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Day 54
Choice.
There’s an argument that we all control our destiny through the choices we make. And another that everything is pre-ordained, inevitable.
I think I’m a little bit of both schools. I like to believe that everything in my life comes down to the choices I make. John and I often talk about Father Sanderbeck (a priest at my father’s high school) and his words of wisdom. I grew up with stories of Father Sanderbeck, and John was introduced to him when he met my Dad. Father Sanderbeck used to say (among other, wise things) that you never make a bad decision; you make the best decision you could with the information you had. Sometimes that means when you (inevitably) learn new information, your previous decision can seem … ill advised.
But then again, it wouldn’t seem ill-advised unless you’d possessed the information that you DID NOT have at the time you made the decision. So …. there you go. Father Sanderbeck — the Dao of the House of Simone.
Anyway, other times I find it comforting to think I actually have zero control over my fate and that what was meant to happen will happen and there’s nothing I can do about it. Not having responsibility can feel wildly freeing.
Life though— life likes to keep me guessing. Like today, when I got a phone call about another job … and had to once again go through the painful process of explaining why I am unable to consider the offer. It’s like life wants to make sure I really, truly understand. Like the old adage that if you understand something, you can teach it/define it/explain it.
Life likes to make me define it. I have to laugh (otherwise I might cry and that’s really no fun).
I do — mostly — like to think we all have choices. Choices about how we feel, how we respond, how we choose to frame our lives. I could be really bummed out that our take-out tonight was completely wrong. Like — every single item was in some way incorrect. But that then leads to anger and disappointment and anxiety and stress. Instead I chose to focus on the good stuff — that it all tasted great even though it was wrong, we’d been wildly overcharged, and there was no course of action to rectify it.
Instead of being irritated that our Hello Fresh delivery was missing a recipe, I thought, Well, at least the recipe exists on the app and it’s less paper.
Instead of wondering why in God’s name the last few movies we’ve watched have been so effing depressing, I thought Well, at least I’ve now seen all the X-Men movies. (I’m not 100% sure why that’s a good thing, but let’s go with it).
I could continue, but maybe by now my point has been made. Anyway, it wasn’t the best day … or was it? I guess it’s up to me to decide.
Xox, g
Day 53
Truth.
We all tell ourselves and others stories.
We create our narrative. We edit. We decide who sees what. The stories share themes, they share broad brush strokes, but each story is different in the details.
For example, the story I tell my husband is drastically different from the story I tell my friends. My husband knows the intricacies of my days, the struggles, the coping mechanisms, the sadness and frustration, the joy and excitement. He knows what medicine weeks mean and when I need to sleep for fourteen hours. He knows how fickle my legs are, how vitally important Lydia can be. He knows how debilitating stress and anxiety are, how they wreak havoc with my entire physical wellness; he recognizes the fatigue and shoulders the burdens. There is raw honesty in the story I share with my husband.
The stories I share with my friends vary — I don’t want to trouble them; to appear to want or need pity. I know that some things are beyond the realm of comprehension — that there is too great a disparity between the appearance of me and the reality of me to reconcile. I can save them the weight, the awkwardness of not knowing how to react, or to feel uncomfortable, by telling a cultivated version of my story — one where I can meet them for dinner and walk around parks and go home and be fine. Wake up the next day and continue to expel multitudes of fathomless energy.
Who benefits from the struggles of my life? No one. I’d rather they be my own, I’d rather not have to share them, and fracture the facade I’ve created for myself.
But sometimes there are moments when nothing else suffices. Sometimes, I have to let down my walls, I have to share more of the story I live rather than the one I write.
It is humbling. It leaves me feeling vulnerable and exposed.
It makes the deep sadness of living with MS nearly unbearable.
Xoxo, g
Day 49
The thing about reading philosophy is it begets reading philosophy.
As a result of daily emails I receive I decided it was time to invest in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. And let me tell you, beginning something like Meditations (which is largely Stoic in philosophical nature) is very … interesting … when you are simultaneously immersed in a book about Buddhist philosophy.
Today’s chapters began the extensive examination of essence and the Buddhist concept of emptiness. I have been inspired to follow this up with something that delves into Hindu philosophy. Mr. Wright briefly touched on their attitude toward emptiness and it seems to resonate more with me than Buddhism. I guess the quest for enlightenment on any level never actually ends … because there is no true ending.
Sometimes, I look in the mirror and I don’t fully recognize myself. Some of this I attribute to cutting all my hair off about five months ago. Some of it stems from my quest for self evolvement. Is this woman staring back at me the same human who believed, at the tender age of eighteen, that one day, she would be as famous as Brad Pitt, the toast of Hollywood? It feels unlikely, and yet … they are one in the same.
When I stopped working four years ago I had no idea what I was going to do. I felt lost and confused. Bereft for an identity I tied – too extensively – with what I did rather than who I was. It’s been a strange and funny journey since then — weird and wild and painfully sad among a myriad of other emotions.
Reading philosophy — studying it and working it around in my brain — has given me something back that I thought was lost. And I can’t articulate it, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s exactly what philosophy is teaching me. That just being is okay. That nothing really has to make sense … and what does that even mean anyway?
Xox, g
Day 47
If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?
This is an age old question. When I was younger, my automatic answer was — of course! As I’ve aged, the answer gets more illusive. Does sound exist if ears do not exist to hear it? Is sound a by-product of the ears? As in — if our ears were constructed another way, would actions produce the same sound/noise? Would a cello sound like a cello … or would the sound manifest differently?
If no human ears are present in the woods when the tree falls, is the noise the same, different or non-existent?
Thoughts.
The same principle can be applied to many things. The one I have been thinking about a lot recently is this — if I don’t post about the roses my husband sent me for Valentine’s Day, did the roses exist? … And in turn, if I am not posting about the minutia of my life on social media, does my life have value? Is value derived from applause?
There are arguments to be made that it does. We seek approval, we seek praise — those are good validations of our existence and they can be achieved by merely posting photos (and the occasional video!) on social media and then counting the number of hearts (or thumbs up or whatever). I can successfully quantify my life via social media.
Should I? Is it healthy? Is it necessary? Is there more value to a life lived publicly for approval and validation than a life lived within the four walls of one’s house? Solely for the pleasure of oneself?
Giving up social media has made these questions front and center to me. I find comfort in just existing without strangers reinforcing my life choices. But sometimes, I also feel lonely. As though I need that validation to continue existing happily.
Forty-seven days in, and I’m wondering if I’ll ever go back.
Xox, g
Day 46
Life ebbs and flows. My days ebb & flow. Sometimes up, sometimes down. Sometimes a blur. The older I get the more I see the rhythm and accept it, rather than fight it. I will have good times. I will have bad times. There will be much in between.
Today felt like a sprint from the beginning and my head was filled with nagging, irritating thoughts. So much time is wasted with worry and anxiety and anger but it’s hard not to fall into the patterns of replaying conversations and situations. It makes me think of samskara — something I know very little about but read of in The Untethered Soul. Feelings, memories, things you can’t let go; they just replay and replay and replay and circle and linger. There is no satisfactory outcome. And so they are very present, just below the surface, in and out of conscious thought.
My homework from my last therapy session was to re-write the story I tell myself. It has proved to be much harder to do than any previous homework. In re-writing my story, I’ve come up against some ingrained parts of my nature that are difficult to overcome or change. Or even reconcile. Often it has left me deep in thought, wondering why I’d accepted so many things that have been status quo in my life.
It’s much easier to uplift other people than to uplift yourself. It’s the hardest self-help work I’ve ever done. It feels like a slippery slope with no end and no beginning. Just struggle and battle. I’m perplexed. I’m exhausted. I am learning and in that learning I am hurting at the hurt I have inflicted upon myself. At the hurt I have endured and allowed as acceptable.
It is hard.
Xox, 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
Day 37
Some days just call for gratitude. For grounding. For perspective.
I am grateful for Dora, who comes and cleans our house. She is one of the best humans I know and I’m so glad she’s in our lives.
I am grateful for Starbucks Soy Chai Lattes. They are happiness in a cup.
I am grateful for my Dad. He is the best Dad and I couldn’t be luckier that he’s mine.
And as always, every day, I am grateful for John and Lucy. They are my family. They make our house a home. They are love personified.
Xox, g
Day 35
Lemme be real for a minute.
Life for me is like an amusement park ride. There’s a lot of waiting, anticipation, anxiety and then there are highs and lows and everything happening in a rush … and then waiting again.
I don’t know if it’s the snow, or COVID, or just February. But lines are blurred and up feels down and down feels sideways and I’m just bouncing from wall to wall to ceiling to wall and then floating out the window.
I’m sad and I’m angry and I’m resigned and I feel trapped and overwhelmed by the vastness of it. I’m searching for comfort and finding none. I’m yearning for contentment but everything feels off its axis. I am drowning, I am floating … I am above and below and somewhere in between. I am lost.
That’s my brain, that’s my stream of conscious thought.
I keep grasping for an anchor and coming up empty-handed.
Listen to Miley Cyrus’ Plastic Hearts. It is my soul right now.
Xox, g
Day 34
Today was the day the music died in 1959 (I believe I have the correct year).
I learned that today listening to the radio. I don’t normally listen to the radio but I had to go to the chiropractor this afternoon. And I listen to SiriusXM in the Jeep.
It seems strange that a year ago, we lost Alan. So much has changed. Everything feels different; in so many ways, everything is different than just a year ago. Time is fickle like that. Global pandemics will do that, I guess.
Life goes on, but when you lose someone who is part of you, the way Alan was part of John, that emptiness is never fully healed. You just learn to exist with it.
Sometimes I feel the loss of my mother so acutely it takes the breath right out of my lungs. I wonder how I have managed to go on without her for over two years. I wonder how I can still be me … without her.
The truth? I am not still me — not the one who existed up until December 30, 2018. Just like John is not the same John who existed until February 3, 2020. That’s the way of things. That’s life and time and grief and loss.
xox, g
Day 33
I get daily Stoic philosophy emails. I was inspired to sign up by one of my yoga teachers, who was studying Stoicism (or just reading a book, I can’t remember) back when I still went to the studio three or four times a week for class.
Now I go zero times a week and I think my brain has begun to atrophy (evidence: my complete mental breakdown moments ago when John asked what I wanted for dinner and I didn’t know). I *really* miss social interaction and my yoga community. A lot.
I find the Stoic emails comforting and oftentimes enlightening (if only to give me a new perspective in which to frame life, thoughts and motivation). They are very matter-of-fact in their logic and their structure which I find comforting in a world that requires more and more interpretation.
Recently, one of the emails pointed out that Stoics believe that people cannot *make* us angry; rather we *choose to become angry. Which sort of dovetails with what I’ve been reading in my Buddhism book about self and not-self (and a whole manner of other, somewhat illusive concepts).
This logic, this proposition about our feelings actually made me angry. Mostly at myself for my inability to detach from my own emotions (that run rampant). It’s very frustrating to be sad and feel helpless and then be reminded that all the feelings I feel I am *choosing* to acknowledge and give power to. My Buddhism book distinguishes feelings from emotions — one being transient, the other more ingrained. I use the terms interchangeably , which just goes to illustrate how very far I have to go before reaching a state of enlightened bliss (or any enlightenment at all, for that matter).
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my brother-in-laws death. I keep shying away from it, like avoiding looking at a cut that I sustained — using the logic that if I don’t look then it can’t that bad, it won’t hurt that much.
But pain doesn’t work like that. Pain is insidious, pain is subconscious and invasive and all consuming. It manifests in such a myriad of ways that its not always easy to identify. (Watch WandaVision for an excellent meditation on grief and pain).
Anyway. I’m a mess today. I’d like to go to sleep and try again tomorrow, but I don’t have much hope that tomorrow will be better. It will be the same as today … just Wednesday instead of Tuesday.
Xox, g
D5 Creation