On Therapy, Frozen Credit Cards and Loving Oneself

Sunday, November 26 2023

Hmmm. So this is what it’s like to type without an index finger…I don’t like it!

I’m dumbly accident prone recently. I burnt my foot a couple of weeks ago, while Valérie was over.

Now, the burn is finally almost healed, and I go ahead and lop off the corner of my left index finger, nail and all! Eeek. Gross.

And all while preparing “healing soup” for me to eat after my stupid gum graft surgery, which is less than two stupid weeks away.

My body must feel prematurely traumatized.

Raenie is coming over. I think she is, anyway. She said she would before we parted ways at the yoga studio.

I can’t help myself, I’m excited about Raenie. She feels so easy to talk to, and nice, and and and…

I told Mommy how I picked her up at the studio. Cuz I was mesmerized by her crop top and the way it showed the tippy tip of her sports bra and she caught me looking, made eye contact and was all, How are you?

Mommy was like, Haha that’s amazing Baby Girl, also, it sounds a little bit like maybe SHE picked YOU up!

Outrageous! Though possibly true.

Anyway, Raenie caught me checking her out, and we smiled, and she asked how I was, and next thing I knew, I’d asked her out to lunch and she’d said yes very emphatically and then we were smoking a joint back at her place and it all felt just easy.

Nice.

“Careful getting to know her — you might learn all her flaws, and you know where that has gotten you lately!” warned Mommy.

Too late. It’s time to make space in the closet and plan the wedding!

Okay seriously though. Is she ever going to get here, or what?

The Mommy Magic lasted for a lot of the week, but yesterday I accidentally let Chase credit card into my Happiness Palace, on a Shabbos of all days.

I hate people.

I also hate enormous corporations that don’t do a good job with systems management. I would like a chat with their CEOs. If they followed my fairy princessing advice, they’d have better efficiency and higher customer satisfaction. Which would ultimately mean better revenues. So…yeah.

One day.

I’ll have my own Ted Talk and maybe THEN they’ll listen to me!!

In the meantime, I’m locked out of my credit card and after an hour on the phone with them yesterday and multiple dropped calls, I am actually further away from resolving the problem.

Oy.

Anyway. Mommy Magic. It did last, I just so easily succumb to negativity, and negativity is so easy to find, especially when I’m left to my own devices.

I was thinking about it today in yoga, which is one thing that I have that is so good for my sanity.

I was thinking of what I wanted to let go of. It was Wren’s class. I love Wren. She is one of my favorite teachers at Akasha.

I do not believe in astrology, but when Wren gets going, I start grounding into my Saggitarious moons and suddenly the fire sign begins to make sense.

I told Raenie and she agreed. “I don’t believe in astrology either!” she exclaimed. “But somehow with Wren, it doesn’t matter.”

I thought for a moment. “I think the thing is, like, I don’t necessarily believe in planetary influence to that extent, but I believe in energy and body awareness and…”

“Yes! And Wren does that so well! While weaving in enough astrology to suddenly make you a believer!” finished Raenie, and we both laughed.

I asked her who her other favorites are.

They’re pretty much the same as mine.

Would she just not show?

I don’t think so. I hope not.

It is getting later though, and we did say “afternoon…”

This is my fault, for never scheduling actual times with people. I should have said, be there, 3pm on the dot. But we didn’t know how long exactly it would take her to get ready, and leaving it flexible felt right at the time!

Her drawbridges are just as complicated as mine, actually.

I liked how she put it: “I’m falling in love with my solitude.”

“Me too,” I agreed emphatically. “But also…I get lonely. Do you?”

Thursday, November 30th, 2023:

She never came. Hours later, I got the message:

I’m so sorry, babe! I lay down and shut my eyes just for a second after doing the laundry and then, bam, just waking up now.

Story of my life.

The panic has been in full-fire mode. I think it’s the impending deadline-I leave for Mexico three weeks from today.

I feel like I’m in a video game racing toward this finish line and it gets harder and harder the closer I get.

Bam-CHASE FREEZES YOUR CREDIT CARD

BOOM — You’re locked out of your client platform

Bam- Your client list is shriveling

BOOM -That money transfer won’t go through

Bam-CHASE WON’T TALK TO YOU. THEY SOUND SCARED AND SEEM TO THINK YOU ARE THE ONE FRAUDULENTLY USING YOUR OWN CREDIT CARD

BAM- you try to get a new credit card but you don’t have an American phone number for authentication

BOOM-You try to apply for a Canadian credit card but you don’t qualify

BAM — Cross border banking is fucking complicated for somebody who is not actually, you know, wealthy.

I do want to be wealthy one day. Enough to not worry.

I wonder how much it would take, though.

How much of a buffer I would need.

My friends from childhood and young adulthood, the ones who chased that security blanket…

Well, some of them are happy at their desk jobs and some of them aren’t.

I do have a security blanket It’s thicker than some, and thinner than others.

And currently it’s all stuck in this disaster of an international banking catastrophe, and I just. Want. To. Stop. Grownupping.

In fairness, I do have a desk job. I’m just my own boss.

“I’m so tired of it,” I wailed on the phone to Mommy. “I don’t WANT to be in charge anymore! I want a 9–5 job where somebody ELSE tells me what to do!”

Mommy laughed and said, “I kind of doubt you really want that, kitten.”

“I DO!” I argued emphatically. “I want a 9–5 job where somebody else tells me what to do. THAT way, instead of getting annoyed at having to be in charge, I can be mad at them for how much they SUCK at being in charge!”

And we burst out laughing.

I don’t miss having a boss, and I definitely don’t want one. I am pretty fricking tired, though.

I had a massage today with Bryan. He was amazing, as per usual. I’ve scheduled an appointment with him for Dee. I can’t wait. She’s going to love him. He’s like to massage what Olivier is to osteopathy.

He told me today that I am “missed” at the dance jams.

Oh? By whom?

“Thanks. That’s…nice to know. I…I miss dance jams too. It’s just…” I thought of explaining it, and then thought that was not the conversation I wanted to have just then.

I forgot that he knows…everybody.

Gale.

Etienne.

Clyde too, probably.

“You’re welcome to share or not share. It’s entirely up to you, and whatever is said in this space is completely confidential. We can engage in conversation of your choice, or I can hold a meditative silence.”

Bryan’s funny like that. He steps into this really formal, almost detached speak sometimes. I guess it’s his way of honoring boundaries. A step up from Naomi, that’s to be sure.

I do trust him. And I respect him. I know he’s willing to look into himself an apologize and do better. That’s because I saw him do it with my own eyes and ears, when I talked to him last year about that party.

I do maybe want to talk to him about the whole dance festival debacle one day. He might be an ally, and help me rid the dance community of the creepsters.

I’m not ready to deal with it yet though, and it’s sticky socially, plus we’re still building trust, so I stayed quiet on the topic for now.

He remarked, while doing something to my trapezius that made me want to sing for joy, that he’s grown closer to Gale. “Leaned more” into the friendship. He said he’d been to “their” house last week.

I wondered if Richard was implied in the “they.” I didn’t ask.

I felt a tremor. I’ve blocked her out so completely in the last few months.

Well…good. Gale needs men like Bryan in her life. So do the kids.

I told him he should talk philosophy with Felix.

Felix. My heart. Bryan said he’s taller, and his voice is changing. Oh, I hope we don’t lose him to the patriarchy.

My therapist says that Gale is exactly where she needs to be. She is on her journey, and she will figure out what is best for her. How she directs her journey is “none of your business.”

Ouch!

“I know it sounds blunt,” she went on, “But it can be liberating, too. Once you release that need to control your friends, it often gets easier to be around them.”

“But I…I…I mean, yes. I do know I can’t control Gale’s journey, that I shouldn’t. But it hurts me to be around her.”

“And that makes all the sense in the world, and it’s also not her responsibility. It is your business, and it means that maybe right now, you need to see a little less of her.”

“But I AM seeing less of her,” I exploded. “I haven’t seen her since JUNE!”

And then I sobbed. Big, giant sobs of sadness and grief because I haven’t talked to Gale since June and I love her, and I miss her.

It did help to remember I can’t control her journey, though.

“Even the bad relationships teach us things,” my therapist reminded me.

It’s true. Even if I could take back the icky times with Gavin, I wouldn’t. My experiences up until now have made me into what I am today. And I like who I am today.

I’ve just had to pick up the pieces, and it’s been a struggle.

And I can’t really do it while I’m watching Gale come to terms with her own pieces. Especially not when I see them, so clearly scattered on the ground, and I just sit there losing my mind because she’s the only one authorized to put them together.

I can’t do it now while I’m still so fragile from all the fragments of my own.

“You have had to do a lot of work,” my therapist went on, and it felt good to hear that out of somebody else’s mouth. “Don’t forget that there was recovering from Gavin, but there was also recovering from what led you to Gavin. Is this a pattern? Have you always felt this need to, let’s say, fix what’s going on in peoples’ lives? Is this a habit for you?”

I didn’t even need to think about it. Of course it is a habit for me. In fact, I had merrily explained as much to Raenie the other day.

I said, “By the way, a thing to know about me is that I will give you unsolicited advice. It will just happen. I can’t help it. I just love people, I love to love them, and I want to help the people I love be the best, most self-actualized versions of themselves they can be. Of course you don’t have to take my advice…” I paused. Then finished, “But you’d be dumb not to!”

We both laughed at that one. Because, it was a joke. Mostly.

It was interesting though, looking at how I was letting everything control me, just precisely because I was trying to control it.

I want to control how Andrés and Marisol perceive me.

I want to control how Chase responds to my credit card being flagged for fraud.

I want to control how my products are sold, how the construction is done, how the package is delivered…

And then in the middle of all that the Forest Troll raises my rent.

(And if I’m to be honest, which I’d rather not: In the legal research I did on rent increases, even though I’d like to control the rent increase…not only is he fully within his rights to raise the rent the amount he did…but also…

My rotten food really wasn’t his responsibility.

Legally, anyway.

I still maintain he could have helped out anyway, ethically speaking.)

The point is, I give all these things control over me. When at the end of the day, I can do what I can do and then…

Let go.

The Art of Letting Go is a powerful thing. It’s the whole magick of submission, actually.

Of course, you can’t let go of everything. The trick to being a self-actualized submissive is knowing when to let go, and with whom.

I haven’t been practicing letting go enough recently, or maybe I have but growth is slow, and it’s hard to keep a practice that makes my self-compassion bigger than my stress.

“I haven’t been a good Mistress to myself lately,” I realized on the phone with Mommy. “I mean, I have. But I’ve been so hard on myself, too. I’m hard on myself because work is so challenging. Then I carve me-time and I’m hard on myself because I am feeling depressed and not enjoying the time. Then I think that it’s all easy, it shouldn’t feel this hard…”

We were unpacking the weekend and reviewing the document I’d typed up. We are finally moving forward with the Fuckface Paperwork.

I had to re-cap all the traumas in that goddamn document.

“You had your agency taken away,” my therapist had reminded me.

That bullet point list I made listed all the things. The traumas, emotional, psychological, physical and sexual. The brain fog, and the gaslighting.

“You are doing great,” said my therapist emphatically.

“I am so proud of you,” said Mommy.

“I’m a Super Boss Bitch,” I said to Bryan on the table. “I CAN get shit done, and I WILL.”

Because that’s what I do. I always do.

Mommy sailed in yesterday just in the nick of time, a fairy godmother to magic me back to sanity just as I was about to lose my mind.

Apparently Matt’s dad seriously liked me. I can’t believe I made such a good impression. And without even trying! I guess you can’t really try, because that spoils it.

Apparently Matt replied to his dad that I was the most “stand-up person they know,” in “all the ways.” He said that I was the best friend they had.

Gah gah gah gah gah.

She showered and did laundry while I met on Google Hangouts with somebody I’m about to hire for a lot of money to help me through the Jungle of Canadian Bureaucracy.

I like him. He’s hired.

His name is…

Etienne.

Of course.

Speak of the devil…he’s coming. The original, Etienne, that is. He’s getting here soon. Like, maybe this weekend, actually. Gah gah.

“I was in a pretty difficult relationship,” I said to Bryan. He was finally at the scapula and my rotator cuff was in heaven. This was a natural progression of our conversation because I’d accidentally unloaded about everything that’s been stressing me out. Just listening to my own words I realized how silly it was to be this scared. I felt almost embarrassed for being less confident than I “should” be.

“It kind of sapped me of my confidence completely and…I forget I’m good at things sometimes.”

“Oh…I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it. Like, really meant it. “That happened to me once, and it took years to recover. For literally years after it ended I would find myself doubting myself in random situations for the worst reasons. Was your relationship recent?” he finished, but I couldn’t answer, because I was crying again.

When I finally had the words, I said, “No…actually not recent at all. It’s…depending on how you count, it was, well, three years ago at around this time was when I moved in with Gale.”

“Wow. And with the pandemic…”

“Yeah. It was intense.”

“It’s amazing that your friendship made it through that!”

“Well…we didn’t, quite,” I said.

Gah gah.

“It just all got too intense, and too mushy, the boundaries were blurred,” I explained, careful to stay vague and general since he does know her, after all. “We were too much in each others’ business until suddenly we couldn’t be anymore and fuck I miss her. I’m glad you guys are starting to be friends. She’s one of the best people in the world. She’s so incredible at holding space. At listening. At being present.”

Bryan’s pretty good at that, too. When I come in with my list of ailments, he always repeats them back to me, and he is always spot-on.

I put on teal blue lingerie yesterday, and when I looked in the mirror I felt a spark.

That’s new and fresh, that spark.

I remembered what it was like to feel sexy.

Alluring.

The trauma is not gone but it is fading.

I accidentally got impatient with Estrella.

I didn’t say anything, exactly. It was just a feeling, and I guess I didn’t hide it that well. I didn’t even realize it was showing through, but…

She was feeling sick and I was just not in it, and it was supposed to be a short meeting.

“It ended one hour and 17 minutes after we started!” she said, as though that is just a blink of the eye. I felt a pang because I knew she must have paid attention to the clock on account of me.

“But that’s not SHORT!” I argued. “And…it’s okay that it wasn’t, it just was different from what I was expecting and…”

I feel bad though. She’s so nice, and so hardworking, and she doesn’t need me there tapping my fingers in desperation.

God I need this vacation.

I need to step into my role as the boss, though. I shouldn’t need my vacation this bad, and I shouldn’t be so scared of a self-imposed deadline. I’ve got to stop acting like a scared little mouse all the time.

I’m a mother fucking CAT, okay, world??

Hmm. Perhaps this is the self-mistressing I’m supposed to fix.

“There are no supposed tos. No shoulds, either.” Hazel taught me that.

I mean, sometimes there are supposed-tos.

I think the trick is just distinguishing between the should-moments versus the self-compassion moments versus the Moments When You Should Just Let Go.

Ah yes, Hazel. See, this is what happens. I fixate on the Gales and Marisols in my life and meanwhile I haven’t talked to Hazel in a million years.

Such a giant part of the stupid recovery process is reevaluating your relationships and re-solidifying your boundaries.

Can we get to the sex tigress part, yet???

Meow.

Saturday, December 2nd, 2023, Shabbos:

It’s barely 9:30 in the morning. No drawbridges down, yet, just me, alone with my thoughts in my Happiness Palace.

Gale hopped the drawbridge in my dream, though. She came straight into my head and I woke up with vivid memories of the imaginary conversation we’d just had.

In my dream, she was very hurt that we haven’t seen each other these past few months.

In my dream, she also seemed to have completely forgotten any of the various causes for the distance between us.

Perhaps my subconscious has got it wrong, but…I kind of don’t think so.

After I became aware of the world around me, I wanted to dive into the sadness, like normal.

This week I started combatting the lie-in-bed-depressed-until-I-decide-what-painful-thing-to-obsess-about habit by creating a morning meditation for myself.

I taped it when I was feeling kind of decent. Mistress Me put it on the “to dos” for the day after I saw Mommy. I was in that space where I almost remembered what it was like to be confident and strong.

“Good morning, baby girl,” I croon in the recording. “Take a big stretch. Or snuggle up under the covers. Either way is fine.”

It’s been kind of working. My own voice convinces me to get out of bed every day.

Yesterday I added on a recording of all the words Estrella wrote for me, the ones where she reminds me what a badass bitch I am. She wrote it in the first person. “I survived FuckFace. Like a pheonix, I rose from the ashes. I am passionate but humble. I get shit done. I’m sexy as fuck, intelligent but always ready to grow, even when I have to eat my own ego to do it.”

The thing is that today, my phone is off. That physically shuts down the drawbridges, but it also left me alone to my silence and my thoughts; no white noise, no morning meditations. (I could figure out a different place to store the recording than my phone, but perhaps naiively I assumed it would be easier to wake up on a Shabbos.)

I got myself up anyway. It’s Saturday, I reminded myself in lieu of a recording. Nothing to do except party at Lynn’s, which you WANT to do.

“Party” means “participate virtually in a boring meeting in DC” that is actually not too boring when you don’t have to be quiet and sit still for three hours straight. It’s the same one Lynn and I attended from her place last year.

I’ve never attended live, since I joined the group after the pandemic was in full swing. They’ve kept the meeting hybrid even as the pandemic has eased.

Awake now, I smoked a joint and watched Netflix. Girlboss is a series I had discovered and then forgotten about. I’m back in. It’s very entertaining.

I’ve finished Life in Pieces.

I’ve also started and immediately finished Friends From College, which is a story that just wouldn’t be a story if non-monogamy were accepted. Seriously, maybe that’s why people can’t handle the idea of more than one person in your life; it would kill the plotline of almost every movie you’ve ever watched, because cheating could be replaced by challenging but growth-inducing conversations.

Oh, there would be other drama if non-monagamy were mainstream, don’t get me wrong. People suck at being poly just as much as they suck at being monogamous. I think people just generally suck at relating to other people, because it forces them to look past their own egos.

But it certainly would be interesting to society and devastating to movie plotlines if we stopped shaming people for being attracted to more than one person or (gasp) for being open to sexual exploration with more than one person.

I haven’t finished This is Us. I’ve been dragging it on as long as possible. I’ve been watching portions of the final episode for months now, a little at a time.

Every time I watch This is Us I cry. I’m not exaggerating. I have never not cried while watching it, at least once per episode, often more. The writers do it on purpose, and it works. Everything is so serious, so dramatic. But really well done. They explore the complexity of human relationships very very well, and never cease to surprise with new connections and surprising (though always NPR-politically-correct) perspectives. Sure, there are some dumb moments and canned acting but, it’s a good show. And I’ve been watching it unfold, season by season, for years now.

It was a show Gavin didn’t ruin for me. He liked to be in control, and since he hadn’t chosen it for himself, he just ignored me while I watched it, only pausing occasionally to mock something, usually me, not the show.

I’ve been trying to watch Russian Doll, a couple episodes every couple months. It’s getting creepier and creepier, though, and I think it’s possible it’s reached my limit.

Only, my limit is increasing. All my limits are. My tolerance for bullshit. For fear. For difficult emotion. For scary TV.

I’m getting better.

It felt good to cry in therapy, just like it felt good to cry watching This is Us. Sometimes I do it on purpose. It’s cathartic.

Mommy told me it was good for me to cry very early on in our relationship, and it helped me take ownership of it rather than feel weak.

“You need it,” she assured me. “We all do, and some of us can benefit from it even more than others. It’s a release.”

To cry is to release.

To be held, while you cry, to be seen…

That is validation.

I did it with my therapist, the other day. With my dad for a moment at TNPTWNBN or whatever the acronoym was I came up with for The National Park That Will Not Be Named, after I took that crazy hike and hurt my body a teensy tiny bit.

I’m learning when I can cry, and with whom.

Mommy and I do it special, the release. We take our time, we talk, and all the while we gather energy. And then, eventually, it starts to take shape. It becomes so intense it is almost physical, I can feel the energies, and with her voice in my ear I can shape them, mold them, follow them, channel them, show them how to flow through and then

OUT

And I’m crying

Or I’m orgasming

Or maybe both.

And the ickies are out, and I feel whole.

“This is ancient, Lorelai,” my therapist says, and I’m not sure at first what she means. We’ve been talking about Gale, and I’ve just exploded, saying how it’s been months since I’ve seen her. Saying how lonely I feel sometimes.

“It is?” I ask, sniffling. I pick up a tissue from next to my bed and blow my nose loudly, putting my zoom microphone on mute so she won’t hear it. The benefits of living in the digital age. Even though it’s kind of ironic, because my whole sadness, or a lot of it anyway, is about the lack of human connection, and here we are, two-dimensional images in cyberspace.

“I’m seeing a little girl in a tree,” says my therapist. “I’m seeing a lonely little girl in a tree.”

Oh.

Yeah.

My ancient history.

Because I’ve been alone before.

Mom, if you’re reading this, don’t be sad. You yourself said that we would all need therapy when we grew up, and that any therapist worth their salt will always bring you back to your childhood.

And for the record, I loved my childhood. I loved going to the ice skating rink in the middle of the week and having it all to ourselves. I adored climbing trees, creating seats high in the sky out of clotheslines, lifting up the books using a bucket pully I’d made myself, reading for hours. I loved being different. I felt important, dare I say, even superior. I didn’t need school, and the school kids were dumb, anyway! Loud, and sticking gum under their seats, and making fun of their teachers for no good reason. Trying to impress people to be popular.

I loved being different.

But I also longed for a posse. We did have Homeschooling Day at the park, but the peer group, though I loved them, just wasn’t exactly to par.

And whose peer group is? And who knows? I’m sure if I’d spent less time in trees and more time in the classroom, I’d have had other problems that would have resulted in therapy. At least my childhood bullies were few and far between.

The point is, Mom, you did an excellent job, but even the most excellent of mothers cannot protect their children from heartache.

And to your credit, you knew that, and told us all from an impressionable age how helpful it could be to get therapy.

Marisol finally came through on the magic drawbridge.

I think we’re okay, but it would be nice to hang out one on one maybe before Valerie and I visit you after your surgery. What’s your schedule like?

Oh now everything’s fine and you want to hang out?

Well, good. Me too. But next week is crazy before my gum graft surgery so…we’ll just have to see.

Earlier this summer, before Mommy got sick-sick, we were discussing how far I’d come. How very soon, so much shit will be left behind for real.

Ever the goal-fixator, I started listing all the one day things.

“It’s good to look forward like that,” she said, “But don’t forget to enjoy right now. Where you are right now is actually really, really good. Where we are is good. Don’t forget that.”

And I tried, I really did. But then she got sick and all my friends got stupid and I’ve just been thrown off, again and again and again.

“I feel you at the periphery of your life,” my therapist said, “instead of the center. I feel you off from center.”

Me fucking too.

On Thursday I raised all the drawbridges, Chase be damned. They’d been promising a call all week and I’d been literally sitting by the phone waiting, but I can’t keep doing this to myself. I needed to raise the drawbridges and re-center.

(Meanwhile the yoga studio is like, Um, your monthly payment hasn’t gone through this time, could you check the card on file? I’m sure a bunch of other automated payments will start bouncing. I’m going to have to try to remember them all, just as soon as I have a new way to pay them. ERG so annoying.)

So I applied to two more credit cards, and hopefully one of them will be approved and be what I need.

Then I said a giant, quiet, “Fuck you” to Chase, and turned my phone off.

Then Bryan rearranged my chakras.

I was able to let a lot go, then. To remind myself that I have got this. My work may be challenging, but I’m up to the task. It’s the demons in my head that have been the real son of a bitch.

I wrote the stresses on a To The Moon list and I burned a To The Moon Candle. I rang a bell to clear the space of bad energy.

I meditated.

I cooked some food.

I watched a lot of TV.

And then yesterday, Friday, I woke up to my dumb morning meditations, pulled myself out of bed, mostly to escape my own annoyingly chipper voice, showered to cleanse away the demons.

Filled out the beautiful work of art Estrella helped me make to be my daily planner.

Got shit done. Met my own stupid deadlines for the week, while remembering not to take any of it too personally. “I’m a submissive to myself,” I thought. “Super Boss Bitch will deal with any of the really annoying stuff later. All I have to do is carry out the tasks.” Which I did! Efficiently, cuz I’m a boss bitch!

Didn’t finish it all, because some of it was out of my hands and I can’t control other people.

Reminded myself that that’s okay. That I’ll do what I need to do and anyway, none of it matters. That in a hundred years we’ll all be dead, anyway.

Finished work in time for yoga.

Tried to remember what it feels like to be a strong, confident person. Tried to remember that actually, at my core, that’s who I am.

And today I woke up, sat down, and wrote.

The image from my childhood is still incomplete. A rather relevant piece is this: I spent much of my childhood dreaming, fantasizing, waiting for my life to start. I don’t think that’s different from most children; don’t we all want to grow up and live out a spectacular and perhaps unrealistic version of what grownupping might be?

In the end, I don’t know. I can only speak for myself.

What I realized after therapy, though, is that I’m still waiting for my life to start. As though it will only begin once I’ve healed from Gavin, or once I can afford to buy my own house, or when Mommy and I can see more of each other, or I can see more of Estrella, or when I find a life partner, or when I publish a book, or have more money, or…

Last night I thought to myself, No. This is your life, now. Between these four walls. In this rented apartment. Without a nesting partner, on your own, right here. This is my life, and I am strong, I am capable, and I do not have to live in fear.

It was a nice thought. I’m going to try to think it more frequently.

Because also, the grays are starting to come in, and if I spend my life waiting for it to start, I’ll be an old woman before I can blink.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

Estrella was helpful, too.

“Please please please don’t think the universe is out to get you, or you’re being punished for planning a vacation, just because you’ve had a million tech problems and you’re locked out of your credit card.”

When you think about it, Estrella reminded me, we go through our day encountering dozens of digital systems. Checking our email; swiping the card at the metro; getting into an elevator.

We only notice them, though, when they’re not working.

And statistically, simply as a matter of percentages…some of them will sometimes not work.

Add human incompetence into the mix, and what is happening to me is normal, not a result of having angered the Gods of Capitalism for Daring To Take a Month Off.

Gah gah.

In the months (and even years) that have followed my separation from Gavin, I have often waffled between two states of mind; either I am minimizing my pain, or I am drowning in it.

Denial is often a better option, and it is actually healthy. It can manifest as “compartmentalization.”

An unhappy side effect of it is that it can lead people to think I am much less fragile than I am.

It can also manifest negatively as denying the victim’s reality and experience. This is common not just to abuse recovery but to abuse itself, as well as society’s reaction to it.

The abuser minimizes the problem because they don’t want to be fingered as the culprit.

The abused person minimizes the problem because they don’t want to be labelled as a victim, or to acknowledge they have chosen a harmful person to love.

Society minimizes the problem by blaming the victim. They otherize. They don’t want to admit that when confronted by the right monster, anybody’s insecurities can be weaponized.

“How could you be with that person?” they ask. “If it were me…”

So we are being gaslit, minimized and blamed not just by the abuser but by the other people that we love. In different ways, of course, but it’s happening all the same.

And we internalize it.

We do it to ourselves.

I still am. I still minimize my own reality, still cast doubt. And it doesn’t help that the confidence was literally manipulated out of me. That my trust was taken advantage of and now I’m scared to use it again, which leaves me very much alone.

There is a solution, though. An antidote: compassion. Especially self-compassion. To love myself, no matter what. To hold space for myself. To see my own pain but then, rather than allow it to envelop me, to envelop it.

To hold Baby Girl Lorelai gently in my arms, just the way Mommy does. To say, “Hey, little girl. This is tough and you are brave. You got this. You are a kickass rock star. You are loved.”

(I imagined it in yoga yesterday, back in the studio with Wren: “Usually I focus on the sun in the sky, but today we’re going to look at the Moon,” she said, and I breathed and I moved and I soaked in her words. “The Moon is in Cancer right now. The cancer sign is the mother archetype. Inhale to the right, exhale to the left. That’s it. Breathe. I imagine Cancer like my abuelita, in the kitchen, feeding the people she loves. So ask yourself, today, in child’s pose, what your inner child needs to feel nurtured. Grounded. Loved.”)

It’s what Jesus preached, isn’t it? To love. To be bigger than the sin by loving.

To love harder than we sin.

But not unconditionally. Or rather, we can love unconditionally, we can forgive unconditionally, by accepting what is…

But we must still hold ourselves and each other accountable.

Not for having sex, or for stealing food from the landlords, or whatever archaic law was sealed into writing some hundreds of years ago.

But to hold ourselves and others accountable for harm to others.

For love to be bigger than our egos.

I really think Jesus would agree with that interpretation, to be honest.

Anyway. I’m trying to remember that my biggest, most important job, bigger than any credit card or arbitrary deadline, is to hold space for my self.

“Be who you are, and may you be blessed in all that you are,” is the blessing my parents give us on shabbos.

It’s time to let the blessing in.

Love,

Lorelai