Enter Sandman

My subconscious has been doing a number on me lately.

3 of the past 4 nights I've had nightmares, or at the least very suspenseful dreams.

Last night I watched one of my ex-boyfriends get eaten by a hoard of zombies. Ironically, it was the ex who has his own reoccurring nightmares about zombies. I woke up in a bit of a panic, managed to laugh at myself a little and then fell back to sleep trying my darnedest to think about cute puppies or rainbows or anything peaceful and pleasant.

Instead, I dreamed I was in a department store full of people milling around. Suddenly, all the TVs and speakers in the store started announcing this competition that would be happening in just a few minutes, some sort of scavenger hunt. The winner would get a million dollars. The person I was apparently with in my dream leaned in close and whispered "I love you, but I have to win this". I've never heard this person say that before so it caught me off guard, but before I could react he was gone.

Looking around me, I instinctively knew something was wrong. Instead of joining in the competition I calmly climbed out a nearby open window, scaled down a few stories and safely jumped to the ground. Suddenly my "point of view dream camera" swung outside of myself and I was looking at myself walking away from the store. It became one of those slow motion movie moments set to music- the heroine of the story casually sauntering towards the camera as the whole building blows up in the background. Stunning really. I wish I'd had a way to record it.

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Maybe we shouldn't read too much into dreams. Maybe they really are just the left-overs from the day rolling around and working themselves out, but I kept coming back to the way the relationship between me and the (ex/unexpected) love interest played out in the dreams. I'll spare you the gory details of my internal analysis, but eight hours of plowing through boxes at Pier 1 left me with an interesting question.

Would you rather have a good relationship with an indefinite time-line and no real knowledge of what could end it?
Or a good relationship with a definite end and clearly defined, openly admitted excuses to break it off? Perhaps knowing the details would allow you to relax and actually enjoy the other person?

I'm not asking which is better, because I don't think one is over the other and both have their perks... but what would YOU rather have?

Start Where You Are

"Today was enough to make me completely not believe in karma."

That was my exact thought as I sat slumped in a chair in the back office of Pier 1, head and trashcan between my knees. I still had 6 hours to go in an 8 hour shift and I found myself throwing up the cantaloupe juice I'd consumed instead of an apple this morning.

I was only supposed to work 12-5 today, but one of our assistant managers decided to quit and not work her final two weeks. This was the particular assistant manager who I had covered for on numerous occasions, including one where I came in early because she had been throwing up all morning. I normally wouldn't complain, but the pain in my stomach and the burn in my throat made it hard not to think "This is so not fair".

A few hours later I took my 30 minute break and sitting balled up in the office chair focusing on my breath, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite Buddhist authors- Pema Chodron. Ironically I'd flipped through a copy of O (Oprah's magazine) at Mark's parents' house during our strange estranging last weekend and read an interview that Oprah did with Pema. In that interview Pema talks about pain and suffering and how we desperately try to avoid it, to shut it out when what we really should be doing is the opposite.

"...not staying with the feeling cuts you off from your compassion for others, your empathy for others, and also from the largeness of your own heart and mind"

I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to stay with it. It started simple- I began to think about how many other people in the world were dealing with and have dealt with stomach aches. I thought about how many people are struggling with anxiety, how many individuals are mourning the loss of relationships and love, and I couldn't help but feel compassion grow within me.

Starting where we are, recognizing and fully being present in our own unique experiences allows us to reach outside of ourselves and connect to other living beings. But I also realized just how easy it is to do the exact opposite- to feel pain and cut other people off. I started to understand how people who abuse alcohol or drugs or food are desperately trying to escape an emotional pain and their resulting actions are so selfish. We're so bent on avoiding the hurt that we ignore the fact we're hurting those around us. We're face down and wallowing in the mud of our own self pity.

It hurt to admit to myself that I had been doing that in my relationship with Mark. I was so stuck inside my cloud of anxiety about my own life that I couldn't see much beyond my own nose. I wasted a perfect opportunity for healing, compassion and being awake and instead I chose to make myself and those around me miserable.

There's this trap I fall into whenever I start practicing compassion- I start to realize just how good I really do have it in comparison to everyone else in the world and I start to feel bad for any small amount of suffering I might feel. But tonight I realized that my suffering may be less (empirically speaking), but it isn't any less valid. I can't just wave it off as "Well at least I'm not starving to death" and try to push through and move on. Instead I need to feel it, to acknowledge it and allow myself to learn.

"This encounter, as unpleasant as I'm finding it, is unique. It's never going to happen again in exactly this way. And maybe I'm glad of that but I don't want to waste this moment because it's never going to happen again, just like this. You know, this is—this is the only time I'm ever going to experience this. So let's taste it, smell it. "

I survived my shift, ended my apple fast a few hours early with a lovely bowl of miso soup and now I'm feeling much better. Perhaps this was too personal of a story to be sharing in such an open forum, but I felt the need to post it because I think I only truly understand what it is I'm feeling and thinking after I communicate it with someone else. Maybe something I said reached out to you, maybe not...that's okay too. I just wanted you to know that tonight a lotus bloomed in my murky swamp of a self, and in a way it makes this whole painful experience worth it.

No Two Ways About It

I'm starting to think that I shouldn't have given fish up for Lent.
No, I haven't suddenly changed my mind about compassion towards living creatures, and no I didn't give in and go on an all night California roll bender.

However, I'm starting to think it would have been a better idea to give up my ambivalence for Lent. Maybe... ;-)

In all seriousness though, a complete stranger asked me today (in a completely pressure/judgment free situation) what I honestly believed, what my "spiritual beliefs and practices" are.

I hemmed and hawed for a moment before muttering something about being raised in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and studying Buddhism and seeing the validity of any honest quest and then I sort of made some vague reference to the "Ultimate Reality" and energy.

Wow Lindsey, is that really the best you could do?

You see, somewhere along the process of earning my degree in Religion and Philosophy and going off to graduate school I got so worried about people judging me for what I believe that I packed everything I might have held true into a box, locked it and sat on top of it. I think I lost the key.

So now here I am in this sort of suspended spiritual animation where I'm able to hold all these different conflicting ideas in my head and not do one damn thing about them. I don't judge, I don't believe, I just absorb. As a consequence of this amazing ambivalent juggling act I feel absolutely root-less. There's nothing holding me up.

I think this is definitely a major factor in the recent anxiety I've been experiencing. Sitting in class sometimes I really want to have an opinion, I really want to have some system of something to measure these new pieces of information against on a personal level.

I want to argue not for the sake of arguing but because I actually care about a belief or a cause.

It's a little bit scary thinking about unpacking the box since it's been so long since I've even really looked in there. But I think at this point in my life, at this point in my relationships, it's a necessary fear to face.

My act of compassion towards animals this Lenten season is not eating fish.
My act of compassion towards myself and everyone I interact with (especially you Mark) is reclaiming my roots, reclaiming health, reclaiming myself.

This isn't going to be easy, but sometimes the best things in life just aren't.

Do you want your rib back?

I'm nursing the remnants of last night with an iced tea and blogs...
So rather than lying on the floor quietly letting my brain wander and avoiding bright lights I am going to inflict upon you something that has been rattling around inside my head this morning.

We were not meant to be alone.

Call me co-dependent if you must, but I've been seriously contemplating the idea of companionship and the role it plays in our lives lately. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that humans are naturally social creatures, that we constantly form relationships and seek out familiarity in the people around us. So it makes sense that we partner ourselves off and establish families; we perpetuate the cycle.

But why do we do it? What do we hope to gain out of those relationships?
Is it love and understanding? Are we simply afraid to face the world alone?
Or is it something as simple and biological as sex and procreation and we justify it by calling it love?

And why is it that I ask questions I can't answer? Haha...

I hate post-modernism. I want a meta-narrative, something that tells the whole story for everyone. Hell I'd take positivism- This is the way it is, end of story. Here's the formula for finding the perfect partner and these are the desired results. Because right now I feel like I'm crawling around in the dark without my contacts in.

I wish I could just hand it all over to a higher power. I wish I could honestly believe that I have nothing to do with who I wind up with; that my prince charming has been hand-picked and will be arriving at my door according to God's timing.

But I am SO TIRED of taking a back-seat in my relationships.
I want to do what I want.
I want to be with who I want to be with...not just the guy who wants me.
I'm breaking a bad habit I've had for oh... 8 years now and I'm okay with that.

I think the one of the biggest problems in friendships and other relationships is that we think we know what's best for the other person. We think we understand what they want and need.

But what if what people really want and need is for us to support them in their own decisions? To not take sides or judge, but simply let them be their own people.

This is meandering to far from the original point I didn't have...oh well.

I'm going to go sit outside and find the truth beyond Kevin's "Fight, Flight or Fuck Theory".
There has to be more than this.