Why… weirds me out

Generally I’m not a writing snob. My grammar and punctuation are horrible, as anyone can tell by reading my blog. I do have some peeves though. First is the excessive use of…I’ve been getting e-mail from some people who do this… constantly. It’s like their drooling, or sighing like a teenager full of melancholy. I hate it. I think it’s supposed to look poetic, but it just looks like fill in the blanks. I see the place for it, but it’s often only one place, not ten. Also, shortening really bugs me. LOL, OMG, WTF, and when people say Docs. It seems like another sign of our laziness. I never liked shortening people’s names either, unless I met them when it was already shortened, like my friend Kate, who is Kathleen. Although I don’t think I would say laugh out loud, I would say oh my god and what the fuck. The long versions though. That’s it, until I find something equally useless and snarky to bitch about.

What a difference a day makes

Or what a difference an acupuncture treatment with hot stones and moxibustion makes. I had an amazing treatment yesterday. I felt so relaxed, deeply relaxed. I felt less angry, less sad, soft and lighter. My computer crashed yesterday, and I just couldn’t get too freaked out, that was before the treatment, so maybe I was just ready to feel different. I got reminded that all my perogy eating right now is comfort and I need alot of comfort right now. So last night on my way back from acupuncture, I wandered through downtown, and it looked pretty. I went to the mac store to set up an appointment to get my computer fixed, got a bunch of smelly stuff for the bath and a face mask at Lush. Lightning was filling the sky and I made it back just in time. I had a bath, made more perogies, had a face mask, and watched episodes of Ugly Betty on youtube. My mom called, and she told me she feels like fighting for herself. I felt lighter when she said it, and skeptical with a bit of curiousity as to how she may change through all this. Maybe she’ll tap in to something in herself she didn’t know she had. Yesterday reminded me that change is often subtle, and slow. It takes a while to work into your system because there are so many forces fighting it. I don’t want to go back to how I was. I can’t. It always feels like death, changing. I guess because you lose parts of yourself. You lose people, or you lose how you were with them and the awkward kind of comfort it had. I really want to be better for myself and more genuine with the people in my life, and the people who will come in to my life. Sometimes I write things and I either don’t believe myself or something doesn’t feel right about it, but it often ends up in here anyway. Me wanting to be better for myself and others is one of those lines. I have such a distorted vision of myself, probably because I spend so much time in my head. I could already be who I think I should be and not even know it.

Grief

I am sinking. Eating too much, but nothing tastes good. Crying everyday. I move from angry to sad, to helpless all day long. I don’t know when It’s going to change. I am lost, and trapped. My brother was just here for his guilt visit. He’s only had one. The one that involves seeing our mother before she dies of cancer. She could be around for years, he may have to do more than 48 hours of barely making eye contact, and bringing his 4year old boy as a way to avoid talking. It was so awkward. I have had complete strangers treat me better. He is like a brick, not mean, not anything. I don’t want to buy the excuse that he can’t talk about it because he’s a man. I think men get away with not communicating, just like women get away with being passive, apparently it’s not in our nature, which is such shit on both counts.

I keep saying to myself, and others have said to me, this will change. It will get better. It feels very far away, better. I cried so hard last night I could hardly breathe. I am losing my mom, and I have lost someone who I love, not died, but it feels like it. I think of him during the day, I dream of him at night. I smell him. I don’t want to let him go. I have to let him go. Or I have to let something go. I’m just overwhelmed with loss. My home, my identity in the community I was a part of for 16 years. I am losing my mother and my family, who I lost along time ago, but more accutley felt at the moment when they are most needed. My best friend, someone I have been a little in love with since the day I met him 14 years ago; and another good friend who has been like family, who hooked up with someone and moved to relationship land, where old needy friends like me get an awkward lunch once every couple of months. I don’t really talk to many people and I don’t hear from very many people. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either right now. Everything breaking down, means making space right? For something more real, greater, more authentic. I know the therapy, new age lingo about what this time could mean for me. Transformation, shedding skins, becoming more of myself. I also know that I am in pain, in all kinds of ways everyday,transforming hurts.

Snotty cows and the comfort of drug stores

I am a sad girl right now. Lots of reasons. I’m in the library downtown. Not feeling inspired or communicative enough to go downstairs to the Media Democracy Day event, and it seems like the same old, same old, and I’m sick of conferences anyway. We can’t get past fighting ourselves or each other to challenge anyone or anything else substanially. There is a snotty cow stroking her ponytail two desks away from mine. It must be a curse to have a face like that. Pretty and snotty. What am I saying, I can do it too, anyone can do snotty, but some peoples faces are better equipped for it. It makes me feel better to mock others. Sad, but true.

The other thing that gives me comfort when I am sad is going to the drug store. I noticed it last night when I walked through the automatic doors into Shopper’s Drug Mart. I’ve been doing it for years, wasting away hours in the drug store. Looking at all the hand and face creams, magazines, blenders, vitamins and the different kinds of chocolate. It’s so calm in there, and you can get almost everything you need. I prefer London Drugs, more options and they carry more of what I need like blank dvd’s and tapes. I guess it’s the grown up version of my teenage mall escapes. It is disturbing though, a little. Mostly I don’t care. Whatever works right now. Swimming, reading, mocking people, crying, watching crap TV, and the rare decent show, and writing.

Reading a book I was supposed to read when I was 13

I have been reading ‘The Diary of Anne Frank”. Thought I would cheer myself up. I have never read it, not terribly good jewish girl of me, but I’m not. I found a hard cover copy in the thrift store in Grand Forks. I can see why so many people have identified with her. She doubts herself, as do most thirteen year olds and average humans, but she is also funny, a bit goofy, old-soul smart, occasionally annoying, but very lovable and so brave. I wish I had the drive to write when I was young, when secrets were killing me and my family, a book of my own, where I could say everything. I have it now, her name is Hanna. I am only on page 65 and we all know how it ends, even without reading it. She left the world a great gift. I know it’s probably a very tired cliche, jewish girls wanting to be like Anne, any girls or boys wanting to be like Anne. I aspire to be like anyone who is brave, funny, loving, wise and smart. Sometimes, but not at the moment, I can be.

Love

It’s morning. I’m stting in the 24 hr coffee shop with free wireless around the corner from my mom’s. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I am buzzing, not from coffee because I don’t drink it. I keep wondering when I’m going to get serious. I say I’m here, here in the city because my mom is sick. I’m staying with her because she is sick. Is it true? Doesn’t feel true. Feels like a safe nice answer. I am staying with my sick mother. I want to be close to her in case she needs something, and because I want to be close to her. She is mostly fine, and she may be fine for a long time. Nobody knows.

I screened my film last night. Got some good feedback and some unwanted from some old guy trying to shove a card in my face telling me how many “ums” I said while I was speaking and that he could help me with that. I didn’t care. I don’t care what they think of it. It initally felt important to show it last night, at Carnegie. I thought it would be this emotional thing, but it wasn’t. I didn’t feel it. I felt it after. I felt the affection from people I see on the street. I felt the lonliness sitting in another coffee place having tea, and wishing I could go see somebody that doesn’t want to see me. Wishing we had healed what needs to be healed, and he would hold me. I know it can’t go back to how it was. Our old dynamic needs to die. It is so hard though. I think of him everyday, throughout the day. I woke up this morning trying to squeeze him out of my head. It is less than it was, but I still get flashes through the day, particullarly around sunshine. My best memories, best of my life have been with him, when the sun was shining. I’m hanging on, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if there will be anymore amazing days with this person, or if that’s it. We had our quota and now I let go, because we have this shitty dynamic that is painful for both of us. I let go and meet other people I will have great memories of, and other kinds of, and potentially the same kind of shitty dynamic, but I hope for the courage, patience and the willingness from myself and these unknown other people to work through them. I hope for that now with him too. Partially true. Part of me is tired, and feels done, is angry with myself for falling into these dynamics, still caught up in old trauma, and letting it guide my behavior. I know. I need to go easy on myself, but I always wonder why. If I don’t push me who will, and honestly I wouldn’t hear it from anyone else. I am not serious. I act like I’m serious. Like I listen, but I don’t really. I don’t let it in. I don’t feel like I really hear people. I act like I hear people. I find it hard to take them in. I’m not as brave as I play, or as open. I’m not that interested in other people, not deeply anyway. I would like to be.

I stayed with my friend and her husband this past week. They have both been through so much in their lives, and they together as a couple, They are living in this beautiful place high above Grand Forks. They seem even happier, as individuals and as a couple. They have committed to each other to work it out, and when they need do their own thing, they can, and are supportive of each other. She is taking off for a while to go study and he will stay where he is happy, up in the mountains in their beautiful home, off the grid, playing his guitar, being active in his community, while she is studying to become an even better herbalist than she already is. They are not perfect, but they are pretty happy, and are living in a way that feels right to them. Low impact on the earth and greater impact on each other and their community. That is what I want.

Depression

I spoke at a conference on Friday. The previous 2 days I was barely functional. Sleeping, crying, listless, an effort to put on clothes. I have dealt with depression most of my life, my own, and the depression of those around me. My Mother, Father and sister regullarly talked about how they wanted to die or kill, I just thought about it, I still do. Death was ever present. My means of escape was the Mall, the TV or silly pop and disco records. I still like silly pop and disco records, but the escape in to them never felt as unhealthy as when I would become submerged into the TV. Or the hours spent looking at clothes I couldn’t afford, making up stories to the sales people so I could try them on and get out of there without feeling too bad. I don’t think I realized until much later that there were healthier ways for me to escape and deal with my depression. I don’t always remember them.

It’s hard right now. really hard. nothing is solid. I have no home. My mother is dying. I have no regular income. I still can’t stand this City but I can’t leave it either. Can’t stand is a bit harsh. It drives me nuts, it has a few redeeming qualities, but mostly it’s a soulless, passionless hole with bad architecture. So i’m all over the place. I started with talking about the conference because it helped with the overwhelming depression I was feeling. In my mom’s place there is a TV that is on alot. She can’t do alot other than shop, eat and watch TV. So I do that with her. The same mechanisms for dealing with depression that I used as child, as a teenager, and as a sort of grown up. They are easy distractions, they don’t require alot of work. At this conference the other day, a man who was speaking on the last panel about sustaining activism, told me I needed to take care of myself. He looked me in the eyes and told me” You are precious. The world needs you. You must take care of yourself. Excercise, eat well and meditate.”( maybe not exactly like that, but that was the gist of it.) He then put his hands on my face, gave me a kiss on cheek and hugged me while I cried. He has worked for Greenpeace for over 20 years, front-line Greenpeace, on the ships, chained to pipes, arrested, arrested, and arrested. Arrested for saying no you can’t destroy this planet. So when he told me to look after myself the other day, the world needs me. I believed him.

I know what is best for me. I know that I need to exercise everyday, make things that are responding to the world around me with other people, and meditate. So yesterday It took me until 2pm to leave the apartment, get out of my nightgown, go to the store to get some things for my Mom, and then I went to the beach, put my feet in the ocean, washed my face, overthought things I can’t fix about someone I can’t and don’t want to fix, looked at all the shells, matched a bunch by colour, shaped and direction of grooves, and then watched them get pulled away. Walked up to the pool, swam ten laps, came back to the apartment, had a shower and went for dinner with a friend. This morning I watched “Sketches of Frank Gehry” which I have seen before, but my mother hasn’t . She loved it. So do I. It doesn’t feel like an escape it feels like a gift. I went swimming again today. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes. The irony of depression as any one who lives with it knows, is that the things that make you feel the best, or at the very least, give you a bit of energy to keep you moving and communicating with the rest of the world, are the hardest to do. Or maybe they aren’t. For the most part, I know it’s a mind wrestle. The image of the arm wrestle is in my head, which way will I go, to the pool or the couch? I’m voting for the pool.

Maybe i’m crazy. I feel like there is a level at which I am perfect, fine, just as I am. Quite sane and healthy. On another level, the one I live on each day, I am always sick, my head is a mess, and I feel distant from everything, and very little seems possible. My triggers are worse than they have ever been. I have a sense that crazy me, hypochondriac, sick, frightened, traumatized me, is on the verge of some kind of break, or explosion, like my brain is going to bust from all the thought. My body will collapse from all the draining feelings, and then the shell will drop, the garbage will be dumped, and I will emerge sane, healthy, and dead. I don’t know why I said dead. I just imagine that’s where I’ll be when I get to that point. Or that this perfection is boring, and all this whiney stuff I do, it’s also me.

Every time I go to the Dr. I’m fine. My whole body from head to toe is in pain, or feeling discomfort in some way. My blood pressure is almost always fine, xrays, bloodwork, my eyes, throat is a little red, but that’s it, and the bleeding has an explanation too, nothing sinister, just passive body care. I sit there and I wait for her, and I think about where to begin. Do I talk about the blood on my rectum, the constant pressure on the right side of my head, my achilles tendonitis flaring up, the sore back or the sore thumb? Does any of it matter, I know why most of it’s there.

I feel so far away from everyone. Thoughts of the old life, where I was nice to people and didn’t mean it alot of the time, are fading, it was some other girl, some other Sharon trying to make it all better. I am done. I can’t help anybody, and I don’t want to. I have sacrificed my self all of my life. I tried to be something special for people. Someone nice, soothing, non-judgmental, caring, hopeful, and supportive. I wanted to be hope. I wanted to crack people open, like I have been cracked open, to feel what is happening, to stop the bullshit. I use to think that If I could just say something in my purest voice, youngest, most compassionate and innocent part of me, that still exists, through a mutilingual loud speaker that would reach every soul in the universe, I would say “enough”. The problem is, I don’t feel like I care anymore. I don’t care because I think we deserve what were getting. I don’t care because I’m tired of trying to figure things out. I don’t care because I am alone. I am responsible to 2 cats, a mother who is dying and friends that have their own lives, partners, kids and work. I can be anywhere, free, no mortgage or car, or child, or partner, or company, or job. So why don’t I feel good? Doesn’t everybody want to be free?

hollow words or insulated feelings?

I am embarrassed sometimes that I use the internet this way. That it has become a place to expose my feelings like it has for so many people. Maybe it’s like going to confession, or visiting your favourite old tree. You can say everything and not be judged, and if you are, you can’t look them in the eyes and feel the judgment. It is anonymous, like confession.

I am deeply sad right now. Dissappointed with most of what’s around me, but this isn’t news. Some days it’s worse. I listen to my mother talk about my sister and my nephew on the phone. She’s more erratic than usual, no surprise, learning your dying by something specific will do that. I listen to her though, and I hear a hollowness in her voice, like she’s saying emotional things, but there is no emotion. She’s angry but it feels like nothing. I wonder how often I am like this. I say love, and often I don’t feel love, or I say it when they’re not around and it makes me cry, I say it to the air or to an image of them in my head. I’ve been crying alot. Things are unclear with someone I think I love very much. I can’t talk to him right now. I’ve been thinking so much about it, I don’t even know what I would say If I actually talked to him. I had this thought that if I thought any harder about it, my brain would start to bleed. I sometimes think there is something wrong with me. Like mentally wrong. I think so hard. I am always trying to figure things out, and I mock people and call them arrogant for thinking they have found the one thing that will solve all our problems. Bio-diesel, recycling, sprititual movements, books, money, compassion, love. Who can blame them. It gives people hope to think there is something that will save us.

I listened to all these people last night who are doing social justice work. I was documenting them as part of the Peace Summit. Nothing stuck for me. All the words ran right through me, except for 2. Knowledge Economy. Only 2 that resonated. That this place, my blog, my confessional, my old tree, is housed in one of the only environments where there is the potential to level the playing field. As I know from all my thinking, there is no one thing that will make it all better, no one person, and no particular word. I don’t remember when it first came to me, and it’s not anything particullarly brillliant, but I realized we need to try as many things as possible, the things that feel right for us. Not just the two options, but the 3rd and maybe the 4th. Not just harm-reduction, but abstinence too, and they don’t eliminate each other, they are options. If we are an open society, then that would mean we had choices, not just the lesser of two evils, like everytime I go to the ballot box. Heads hurting again. I should take my advice and try meditating, my brain is needing a rest.

Cancer is our legacy.

My mother has pancreatic cancer. It might be the kind that is less aggressive. It has metastisized on her stomach and liver. She has no obvious symptoms. She is tired, but her spirits are better than they have been in a long time. Maybe it’s because she knows she has less time, maybe it’s because I’m staying with her a bit right now while I figure out where I need to be, mostly I need to be close to her. We have been getting along better, laughing alot and being more affectionate. She has been sick most of her life and isn’t interested in a brave fight against cancer. She doesn’t mind leaving, and I’m not interested in a brave fight to keep her here. I am interested in spending good time with her, and being there for her as much as I can.

My mother getting cancer of course makes me think about it even more than I already do. She is one person, and one person experiencing the disease of our culture. The cancer, the growth, the thing that invades our bodies and most often kills us. If the last hundred years were to have a particular legacy it would be cancer. Over a hundred years of plundering, raping, and poisoning, the earth and its inhabitants, with enthusiasm, or should I say greed, or addiction? Cancer is often used as a metaphor, something deadly that must be removed. An invader. I want to understand it. I always feel like understanding something will help me find some peace with it, or feel less helpless that my mother is going to die of cancer. Although we joked the other day it could be a heart attack that kills her, she’s had 4.