Come on, Eileen…

Written July 30th, 2020

My dog and I are splayed out on my bed, small fan whirring, anticipating the heat. With less than an hour’s sleep last night (and I’m not convinced Minnie slept more than I did) the world takes on a wavy sheen. As if just when I look at the tiny potted plant and my brain, delayed, is finally convinced of its plant-ness, the damn things turns into a tiny green dragon. My belly is bloated. It’s like the boundary of my skin has expanded several inches and I am rubbing up against things, the sheets, these computer keys, the walls of this room, uncomfortable in my largeness. I know this will make going out into the world today a problem. Everything around me is sandpaper and I am a desert of sensitive skin.

Yesterday felt different. I woke up not questioning my right to be here, in this string of rooms that is my apartment, lying in the shape of my body’s imprint in this bed. I made a difficult phone call to my landlord, trying to pin down a time for someone to come and check for mold in my bedroom (whole other story and issue). I pushed, once again, to track down the guy in charge of finishing the work in my room so I could move back into it (connected to other story, same issue). While the day beat on I worked to resolve a conflict here, then continued stand up for myself in other ways, other situations, making my voice a little firmer if needed be. Confident in my decision-making, forgetting my usual wavering, self-doubt; I was not merely faking being competent. I’m pretty positive that I was so sure of myself because I was actually just being that: myself. I was fully plugged into the present moment, my breath and body, my voice and words and intricately threaded through all of the above: my power.

Most significantly and truly, if I could trumpet a horn right this second I would, a dear friend coaxed me to post the link for this blog on my Facebook page yesterday. Or rather, I posted the wrong link and an old friend fixed it for me. At any rate, the decision to share all this with over 100 people (for me, that feels like a lot of FB friends), some of whom I’ve known for quite some time on paper, but perhaps don’t know so intimately in real life; others are friends of friends, etc. (you know how FB works). For me this was…. HUGE. If you’ve read this blog’s home page, you know how terrified I am of putting myself “out there” into the world.  Being seen in all my multi-faceted layers; colorful plumage, broken feathers and all, makes me a little less nauseas today than it did a couple weeks ago. But truthfully the nausea of it all comes and goes.

I can talk about having Crohn’s disease since I was a kid, I can even talk about doing electroshock therapy for depression now (this has taken me a bit longer to disclose to people outside my close circle) but when it comes to the daily struggles I have with getting up and living; with making it to the grocery store when I’m so overstimulated by sounds and light and people that I cringe (bur really want to cower) when a bus drives by; these are details I don’t talk about easily. And when it comes to sharing the smaller, sharper fears that of course are related to this invisibility I’ve inhabited, well it makes me want to go to sleep forever. Sometimes, not all the time.

Yet here I am doing it.

I survived the fear of it all. The blog is out there and I don’t think people much care, really. I say that in a good way. No one is as obsessed with me as I am. Who said we are the protagonist of our own novel? So very, very true. I was riding high on the brief surrender of my guard (or perhaps my judge?) yesterday afternoon, this tentative sharing of myself with my small world that grows a bit here and there as days go by. And lo and behold, the feedback was loving and supportive. Propelled by this high, and the fact that I am still taking 40mg of prednisone to help settle a recent nasty flare-up of said Crohn’s disease, I had some energy to burn last night. And I wanted to take advantage of this new meshing up with the world around me. Much of the time I go about feeling quite separate from things. Out of sync. I have a rich spiritual life and this helps me connect to the deeper rhythms of nature and people; an essential skill for not only surviving, but flourishing. Yet I do feel as if I live on the outskirts of things. Yesterday my jagged pieces found a sharply edged space perfectly shaped to accommodate each and every rough groove of my being. I fit. It was almost seamless, this fit. My edges already felt less inflamed by their constant knocking up again surfaces that irritate them.

To give you some background on the next part of this story: in order to sleep these past several weeks, I’ve had to rely on taking several meds which, really and truly, only work sometimes and when they do, only sink me into a three hour hole of cave sleep somewhere near 1-4am. There are nights thought, that I am up all night, regardless of the meds. 40mg of prednisone, even when taken in the morning, jacks me up like I’m drinking caffeine all day. So by nighttime I have a terrible time getting to sleep. I boldly decided last night around 9pm that there would be no nighttime meds for me tonight, that I would stay up as late as I needed to in order to feel tired enough to actually get into bed and fall asleep. And so with this sure-footed decision (and let me assure you so few of my decisions are such) I bounced around the apartment watering neglected plants, putting away clothes, and shuffling things around on surfaces to make them appear neater.

My brilliant plan was hatched around 10pm.

Part of my “self-nudging” into the world was to create a Facebook page for the yoga I teach. Another very quick, I promise, detour: a few days ago I posted my very first video on this page. No one had showed up for class one day so I decided to record myself talking about what drew me to yoga and teaching, what my hope was as a teacher, and the space I wanted to provide for people who tried my class. Nothing rehearsed, I just went with it. The video was well-received and, I have to say, that felt good. As much as I tell myself this isn’t about validation, I’m a human being, somewhat of a self-conscious one, and having people support me and what I’m doing feels absolutely magnificent. So. That gave me the confidence to try out last night’s little experiment.

“Yoga for an insomniac” was the name I gave the video. My plan involved recording a yoga session where I taught some skills for calming down the nervous system and being able to relax enough to fall asleep. Again, not really planned though I had a loose idea of what I wanted to teach. I looked at the whole thing as an experiment, which is always a nice way to balance my irrational fears. Because I didn’t plan anything it took longer than I thought (you might be able tell that I can talk a lot when I get excited about something). Around forty minutes, I think it was. I will say it felt great to do it. Though part of my plan was to offer some suggestions for people who struggle falling asleep, the other part was to also help me practice those suggestions. It was midnight when I started and by the time I posted the video it was well past 1am. I will insert here that I “slept” from about 3:30-4:30. Being in the garden at 5am was lovely. Coming home and crashing tragically in my bed at 7 was not.

So let me recap. Yesterday: I took two significantly GIANT steps in becoming more visible.

Now we circle back to this morning. Where I want to fall into a galaxy-sized cave that will keep swallowing me in its cool dark shadows every few seconds (so I can always feel like I’m disappearing). This land is poisoned, I know, by severe lack of sleep. Yet the creeping in of a smelly kind of tidal despair and self-loathing feels very familiar. This tends to happen when I step out of severely defined self-imposed restrictions. The steps I took yesterday are two perfect examples of “stepping out” of bounds.

There is an emotional backlash that comes from trying out new behaviors. Especially ones that challenge very old belief systems, or ideas about the way we should be based upon the messages we received growing up. The part of me that wants to keep me safe, let’s call her Eileen, is pretty pissed at me today. I not only toed a line we had agreed I’d never cross years and years ago, I did a full-out ragey joy dance across it as I stuck out my tongue at her. Not really, but I’m sure that’s how she feels. Eileen has been taking care of me for a long time. I picture her in dark gray dress suits, flats (even mild heels are nonsensical) and hair that is so tightly pulled back in a French chignon that she gets headaches (and refuses to admit it’s because of her hairstyle, which she also refuses to change).

Eileen is my judge; the voice of my inner critic.

We’ve made a pretty good life together, Eileen and I. I’ve managed to not make a fool out myself, attracting ridicule; but I have gotten into numerous relationships with romantic partners that were emotionally unavailable (or, if examined under the lens of Eileen’s super sharp eyewear, “safe” due to their inability to share true intimacy). In keeping with the general guidelines of “playing it safe”, “keeping myself small”, and above all, not attracting attention and taking risks that would slice me open to the possibility of being rejected or abandoned, there were certain ways I started to notice I had stopped engaging with the world.

There is a price to pay be for staying safe.

For me, I believe my lingering periods of depression have much to do with me not using my voice (i.e. “stepping out of bounds”). That’s a side note for another post’s topic. Feeling safe may feel good until one day I realized I was confined to a small box that only allowed me certain movements but not a true full-body dance. My body was cramped, my muscles sore, and I felt a cloud of rage coalescing into a storm. It’s really a trip when I realized that I myself (with Elieen’s guidance) had actually constructed this box one board at a time.

I woke up this morning feeling like I had regressed to my six-year old self (let’s call her Ris– what my grandfather affectionately called me). This is part of the backlash. The little girl, the part of me that is still wounded, and carries all the pain, shows up terrified. If you’re wondering, all of this examining of parts comes from some exposure to Internal Family Systems therapy. It’s pretty interesting stuff. There are other modes of healing that incorporate this idea that we are composed of various identities whose role is to help us survive in the environment we grow up in. Of course, survival skills are essential yet, at some point, they outlive their usefulness. This, I think, is where dysfunction is born. Aside from living it, this kind of stuff fascinates me.

We are complex creatures, human beings.

There was a bright new world shining out behind my shades, I could feel its heat reaching for me, and I wanted to dive deeper under my covers. Where was the woman who had stood her ground on the phone just 24-hrs earlier? I didn’t even want to get dressed and be seen walking my dog outside– even if that walk led down to my garden, which I love. Take it all back, delete all the videos, cancel FB account… BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND!!! Eileen’s whispers are desperate and growing louder. Her logic is very convincing: if people really know you, if they see how needy you are, how high maintenance are your needs, if they know how twisted your thinking is; how sick you really are; they will abandon you immediately. 

This is the fear that lies at the bottom of everything: rejection and abandonment.

This sudden desperation to hide myself away from the world I had so recklessly decided to show myself to felt essential to my further survival. And by “further” I mean this one moment right here. “Ris” is the response to challenging Eileen’s strict rules. Going into hiding, wanting to feel safe, curling up with Minnie: lots of TV and bad food. Comfort. The waves of self-criticism I was hearing, the internal voice that critiques something I say, calls it stupid; the voice that used to scream at me, you are disgusting. This is Eileen doing her magic. She probably came about when I was a little kid, helped me discern the rules and behaviors of my environment, and showed me how to stay just visible enough to be cared for, but not so visible to become a burden (which was the other message I internalized).

None of this is to bash my upbringing, we all have our dysfunctions and the pain we inherit. But I do think that as human beings we share similar ways in which we evolve. And I think if I asked if you, too, have a self-critical voice that lives inside you, some days more present than others, you might answer, “why yes, I do.”

Just a thought. A breath of levity: you might try giving them a name, a persona of some kind. If nothing else, it’s kind of fun. Or at least in some moments it makes me take Eileen less seriously.

So while I get mad at her, right now I want to thank Eileen for helping me to survive up until this point in my life. That’s what she’s been trying to do, after all, just push and push and push me so that we could both live through our childhood, grow into an adult not too debilitated by her dysfunctions, and then continue surviving this world and all its imperfect people until we die.

But that’s not good enough for me anymore. It also sounds really depressing (though I appreciate Eileen trying to keep the bar low). Trying to keep myself small, barely visible, has led me into a cycle of ever darkening depression, has waged a continuous war against my immune system that has given birth to a host of autoimmune diseases and disorders and, in short, has made me really mentally and physically sick. I also must mention the now thinly concealed veil of rage that boils beneath the surface of my life at times, and that if not addressed, if not released in some capacity (like screaming in a car) turns back on itself, on me, and devours me.

The result: depression. I believe all these things are intertwined: trauma, physical and emotional and mental health, and the myriad ways we learn we have to be and live in the world in order to survive it. Our physiology adapts to our behavior, because we are amazing miraculous creatures, and soon there’s a feedback loop. We are wired to survive. At all costs. And we happen to live in a world that celebrates maladaptive functioning.

If we develop illness or dis-ease, then our behavior has to adapt to our physiology. And in between lies a giant chasm of discontent between our mind and our body (I’m simplifying here by separating the two).

Once again, I digress. This post is about taking a pause. It’s about not reacting to the trembling fear I have about posting videos and people seeing my face and people knowing I teach, I write, that I love dancing, that I sometimes make weird faces when I talk. That sometimes I say the wrong thing. This post is the answer to Eileen screaming at me to take the videos down, delete your Facebook account, cut all times and RUN. This morning I say: NO. All this fear and angst is giving me a stomach ache. Thank you, Eileen, for your guidance; thank you for your protection and for your loving care. Well, not loving. But it was all you knew how to do. Your heart is in the right place. But, frankly, I am done hiding. So from this moment forward, you and I are going to have to find a new way of living together.

The time has come to shake things up a bit.