Dilation!

Dilation!
Current mood: angsty
Category: Life
I observe Luke's eyes as he plays Halo 3 on his Xbox 360.

Me: "Luke, your pupils are all dilated."

Luke: "What does that mean?"

Me: "They're all ginormous and black."

Luke: "Black?"

Me: "Yeah."

Luke: "OH. I thought you said my NIPPLES were dilated. I was like, 'How can she even see them; I'm wearing a shirt.'"

Me: "I have no idea if your nipples are dilated, nor do I care."

Luke: "Go away, Mommy."

Adieu. Au Revior. Fuck It...A Lesson in Catharsis.

Adeiu. Au Revoir. Fuck it...A lesson in catharsis.
Current mood: hopeful
Category: Life
Tomorrow, I'm finally moving all of my crap out of my apartment in Chicago and into storage. "Camp Swanky," as it was coined by a friend when I moved in, doesn't have very many happy memories assigned to it; rather, it was the setting for many a rock bottom in my life over the past 2 years.

The apartment itself was tits--3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, central AC and heat (trust me, in Chicago, this is a necessity), a huge Jacuzzi, and on two levels...plenty of space for myself and my son.

Unfortunately, Camp Swanky was also home to a feigned quasi suicide attempt, a destructive relationship with another enabling alcoholic and my own eventual alcoholic rock bottom before rehab. It's actually a good thing to be free of a place that harbored so many of my lowest lows in life, all the while considering and applauding how far I've personally come since I resided at the apartment.

What I also learned is that a plentitude of space does not necessarily equate happiness. Having a plethora of "stuff" is, in fact, more stress than it's worth. While I occasionally long for the room to groove on my own which is sorely lacking in the present living arrangement with my mom, I am learning to appreciate the experience. On a day-to-day basis, I essentially have everything here at my mom's that I might need, as does Luke (maybe aside from an extra dose of patience and an extra bathroom).

It's been admittedly refreshing to not have to worry when the Sheriff is going to evict me (lest we forget, my landlord foreclosed on the joint, and the eviction is not at all our fault), and once the extremely busy Eviction Police finally clamp a padlock down on Camp Swanky, my leftover possessions and requisite trash piles will be the bank's problem, not mine.

Briefly, I toyed with the notion of completely pulling up stakes and only moving into storage what I'd already packed, the furniture and material gains be damned. Even at this stage, I'm really only taking what is important or deemed necessary for either practical or emotional reasons, with the rest in "leave here" piles strategically strewn about the apartment.

Reshifting the focus away from "THINGS" and refocusing on Luke and I as "PEOPLE," has been very cathartic, though it's had speckles of anxiety and loss as well, which I'm sure is perfectly normal. Someday Luke and I will have another apartment, and there isn't exactly a lack of stuff in which to decorate, furnish or appoint, for we presently have as much as either of us really needs in life.

I'm also trying to be mindful of the moving experience according to the cognitive behavior therapy in which I take part weekly. For too many months, the daunting task of packing and moving out has loomed heavily in my head, hence procrastinating until the bitter. I'd let Camp Swanky become this metaphorical monster of stress and anxiety, when in reality, it's always been just a bunch of rooms that were filled with my crap.

So tomorrow, movers will take the aforementioned crap and move it into a contained, rented storage facility soon to be full of my crap, and any crap left over is clearly not crap I've needed or thought about any time recently.

By the afternoon, the project will be complete, though I can trudge back there to pack or clean up loose ends until they padlock me out. I haven't yet decided if that will even be necessary.

'Twill be a refreshing load off my shoulders as Camp Swanky is filed into the transoms of my memory and off of my agenda. Stay tuned as my new life unfolds, ya'll, and as John Troast says, "If I'm gonna have to leave it all behind, was it ever really mine?"

Five Beatles Songs I Can't Fucking Stand

...in no particular order. Apologies to the Fab Four, you know I love ye more than life itself, but the following just grind on my last nerve. Apologies to Carl Perkins, I 'spose, as well, as I felt it only fair to throw one sung by each Beatle.

"One After 909"

"I'm Happy Just To Dance With You"

"The Word"

"Matchbox"

"Michelle"

Melancholy Baby

I promise a proper blog soon. As I always say, "I'm working on it."

Till then, watch this clip to the end...

This Brain is Intentionally Left Blank

I'm so behind on my blogging, for shame. One would think that the natural tendency towards winter hibernation would reward me with copious cave time during which I hone my writing craft, but that has not been the case.  

Today, I am 11 months sober. Eegads, the last time I blogged an original entry was exactly one month ago, on the 10 month sobriety anniversary. To review, it's been a mighty eventful month, during which (mostly in chronological order)...

The holidays came and went, my governor was arrested and impeached, my son turned 9 and the United States inaugurated the first African-American President.

A bitter cold snap followed by record high temperatures caused a domino effect of copper piping cracks in the basement plumbing of Camp Swanky, too costly and laborious to repair, rendering the building unsafe and impractical to inhabit. But we still haven't been given an official eviction date (our landlord foreclosed, remember?), so....

Instead of renting another apartment, Luke and I moved in with my mom due to economic hardship and a shitty job market, which means I'm no longer a squatter, though most of my furniture and crap still squat at the Swank. Unfortunately, I am not making as much headway on getting things packed out of the apartment and into the storage unit I rented last month as I'd like to be, but that's partly because...

I actually am working part time as a personal/executive assistant to a very busy downtown business person. It's mostly puttering and erranding...it's fun, the pay affords me a bit of cushion and is most likely a job which I could still feasibly perform in the event I eventually find full-time employment elsewhere.

I'm sure I'm leaving out something Big! and Major! that occurred within the last month, but moving on...

You gotta love Pandora's complex, scientific algorhythm by which their servers choose songs they think I *might* enjoy, based on songs, artists or genres whom I've previously rated a thumbs up or thumbs down. While I haven't yet precisely calculated it all out, I must say I get a chuckle out of Pandora segueing "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath straight into "Summer Nights" from the "Grease" soundtrack. Less amusing, however, was the block of music earlier this evening, "Artists From Chicago Who Are Not Jon Langford and Whose Music I Find Deeply Annoying," which featured back-to-back Smashing Pumpkins (blech) and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the latter managing to sound even more vocally annoying than Bob Dylan on a Bob Dylan cover.

Similarly, Facebook likes to suggest potential friends for me with it's "People You May Know" function. Underneath the potential friend's name, Facebook tells me in what context I may know the person. My favorite is "You both live in Chicago."

It might take me a while, but I'm now determined to become BFF's with all 2.8 million Chicagoans.

The Week That Was...Meh

The Week That Was...Meh

My psychiatrist upped my Abilify and Celexa by half a dose on Tuesday. This is mostly to counteract some generalized anxiety with which I'm presently dealing, for which I cannot take short-acting anti-anxiety meds like Valium, Xanax or Klonopin. My doctor says, and I agree, that taking potentially addictive benzos like that is tantamount to "throwing gasoline on a fire" when the patient, in this case, me, has a history of addiction and substance abuse. But at least the medications I'm taking are working in tandem with some relatively intense psychotherapy.

I wish I knew what the root cause(s) or issue(s) are that are causing the bulk of my acute, generalized anxiety. True, I still have the major life stressors/triggers still occurring, like waiting to be evicted from my apartment (landlord foreclosed, remember, I did nothing wrong) and the fact I've been looking for a full-time job for A YEAR now. But the holidays are adding to it, mostly because I'm dead ass broke, as well as less than a handful of more minor problems that are currently mid-rectification.

This cognitive behavior therapy I'm receiving has been good thus far...useful, interesting and cause for optimism. That said, I'm not having the healthiest reactions or thoughts, either mentally or physically. My incidence of cutting has increased, my mood is slightly more depressive than manic, and though I'm not having trouble getting to sleep, I'm having trouble staying asleep and awaken at an ungodly early hour without being able to fall back asleep. So the combination of the higher doses of my medications plus tiredness also might partially explain the anxiety and general "meh" of recent past.

Having to actually LEARN practical, healthy coping mechanisms and skills when dealing with emotions and feelings is HARD WORK! My salve, my emotional band-aid, my ultimate albatross used to be alcohol. I used alcohol to both numb pain and prevent emotions from bubbling to the surface, and consequently ended up an alcoholic. Now, with the cutting? My therapist says that while really, really unhealthy as a coping mechanism, it sort of "works," in a really fucked up fashion. It's use as stress relief is tangible and instantaneous. It feels like an act of regaining control, when in actuality, it is evidence of a complete LACK of self-control.

Cognitive and diadactical behavior therapies have been shown to very positively impact people like me who self-injure. That said, it is not uncommon for those who self-injure to experience an increase in cutting early on in cognitive behavior therapy, which I just found out at my therapy session this week. Since we discuss cutting a lot in therapy, only natural that it gets more recognition than it deserves when I decide to filet the interior of my right forearm.

Speaking of using alcohol as a band-aid, today I am ten months sober. Soon, I will be able to count my sobriety in years rather than months, and I can honestly say that during all of this acute anxiety and extra stress, I have not once had a craving for alcohol, nor did I take a flying leap off of the wagon. Sure, some of it has to do with the medications I take which aid in my continued alcoholism recovery, but I do still owe myself a huge pat on the back for conquering yet another month of one-days-at-a-times. I'm prepared to be mindful of the propensity for an alcohol craving once the flurry of Christmas and New Year's festivities begin, but I am determined to continue to be proud of myself and my sober accomplishment.

It's only taken me like three years to fully realize this Pandora thing on which everyone else I know seems to groove. It's been great, all this "make-your-own-internet-radio-station" hoo-hah, and I've got channels now reflecting my love of both The Beatles and The Flaming Lips, and it's coming up with some interesting offshoot additions to the mix. But Pandora's acting weird tonight--it keeps selecting that I like a particular song when I haven't ever actually rated it. Not fair! And no, they're not repeats I've already rated, I'm not that flighty, people, sometimes despite appearances to the contrary.

In other news, it's mighty fucking cold in Chicago. Wind chills are at -30 with subzero air temperatures and winds gusting in excess of 40 mph, howling out from the atmosphere and directly into the drafty areas of my apartment. This has made heating the main living area and two of my three bedrooms a Machiavellian task on this first day of Winter 2008. Luckily, my apartment has 2 floors, and the loft, which is also my bedroom, is on a separate heating and A/C system, so between that and the heat being on downstairs, my bedroom is plenty toasty. Luke and I bunkered up there for an hour or so this afternoon, brought up his 13" TV/VCR and enjoyed this year's viewing of our traditional "Arthur's Perfect Christmas." Yay, bonding time with my cabin fevered son because it's too cold for him to play downstairs!

My efforts to warm up the downstairs included shutting the doors of the downstairs bathroom, Luke's room and my office, which has helped. The apartment downstairs is mostly vacant and without utilities, so it has no heat with which to radiate up onto my downstairs hardwood floors. I also resorted to an idea that his HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED for safety reasons--running the oven in the kitchen with the door open to circulate some warmer air. At least my oven is electric, not gas, so it was not AS unsafe as what you usually see on the local newscasts. And all of these things brought the downstairs temperature to a reasonable 71, from the 64 it was when I woke up this morning. As I type right now, I have on 2 pairs of socks, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a sweatshirt, and am sitting under 2 blankets in the office.

Oh, the personal tribulation I endure in order to blog about being too cold! Hello?

"Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom For Daily Living"

Current mood:  inspired 
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Over the course of the next several blogs, I will be sharing quotes from a book I'm presently revisiting, "Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living."

In a recent therapy session, during which mindfulness is thought upon and the transitory nature of emotion is emphasized, I brought up Bruce Lee and his spin on philosophical matters with respect to the concept of mindfulness and the paradigm shifts necessary to understand and work through stress and anxiety. 

I also "A ha'd" that I was revisiting the idea to take up a martial art in the New Year as both emotional/philosophical and physical fitness. "Striking Thoughts" is but one of half a dozen books by Lee that have called my bookshelves home for over a decade.

I've wanted to study Jeet Kune Do, the martial art system and philosophy developed by Bruce Lee himself, which translates to "The Art of the Intercepting Fist."

To label Jeet Kune Do a "system," however, contradicts the very core principles of the art, which draws both movement and philosophy from a variety of traditional Asian martial arts and American boxing, and is thus, as Lee said, "using no way as way and having no limitation as limitation." 

Since mindfulness is at the root of the cognitive behavior therapy I am receiving, I thought it would behoove me to quote Lee's definition of "calm." My main issue is is that I get caught up in the intense emotion of a given experience, and my responses to that emotion can sometimes be illogical, unrealistic, catastrophic or physically harmful. It is useful to label them as this: 

A) The Emotion (anxiety, stress, fear, paranoia, et al)

B) Space for Mindfulness, detachment and dissection of that emotion and its consequence

C) The Ultimate Action or Reaction

My problem is that I start at "A" and manically slide straight over to "C," without stepping back and slowing down my response so that it can be met with a healthy, productive, realistic response. There are several ways to achieve mindfulness at point B, breathing and meditation being just one example. Bruce Lee's interpretation of point B is this:

.."At this moment, stop inwardly...when you do stop inwardly, psychologically your mind becomes very peaceful, very clear. Then you can really look at 'this.'" --Bruce Lee

Monday night is my introductory Jeet Kune Do lesson at a highly respected martial arts academy here in Chicago. Wish me luck and check back soon for another inspirational quote from Bruce Lee.