her age would be as insightful as she was. The character either needed more development, or should have been casted with someone older. Or older-looking (what gorgeous skin she has!).

I only bring it up because there was something about the movie that jarred me that I couldn’t put my finger on until today. Yes, there were holes in the plot, but I decided not to think too hard about them because the premise and special effects were awesome, and the plot was much better developed than some other action flicks. Why I couldn’t ignore the age of one character . . . upon whose wisdom the resolution of the story depended . . .

Perhaps the production team assumed that all females carry such deep understanding, no matter their age. Maybe it’s some sort of compliment (sort of like the offhanded compliment Oprah commented on years ago about how black women are cast as if black women don’t age). . .

Even as a kid, there was something that always bothered me about these psychologically savant children. “Out of the mouth of babes” is one thing if used sparingly, but when they are spewing a whole psychology dissertation–it just makes me crabby. Neil Simon’s child character in The Good-by Girl drove me nuts when I first saw the movie back in high school. Yeah, maybe the intention was for the child to play the Fool, the Court Jester whose innocent comments shake the world around her. But overdone, I see the art as lost and the child becomes a lazy person’s tool to cut to the punch.

Snore.

I do note with great humility that apparently, my tastes run counter to the rest of the population when you take into account the popularity of Neil Simon. What right do I have to call a successful writer lazy? I’m not saying he is wrong or a bad writer. . .

I suppose my opinion is tainted by having been a child who was expected to act older than her years her whole life. Way back, I probably identified with Neil Simon’s child characters. Except I didn’t have their wisdom. They got through their ordeals with exuberance. I barely crawled. I was jealous.

“Children adapt,” Mom told me once when I was in my thirties.

“Yeah, but, who’s the adult?” I responded.

Not that Ellen Page’s character in Inception was a child. I assumed she was somewhere between eighteen and early twenties, a brilliant pupil studying architecture in France. But for me, there were too many questions about her psychology that I could have ignored had she appeared to be someone with a little more life experience behind her. That said, I totally understand why the actress took the part. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that cast in a blockbuster movie alongside Leonardo DiCaprio? She was smart.

Perhaps beyond her years.

I met a woman the other night, and instantly could tell I liked her. Later on, I bumped into her again and, for the third time, had to ask her name. We started to talk about writing, and that’s when I discovered that she is THE Lisa Jones, who wrote the book I posted about a few months ago, Broken, A Love Story. It’s an autobiography that encompasses everything I love to read about–love, breaking down, building up, healing, relationships, healers, truth, honesty, introspection, nature, signs . . . . It’s powerful. It transformed me. It gave me profound dreams. I called a friend to share just about every other paragraph–

OMG! Lisa Jones!

I think I may have even squealed. So not cool for someone from the East. But I was caught off-guard–how was I to know she was the author of this transformational autobiography? In her picture on the back cover she’s wearing a hat, and there we were, in ninety degree heat.

I tried to joke because all the questions I had had after reading the book were nowhere to be found in my head. Nor was any information about the book. My mind was one big void. All I could say was, “You’re much shorter than I thought you’d be . . . .”

The silly thing is, it’s not like I haven’t met writers who I admire before. I’ve chatted with Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina) and gave my card to Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones), asking her to consider writing an endorsement for me (I still haven’t sent her anything). I hooped with Gail Storey, author of The Lord’s Motel and God’s Country Club and sat through a concert and dined with Julene Bair (One Degree West).  For goodness sakes, I not only met William (Bill) Styron, author of Sophie’s Choice, but had drinks with him at Elaine’s in New York City. I interned at Rolling Stone magazine and met most of the heavy hitters there. Sure, it’s all exciting, very. But nothing that I went gaga about. But then again, none of those encounters caught me by surprise. When I somehow managed to be the first to shake the hand of  Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) after an inspirational talk she gave, I did shed some tears.

My conversation with William Styron included a group of other college-aged students studying writing. We were discussing the characters in Sophie’s Choice, deliberating as to who they were and what made them take certain paths. It was like talking about friends, ones we cared about and wanted to help. Then, one of the students spoke up and marvelled how we could speak of fictional characters as if they were alive. The conversation stopped.

“Well, duh,” was the unspoken reaction from most of us. Isn’t that the biggest compliment one can give an author? To respond as if his characters were real?

She couldn’t let go of her point. My friend, Linda, who had arranged the get together, was perhaps the most mortified. “How can she consider herself a fiction writer?” she snapped later that evening.

And, I have to agree. The best books are the ones where the characters travel from the imagination and are birthed into humans. Beings. People that exist. They feel like people you know. Sometimes you become them, you relate to them so deeply.

Heck, while reading the first Harry Potter book, I even found myself believing in the setting so much that I felt the author at moments did a disservice in her descriptions. “Oh, it’s not like that,” I’d say to myself, as if I’d visited Hogwarts before. “No, no. She got it wrong. It’s more like–.”

We believe in well-written characters. We sweat and fear and cry with them, cheer them on, celebrate their victories, wish they’d make different choices. They become people we know, people we’d love to meet, even if it’s impossible.

And, perhaps that explains part of my reaction around meeting Lisa. Her characters are real. She is one of them, the main character, as a matter of fact. She didn’t just come alive in the writing–there she was, standing in front of me. I was thrown into a surreal world of knowing that all the feelings, concerns, and movement dredged up in me while reading her book, which read like good fiction, were not inspired by real people; they are real. These were people I had wanted to meet, but never thought I would, which made them, I guess, more fictional in my head. And I knew that if I ever had the chance to meet them, I’d probably feel intimidated, or embarrassed, to push my way into their–real–lives.

What is written on a page feels like part of a different world. And yet, here I was, face to face with that world. The door had not only opened, but had appeared unexpectedly. I’d had no time to prepare for the encounter. This friendly, bright stranger became someone I’d already met, and had come to know and care about. Yet, before me, she was still a stranger. That I knew.

No, I wasn’t drinking. Much.

At the same time, she knew nothing about me. It’s sort of like walking into someone’s den and observing them, unnoticed, then suddenly being seen. Where does one start to balance the equation? Do you ask questions, or blab on about yourself and why you feel such a connection?

But I had felt a connection with this woman before I met her, I told myself. So it isn’t all gaga, teen idol sort of adoration kind of stuff. She really does have an engaging presence–

And then another one of her “characters” walks up and says hello. Literally. Just as I was beginning to calm down, the gaga comes out again. OMG! He’s real, too!

Oi.

Again, it’s not like I haven’t been awed by other people. I felt a connection to Gail Storey before I met her, too, based on her presence alone. She seemed fun and wild, so I introduced myself. Then I heard about and read her books, which are hilarious, and turned a bit shy.  I’m sure I will do the same after I read Julene Bair‘s book, which is tugging at my attention from my desk. Jasmin Cori had been a friend of a friend who I was just getting to know when I read the as-of-then unpublished Healing from Trauma, which transformed our budding friendship into one with an even deeper appreciation and respect. Andy Stanton’s Pilates for Fragile Backs did the same. I’ve dined with and been inspired by Rosemary Carstens, author of Dream Rider: Roadmap to an Adventurous Life, Alyce Barry (Practically Shameless), Simeon Hein (Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance). And I have to admit, that after I did a reading alongside of Linda Tate, whose Power in the Blood memoir is reminiscent to me of the writing of my long-time favorite, Alice Walker, I was too shy to introduce myself. I waited months until I saw her at a potluck at Melanie Mulhall’s (Living the Dream) this past June to tell her how much I enjoyed her book. Then there is Lys Anzia, responsible for the jaw-dropping Women News Network, and Deborah Fryer, who wrote, produced and directed, SHAKEN.

Okay, so am I name dropping now? I’ve gone from gaga to name dropping? This is so not me.

Though, apparently, it is.

I’m going to meet up with Lisa this week and I hope talk, among other things, about my going to Wyoming to meet the other main character in her book.

See? There I go, calling them characters, as if they are fiction. But they are not.

I vacillate about whether to reread Broken, A Love Story–do I want to meet Lisa’s version of these people or encounter my own? Who will they be, in the flesh? Can I meet them without any preconceived notions? I’ve already had conversations with them in my head, like I do with most characters–

Okay, so that started because I was a lonely child who lived in fantasy. It was a safe place that I could control, where no one but me defined who I was, where I was liked and admired by people who I liked and admired, be they fictional characters or idols fabricated by their PR machines. It was how I survived. It’s not where I live now, but it’s still something fun to do. I can’t help it. I continue to study and extrapolate from what I read. I dream about meeting people I admire and hope I could see them as themselves rather than through the lens of their public image. I ask them questions, get advice. It’s an imaginative way to step out of my own myopic box and see the world from another angle. And it works.

But, when they are real and you actually meet them, then what happens?

I guess I will continue to find out.

Grieve . . .*

by Debbie Mihal ©December 2009

Grieve. Grieve in your own way, in your own time. Don’t let others take this from you. Don’t believe the poem that tells you not to cry because I live on. Yes, even though I am still “here,” your loss is very real. It is physical and palpable. Embrace it until there is nothing left to hold. Grief is your right. Take this path, this right of passage, and walk through it. You’ve earned it. Savor it. In savoring it, you savor our relationship, our friendship. Hate and love me as you need to. I was not perfect. Embrace it all and grieve.

Eventually, I’d love it if you transformed your grief and memories of me into something useful. I’d like not so much to be remembered as be used, actively, in the here and now, in the present. Use me to cheer you on, to support your heartfelt choices, to challenge you, to negotiate the best for you. Use me as if I was still there, pushing and coddling, asking you to be true to yourself. Continue to use me as your inspiration, your friend, your sounding board. Use me as an anchor to hold onto in rough times and as the wind in your sails when things are smooth. Continue to push against my stubbornness in order to find your voice. Add my strength to yours and allow yourself to trust in leaps and bounds of spirit, body and mind. Use me in a way I couldn’t allow when I had a body and needed to protect my own boundaries. Use me now more than ever because I no longer have my own needs. Scoop up the memories and blow them into the wind and let them seed inspiration for yourself and others. Laugh aloud and dance hard, savor the music and simply live, with your teeth cutting into life like the fangs of a hungry animal. Use me and my death as a reminder that it all ends, that life is too precious to live in a box. Use me, and in doing so, help me make up for what I could not do. Help me help you to live. Use me, as I wouldn’t let you when I was alive. I am no longer here and am boundless. Use me.

*Inspired by an exercise, “Making Death Your Ally” from Melanie Mulhall’s book, Living the Dream: A Guidebook for Job Seekers and Career Explorers, and my mother, Irene Mihal, 1933 – 2009.

These dance venues set up to be a safe place of freedom to express are a godsend. This particular one is called BIJA. There is no alcohol served, no bar scene. I’m sure there are people checking each other out, but for the most part, movement is the key theme. Space is respected if that’s what you need and you can dance in any style, to any beat, alone or with partner/s. The creativity is rampant as people explore their bodies’ capabilities, and it’s also okay if you just want to trance out to the same two steps all night. Of course, if you choose to, you can have this freedom anywhere you dance. Though, it’s a lot easier to go where the space has been set up for that kind of freedom. Where people go to dance, not find a date. At least that’s my intention.

The musical theme the other night was techno/trance/spiritual, and I was so ready for it. I only lasted an hour, but it was a darn good hour. I even stretched a part of my body that felt buried my whole life–my middle gut. Sure, I do yoga and stretch out all the time, but this was more than stretching muscle tissue. It was much deeper and more profound. It felt like I was releasing my power, and I was sure that at least one person there, if they looked, could see the energy burst from me. The experience almost scared me, like I was birthing an alien or something. As if being empowered is foreign to me. Too funny.

I have a friend, abused as a child, who sees herself as small and powerless. Her voice even sometimes regresses to that of a child and she holds her body in as if protecting herself. Yet, she’s a kickass woman who speaks out and defends herself and her family and loved ones with integrity and power of a lioness. She just doesn’t see that part of herself.

I think, during the dance, that part of myself started to roar.

But, it was just a moment, and yesterday, as has been happening, I sort of crashed. My being seems to be doing that lately–acknowledging its strengths and gifts and then withdrawing into a deep questioning–am I sure those gifts are mine? I’ve been standing up to those doubts and saying, YES! They are. It still takes work, though.

My psyche is getting very creative, where the black and white thinking of negative beliefs and doubt are obscured by stories that at first seem different from the old ones. They are not. They all boil down to beliefs about not being good enough, not being worthy, not mattering. I’ve been tuning out the story, though, and focusing on the feelings, letting myself actually feel how bad I feel without throwing more salt on the wound. Then a calmness comes over me and I know that there is nothing wrong with me. What is happening is that I am throwing out the crumbling bricks of the old foundation of my being that believe I’m not good enough and replacing them with new ones that know I am. I’m not “faking it till I make it.” This is real.

Yesterday, I turned the doubts around in hours. It used to take years to even acknowledge the doubts existed. I feel good, though I suspect this, too, will create a “change back” response. That, too, shall pass.

So I don’t know if I’ll dance again next week or simply savor this experience for a while.

Addendum: Happy to report there was no “change back” response to this post. And, I actually took an impromptu hooping class last night. More fun–and two nights in one week! Yes, that experience did bring up some ugly insecurities, but they are quiet already. I finally feel like I’m truly peeking my head out of this mourning phase and realizing that there is fresh air out there. I’m hoping with that, the trauma triggers will return to a back burner, too. We’ll see.

I can go on with life, and I do; however, that doesn’t take away the PTS or how it affected me developmentally. I still have distorted perceptions around the trauma that affect every day thinking. Plus, even though I don’t get triggered as often or as much, I do continue to get triggered. I’ve seen how much stronger and healthier I’ve become by working through my issues, and yet, there are some areas where although I’ve made peace with my reactions, I still don’t feel I have a wide range of choices available to me as I’d like.

It used to be that I was unaware that I was limited by PTS. However, PTS is no longer something I can effectively manage by ignoring and rationalizing the symptoms. As a result, I’ve become my own experiment in seeing how much I can integrate a new foundational core versus manage symptoms. I will probably always have to do a combination of both, but I would like to make management as small a piece as possible.

What do I mean by that? In my mind, management is anything from avoiding or limiting certain kind of experiences (i.e., crowds) to dealing with the reactions that are the result of submerging myself into such situations. Integrating a new foundational core means that I remap my brain and change beliefs (so that I feel them and not just think them) so that I don’t get inappropriately triggered or have to constantly gauge my sensitivities. Management deals with the symptoms, whereas integration means healing.

I think a lot of me has moved onto integration, and I find myself often wondering if I’m holding myself back writing about PTS in order that I can explain it to others. Then I get triggered, and think, nope, I’m not someone who likes to be mired in her psychological process; it mires me. I write about it because I’m tired of the stigma that comes with the inability to “just get over it.”

The other night, I was having trouble falling asleep–a rare occurrence for me for most of my life. I was tossing and turning in that space between sleep and wakefulness, having revenge fantasies concerning the first trauma and wondering what the heck was up with that? I couldn’t trace the fantasies to anything that had happened during the day. Then, suddenly, I became aware of the faint smell of a burning cigarette that wafted through my open window. Within a millisecond, I was out of bed, at the window, yelling into space to someone about “Your smoke is in my house,” before I slammed the window shut. Shaking, I got back into bed, still raging: I should NOT have to smell that stench in MY home.

It took a while for me to calm down. I opened another window and the noise on that side of my home got to me, even though it was nothing obnoxious or exceptionally loud. I tossed and turned some more, angry that I was awakened from a half sleep with revenge fantasies triggered by cigarette smoke.

Ten acres, some sheep, and a good dog, I kept telling myself, thinking of my dream future where I am far away enough from neighbors that I don’t have to care about what they do, where I won’t smell their smoke and any noise they make will be muffled by distance. Ten acres in reality may not be enough, but in my dreams, it is plenty.

My sister mentioned to me yesterday about some program they are starting in California that offers vets suffering from PTS farms. Apparently, I am not alone in thinking that land would offer sanctuary. I am happy for those vets who take advantage of that program. I hope some day I can offer the same to myself. Don’t know if I’ll raise sheep, but just the idea of buttressing myself with land brings solace.

Cigarette smoke, to me, is a boundary violation, just as loud noise or bright lights are. Except unless it’s a female’s scream, the latter two don’t trigger me the way cigarettes do (unless I’m already triggered). Management of the cigarette smoke trigger includes things like moving to a farm, closing my window, avoiding smokers, walking to where there is clean air or leaving a party. As a child, I stayed in my room or at friends’ homes and went out of my way to avoid the smoking lounge and the kids who hung out there. I thought it was only because I couldn’t stand the odor.

I used to be more polite about my discomfort; now, I’m not as reticent about my anger and will scowl, wave the smoke away, and/or complain loudly. I’ve had enough lung damage, thank you. Both my parents struggled for breath at their end of their lives. I feel I struggled for the first eighteen years.

But that’s all a cover; I associate cigarette smoke with the trauma I experienced as a child. It invaded my boundaries, and in a way, gave me an excuse to reinforce mine while evading the truth about the other boundary violations.

Yet, yelling into the night isn’t quite a rational response.

Integrating a new core foundation may not mean that I learn to like cigarette smoke, but it would mean that it would no longer trigger rages or revenge fantasies. I also wouldn’t need to compose myself before addressing the offender–if I chose to do so–because I would remain calm. I might even feel compassion regarding the addiction rather than annoyance. And none of this would be a learned, or behavioral, response. Rather, it would be deeper; there’d be no painful associations in the first place. Cigarette smoke would be, perhaps, just an ugly smell. Or maybe it’d become a neutral smell, not judged under the spell of trauma.It would simply be a carcinogen I choose to avoid. My reaction would be a choice, not an imperative.

So, yeah. I’d love to put PTS on a back burner. But my work on this earth is to see if I can tease out the triggers that distort my perceptions that make life harder. And put an end to the snowball-effect associations. (I am already pondering how the smoke from future fires caused by the beetle kill will trigger me, even though I rationally know it’s a different kind of smoke.) I don’t like to rage or fear  and not understand why.

I chose this path over ten years ago when I decided to devote my life to being a novelist. I said I wanted to know how I function better than how some computer program functions. Now, I write about those discoveries in fiction form (though my characters are only a hint, rather than a roadmap, into my personal psyche). If I were to put down the PTS exploration, my work would be transformed into something else.

Some day. Maybe.

Dang. I’ve had my bike longer; I wanted to reach 1000 on it before the car.

And, if I’d taken a tour, I’d probably already be at 2000+ miles on the bike.

Sigh. Despite my acceptance of what is–Sigh.

As I took my bike ride today, I kept thinking of my choice to by a Crossover instead of a car, forgetting how limited the choices are for a larger sized vehicle with good gas mileage. The ones that had it didn’t have a flat-fold back seat like I needed. And I wanted the power of a V6 for driving in the mountains. There is nothing as scary as thinking you have more power than you do and suddenly the car that was way behind you is now riding your butt.

I try to compromise by not using the V6 engine to its potential, which has been difficult because I am definitely programmed to take advantage of a V6. I finally gunned it on the highway last week (at about 989 miles!) and was surprised at how feebly it reacted at first. Not like the sweet, smooth turbo ride of the Subaru Forester–boy, was that a nice ride. But, I only got 11 mpg on that test drive–not the number I was looking for.

On this Fourth of July–a day of torture for me–I’ve been thinking a lot about my ideals and how I’ve stuck to them until recently. In the past, I’ve been seen as ornery, a stick-in-the-mud, no fun, heavy, because I complain about things like the pollution all those fireworks generate or how ridiculous it is that cars have increased their miles-per-gallon over the years rather than decreased. In Boulder, I can fit in. Boulder is a place where it is easy to connect with others involved with egocentric healing or environmental causes. Here, I can find people who’ll listen, and even agree, without rolling their eyes.

But what has been rare to find are people who are there. Who put off work or sleep or a cause to help out a friend. Not that I’m judging–I am just as guilty. Immersed in my work, and trying to make sense as to why I’ve caused myself so much pain with bad choices, I simply have not been there as much as I could. Couldn’t be; I had nothing to give. Zero. Zilch.

So I suppose it’s no surprise that I’ve felt so alone this last year. I’ve pushed people away, knowing I couldn’t give back. Knowing I didn’t want to expose the pain of my loss. Knowing that even though I changed the record, it was still a broken one.

Now, I want both. I want to have my causes and have friends.

And I think, that’s why I compromised with my car. I’m tired of double-binds, the either/or scenarios so common to my world view. I didn’t want to settle for a small car with big gas mileage, nor did I want a big car that gulped gas. I wanted my needs to be met. Even if that meant that I’d be contributing more to this country’s insatiable desire for fuel. I miss being holier-than-thou on my bike. And yet, I love the potential my car offers.

In the past, I would have cut myself off with some snide comment about there being no potential when the gas runs out, when the poles melt, when the world dies. But for now, I just want to be okay with my big car that will shelter me in a storm or against a swarm of mosquitoes. I want the kindness toward myself that may less sustainable–but at least carries some compassion.

And I wonder, is that one reason that our consumption as a culture hasn’t changed? Life is hard. Fuel is one thing that makes it easier.

As a sufferer of PTS, I don’t think I ever knew what easy was. I spent so much time constricting my life, that I thought hard was the natural state of things–limiting what I eat, how I travel, where I live. . . . Now, I’m wanting to breathe into a whole new existence. One that maybe won’t last, but will at least give me joy. How to balance that with my convictions–I have yet to figure out. Or maybe I am experiencing balance with my 928 miles on my bike against 1024 miles on my car, and the compassion to not let it get to me. Too much.

As for the friendships–so much for my being there, still. I have had quite a few invitations over the last few days to do things with others–and I’ve turned them all away. As much as I want to break out of this cocoon, I’m still in it. I want to figure out who I am. More on that in a future post.