About Tonight: A blog

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The Bidet

There was gas in the water line for the bidet. Got your attention? It sure as hell got mine. We don’t have a “real” bidet in our place, but it’s a sprayer attachment on the side of the toilet. Works great, though. The fact that I have a bum sprayer, let alone that I use it, still kinda boggles my mind. But it’s good. The sprayer is a fairly new addition, I put it in about a year ago after we got back from Brazil. Brazil is what changed it all for me.

My wife and I went to visit her family and we stayed at her mother’s place. It’s a beautiful home and when I first used the bathroom I noticed the sprayer next to the toilet. Now, I knew what bidet’s were and being a good Mid-Western boy there was no way in hell I was going to use water instead of toilet paper to clean myself. No. Way. In. Hell. I don’t know what my aversion really was. Although, if I’m being honest, it may be left over from attending junior high and high school in the 80’s where if anything came near your butt you were called gay and you were endlessly teased about it. And I didn’t want to be teased back then. So, maybe, on some level, I was still associating a bidet with being gay. Which is stupid on so many levels, ’cause, I mean, c’mon, who hasn’t at least been curious about exploring back there? Guess I’m still learning about my biases. Well, that’s the first step to changing them : )

So anyway, I didn’t use the sprayer at my mom-in-law’s place. Then we went on a vacation while we were on vacation. We went to Jericoacoara.  A beautiful place and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for somewhere to visit. The main point about it is that in our hotel bathroom there was a sign next to the toilet that said something to the effect of, “Please do not flush toilet paper down the toilet. The town’s sewer cannot handle it and it will back up.” Well, “fuck that,” I thought and I used my TP and flushed it down the toilet. There was a little trash can next to the toilet/sprayer for you to put the TP you used to dry yourself. I’ll be honest, it took me a second to realize that’s what it was there for. My first thought was that you were supposed to wipe yourself clean and put it in there instead of flushing. Which seemed absurd. Then I realized I was the absurd one. So I flushed my TP down the toilet and wet some more and placed it in the basket. I certainly didn’t want the hotel staff to think I was flushing it down the toilet. I know how to get away with stuff.

Then I felt bad. What if it backs up? How badly can this TP mess things up? Does it really screw up the sewer in the rest of the town? ‘Cause the plumbing in the hotel looked pretty new. And then I realized I was being a stupid, selfish American. The next time I used the bathroom I used the sprayer. Not gonna lie, it was fuckin’ weird. But over the next week, I got used to it. My wife said she wished we had one at our place. “That’s easy enough to do,” I told her. So I put one in. She was happy. I scored points. It was all good.

So now, I use one every single day. I love it. It’s refreshing and clean and we’re saving a ton on TP. The problem is, once I got used to using my bum sprayer, things got pretty sensitive back there. Normally, it’s great. Traveling, however, is the worst because I have to use TP, and it’s typically the cheap, rough stuff. Can I just say, “Damn!” After a day or so I feel scraped raw and when you’re walking around with your bum hole feeling raw, it makes everything else less fun. This is a common complaint amongst my family when we travel. Oh, well. I spend more time pooping at home than anywhere else, so it’s totally worth it. And, while it may seem awkward and weird to most of us Americans, in the end (ha, ha), I’d recommend trying one.

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Unsatisfied – 500/2

It rained today. I think. It was a weird day. This morning I walked outside and the sidewalks seemed damp. Not really wet, though I guess that’s one definition, but like it had rained several hours ago and was mostly dried up. “That’s cool,” I thought to myself. “Maybe it will get sunny today, it’s supposed to be fairly warm.” But it never got sunny.

I was running errands, so I was in and out all day long. In the office, out to the store. In the apartment, back to another store. Head inside for lunch and then back to the office. Several times I heard rain, tap, tap, tapping on the window like Poe’s raven. But I would go back outside and nothing. No rain. Just damp pavement. I had to use my wipers several times as I drove, but only to clear dried up spots from my windshield. I didn’t see a single drop of water on my car.

After lunch I said to my companion, “It’s getting dark, right?” He agreed. I thought, “Surely, now, we will get some rain.” Into a store we went to get a few things. We weren’t long, 30 minutes, maybe 45. When we walked out I heard the tell-tale shushing sound of tires passing over wet ground. But there were no puddles to be found, and not a drop from the sky. I got back into my car, disappointed. I used my wipers again and drove off.

All this left me bewildered and … unsatisfied. You see, I love the rain. I love thunderstorms. I grew up in the mid-west where we have magnificent thunderstorms. The kind of thunder that shakes the building. Downpours that rip leaves off tress and flatten plants to the ground. Wind that drives the rain sideways, into the cracks of old windows, water puddling up on the inside sill. And as you’re cowering in whatever shelter you’ve found you think, “Will it hold together?” You start to worry if, this time, the might of the storm will rip the roof off like a giant opening a can of sardines. It actually happened to a building I was living in. One night an incredible storm came tearing through. The wind clawed at the windows, the rain raked at the roof. And I … I went to bed. It was late. I was tired. And, in my ignorance, I slept peacefully.

The building I lived in was in a U-shape, with a courtyard in between the two sides of the U, one of which I lived on. When I woke up the storm had passed. It was peaceful, and sunny. I looked at my neighbor’s place, across the courtyard, and realized I could see the sun in their living room. But I shouldn’t have been able to, not at that time of day. That’s when I looked at the ground and saw my neighbor’s roof, laying over the sidewalk and bushes of the courtyard like the corpse of some giant animal. That was the moment when I started to truly respect the strength and glory of storms. Not fearing, but surely respecting the shit outta them.

So, here I am now. Unsatisfied. Disappointed. It was as though all day long I was playing with a lover, tantalizing, teasing, in a dance of expectation. It has been a day without release. Without satisfaction. But now the day is over and as I prepare for sleep I hear, yet again, the soft tapping against my windows. My lover, once again, calling me to play.

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Struggles With Inertia – 500/1

I’m a little late to this round of 500 words a day for 30 days. I want to lie and say I’ve been writing, that I’ve been keeping up and I just haven’t been posting. And while I did write once in my journal (it may even have been 500 words) I certainly haven’t been “keeping up.” My writing has been waning for a while now, both personally and what I post. I’ve been having a block and that block is starting my new website. I have tons of things I want to add to it, but I just keep on piling up ideas and never fleshing them out, and certainly not starting the website. At least I bought the domain and month ago or so, so that’s started. RevelLivingTherapy.com coming soon.

I try not to get down on myself, but that’s part of the problem. Years ago I would get down on myself so much I hated myself. I thought about killing myself most days for 15 years. I’m way past that now, but one way I did was to give myself a “break” and trying to “accept myself as I am.” These are good and worthy things. The issues comes when that is the default. See, I’ve allowed myself to become lazy. Shoot, who am I kidding, I’ve always been lazy. I guess that’s one of the things I need to accept about myself. So knowing that, what do I do?

Put a schedule, of sorts in place. Focus on what I want and where I want to be, on what I love. Focus on being loving to myself. That last part was huge for me in learning to get over self hate. The question I started asking myself was, “Is this loving to myself”? That really helped whenever that internal struggle to do something unhealthy came up. And so now I’ll use it to add healthy behaviors into my life, rather than just remove unhealthy ones. So I guess this is my commitment 500 Words a day for the next 30 days.

I’m going to add to that 30 days of working out. As I said, I’ve gotten lazy, and my body doesn’t like it. I woke up at 5:15 am this morning. In pain. There’s always some level of pain in my body these days. I have back issues from hyperlordosis and neck issues from a flattened out cervical spine. Then there’s my right shoulder pain from swimming and wrist pain from lack of flexibility. I also have a heel spur on my right foot, knee pain in my left knee and, my most recent acquisition, right hip pain from a partial dislocation. These are all issue stemming from not caring for myself. And it’s not that I don’t exercise, although I don’t do it as often as I used to. I believe most of it is from not warming up properly and not doing enough to balance out my body when the activities I do tend to focus on one side of the muscle groups (hello, acroyoga).

So here I am, recommitting. The 500 words a day is a good reminder to me to get out and do something. It’s 6:30 this morning and I’ve already done a quick stretch and written this. Here’s to a productive rest of the day, too.

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Taint Ache

So I’m getting older. That’s a fact of life. But what really snuck up on me in the past few years is how lazy I’ve gotten. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been lazy. It’s the curse of my life, but I’ve always been fairly physically fit. What I haven’t been keeping up with is my cardio. I noticed this the other day while doing standing acro with a friend. We went through a series of poses starting with High Bird (think Dirty Dancing lift) and then transitioning through several others where I’m supporting her over my head with one arm. When I set her down, I noticed that my heart was racing and that I was short of breath. It seemed weird to me because, while those lifts do take strength, I wouldn’t have thought it would affect my heart that way. Both my blood pressure and cholesterol have been borderline for a few years now and I’m not OK with that. Yes, diet can change those things, but I also believe that exercise is helpful. That said, I decided to take a spin class.

And Away We Go

I’ve been to spinning classes before, but it’s been a while. Like, not this decade. Or the one before that. So it was with some apprehension that I went. I’ve read stories about middle-aged men who tried to exercise like they did when they were younger and they ended up having a heart attack. To avoid being carried out on a stretcher, I decided not to go all out my first time back. It seemed appropriate, but also amusing to me, that I was more worried about the embarrassment of being carried out on a stretcher than the actual proposed heart attack. Someday I’m going to have to reassess my priorities.

I check in to the health club and said good-bye to my sweetie, ’cause, you know, I may never see her again. I remembered that the class is supposed to be popular and that I needed to reserve a spot at the front desk. I turn around and head back. As I go to sign in, I see several people have already done so, but it looked awkward. Instead of signing up one, two, three and so on, they signed up for 18, 32, 11 and other random numbers. I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t know what that meant, so I signed up for 16. Why not.

I get in the classroom and as I’m setting up my chosen bike I realize that all the bikes are numbered and it’s possible people signed up the way they did because that was the bike number they wanted to use. Now I’m uncomfortable. I look for bike 16 and I don’t like where it is in the room, so I decide to stay where I am. “No big deal”, I tell myself. If someone says something to me I can plead ignorance, smile nicely and offer to move. Meanwhile, I eye everyone who comes in and wait to see if they are going to say something to me. As if impending death weren’t bad enough, now I have added awkward social anxiety to deal with.

The Instructor

Since I’m already watching everyone come in, I give them all the once over to see if I can actually do this or if I am well and truly screwed. I think I’m good. Aside from the very fit people, there are some older folks, some heavier folks, and some heavier and older folks. Then I see the instructor, Vlad, come in and he appears to be in his mid-to-late-50’s or so. I’m feeling better until I look at his legs. I’m fairly sure Vlad did some steroids, just from the waist down. I’m not sure how he worked that out, but I’m fairly certain that’s what happened. Once again, I see myself being carried out the door.

The class is about to start and a woman walks near me. She doesn’t say anything, but silently stalks around me, eyeing me the whole time. She fidgeted with the bike on my right a bit, then decided she doesn’t like it. She goes to the bike on my left, fidgets with that one for a minute and finally sets up there. I’m fairly certain this was the person whose bike I stole. I feel a little bad, but honestly, the room is set up with almost 50 bikes. There’s about 15-20 of us in the room. If she can’t vocalize anything to me, she can deal.

In The Beginning

Vlad starts the class. He gives this spiel about “not holding back” and that “you’re only cheating yourself.” I know better. By being in this class at all I am already cheating death, so I decide I can take some liberty with his instructions. Half turns, full turns, whatever. I’m just going to play it by ear and if I have to pretend I turned the damn dial, I will. Music starts thumping, spin cycling’s greatest hits, I think. Whatever. The beat is pretty good and judging the music takes my mind off what I’m doing. Yes, all my mindful techniques did get shot to hell today. So sue me.

We’re ten minutes in and I feel good. I remember sweating more when I took these classes. I remind myself I’m not out of the water yet. We start doing hills. It starts to get to me, but I wasn’t stupid enough to put a lot of tension on the bike. The singer starts saying something like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do you hard!” The fuck are we listening to, Vlad?? That astonishment got me through the rest of the hills.

The “Taint Bounce”

Then we did what I’m going to fondly call the “taint bounce.” In case you’re wondering, the “taint” is technically called the “perineum.” If you don’t know what the perineum is a) you’re probably a guy and 2) you’re on your own to look it up. I’m not sure if this move was developed by Vlad or some other evilly inspired spin instructor, but we were spinning at about half speed, maybe a little faster when Vlad instructed, “Stand!” I got through about two rotations and he shouted, “Sit!” On and on it went, stand, sit, stand, sit, stand. Basically, we’re just bouncing up and down on our (hard as rock) seats and trying to pedal at the same time. God knows for how long this went on. All I’m sure of is that I’m feeling rubbed fucking raw and I’m not happy about it.

The Trooper

We get some blessed relief and just spin easily for a while. My butt is sore but if I get it in a good spot I can’t feel the pain. I consider that I’m probably not going to be comfortable sitting for the next two days. Screw it. It’s good for my health, right? Vlad says we’re going to start spinning faster and gets off his bike to change the music. Seemed weird, but he puts on the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I’m cool with that and, to be honest, I was shocked at how well it went with trying to get my legs to move so quickly in little tiny circles. It really was fucking great. I felt like I was flying. I take a moment and wonder at the fact that I still have fast-twitch fibers in my legs. Who knew? They haven’t been used in decades. While I was marveling to see those puppies back in action, I suddenly realized I knew the song that was being covered. Iron Maiden. The Trooper. Sweet! Even though it’s an instrumental, the lyrics immediately pop into my head. “You’ll take my life, but I’ll take yours, too!” The woman whose bike I stole glares at me. I think I may have said that out loud. Now I’ve been upgraded from asshole to psycho. Oh well, she already hates me, I’m just going to enjoy the music.

It Was Short Lived

MORE taint bounces?!? Are you fucking kidding me, Vlad? Different singers are now doing each other over the speakers. What the fuck? Some small, dim part of me realizes that I decided yesterday to be less judgmental of people and things. The therapist in me pokes his head up and I start ruminating on my childhood. I made some great progress, therapeutically speaking, until I realized I was dripping in sweat. Literally dripping. I don’t think there was a dry spot on my shirt. When the hell did that happen? All life changing revelations have been forgotten in sweaty wonder.

The End

The class comes to a close. We stretch for about 30 seconds. I follow the group of people to the towel station so we can clean the puddles of sweat off our bikes. The person in front of me grabs hers and turns around. It’s my bike neighbor who hates me. She glares at me, but I’m used to it by now. To get around each other we each cut to my right, then my left. Finally, I go left and, with a parting glare, she goes right.

My legs are feeling unsteady as I walk towards the lockers. I notice a pretty girl looking at me from a treadmill. I know she’s either amazed/appalled at how sweaty I am or staring at my tattoos, but I smile to myself anyway. As I’m enjoying the look, I dimly realize that my unsteady legs have walked me directly into the path of another treadmill. I somehow manage to avoid both the treadmill and falling on my face, which I’m sure would have resulted in my being carried out on a stretcher…

I know my ass is going to be sore for the next few days, but I made it through class. More importantly, I didn’t die. Yay me.

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The Shared Funk

If you’ve ever been in a relationship, whether you recognized it at the time or not, you’ve been a part of the shared funk. You’ve either received funk from your partner or you’ve shared with them some of your own. Most likely you’ve done a little of both. Your day starts off and things are going great when, suddenly, something happens with your partner and everything feels… funky. It could be as extreme as having a death in their family or as simple as waking up on the wrong side of the bed. Whatever it is, suddenly, you feel anxious/bad/sad/mad, whatever. Now you have to deal with it.

The shared funk happens for a variety of reasons. Some of us are overly sensitive to other’s moods and some of us have partners who try to put their mood off on us so they don’t have to deal with it. The latter is a whole ‘nother bag of cats, which I may write about at some point. For the rest of us, well, let’s just say that we’re not sociopathic, thus, when someone we love is upset, we sense that and respond. It is how we respond/react that makes all the difference.

The thing is, we are all responsible for our own emotions. That said, logically, it would follow that just because someone we love is having a bad day it doesn’t mean that we need to have a bad day. You may even have a reason to be happy, like a promotion at work. When that happens, you want to be happy, and you are, but you don’t live in a bubble and you need/want to be there to support your partner. At this point, some of us would get mad, because we want to celebrate and our partners are all bummed out! Then we get all “WTF! Get with the program! Don’t ruin this for me!” Oops… Here’s the reality, they didn’t ruin anything. They need to feel their emotions just as you do. You may feel get angry about it. You may feel hurt. You may feel both. But adding to their angst by inappropriately expressing your anger through yelling or name-calling is counterproductive. We don’t control what we feel. So, to clarify, we are responsible for the actions we take when we feel our emotions.

Here’s another secret, you can feel more than one feeling at a time. So when you’re happy and your partner isn’t, although you may feel the anxiety or whatever is bothering them, also remember that you were happy before it started, so, hold on to that feeling. Hold on to the happy! It may be the thing that your partner needs to help pull them out of their funk.

I think it’s hardest for me when my partner is just having an off day and is grumpy for no particular reason. That can be harder to deal with because it’s more subtle. To be honest, I get anxious when my partner is having a bad day. I know that anxiety comes from my own insecurities. I want to know that they love me, that I haven’t royally fucked up and they simply haven’t mentioned it (yet). Since I know how I work, the first question I ask myself is “Did I screw up? Was I insensitive/rude or just a plain old asshole?” Since I’m pretty much perfect *cough, cough* I know that they’re just having a bad day so I need to sit with my anxiety.

And that’s exactly what it sounds like. I feel the anxiety, but don’t necessarily act on it. I tell myself “I’m ok. They’re ok. They’re just going through something.” Now, there is some reaching out and checking in with my partner. I’ll ask “Are you ok? Can I help?” Here’s the catch for a lot of people. If our partners say they’re ok, that we can’t help them, we need to leave it alone. If they lied, that’s their problem and they are the ones causing needless problems in the relationship. If they didn’t, then it’s up to us to give them what they need, and often that’s simply giving them space to process their own emotions. So that’s our job when they’re having a bad day. Check in with them and give them whatever they may need that we are able to provide, whether that is space, a hug, a box of donuts, or pulling up a cute kitten video on the internet.

Like I said earlier, I think giving space is the hardest thing to do for most people. We sense our partner’s pain and we want to soothe it. Or we feel like there is a gap between us and we want to close it. Either way, our partners are not responsible for our emotions. We are. So we need to  find some way to manage our own anxiety. First, acknowledge that it is your anxiety. Then go read a book, play a game, workout. Whatever it is that soothes you, do it. Otherwise, you are adding to your partner’s already funky day instead of helping.

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The Funk

I wish this blog were about “Da funk”, it sounds a lot more fun. But instead it’s about emotion and how we all (ok, how “I”) seem to feel out of sorts from time-to-time. I woke up this morning and had a great day, really. I went to a consulate to apply for my first visa out of the country, I was able to walk around downtown Chicago a bit, I rode the train in and out of the city, and I was able to spend time with my girlfriend doing all of that. There was really nothing that seemed to be bad about today, and yet I feel … I’m not sure how to describe it … Down, blue, out of sorts.

I know this happens every so often, I’ve talked about it before. Usually it’s a blue kinda feeling, but today it was just funk. I didn’t like it, but I also wasn’t sure what to do with its it other than ride it out. So I did. I went home, I took some time for myself and read. My girlfriend suggested we go to the movies and stop at World Market before-hand. I picked up some coffee that I absolutely LOVE, at 30% off I might add. I began to feel better. After dinner I felt so much better, and then I began to think.

I’m a big believer that our emotions must be felt and, if necessary, expressed. For me, I talk to friends a lot, I write here, and I journal. All these things are good ways for me to express how I feel. To let my emotion out of myself and not hold on to it. I held on to my emotions for years and all it got me was more of the same emotion. Once upon a time I had a therapist who asked me what would happen if I gave in to the sadness that I tried for so long to keep at bay. I told him I was afraid that if I gave into the sadness that it would never end. His response? I’ll never forget it … “If you don’t let it out, it never will end.”

That gave me food for thought. A lot of it. Today I try as best I can to just go with whatever emotion I feel. To spend some time and REALLY feel it. It’s a tough line to walk, I’m not gonna lie. It’s tough because there a re times when I just want to give in to the sadness or happiness. To just revel in it and forget about whatever else is going on in life. For instance, when I’m sad I sometimes just want to lay in bed all day, watch Netflix and eat pizza and ice cream. Or when I’m happy I want to spend all day with my friends playing in the park. Neither of those things are inherently bad, but you know what’s not there? Spending time working. Spending time doing things that fulfill me. In some ways they are about distraction. Heck, in many ways they are about distraction.

I know that there are type A personalities out there, those people who just want to, “get it done.” I’m not one of them. I’d rather chill out, relax and hang with my friends. I’ll admit it, I love doing that stuff. But in the end it’s not all that fulfilling. A quote I heard a long time ago was that, “Success is the continuous realization of a worthwhile dream.” That quote was by Dexter Yager, one of Amway’s greatest salespeople. That quote reminds me of what i want to do with my life. I want to inspire people. I want to help others feel better in life. I’ve said before, and I truly mean it, that if I can help one person not go through the crap that I have, if I can help one person improve their life, than I’ll have lived a worthwhile life.

So where does that leave me now? Yes, I’ve been in a funk today. But I don’t have to stay there. I can feel it and move on. For me, a type B personality, what’s the best way to move on? To do something for others. It helps take my focus off myself and it lifts my soul when I see others doing better. As with anything, you get whatever you focus on. if you focus on sadness, anxiety and depression, what do you get more of? Sadness, anxiety and depression. If you focus on love and service, what do you get? satisfaction and joy. That’s what I want to focus on, and that’s what I will focus on.

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Lessons Learned From Being Hurt

Another writing prompt… a time I was hurt.

I really don’t want to do this one…and yet I do. I don’t think I’ve really spoken about it to too many people over the years, at least not in detail. It was so long ago, many lifetimes for I have been many different people since then. I was so in love, and maybe even in love with being in love. I though I had found someone who loved me for me, for whom I was. I felt like I didn’t have to put on any masks, that I could be the person whom I really was. Another writing prompt was to write about a time you were happy for a week straight. Maybe I’ll do that one, too, but about another time. To be honest, when I think of that time, it’s hard to remember how happy I was because of the pain I now associate with it. I’m sure you can guess what happened, she cheated on me.

I found out from a “friend.” Hell, it was him she slept with. I told him I already knew and that he should have the balls to own up to it. I didn’t know, I just suspected. As I’m writing this I find it odd that I could easily have written about a time I was physically hurt. The prompt just said “hurt” and I immediately thought of emotional hurt. Damn therapy mind lol. Honestly, I kinda want to write about that now. It seems easier than to relive the emotional hurt. Maybe this will bring some closure.

Anyway, I was hurt and I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t know HOW to deal with that type of hurt. I was starting my third year in college, I had the girl I loved and everything was pulled out from under me. So I did what any red-blooded, American college boy would do. I drank. A lot. So much so that I got to know my bar tender fairly well. WOW, was she beautiful. I considered her to be one of if not the hottest women on campus. I considered her to be so far out of my league that it never even crossed my mind to ask her out. And yet, even through my introverted, drunken awkwardness, I did manage to have a couple of conversations with her. She even gave me a few drinks for free. Heck, probably more than a few.

The next year I bumped into her at a party, the last of the year before we would both graduate. I’d never seen her at a party before and thought it was pretty cool. She was kinda drunk. That’s when I found out she had a crush on me that whole time. But now she had a boyfriend, she was going away, and it was too late for us. I was flabbergasted. I like that word, and it really fits. It makes me realize that because I spent so much time in pity , depression and drunkenness I missed a chance to go out with someone new. And did I mention how gorgeous she was?

Oh well, life goes on, and it’s been pretty good. Moral of the story? Get your head out of your ass and notice what’s right in front of you. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

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Earthquakes and Fear

I’ve been thinking about all the devastation going on throughout the world today. Fires in California, floods in Louisiana, and the earthquake in Italy yesterday. I can only imagine the fear and loss that’s going through so many people’s lives right now. It made me think about how I’ve been on the outskirts of all of these types of natural disasters, but I’ve never really been impacted by them. What’s more, I’ve never been afraid of them. I’ve been in flooded streets, I’ve had wild fires come to within a mile of where I lived. I’ve felt earthquakes move the buildings I’m in and I’ve even seen tornadoes. I’ve heard people from the Midwest say they could never live in California because of the wild fires, that they were too scary. And I’ve heard people from California say they could never live in the Midwest because they felt the tornadoes were too scary. For some reason none of these things scare me.

I remember the first earthquake I was in. It was kinda comical because I was sitting on the john, at the time. Imagine if you were in a porta potty and someone came by and shoved it really hard. That’s what it felt like. My first thought was that a big truck had hit the apartment building. After it occurred to me how absurd that was, I realized I had just experienced an earthquake. I actually got excited because it was my first. I imagine my excitement would have been somewhat dulled had I ended up in a pile of rubble afterwards.

Though, in thinking about it, if I lived through a building falling down on me, I still don’t know that I would be fearful of future earthquakes. I look at physical danger, the danger that disasters offer, in a very practical way. Either it’s going to happen or it’s not going to happen. While I certainly wouldn’t seek it out, I figure if it’s my time to go, then it’s my time. Worrying isn’t going to change it. It’s much harder for me to take that practicality into other areas of my life. Areas like money, job security, relationships. That practical look on things doesn’t seem to exist for me in those areas. Maybe it’s because those are things I can’t see, they aren’t tangible. And my mind conjures the worst fears possible.

I think it also has something to do with how I view myself. When there is the possibility of some physical danger I just accept it, do what I need to to minimize any negative effects and move on. But I attach meaning to those other, intangible things that cause my anxiety. If I lose my job, don’t make enough money or a relationship fails, then I often feel like that’s personal failure and that I am somehow lacking. It’s bullshit, of course. But society has wrapped self-worth around success, whether in a career or relationship, in such a way that it’s hard to separate them. And then it brings around the shame cycle I’ve spoken about before. Like I said, it can be a tough thing to separate them, but it can be done.

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Loving Yourself

I received a writing prompt to write about a time you loved yourself. I like the prompt, but I’m going to change it into “when I began to love myself.” I think that when you learn to love yourself only one thing really changes… everything. Loving yourself is not some great big event, but a series of small events, little moments in time, in which you choose loving things for yourself.

My moments started with food. I’ve had a long history of food issues. When I was 15, I was diagnosed and treated for anorexia. It went along with my depression. Everything seemed so out of control, but there was one thing that I could control and that was when and how much I ate. And I often chose not to eat. I also had body dysmorphia, meaning that no matter how much, or how little, I weighed I thought I was overweight. After a while, I got over not eating and proceeded to go the other way. I started to eat too much and began to gain weight. For the next 20 years my weight would fluctuate 25 lbs or so in either direction.

Then, one day, as I drove past the same fast food restaurant for the third time, arguing with myself whether or not I should buy the double burger and fries, I thought “What is the most loving thing I could do for myself?” I realized at that point that buying fast food wasn’t being loving to my body…and more importantly, I realized I wanted to be loving to myself.

I know that it seems like a simple thing and, in a way, it is. But there are other things that went through my mind that day, and subsequent days when I made the same decision to love myself. One is realizing why I wanted the fast food. That day I was stressed, not hungry. I had learned to eat to cover stress because it made me forget about the stress, at least for a little while. I also knew I had other, healthier food choices that I could make. That day I chose to go to a vegan restaurant instead. Yes, I still ate my feelings, but it was arguably less harmful to my body. The important thing was that I came away feeling better about myself and my choice. I didn’t add any shame to my life because of my choices. And, to put it bluntly, the shame cycle is a bitch. You get stressed, you eat poorly to feel better. It works while you’re eating, but then you feel shame for what or how much you just ate. That shame adds more stress and you want to eat again. The trick to get out of that cycle is to remember you are not a bad person, even if you didn’t make the best choice. Perhaps another blog about that later.

So, loving yourself isn’t about making big changes. It’s about making small choices on a daily basis that make you feel better about yourself. A lot of mindfulness is required and, that alone, can take time to develop, but it’s worth it. Just remember, the next time you’re making a decision, ask yourself, “what is the most loving choice I can make for myself,” and make that one. Good luck : )

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A New Pilgrimage

A few months ago I watched a movie called The Way. The movie is about a man who’s son was killed just as he was beginning a pilgrimage in France called “el Camino de Santiago,” or the Way of St James. While he is picking up his son’s ashes, something comes over him and he decides to take the pilgrimage himself and to bring his son’s ashes with him. While on this journey, he decides to scatter his son’s ashes at different spots. He meets new people, some of which join him on his journey, others merely flit in and then out again, like shooting stars in the night sky. It’s a great movie and I found it truly inspiring for a variety of reasons.

One reason is that I feel as though I’ve always been on a pilgrimage of some sort or an other. I’ve always been a thinker of things, looking for something, trying to explain life. Or at least my life. I realize that what I’m looking for is internal, though I’ve certainly looked for it in external things. Alcohol, drugs, music, sex, you name it, I’ve pretty much tried it. But aren’t we all looking for something? Could be. Sometimes it seems to me like a lot of people aren’t looking for anything. Or perhaps they have already found it. Or maybe they’ve given up. I feel like I’ve always had questions about life, that I wanted to know more. But I’ve limited myself. I decided earlier this year that I wanted to travel more and that I’d start this year. It’s important to me, important to my life that it happens. I realize that I’m at a crossroads in my life and I find it funny because, even though I’m at a crossroads, it feels like there is really only one path for me to take, the one that leads to growth and change. So far this year I’ve already taken two trips to San Diego, which were great, but I lived there for so long it’s like going home, it’s not the same. I also took a trip to Florida to visit my parents. Once again, great, but not new.

I’ll admit it. I want to travel to places to which I’ve already been. Some of them are places that I went when I was a child and I want to see them with adult eyes, and maybe introduce my son to them as well. There’s some nostalgia there, but for some reason I feel like going to an old place first will help jump start me to visiting new places. And I want to see new places in the world, and, even more important, I want my son to see them. I want him to know that there is more to life than what’s in the U.S. I want him to know there is a great big world out there and, really, our job is to try and make that world a better place. I have fears and I have dreams. I have spent a lot of my life ruled by my fears and it’s gotten me to where I am. It’s not a bad place, it’s been a struggle at times. There have been good times, some not so good. I’ve grown and changed. Haven’t we all? But I still feel like there is more to this world and I want to see it. I want to show that world to my son. But in order to do that, I need to be able to see it myself. And to truly do that, I need to grow.

One of the things I found so amazing about The Way is that I had never heard of Camino de Santiago. I had heard about the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and many smaller trails throughout America, but not about the Camino de Santiago. It made me realize how little of this world I really know. After all these years, I have finally just began to see how sheltered I’ve been. I’m a middle-age, middle-class, white male who lives in America. I am the epitome of privilege. I’ve spent part of my life being ashamed of that reality and part of my life accepting it. I can’t change what I am, but I can try and change how I see things. I can try and see things from other people’s perspectives, to understand their perspective. I see travel as one way to help me do that…while also accepting the very real fact that being able to travel itself is a privilege. Down the rabbit hole we go… I guess what I’m really getting at is that the best way I know how to change the world is to try and be a better person and to try to raise my son to be a better person as well. I know that there are many ways to do that, that travel is just one of them, but it’s a journey I plan to begin.