meditation
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27722
I always start the year off strong and then sometime in March completely fall off the wagon. It’s sort of like my meditation practice. When I’m in a groove, it’s excellent. But it’s so easy to fall out of the groove. And then realize I haven’t blogged in nearly four months.
Tomorrow I have an appointment with a headache specialist. I have been tracking my headaches for about a year and a half and they occur much too frequently and are far too debilitating to continue to ignore them. Once upon a time — a nearly forgotten time — I did not get headaches every other week that took me out for three days. But here I am now, hoping that tomorrow is the beginning of a solution.
I think I’ve figured some things out but then something happens and I’m lost again, searching in vain for commonalities or some kind of fixable situation that can be addressed. Hormones, infusions … nothing is the same each time. It’s maddening.
Anyway. I thought I’d come back here to blog. To hold me accountable, sure, but also to document this journey from the semi-beginning.
For the record, as usual, I feel like shit. Not just physically (that’s kind of a given especially since I am coming off another headache) but mentally and emotionally. I’m angry, frustrated and feeling impotent in the large machine of western medicine. My right leg hurts through its numbness – something nearly unbearable. My hip sears in pain like the sizzling of meat on a grill. My left shoulder aches and throbs, sending me messages I cannot interpret. My right ankle drops, tries to lift, and drops again. The numbness burns. I want to cry. I am resentful of everything MS has taken, resentful of how much more I will have to set down along the way.
Tomorrow begins another quest for wellness. Another walk down the de-humanizing hallway of neuroscience. I know that I have to make changes – diet changes and exercise changes. Life changes. I’m angry about that. But anger doesn’t change the facts.
Either I change or I continue to decline. There are no other choices.
Xoxo, g
22222
Today was an interesting day. Gray and warm for February but also full of strange and left-field emotions.
Once I got on the bike (a struggle but accomplished!) I felt much better. And even when I’m sitting and feeling woeful I know exercise will help. It’s getting up and getting it done that I find so difficult sometimes.
Life was all over the map last week — painful both physically and emotionally and without much stability. This week feels better – a little more rhythm and routine. Less pain, less uncertainty. But the weather wreaks havoc with my body and I always find that disconcerting.
My mind is full right now – not an excellent sign considering I meditated (but I also read my email, which I know not to do before bed but did it anyway … whomp whomp). I trying to remind myself that my frustrations are more a reflection of me than anyone else (per my meditation, which felt timely while reading my emails and quietly steaming) but frustrated I remain regardless.
Must sleep now. An early morning and a doctor’s appointment awaits.
Xox, g
Day 343
Per Dr. M’s instructions, I spent today doing nothing (I knew – despite a long, long To Do list, that I was exhausted). I messed around with photos on the internet. I drank a delicious soy chai. I watched the first two episodes of “And Just Like That.”
And then I found myself staring at the ceiling in my gym, not quite paying attention to a Peloton guided meditation while testing out my new infrared sauna blanket.
PS. I know that whole last sentence is ridiculous. In fact, I thought about it while lying there.
As I lay there, trying desperately to listen to Anna Greenberg’s instructions to tense and release all the muscles in my body, I thought about what a weird wacky road I’ve been on. I’d say the last nine years or so, but it’s really just life. Not just MS.
There was a moment in my life that I was so broke I was crashing at a friend’s apartment, eating her peanut butter out of a jar and making biscuits with Bisquick and water (things readily available to me that cost zero dollars). I remember spending my last five bucks on a pack of Parliament Lights and going to a bar where I knew the bartender so I could get a drink. I ate fast food or whatever I could scrounge at the restaurant (I never worked anywhere with staff meals, but man that would have been nice). I slept odd hours if I slept at all. I had shitty friends and dated shitty guys. I mean, if you could call it dating. Or friends.
Today I have an infrared sauna blanket, a Peloton, a full fridge and a plethora of NA beverages (because I quit drinking almost two years ago and smoking many many years before that). I sleep 7-9 hours a night and drink massive amounts of water. And green smoothies. With things like spirulina in them.
It’s a far cry from that lost twenty-something.
When I think about it, I often wonder how I got to where I am now. I wonder how I didn’t lose my way completely and fulfill all the expectations of the little rich American girl. (I never thought I was rich. My parents would balk at that description. But as a nearly 42-year-old I can say quite plainly that I grew up really well and my life was very different from many many other lives from age zero to about eighteen. And my life today is very nice and we live very well. The difference? John + I earned this stuff. It makes it feel different somehow). How did I end up figuring it out when I felt completely lost most of the time …. Truth? I couldn’t tell you.
Anyway. Back to the infrared sauna blanket.
It’s a funny thing to just keep hoping that something will be *the* something. The discovery that makes the aches and stiffness of MS go away. The something that makes having MS less hard. I keep searching and trying and getting discouraged but trying again. Because if I stop trying then I’ve given up, right? And the MS will never go away. So I have to keep trying. I have to keep doing all sorts of odd things that other people swear are their saviors. I have to keep trying things like infrared sauna blankets.
Because otherwise, it’s over. And I don’t want it to be over. I don’t ever want to admit defeat to MS.
Anyway. I’m all over the place. I told you I was tired.
Xox, g
Day 56
Have you ever said a word so many times it loses all semblance of meaning? All of a sudden you’ve said … believe …. over and over and over and it stops having any shape, any definition. It’s just sounds — it doesn’t make sense anymore.
Or have you looked at a foreign word (not just Arabic or Japanese but any language that uses the Latin/Roman alphabet) and thought … this combination of letters makes no sense to me at all? (I have a lot because I’m currently trying to learn French — my sister-in-law is French and she speaks excellent English and I can say Une coke avec glas sil vous plait in French … and that’s about it). So many people on this planet use words that mean nothing to so many other people. It’s wild.
I was thinking about these things today while I meditated (probably rendering my meditation useless but ce la vie). There’s a line in Avengers: Infinity War that Thor says during his first meeting with the Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s sort of a throwaway line, but John and I love it. He says,
“All words are made up.”
How TRUE is that? I mean, if you stop and think about it, so much of the construct of our lives is just … made up. Not by us but by someone and it was adopted by others and then passed on. Words were created — seemingly meaningless combinations of letters and sounds — that were assigned to specific things. And so on and so on, ad infinitum.
We watched a movie recently about the first editor of the Oxford Dictionary and it made me think about the definitions of words in a whole new light. I’ve always taken the dictionary for granted but there was a time when there was not a comprehensive list of all the known words and their definitions. In fact, it’s only about one hundred years old (the Oxford Dictionary, that is). How wild is that? Something I’ve just taken for granted as always being available, always existing. Now it’s an app on my phone (a lovely, well-used one at that!). But not so long ago … well, the cataloging of words was the Wild West.
Anyway. That’s what’s on my mind the night before a day at the hospital being reminded how inefficient health care in the USA really is. Joy.
Xox, g
Day 48
”Try not to become a person of success, but rather become a person of value.”
~ Albert Einstein
Every winter/spring, I go through what I affectionately refer to as my self-help phase. Perhaps as a way to begin my year by very intentionally learning and growing. Pushing boundaries. Perhaps because as the old year comes to a close, I find myself wanting in certain areas. Perhaps because not only is a new calendar year beginning, but another year of my life begins each December. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is my desire each January to keep chipping away at myself, in hopes of revealing my inner David. (Pardon the Michelangelo reference, but it’s one of my favorites).
The above quote is another of my favorites because it reminds me that my actions and choices should not be guided by financial (or any other kind) of success, but rather by the pursuit of being the best, most well-rounded human that I can be. By creating, within my being, a vessel of value.
In that vein, I am working my way through Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True and it has – to this point – profoundly affected me and my worldview. To be fair, I began it a loooooong time ago and found my way back to it this January. Maybe I needed that time away to gain perspective. I’m not sure.
To help clarify, let me begin at my beginning.
Every night (nearly every night) and most mornings, I sit down on my bolster, next to my Buddha statue, and I meditate. At the beginning, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I’d wanted to begin meditating for a long time (every one said it was so great!) but didn’t really know how to start. It all felt uncomfortably disingenuous. Last January I began yoga teacher training, and meditation was a big component. And thus, my practice began.
Even during teacher training I wasn’t really sure what the heck was going on, and I was pretty resistant. Not purposefully, but it’s inherently within me to resist (I’m working on it). So it was really Covid and being stuck at home that brought me to the meditations on Peloton. Even then, I was skeptical.
Meditation is this thing that for me had a lot of baggage about what it should be and how it should feel. And I didn’t get it or feel it so I kind of dismissed it. Books and magazines and my yogi friends all espoused its transformative power but to me … it was just … overly burdened with expectations.
Even so, I dutifully kept at it, thinking that with repetition I might finally clue in to the big deal.
There was a moment late last summer when I said to John, as I padded back to our bedroom, that I could feel the difference between nights I meditated and nights I didn’t but I couldn’t articulate what it was … I could just feel it.
I think that’s the thing with meditation, and it’s why I’ve struggled for so long. I need to be able to define it, to give it words and form and shape … and meditation is essentially formless and shapeless.
That’s what Why Buddhism is True has given to me if nothing else (and it’s far from nothing else). It has validated my inability to adequately describe meditation, its ‘instructions’ or really anything about it. Other than to say I do it, it makes sense and I feel its benefits.
Which brings me back to Albert Einstein. I think meditation serves as a tool to help me be a better version of myself — to continue developing my character in order to become a person of value.
Xoxo, g
Day 44
There’s a strange thing that happens when you start meditating.
To begin, and maybe this is just my story, but you start to wonder what you’re doing. And why. And if it actually works. And doesn’t it seem to be that you are just sitting and thinking .. instead of doing something as profound as meditating?
And then time passes.
And you keep sitting. And you keep breathing. And you keep focusing on your thoughts.
And then … all of a sudden … meditation makes … sense?
That might be going too far for me at this point. I’ve only been meditating with any regularity for about a year. And even that is … spurious.
What I can say is that meditating allows me to see my thoughts, my feelings … without having as much feeling about them …. So angry thoughts are diffused and sad thoughts are mitigated and happy thoughts are put into context. And for a moment, things feel very even. And there is a very comforting contentedness about that.
I’m not good at it. But I keep trying. It’s a practice, right? I’m working on it.
Xoxo, g
D5 Creation