Happy Place

happy place 

place inside all of us where we are all happy and get the warm fuzzies.  Our happy places are insulated from the shitheads that make up just about everyone we encounter.

- Urban Dictionary

I totally think that nuggets of wisdom come to you when you're in the right frame of mind to receive the message. The seeds of those words are planted but sometimes it takes time for them to germinate, grow and blossom (okay, I failed biology, suck it).  That process of growth can be minutes, hours, days, months or even decades.  For me the concept of a Happy Place is a really good example of that.

As a survivor I became an expert at disassociating.  It was a wonderful trick of the mind to leave my body, fly far away from the pain.  Even when those horrible things weren't happening and I couldn't stand to be in my skin, to feel so vulnerable and unsafe in the world - when the shield of my fat didn't stop the panic, the scream rising in my throat I'd drift, float away in mind.  Far away, where no one could hurt me.

When the concept of a "happy place" was introduced to me it was described as a place that you created in your mind where you could get away from the stress of life, a place to find peace.  At the time I remember thinking, "but I already do that."  And yes, in a way I did, but I think I missed a big part of that definition, an important part.  See, when I disassociated from my body and floated away there was no peace in that place, it was just a dark void.  There was no happiness, no sadness, just.....nothing.  A bleak, dark, desolate prison in my mind where I could hide from pain.

And when I was in my body I judged myself so harshly, those kids on the playground who called me fat, well they weren't even trying...the inner bullying I did to myself left wounds and scars inside that no perpetrator could ever match.  Because I was always ready with a joke or inappropriate story I think I hid how I was feeling quite well, no one knew how I felt because I would never let myself be vulnerable enough with someone to share with them my broken, bruised heart.  And that bullying and those lies I told myself that I wasn't good enough, that no one like me or loved me I never could describe it, but this quote does a pretty good job:

"And it hurts that I can't be what everyone wants or what anyone needs

and it hurts that I can't be what I want or what I need

because I'm not enough and I won't be enough and I'll never be close to enough

and I'm just so damned tired."

- a.d.r.

In college I met a wonderful therapist, Kaia, and she helped me through some really dark times.  That first year of college, I still don't know how I made it through when every class I had triggered me, an experience, a memory...there were days when all I could do was just dig my fingernails deep into the floor to stop from falling off my world.  The first time I went to see her she asked how I was, I made a joke and said okay and she looked deep into my eyes and said "bullshit."  And the floodgates opened.  No one ever had seen past Wendy the clown to see the real me.  Ever.  And just like when you're a kid and you fall and hurt yourself, if your parent doesn't react and say "are you okay" all in a panic then you're all chill and shit, but as soon as they make a fuss you're a crying hot mess.  Same deal with her.  I couldn't reign it in, despite trying to be the tough girl.  But she shattered my defenses, she wouldn't let me avoid and she wouldn't let me hide.   She put a name to what I did when the abuse happened.  She validated me and unlike with my family who also joked about everything (you wonder where I got it from), she took what I had to say seriously.

She helped stop the panic attacks, showed me how to create a safe place for myself when I felt I couldn't breathe and terror clawed at my throat.  Kaia introduced me to other women, they too were survivors and their stories and shared experience made me think that maybe I wasn't alone in this.  They echoed my thoughts of feeling dirty, guilty and full of shame.  I was in a better place than I had probably been in years mentally, but I was far from well.  I used school work to escape, to not connect with people my own age.  I tutored and I was a note taker, I was even a foster parent.  And I ate and I ate and I ate some more.  Always going through periods of working out like a maniac for like 2 months, then having a set back and eating a fridge-and-a-half daily for 4 months. 

It was always this one step forward, five million steps back. Because you see food had always been my secret love, my comforter, my confessor, my worst enemy and my best friend.  I used food like some people use a razor blade to cut, piercing  their skin, marking it....sometimes to have physical pain that could equal my emotional pain and other times because I wanted to feel nothing at all, to stuff and avoid and numb out and hurt myself for some transgression.  And yes, the pressure cooker of emotions brewing in me had lessened, my time with Kaia and with group gave me space to let some of it out so I could at least function.  Of course at this time I discovered my new drug of choice, sex.   I had physical contact that I so desperately craved, connection and even if at the same time I was telling myself that I was ugly and that I was only good for sex.  What I realize is that for me it was a form of control.  I got to decide who got to have sex with me, it was almost a "fuck you" to my abusers to prove to them (not that they knew - I didn't say I was being logical) that I was in control.  There was no love in these encounters, just control and touch. 

When I graduated and was ready to leave college I got really overwhelmed again, out of control, not sure what my future held - and so damned scared of change that I went to that dark place again and things got really out of control....but I spoke about that in another post, I'm not going there again.

Those years after college were much the same.  Avoidance behaviours, acting out sexually.  Eating so out of control.  Numbing out.  Anything to face me.  And their were bad choices and bad behaviours and inner bullying and bullshit.  But there was also wonderful friends, cherished memories and gifts that I would never exchange.  Of course I also had sporadic therapy and it would help, peel off layers of hurt but they all felt like crisis management..... I wouldn't go until things were so bad that I couldn't function again.  It has seemed like I have always been striving for the "if only's".  

If only I could lose weight, I'd be happy.

If only I could go on vacation things at work wouldn't be so out of control.

If only I could find a boyfriend I wouldn't be so lonely.

If only I could win the lottery I'd never have money problems.

If only I was anything but who and what I am I'd be at peace.

In everything I did I was always running at a million miles per minute, in my head, in my job, in my life.  I don't think there was any time where I could just be.  And as I look at the events of my life, the abuse, the bad relationships, the addictions and even the cancer I realize it was life trying so very hard to get my attention and me being the hard headed stubborn little bitch that I am I tried to avoid life at all costs.  Short of taking a shovel and smacking me over the head with it life gave me sign after sign to stop, to slow down, to go to the inner but to no avail.

But there has been seeds germinating in my head from when I had cancer, words that a dear friend and fellow cancer survivor spoke to me.  She said "Wendy, Stop.  Breathe."

Little buds of that truth have been growing in my brain and when I started to take the anti-depressants in October the mental fog I had been blinded by lifted.  And I started to stop.  Stop saying yes when I meant no.  Stopped pushing my body to exhaustion and really listening when my body said it needed sleep, food, water...love.  I made playing with the dog a priority over staying at work for hours on end. Spending time with my parents and chronicling our memories on Facebook for all you to see touched a place in my heart and created joy.  I breathed.  Every day.  Deeply.  When I walk in the woods I slow down my breathing, force myself not to take greedy gulps of that sweet country air, but instead savour it slowly as I feel it enter my nose, throat, lungs....along with life, energy and abundance.  And the exhale is stress, tension and strain...sending it back to the earth.  I walk in prayer, this time that I hold sacred as I let the Universe heal me and in that solitude I have found peace and I've found me.  It has taken 41 years and it may take another 41 but this journey into the very core of my being it has been an encounter with the divine.

Slowly I am making peace with my past, memories that could once puncture and tear at my heart are now just lessons, gifts that have made me who I am today and I am grateful to be in a place where I can use that pain to help others.  Never before have I been able to sit so fully with another's pain without my own being just a huge a presence.  And as I cherish and nourish myself every day that well of giving that I have available just flows over for my clients and the passion and love that I have for this work fills my heart.

And that happy place, that mythical place in my mind that I create to avoid stress, well I don't need that because I am my happy place and life, it is a beautiful place.

I Fell Off the Wagon and Onto a Dick OR Recovery, Relapse and Forgiveness.

The wicked witch of the west, she's dead.  That over dramatic bitch melted all over the place after they chucked the water on her.  And poof, just like that, she was gone... all that was left was a puddle.  No more flying monkeys sent to eviscerate the Scarecrow, no maniacal broad with a skin condition hell bent on revenge plotting against them.  They reached Oz.  They got a heart, courage, a brain, an all expenses paid trip to Kansas (which seemed kinda fucked to me dude was ready to give her anything after she exposed his bullshit scam, me personally I would have asked to have been sent somewhere in the Caribbean first - some all-inclusive resort, I mean she had just went through a hellish time and she could have made it back to that shit hole Kansas on her own after that, right?).  But I digress.

When the movie ended I thought 'but the story isn't finished.'  I really wanted for there to be a sequel to show how the characters of this twisted little fable made out after their wishes were granted and had completed this incredible journey.  I mean I imagine that the Scarecrow still woke up in a cold sweat after being chased by flying monkeys in his dreams.  The Tin Man probably had commitment issues, because yes he was given a heart but he wasn't ready or given the coping mechanisms for the reality of how easily it could be broken, how people would steal little pieces of it when he least expected it and how overwhelming it would feel to have it nearly burst with love.  And the Lion, well I wouldn't be a little bit surprised if that poor fucker needed years of therapy because being such a little bitch for so long that label would be hard to ditch and all the courage in the world wouldn't stop people from being dicks to him.  And then there's Dorothy.  Dorothy who literally went through a tornado only to end that horrific experience by killing somebody, with a house.  I mean sure, it wasn't premeditated or anything and the bitch was evil, but still murder is murder and I'm sure the guilt ate her up when she had time to process it all.  Then she meets all these fucked up individuals who journey with her to what she thinks is her heart's desire.... to go home. But who knows what happened when she got back?  I mean that chick was a hick from Kansas her experiences in Oz were beyond her normal - like me being from a small hamlet in Ontario and going to the Gay Village in Toronto for the first time, terrifyingly delightful.  And that home, that Dorothy she was she can't go back to that, even if she takes off those fabulous ruby red slippers she can't go back, because at her core she's changed.

I think about her line, "there's no place like home, there's no place like home." and I struggle.  I struggle because no matter how many times I click my shoes together (okay, so their flip flops maybe that's why it doesn't work) I don't get "home."  Maybe because there is no magical "home" and if there is, I don't know what it is.  I know that there is no Auntie Em waiting for me to engulf me in loving arms and tell me how worried she was about me and that she's so happy I'm alright.  That just doesn't exist, no matter how much I wish it did.

I went to Oz (and by Oz, I mean Toronto Western Hospital) and asked for my wish to be granted: to lose weight.  There was a part of me who hoped, against all hope that I would lose weight and that I would finally be happy.  I wished so hard for that damaged, dirty, ugly, broken part inside of me to be taken away,  for there to be an end to the loneliness, fear and hurt even though part of me believed that I deserved it.  I lost weight.  A significant amount and I felt happy, I really did.  For once in my life I nourished my body, I fed it good healthy food.  I worked out with a personal trainer who pushed me, encouraged me and helped me to feel strong and healthy and for once safe.  I looked in the mirror and I liked that woman I saw looking back. I liked her face and I loved her heart.

So the story ends there, right?

I'm fixed.

Yeah, not even close.

Life became stressful again, overwhelming and all of my old insecurities, my old demons who I thought I had battled and had beaten came back and reared their ugly heads.  I stopped listening to how I felt and honoring those feelings.  I just wanted to numb out and all my old partner's in crime were right there suited up and ready to go.  I couldn't eat a whole bunch at once, but I could graze all day, fill my poor little stomach till it hurt, because God I was hurting so much and no one knew, no one saw and I just needed to take that emotional pain away for awhile, focus it somewhere else because I just couldn't take it anymore.  That aching loneliness returned and I lost myself in another, floated away and looked down at that body that wasn't mine and ended up feeling even more alone.  Those moments where I celebrated my body and the wonderful sensations it could have became just another way I used to punish myself.

So recently I've slayed a few of my demons, I've made some changes.  Am I still an addict?  God yes.  Do I still do stupid shit?  Uh yeah, almost on a daily basis.  But I feel like in a way I've come out of that dark place I was in.  I've found some peace.  But like Dorothy, my story isn't over.  And that's the most wonderful thing I can think of, because it means that I still have a chance to change how it ends.  It's like a choose your own adventure book.  But like all stories I have to figure out the why - the point of it all - and I don't think the point of this story of my life is to reach this magical, mythical place where I'm perfect and life is wonderful and I'm all Martha Stewart-y and shit.  I think the point is to take the shit that life throws at you, learn to stand strong when you can't duck, to take responsibility for the shit that is yours, to deal with the shit from the past as it comes up, layer by layer, but most importantly to master the art of self-forgiveness.  That's a big one for me, I can forgive the trespasses of many, but fuck me I'm so hard on myself.  I said that I don't have an Auntie Em in my life who can take me in their arms and cradle me and tell me everything is okay, but I can do that for myself.  In my brokenness there is beauty, grace and an opportunity to take the broken pieces and glue them lovingly back together to form a creation that is amazing beyond words.