Liquor is Quicker…

I’m not an alcoholic, I just…

Yeah, that phrase isn’t at all suspicious.

Dog is on a mission to lay down in every spot in the house to see which is best.  She just did her circle and flop routine in the closet.  It’s not even a big closet.  But there she is, wedged between the high-heeled sandals that I never got a chance to wear this summer, and the black satin evening gown that I’ve never worn in public.  If I didn’t know better I’d think she was making commentary on my jeans and t-shirt/slacks and button down lifestyle – the lifestyle that does not involve ever looking or acting like a girl.

Not that I’m all about the nail-polish and the designer handbag.  I have this theory about women, the more high-maintenance their hairstyle/nails/make-up, the more high-maintenance their personality.  And honestly, I don’t have the time or energy for it.

Men, on the other hand seem to feel differently.  I guess there is something to those high-maintenance girls that they find appealing.  I wouldn’t know.  I haven’t been on so much as a date in… well, if I’m being honest, it has been a very long time.  I’m all about making do, so I try to count the things that really don’t count.  I’m great at making friends.  And I’m good at fostering a certain level of intimacy.  But that is not dating.  That is hanging out with friends.  Everyone goes home alone.

I’m not complaining, or rather, I am complaining, but I don’t expect any sort of resolution.  This is my choice.  Or my sentence.  Not sure which.  Someone asked today if I love Dog.  I care about Dog.  I want Dog to be happy and to have a good life.  I want to do what I can to aid in that.  But Love?  Love is a strong word.  I feel the same way about my friends – I want them to be happy and to have good lives and in that way I love them.  But Love?  No.  Not Love.  I think about my life and there are a lot of things that I would really dislike giving up, but there is nothing here now that I could not walk away from – without looking back.

This is what I’d hoped that having Dog around would change.  I’m so emotionally detached from everything around me, I’d hoped she would help me reconnect.  And in some ways she’s been a godsend.  I like having her here.  I like having something that is happy to see me when I get home at night.  I like having something that is excited when I wake up in the morning.  It is soothing to my ego.  I feel a little less invisible – a little less expendible than I used to.

At the same time, I know that my status in her life is a matter of chance.  If not me, someone else.  Or no-one else.  It all ends up the same.  Worm-food.

In a conversation with my mother today I told her I have no expectation of making it to fifty.  She was telling me that fifty feels so young.  I do not doubt her.  I feel young now and it isn’t until I look in the mirror that I remember that I’m now counting my age by decades.  At the same time I want to be done.  So badly do I want to be done.

This is something that I didn’t want to write about here.  I’ve done the pathos thing.  I’ve gone through the therapy and the drugs and the whole deal.  I did not want another of my writing experiments to spiral down into the realm of constant-self pity.  Yet, it is self-pity or nothing at all.  It is where I live.  It is where I’ve lived for a long time now.  I comfort myself these days by promising myself that if it ever gets that bad again I have permission to check out.  To call it good.  To be done.  To die.  And then I keep adjusting the definition of that so it doesn’t include the now.  Because I’m not quite ready yet.   Not yet.  Though I’m close.  I’ve been close for a long time now.  I don’t know what to do with that.

I have the best friends in the world right now.  I have people that I care deeply for and that I know care about me.  I have shelter and intellectual stimulation and a constantly growing set of hobbies.  I do whatever I can to keep my mind occupied.  And when I know that I cannot keep it occupied, I deaden it with booze.  But I also know that I am lonely.  I’ve been lonely for so long that it is part and parcel of my self-identity.  When I dream at night, I dream about what it is like to be alone.  When I daydream about the future, there is no-one else around.  This is it.  Not even my subconscious believes that this will ever change.

The funny thing is that I watch my friends and neighbors as they navigate their relationship drama, and I want nothing to do with any of it.  I almost feel superior – with my emotional detachment and what-not.  Almost.  Then I remember how many years I’ve spent alone.  Years.

I’m living by a new policy these days – get as much life lived as I can as fast as I can.  I don’t expect to live to a ripe old age.  It would be foolish to pretend that I’ll have time to do the things I want to do later.  I won’t.  And as I’m not stuck with anyone else to worry about, there’s nothing to slow me down.  So when this life gets old – and I know it will – I’ll be in a place where I can end it without guilt or regret.

In the meantime, it is a matter of endurance.  And balance.  Liquor is indeed quicker, but just how much booze does it take to erase the lonely?  Maybe I should make a scientific study out of it.

Self-Help Thru Whuppins

In an attempt to maintain some sort of sanity (and to prevent every conversation from devolving into a rant about my thesis) I’ve been trying to read books about things other than land use policy.  Do not fear, I still read a great deal of land use policy. Piles of it. And it still gets me riled up. But, as a medium for personal growth, land use policy is generally lacking.

I read a lot this summer. I’m still reading a lot – generally reading has superseded my other “relaxation” activities (knitting and re-watching movies) and I have found that much in the same way that I stand in front of the open pantry wishing I had a bit of cookie or licorice after dinner, I will stand in front of my bookshelves and search for something to satisfy my literary craving. I have a lot of books, so this would seem like a desire that could be met in-house. Not so, as evidenced by the piles of new books stacked on every flat surface of my living room (and some not so flat, as Dog has discovered).

These new books fit one of three genres. They are crime/assassination thrillers with complex good/bad guys and a realistic approach to fighting, evasion, and investigation. I care not for long descriptions of physical appeal (how rippling were those abs?) and prefer detailed depictions of the procedure necessary to determine that one is not being followed. Or they are books about how we are messing up our planet by eating unsustainable foods and living in unsustainable neighborhoods and using unsustainable transportation and how all of that is connected and how it has been subsidized and fundamentalized and become such a part of our existence that we can’t imagine not living that way, even though our lives could arguably be healthier, happier, and more meaningful. Or, because the first kind of book gets me excited, and the second kind of book gets me angry, I read books about how to be a better person.

I’ll be straight with you. I’ve started one book on how to be a better person, which almost immediately triggered my gag reflex, and I just finished one book that was technically about how to survive violence that felt like the author knew me – didn’t just know my personality and my experiences, but my thought process and the words that I needed to hear. To be honest, it caught me by surprise. And now I’m reeling a bit. I expected the book about learning to let go (which is what I will get tattooed on my wrist as soon as I am done having surgery on it – an odd tattoo for a climber to be sure, but there you have it) to tell me the things I needed to hear. Apparently either I’ve already moved farther along in the letting go process than I thought, or I am not in the right place for that book because it just made me aggravated. When books start throwing out the “self-love” terminology I find my skepticism kicks into overdrive. When books talk about acceptance AND self-love I start to get that bile in the throat taste. I have never been an acceptor. I do not want to accept – or at least, I do not want acceptance to be my default state. Not for myself, not for the world around me, not for my life.

Change does not happen through acceptance. Change happens through action (and sometimes there is a good bit of resistance too – which is generally a waste) by choice and by recognition that the status quo is Not Good Enough. I remember the first time my therapist told me that I was good enough – he was trying to help me establish some sense of self-worth. He asked if I understood and then if I agreed. I told him I understood but that I didn’t agree, not then, but I’d keep working on it. He took that to mean I’d keep working on acceptance. I meant that I’d keep working to make myself better, stronger, calmer, smarter, more confident, more social, more empathetic, a person who is good enough.

I have a very good friend who is deep into acceptance and finding inner peace. She gets frustrated by me because my reaction to perceived setbacks is often self-denigrating, and she can become infuriated at my emotional flailing at what she identifies as problems inherent in the human experience. This is because I will not simply accept conditions as they are. First I will try to outsmart them, then I will try to get around them, then I will try to overpower them, then I flail. I will not accept until it is obvious that there is no alternative. And even then I will pout.

Yet, for the first time I actually understand why I do what I do and why I cannot ease into acceptance – and I can say with some confidence that it is very unlikely that I ever will.

I just finished Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts by Rory Miller. The book is full of pointers and concepts created to not only explain what happens during a violent encounter, but how to prepare, avoid, engage, and survive one if need be. It is not a macho book. It does not glorify or romanticize violence. Nor does it feed the paranoia. What it does do, though, is explain how violence really happens, and what really needs to be considered before a person finds themselves in a violent situation. How unfortunate it is that the only way to learn what needs to be discovered before being thrust into a violent situation is having experienced a violent situation without that preparation.

At the close of my marriage – when the abuse was still too fresh in my memory to have become part of my story, I joined a martial arts school and began training. I never told my instructors about the abuse. I never even hinted. But one thing was obvious, I was aggressively hunting for change. Not only did I not want to be a victim in my story, but I did not want to be a victim in reality – not ever, and change – a fundamental adjustment to my personality – was the only way to make sure that didn’t happen.

But change is not easy. It hurts. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. It is like going through a box of mementos of your life and tossing the stuffed animals and the spelling tests with gold stars and the greeting cards and school photos. They become things that belong to someone else, and while it is often heart-wrenching, it is also liberating. The key is to stick with it – to keep pushing the change – to not give up. Because giving up is anathema to change. Because acceptance may be less painful, but it doesn’t actually alter the situation.

I realize now that I am someone who would rather hurt and work (fight even) toward altering a situation rather than someone who can find peace in acceptance. I’m not looking for peace – at least not as a permanent fixture. I don’t want drama or war or violence, but I do want the conflict and challenge inherent in change. I want to grow and push myself against my boundaries because I realize that the boundaries I find so limiting are almost always of my own creation. Because that is how I overcome them, through conflict – and that is where I get as close as I ever will to peace.

I’ve been frustrated for a while now because I could not figure out how to get “past” my need to constantly push myself. Frustration leads to punishment (seriously – Meditations had some of the best treatment of “punishment” and its worthlessness as anything other than an expression of sadism (or in my case masochism) that will give me a lot to think about for a while) which ultimately leads to injury or damage or exhaustion or any other of a dozen blocks that stop my progress. The problem isn’t the pushing, the problem is the frustration – the expectation that I should be working out my issues some other way, that what I’m doing isn’t right or best or even beneficial. The reality is that maybe, just maybe I should accept that acceptance isn’t for me. And maybe I should quit thinking of change as a unilateral motion – that can only be accomplished one way.

Like the book said, it isn’t the technique that means the difference between survival and failure, it is the preparation, committment, and intent that are going to be the determining factors. I think I just got a glimpse of the forest through the trees.

Acceptance…

Acceptance is realizing that I will not be running on October 3rd.  I could agonize over it, I suppose.  But today, when I stepped off the curb while leaving my office and almost tripped from the sudden pain, I accepted.

I do not like it though.  I’m not as angry, and I no longer want to take a hammer to my ankle.  Well, maybe a small hammer – like a ball peen or a tack hammer.  But mostly, I’m resigned.

Honestly, it feels like I’ve lost a fight and now I’m crawling away with my tail between my legs plotting on what I need to do to win next time.  “You haven’t seen the last of meeeee!”  Which would honestly be pretty difficult because I’m both the winner and the loser in this fight – will vs. body.  Body may have won this round, but will has the better average (except when there is chocolate or whiskey because will is weak when it comes to chocolate and whiskey).  Body is going to win eventually – on a long enough time line the survival rate for everything drops to zero.  Yeah. I just quoted Fight Club.  Again.

Still, I resent this kind of interruption.  I especially resent it in that I don’t feel like I’ve been pushing myself all that hard – certainly not as hard as I did last summer or even last winter.  How dare this wad of flesh fail me when I’ve been so easy on it?

The worst of it is that I wish I was doing this pushing for vanity – because then it would be easy.  Do whatever gets me into the next smaller size.  Lather – rinse – repeat.  I’m not though.  I want performance.  I want to be able to run and climb and hike and lift weights and fight and ski and snowshoe and bicycle and dance and learn new martial arts and I want to do it all dammit – on the same day even.  I do not want to be on the injured list.  Not even for a moment.  I don’t have enough time to do all the cool stuff there is to do without wasting weeks with my foot elevated as it is.

Mostly, though, I don’t want to be too injured to run because it makes me sad.  Not “boo hoo” sad.  Give up  sad.  I’m an endorphin addict and I go through withdrawals when I’m injured.  Severe withdrawals.

Like Mr. Lewis said, “I need a new drug.”

Or at least an additional one.

So I’m not running.  In fact, I’m not going to do be doing much working out at all for the next two weeks.  Then I’m going to start over from scratch.  I’m going to begin rebuilding my body, looking for the weak spots that lead to these kinds of injuries, fixing the problem areas that I’ve been ignoring, and, if my physical therapist has anything to say about it, making sure that I address problems as soon as they manifest, and not let them go weeks and months without relief.

And in March?  I’ll run a race again.  And in June?  For my next birthday?  I’m signing up for Juijitsu.

Shhhh.  Don’t tell my therapist.

Vacancy and the New Social State

I promised myself when I started this that two things wouldn’t happen.  First, I wouldn’t devolve into a state of constant self-pity and “woe-is-me”ism.  Because that just sucks.  Unless you are Faulkner or Wilde or someone else much cleverer than I.  Second, I wasn’t going to just let it be – ignore it for months on end for the random post.  It was going to be regular.  Yeah…  We see how that turned out.

I went to see a film about city revitalization tonight.  It was supposed to be an inspirational film about what is possible – if you can wrangle up a series of public/private partnerships worth $1.2 billion – with a “b”.  Having spent my summer chasing $3.6 million – with a “m” in federal and state grants, and recognizing a fraction of the effort and need and sheer luck involved, the financial obstacle of revitalizing an abandoned city core is overwhelming.  I can see what needs to happen.  I can see how and when it needs to happen.  I just can’t see who will pay for it.  Even if it is more cost-effective in the long run, even if it saves fuck-loads of trees and frogs and owls, even if it means that our grandchildren can actually drink their water without boiling it first, even if it means not spending our senior years wearing masks to protect us from the air particulate, even if it means making our cities and our neighborhoods and our homes more livable and sustainable and enjoyable – I cannot see who will pay for it.  Or more correctly, who can pay for it.  I will pay.  I do pay.  And so do you.  But our money does not go to solving the problem – to the wholesale re-connection to the urban fabric necessary to start the healing process.  Instead our money goes toward keeping the terminal status-quo on life-support.

And it is bankrupting us.  Or at least it is bankrupting me.  How’s your bank account looking these days?  Yeah…

I walked out of the film conflicted.  They had a lot of good points, about walkable neighborhoods and mixed use and using existing infrastructure – and my heart raced a bit when the rest of the audience cheered at the clip of the bulldozer taking down a section of elevated freeway.  By default the film drew people who “get” it – who understand the problem, at least superficially (though I know that many of them had a much deeper grasp than that) and who are at least willing to consider different options.  That part gave me hope.

Then there was the part based in reality – the reality of a bankrupt (morally and financially) state, of local governments saddled with an unsustainable infrastructure that they must maintain, of the short-sighted NIMBYism of the groups (“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” MIB) of people too self-centered to call themselves a neighborhood, but coincidently aligned in their dislike for whatever it is they think will do them (or more accurately, their property values) (as-if) harm, the reality of a growing class of people disenfranchised and impoverished and lacking any of the skills, benefactors, or luck necessary to get them out of their situation  – the reality that shapes our relationship with our cities.

How do you promote a solution when you can’t even get people to recognize the problem?  How bad do things have to get before they are obvious enough for action?  How much has to be wasted?

I can’t abide waste.

The film didn’t talk much about the affordability issue – or even the housing issue of rebuilding cities.  It is great and all to put in stadiums and arenas and bars and restaurants and offices and whatnot.  But if your main housing component is high-end “lofts” (god, where did the traditional “loft” go?  I see one more condo advertised as a “loft” and I’m gonna puke up my brandy all over my keyboard.  Seriously.  Call a dog a dog, you dogs.) and fancy townhouses then you are not meeting the housing needs of your demographic – that being the total people necessary to run a city – from janitors to waitresses to clerks to CEOs.  If your waitresses still have to live out in the suburbs (which, mark my words, are well on their way to becoming the new ghettos) and drive into the city to work, then the revitalization of the core is not long-term sustainable.

Yay that people are starting to understand that there is a problem.  Boo to the fact that they are approaching the solution to the problem the same way that they approached the situation that caused the problem.  Technology will not absolve us of our sins.  Nor will it fix our colossal Boo-Boos.  It might, just might, back us up as we readjust our understanding of our relationship with our homes and our cities and our regions and our environment.  Maybe.

Really?  Thinking about this makes chasing those $3 million with a “m” grants so much more attainable.  I’m pretty sure the govt just draws straws anyway.  How else would you be able to decide which poorly planned, under served, impoverished neighborhood should get the money to pull itself together?  Let alone the fact that reviving one neighborhood alone is a lot like digging a moat around your sand castle in the illusion that it will keep the sea from leveling it the second you turn your back.  Whoooosh.

I don’t know if it was the film that left me feeling frustrated and nihilistic (almost a contradiction there!) or if it was the social context of the showing.  I’ve been struggling with social contexts lately.  I’ve realized a few very critical aspects of my personality that need some acclimatization before I resume any sort of social interaction.  I have spent an inordinate amount of time feeling awkward and unattractive and unintelligent and just plain “wrong” this summer.  It is a sign of change, I know that.  But I’m getting tired of feeling like an adolescent every time I run across some change.  Let’s grow up already!

God knows we need some maturity in figuring out what to do next.

Clarity

I went for my first run since the half marathon today.  The extended break wasn’t intentional – quite the opposite.  As someone who relies on exercise to regulate my mental and emotional balance, extended breaks tend to wreak havoc on my internal operating system.  It starts off with just a general sense of negativity and if I don’t catch it in time I’m in full on Fuck It mode before I even know what happened.  Fuck It mode is the precursor to “I wonder how long I’ll sleep if I take this whole bottle of pills” and “hmm, I wonder what would happen if I drove off this bridge”.

When I say I have a self destructive streak I’m not talking about hanging out with the wrong people or making poor choices.  I mean self destruction.  As in the end of self.

Honestly, it’s been this way since I was a teenager.  In some ways it was worse then because I didn’t know what was happening or why or how to make it stop.  My parents didn’t believe that depression was a real condition – they thought it was something people made up to get out of working hard or taking responsibility for themselves.  It wasn’t until my mother had a bout of depression herself that she finally understood what it was about – and that was around seven years ago.  By that time I’d run the gauntlet of antidepressants and borderline alcoholism, over-eating and sleeping for days at a time.  I was well into my exercise addiction and had already made many of the connections about what I needed to do to keep stable.  Her understanding, while appreciated, was a little on the late side.

So going two weeks with only three trips to the gym is, for me, playing with fire.  I knew it Friday when I proceeded to drink myself stupid.  And I knew it yesterday when I came home from work and promptly fell asleep for four hours.  I knew it this morning when I woke up and wondered why the hell I was still breathing.

As a note, people who are impressed with the fact that I can run 12 or 13 miles at a time have no idea that that is nothing.  The hard part, the truly hard part is putting on your running shoes and your sports bra and pulling up your hair and going to the track and making yourself move when all you really want to do, the only thing that sounds right, the only thing that makes any sense, would be to curl up in a ball in bed under the blankets, and stay there until you simply stopped being.  Fighting that urge is a hundred times harder than pushing through the pain of the last 3 miles of a half marathon.  A thousand times.

It took me a couple of hours this morning to make myself go running.  I’d planned on going in the morning when it was cool and fresh out, before the blooms opened on the trees, before the trails crowded with people out getting some fresh air.  Things don’t always go as planned.  By the time I made it to the trail the air was heavy and the pollen thick.  I started running, and immediately I knew it was going to be a difficult run.  I couldn’t breathe.  Almost instantly I was light headed and no matter how I tried to regulate my breathing, I just couldn’t get enough air.  Plus, my body felt alien to me – like I was in someone else’s skin, trying to move their legs and arms and lungs – legs and arms and lungs that were not necessarily accustomed to my level of activity.

It hurt, is what I’m saying.  I ran five miles, and it was the hardest five miles in a very long time.  I have no idea how I ran 13 two weeks ago.  I wish I could blame it on the 35 degree temperature difference.  But I’ve run 12 miles in triple digits.  That wasn’t it.

The same thing has happened to my climbing.  Only this was much longer than 2 weeks in development.  I’m trying to work back into my climbing and weight lifting schedule, but it is not easy.  I see things that I could do before, and I try to do them now and I can’t.  Mentally I can, but physically I am unable.  I guess this is what happens to the guys who were football or track stars in high school and college and who don’t believe they’ve gained that much weight or lost that much muscle.  I am in awe.  I knew I was losing muscle mass the last few months – I had to really cut back on my activities, first because of my wrist and then because of my school schedule – but I had no idea it was this bad.

I followed up the run of patheticness with a couple of hours of pathetic climbing and another hour of pathetic weight lifting.  I’m so far below my usual standards that I feel like the punchline of a very unfunny joke.  BUT, the negativity is gone.  The urge to climb into my bed and disappear is fading.  The need for a drink is non-existant.  I’m ok.

And if I needed proof that the sleeping pills/alcohol/caffeine cycle was a bad idea, here it is.  I hear it loud and clear.  Now I just need to figure out how to keep my balance when school goes back in session.

I think I’ll worry about that bridge when I come to it.  One thing at a time.