Woozy Wednesday: The Darker Side of Winter

I believe that we are all born with a disposition toward something whether it be depression or anxiety, OCD, or some other underlying burbling of "here it comes if you don't watch out." This disposition gently nudges us against gravity and then something comes along like a divorce or a miscarriage or something else tragic and WHAM we fall backward into its abyss. It doesn't have to be a disease or a disorder, no. That's not what I'm saying. It could be something as harmless as a passion for shopping or applying makeup. But when acute stress tips the scale, all of a sudden we've spent thirty thousand dollars on welcome mats and blush.

I have an underlying anxiety disorder. I was medicated for a while, and I'm open to meds if I ever need them again, but for now I'm able to manage my anxiety levels with the knowledge gained from counseling and therapy, and the catharsis of distance running. And of course, hugs from my husband, who smells like home and holds me and heals the dry cracked parts of my heart.

The winter months tend to have an adverse affect on me; I'm not a fan. I like Christmas and stuff, like, when all the kids are in bed and Andrew and I are a bit tipsy on Spanish coffees, making out on the couch in front of the lit tree. I appreciate those nights. But the cold, dreary, dark rainy winters of the West Coast have a way of hacking into my brain, clearing out all of my rationality and then setting up insanity camp. Kill me now, and then raise me up in Spring with a Corona and a bottle of coconut-scented SPF 4.

However, about two years ago I had my first taste of Granville Island Winter Ale and I've been obsessed with it ever since. Beer is not necessarily my "thing." It makes me feel all bloaty, and I have a hard time eating food when I'm drinking beer because of all the fizz. So I'll often drink it after a run with Lora or on a super hot summer day, so that the heat can metabolize the liquid a bit faster and then I'm able to stuff some nachos and wings down the hatch just that much easier.

But I puffy heart Winter Ale. It's a darker chocolately beer that goes really well with being alive. Some people wait with baited breath for pumpkin spice lattes but me? I'd way rather overpay for a beer than a coffee.

Baggage Claim

I recently read a blog about how people exposed their innermost issues by writing them with pen on their bodies. One girl wrote "daddy issues" across her knuckles. Another woman wrote "molested age 5" and "mother age 16" and "prisoner age 27" on various parts of her body. One guy wrote "fat" on his hand. Another man wrote "accept me" across his forehead.

First of all, my heart goes out to overweight people because they don't get any sort of buffer between when people first meet them and when they really get to know them and the issues they carry. The man who wrote "fat" across his hand? Well, we already knew that. Right? Because he's fat right there in front of us. But the girl who was raped, or the one who cuts her torso, or the man who had testicular cancer or whose dad beat him or whose mom abandoned him, we don't see those issues right away the way we see fat on a person.

Let me take a side road here for a second. When the kids were little, our family went to Mexico and Katie did this thing in the airport where she'd ride on either my or Jason's suitcase because she was too little to keep up with the rush of it all. Since our divorce, I have told the kids that we all have our own suitcases of issues where we carry our pain, our sadness, our anger, our stress. That Andrew, dad and I all carry our own suitcases and that never, under any circumstance are any of our children allowed to carry our suitcases. Ever. But that they, as our children, have their own suitcases and that we are to help them carry theirs. It's a metaphor that works for us, and I've used it many times to help illustrate my point. It's a tendency for kids to see a hurting parent and want to help them out or protect them from their pain, but it's NOT OKAY. All I have to say to them is "this is not your suitcase."

So back to the fat person. Their suitcase happens to be wide open, spilling out all over the place. The girl who was raped or the guy with the mama drama? They can keep their suitcase all secretive and looking tidy. Would that be frustrating for the fat guy? I bet. But I also bet that they feel relieved, knowing that they don't have to keep anything hidden, wondering when someone is going to find out their big insecurity because it's right there in the open.

Big suitcases or small, exposed or not, we all have them. And I choose to surround myself with people who accept that fact because if we don't, we'll get stuck where we are and never get the opportunity to travel to new places.

Time Warped

Kids don't appreciate a lot of things because most of the time, whatever their hearts desire end up on their laps on a silver platter. They don't see the progression from nothing to something. They don't comprehend the work and time and energy and money that it takes to get it there. It just appears.

They keep yelping in frustration from being stuck inside young bodies that so desperately want to grow up, imagining that their lives will become much more pleasurable with each passing year. But instead, what we all know happens, is the reality they face dictates a much bleaker outcome; the older we get, the harder life becomes.

No longer can we rollerblade our summers away. Watermelon stains on our shirts are no longer cute. Work and bills replace endless free time spent building forts, jumping on trampolines, and burning ants with magnifying glasses.

We can't wait to be old enough to have sex, drink, get married, and to have children. And depending on the order of those milestones, one might end up having crossing all four off the list in the same night.

As adults, have we learned anything in our wise old years? Because it seems that we keep putting aside our life right now in hopes for the "one day when" everything will be just right. One day when we have more money. One day when we move to a bigger house. One day when I look good in a bikini. One day when we have kids/the kids are older/the kids leave the house. One day when.

But it's the right now that matters because if we keep living for one day when then we will miss out on right now. Because our older selves tell our children to enjoy the freedom of their younger years. That one day they will be actually be paying $120/hour at a day spa to be "bored", that they would kill for a nap and be counting down the minutes until bedtime. So maybe we should all take our own advice: stop waiting until "one day when" and just live for right now. Besides, it's hard to get a watermelon stain on a bikini.

100 Proof Gives Me Diarrhea

You all know what I'm talking about. We've heard it being preached a million times: "Everything in moderation." My dad's famous for saying that he's "addicted to anything they make more than one of." Whether or not we'd like to admit it, there really can be too much of a good thing.

But I try. Oh, I try.

And before too much time passes, I find myself nauseous from overdoing Easter chocolate, keeled over with stomach cramps from overeating broccoli in failed attempts at redemption, bleeding gums from flossing, sore knees from running, a huge Visa bill, noodle soup running down my chin and no eyebrows.

It all happens so quickly.

I need to realize much more often that it's okay to aim low. That I can always build on what I have but once it's out there, it becomes much more difficult to rein in. One of my favourite quotes is by a Roman authour from the 1st century B.C.: "I have often regretted my speech but never my silence." And isn't THAT the truth.

Andrew's parents brought us back some 100-proof vodka from the States, and, giddy with its power, we mixed ourselves some Ceasars, clinked our glasses and drank them down. However, much to our dismay, the vodka's power seemed to have more of an intestinal hold. Our romantic date nights rapidly went south, and we began to sip our potent vodka-drinks slowly, with a bit more respect.

Too much of a good thing is just that: too much. My hope is to chew slowly, floss gently, run healthfully, spend intentionally, and drink my Ceasars near a toilet.

The Three-Legged Race

I spent a lot of my childhood alone. Not in a bad way, no, not at all. It was just the way my sisters and I were spaced out and how they left home early that gave me a lot of time to myself. I often joke about how I'm the youngest child, and a bit of an only child as well and so a product of extreme self-absorption. In fact, most of my writing begins with the word "I." It's all about Suzy. I admit it. I'm self absorbed. I.

But life doesn't work that way. If all I did was talk about myself then I guarantee that most of my friends and family would fuck right off and I'd be forever alone eating whole boxes of Eggo waffles in front of the TV watching Days of Our Lives. But we're created for communion with each other, for community. God must have a sense of humour to give humanity a hefty dose of narcissism with a starving hunger for relationship. It's like we walk around with billboards on our necks proclaiming, "I need you, but piss off!"

We try to do it on our own all the time, don't we? Even as toddlers we'd look up with a scowl at whoever might be helping us and we'd shriek, "I DO MYSELF!" And then we'd cut our finger or tie our shoelaces into 18 different knots. 

My conclusion? Don't be alone so much. True, there are a bunch of us who are wired to be alone a little more than the average person but don't play that card so often that you lose out on community. In a three-legged race, two people move forward a lot slower than they would separately but they cross the finish line together. We fumble, we fall, and if we're lucky we might even wind up on top of each other in a heap of sweat and rope. There are grass stains and rope burns and sweat marks, but we all have them. Together. And that's all that matters.

Secret Thoughts Are Heavy

I like to journal my thoughts in emails to myself. When I'm particularly disturbed and chit-chatty, I can have a thread a million emails long going back and forth between me and myself all in one evening. I'll be all, "I fucking hate stretchy pants! And I hate everyone who looks at me!" and then I'll reply with, "but I'm amazed at my body for growing a human, and I need to go slather it with coconut oil and remind the wobbly bits that they're appreciated, and loved, and rather quite exciting, if looked at under the right lighting, with squinty eyes, after a glass of red."

When I was a kid, we didn't have email or smart phones and so I had to journal in those stupid little hard diaries with the spines that don't bend, with the locks on the front that only succumbed to a teensie tiny little key that was almost always lost. And I believed that no other little girl could think such wicked things, and so to put them down with pen on paper would be a horrific crime for which I most certainly would get caught and severely punished. 

We all know, however, that there are just some thoughts that we cannot hold inside, that if we did, they'd eventually liquify and seep out in some form or another, quietly like an oil spill or explosively like a volcano. And so I decided, one day, when I was a child, that I could write down all my wicked thoughts onto paper but that my words would be illegible; I could write each letter of each word of each sentence, right on top of one another. Depending on my levels of anger and insanity, I had been known to push a soggy ink blob right through that piece of paper. I'd sit there in church, or school, or at home at the kitchen table, grip my pen in one hand, push the edge of the paper down with the other, and write down all sorts of death and hate, right there, and I'd get it all out. The loathsome enemy could be sitting right beside me and I'd be writing all sorts of evil things about them and they'd never even know.

I think many of us wish Facebook had this status update option, yes? Like, every time I post something that looks like a giant ink blob, all 4 people who click on my timeline will know that I am probably bloated, irrational, and hateful.

We all don't need to put down our dark thoughts into an ink blob. I mean, when we feel like we're ten minutes away from being institutionalized, we can deal with it in our own way. Everyone needs a Safe Friend: a friend who won't judge or laugh or phone the cops when you unload your dark hateful thoughts about life. We can write it, or speak it, or symbolize it into a rock and throw it into a lake. We could walk twenty minutes into the forest, pull our hair and scream out impossibly nasty things into the night air. Or, when it's dark out, we could drive along the freeway and verbally abuse the empty seats next to and behind us.

But whatever we do, however we choose to get it out, once we do we will feel a whole lot lighter. And maybe those stretchy pants won't be needed anymore.

Panty Lines

A long-time friend of mine posted a note on Facebook the other day that read, "One of the greatest freedoms in life is simply not caring what other people think of you." And it made me think.

I know what's she is saying here, I do, and I believe her heart is in the right place. But very few people, if any, can actually NOT care what other people think of us. It's like saying, "One of the greatest freedoms in life is simply not having to go to the bathroom anymore." It's like duh. No shit. Would it be nice? Sure. Is it going to happen? Not as long as we're living.

I've thought about this many, many, many times and I have tried, OH so hard to not care what people think of me. But if I truly didn't care, I'd probably wear full bum underwear under stretchy pants. And when I dropped Special "O" sauce onto my shirt out of my White Spot cheeseburger, I'd rub it in instead of change into something clean. And when I let one go in public, rather than duck behind one of my kids I'd puff out my chest, cup my hands around my mouth and holler, "THAT WAS MEEEEE, BAYBEEEE!!!"

I think what my friend was trying to say is what the doctor and theologian Gerald May once wrote, "self-acceptance is freedom." THAT is where the money is. And to take it even further, Anne Lamott writes in her new book Stitches: "they taught me that maturity is the ability to live with unresolved problems."

So to me, it makes much more sense to strive toward something attainable (such as self-acceptance) rather than something that is impossible to acquire: the skill of not caring what others think. And to accept Self means to accept us Just As We Are Right Now. Not when we're perfect, because that will never happen. But to accept the scar on my nose and my bad choices and my blotchy skin and my quick temper and bouts of emotional immaturity. And because I care about me, and because I care about my family and friends and how I view myself and hold myself up to the world, I hope that I continue this journey of learning and solving problems and resolving conflicts with a clean shirt and no panty lines.

Our Voices Carry

The greatest human need is the need to be heard. Take away our voice and our story becomes disabled, stunting our ability for healing and forward movement.

And yet in the other direction comes things like blogs and Facebook and Twitter: turbo-charged vehicles that carry our voice straight from heart to Universe. At least a biography takes time and editing and patience and approval--all this social media horse shit (and I'm excreting it on my keyboard right this second) if, manned by a driver under the influence of wrong motive, can cause a major wreck.

And yet we do it anyway. Because for the ten people who will squelch our voice and ridicule our story, there will always be the one who is encouraged and helped.

I find it to be like eating and drinking, and any other verb in this world that we tend to soak dry to fill unmet needs. Eating and drinking can bring people together if done well (when I use the term "well" I refer to an action filled with things like integrity and good health) but if abused can lead to sickness and death. This is why I keep quitting and re-joining Facebook--because I am aware of its explosive nature and I want to tread lightly through its minefield.

I have a friend on Facebook who, like me, is pregnant and due around the same time. And yet she found out that her baby probably won't live until her delivery day and if he does live, he won't live much longer out of the womb. Would it be easier for her to let her voice be disabled along with her baby? Much easier. But this woman stepped out in vulnerability and courage and shared her story with the Universe. I have no doubt that for every ten people who ridicule her and her family for the decisions they have been forced to make, there are a hundred people who are healed by her voice. Who hear her story and from the guts of our humanity, hold her up, breathe in and out beside her and let her speak.

More often than not, that is all we need.

Tossed in Translation

I accidentally dropped my tea bag down the kitchen sink this morning which meant that I had to stick my hand down the garburator to fish it out. There's nothing much worse than feeling last night's dinner of beef and barley soup squish between my fingers while the blades' sharp edges threaten me with bloodthirsty possibilities. My body's physiological signals got crossed between fits of nausea (caused by the idea that I'm palpating vomit) and heart-pounding fear (of getting my hand shredded to bits). For the sake of the kids, I held it together just long enough to drag the tea bag out into safety at which point I collapsed from the sheer energy expense of it all.

I really miss my coffee.

Our cell phones are like garburators. Except not really at all, but I really want to talk about both, and I'm going to make this work. Both are functional and practical, taking in substance from one side and processing it through to the other side. But if used haphazardly, can chop us up to bits. Texting is the worst for this! How many times have each of us had one of those miscommunication moments where what we typed into our phones came out the other side looking like puke? And how many times have we found that the miscommunication has nearly chopped up a perfectly good relationship?

There have been many times in my life when I've decided to just toss my cell over the bridge but then clutched onto it in fear of missing out on something. Or maybe I could get rid of the texting feature and just use my phone for talking. I'm chewing on the idea, procrastinating as best I can as I know it will be a tough swallow.

A cup of coffee would sure help it go down.

Alice Would be Blushing

I added a new label: "blended family." There aren't a whole lot of blended family blogs out there. If you're in a blended family yourself then it would be cool to be able to relate to someone else going through similar experiences. If you're not in a blended family then reading about them might help to broaden your horizon a bit! And a blended family is just that: a family. So a lot of the things our family will go through, so will any type of family, I am sure.

Our blended family is a relatively large one and so with it comes a spray park of dynamics; there are personalities coming at us in all directions. Andrew and I have seen counselors, read books, looked up websites, taken notes and made lists. Our date nights are filled with Spanish coffees (well, peppermint tea for me for the next 6 months) and discussions about how we will best parent our children together. There is no shortage of love in our family but we would be naive to think that love is all we need. We need plans, and then flexibility when said plans go to shit. We need to respect and forgive ourselves first so that we can then be able to respect and forgive each other. And above all, we need to communicate communicate communicate.

But it's good for us to realize that we can't control everything no matter how much we read and how many lists we make. And that sometimes we just need to let go. When I update people in my life about our family, I get asked a lot of questions and my reply is always honest: I make the rollercoaster motion with my hands in the air and that essentially sums it up. There's going to be a lot of tops and bottoms and hairpin curves and downright frightening moments. If we can just hold onto each other while we're being thrown around, then we can let go and throw our hands in the air when we're at the top.

One of my favourite memories is when we took our kids up the Abbotsford Grind: a tough hike up a local mountain. A couple of them tore up like it was nothing, and one or two kids straggled behind. But when we got to the top, we sat together and ate our sandwiches in peace while we looked out at the view below. We spent quite a bit of time at the top because it had been such hard work to get up there. I'm not sure who started this but all of our kids lined up along the edge and mooned us. We took a picture to capture the silly moment so that when we have more tough climbs we can remember that it's not always difficult, that they do pass and we do get to have fun at the top.

And we know that when we get shot upside the head with the hose water, we can just shake it off and show them the moon.

Hey, How's it Going?

I went through this phase in University where I put a huge emphasis on authenticity to the point where I sacrificed manners and social skills in the name of "being real." One of the things I hated was when people used the question "how's it going?" as a greeting rather than an honest inquiry. And so I rebelled against it and whenever someone would ask me that, I'd stop and just start totally going into my life story to see their reaction. They'd get all squirmy and I'd get all smug, as if I taught them some sort of lesson in authenticity.

However, I've since matured, partly because I found myself without a whole lot of friends but mostly because it didn't feel good to not care. Don't get me wrong--I value sincerity. I recognize the goodness of being real, of acknowledging and giving validity to our feelings and moods as they ebb and flow through our days. But sometimes, just sometimes, we need to get over ourselves and give a fuck about someone else.

Being human means to be absorbed with Self. Exercising the muscle of Other is exactly that: an exercise. It doesn't come naturally. It's work. It makes us sweat and it often smarts. And sometimes the very last thing on earth that I ever want to do is care about whatever person is in my face in that moment and it takes every ounce of my energy to lift that weight and care. But each time I do, (and I often don't!) I feel better.

When I was younger, I'd whine to my mom about not wanting to go to church that day and my mom would always tell me that this is the best time to go--when I don't feel like it. That I will be doubly rewarded (an extra cookie in Sunday School?) if I forced myself to go. I'm not sure if this ideology deemed true each time but there's something to be said about doing things that you don't feel like doing.

Statistically, a smile, even if it's forced, produces happy chemicals in the brain and our bodies can't help but feel a bit happier! Maybe if we forced ourselves to look up and smile, even when we don't feel like it, we'd find our emotional muscles to be stronger and more efficient.

I'm sure you're angry and resentful and have every good and valid reason to unleash your assholery on the cashier/son/daughter/ex/dog/annoyingpersontalkingtooloudontheircellinthestarbucksline, and God knows they have no idea how hard your life has been and they most certainly haven't ever had a struggle in their lives. But just keep doing what you're doing. Leave the bar of Other on the ground in the weight room and see what happens. If it's the same thing that happened to me, you'll look up in the gym mirror and see nobody around you and your heart will be small and cold and flabby. Or, you can let go of Self and pick up the Other bar and join the rest of the world in all our glorious messes.

Because where there are messes, there are people. And where there are people, there is Love.

Extraction

I often wonder why we are born with things like an appendix, wisdom teeth, foreskin, moles and gallbladders if all that ends up happening is that we get 'em yanked, snipped, and cut out.

Or maybe these lovely little items are indeed planted in our vessels for a purpose of some sort, to serve a greater good?

I have my wisdom teeth, but holy sweet mother of Farley, they're huuuuuge. If God wanted me to masticate spinach and alfalfa all bloody day long, he certainly gave me the tools. It takes me forty-five minutes to brush those beasts. My parents, because they care about whether or not I would fit into society, footed my orthodontic bill when I was a tween because a) I looked like Nancy Kerrigan that got the baseball bat in the face, not the shins and b) I realllllly wanted braces, or so I thought. I had braces for a solid 800 years. At one point I had my 12 year-old molars removed to make room for my wisdom teeth. Lucky me. I swear my wisdom teeth each have 7 corners.

We are all born with (or develop very early on) stuff that seemingly has no purpose. Maybe we have a gargantuan amount of pride, or obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Or maybe we are overly sensitive, crumpling under the smallest pressures. What are we supposed to do with these characteristics? Do we always have to yank them?

I'd like to think not, but maybe that's just the hippie in me. I think pride creates hard workers. I think obsessive-compulsive tendencies give birth to people who are goal-orientated and driven. And I think we need overly sensitive people to balance out the asshole factors of the prideful and obsessive-compulsive people.

What do we end up with? Balance. Our lives become surrounded with people of all types, from all walks of life, each giving a piece of themselves for the sake of life and love. Some of us are gay, some of us have our gallbladders. Some of us are vegans who cradle the wounded (vagans always cradle the wounded!) and some of us are meat-eating conquerors, but we all deserve to wear our crowns. There is no need to take them away, if we can use our teeth for wisdom.

Don't Flush Yet

Like sitting on the toilet in the morning after an evening buffet of Indian food dinner, I'm not sure how this is going to come out. As much as I enjoy a solid purge of personal information, I also realize that I need to pick my audience and I'm pretty sure that letting my private life splash into the bowl of cyberspace doesn't come without some dirty consequences. However, my reason for sharing my life with others is to build community and sometimes all it takes for a bond to form is to have one person take the plunge.

Within the last three weeks, doctors have found two different types of cancer cells in my body (two different areas). That's the only part that sucks, because the good news is that both types are completely treatable. But what if I had walked out of the doctor's office today with a diagnosis of malignant melanoma? Would I be sitting in my room right now, scowling at the cat fur stuck to the edge of my chair? No. But the thing is, is that I didn't get that diagnosis. 

So how should I live from this moment on? How do I not let myself get caught up in the "what ifs?" and yet, and yet maintain the understanding that each day of my life is a gift? I need to somehow find that balance between being thankful for my life and respecting it. Accepting grace, but not abusing its generosity. Today is a gift, not an entitlement. Life doesn't owe me anything and in fact, life might very well smack me upside the head every once in a while and leave me bleeding in a fucking ditch.

I know what I do want though, and that is to live life and love fully. If I get stuck in the land of what ifs then I will feel the pinch of its roped-in limitations. I vow to move forward with a soft heart, a respectful attitude toward the fragile gift of life, and a fearless dedication to love well.

Take my hand! I washed them, I promise.

Balance

Have you ever noticed that most people have an internal pendulum that when it gets too far over onto one side and stays there for too long, it ends up swinging back over too far to the other side and staying there for too long?! And then over time the pendulum will settle back into the middle, a bit like when a dog turns around in three circles before settling down into its bed. Except not really.

When I was growing up, my mom was a florist and therefore my world was inundated with pink and lace and flowery things and because I couldn't see past the giant flower arrangements to watch the Canucks or Blue Jays play, my internal pendulum swung way over to the "I hate girly things" side. I never wore pink, I let flowers die on purpose, and I was severely allergic to skirts. I would belch the word "barf" whenever my mom walked by. If my pendulum was on a scale of one-ten with one being vile and ten being glamorous, I'd say I was about a minus five. But then over the years as I matured, became a mom and figured out who Suzy really is, my pendulum settled down nicely in the middle. I'm happy to wear earrings and skirts and pink scarves as much as I'm happy to laugh with my kids about bodily functions and be okay with getting muddy at the park.

In addition to my feminine pendulum, it seems I have a few more. I have a religious pendulum, which I've touched on a bit already. I have a chocolate pendulum which I am still waiting for to settle down into the middle; it's been sitting in the "eat chocolate until it burbles back up" side for almost 35 years now. I also have a love pendulum.

Before I met Andrew I didn't even look up at people in public places let alone engage in a conversation with them let alone want to have anything to do with them outside of the library/coffee shop/grocery store. I was so scared of the idea of romantic love, so traumatized by it all, that all of my walls were up and my pendulum was so far over that it was practically lapping the other side. We talk about our first date and how I pretty much told him every vile thing about myself in hopes that I would repel him. But Andrew is Andrew, and he has this way of seeing through people and all it took was one look into my eyes and down came my walls with a rush. He saw me for me, not for my mistakes. He still sees Suzy no matter how much I sometimes try to hide. I jumped onto that pendulum and rode it right back into the middle where all the good healthy stuff is: balance, peace, and hope.

I guess our internal pendulums exist for that reason: to bring balance. Fear, hurt and anger hold onto that pendulum so we are all off-kilter, but time and healing bring us back to the centre. However, I do know that there are not enough days in my lifetime to ever take back those moments when I would totally gross my poor mother out and for that, the only healing power left to bring me back to the centre is to hug my mom and tell her I love her, and to bring her a big bouquet of pink flowers.