Anxiety and Meditation

Anxiety is something I am definitely powerless over. If I can observe my anxiety, I am less likely to get doubled back in that crazy place of worrying that I have it.

Today I could see how I added to it by what I said to myself. I heard myself say, "I can't stand this!" "Why won't it go away?" "What am I supposed to do with it?" "Should I have a glass of wine?"

I told myself, take action, use your body. And went for a 20-minute ride in my neighborhood. That took the edge off, made me feel the cool of the winter air, smell the out of doors, got me to make cheerful enough faces at people I passed.

I came home, let my husband finish dinner and meditated in the living room. Oh my negative mind wanted to go over everything I had not yet done. It wanted to solve problems I had no business solving (my drunk friend comes to mind). It wanted to tell me I really wasn't going to amount to anything in this lifetime if I couldn't stop feeling worthless. It wanted to go what-ifing on me. I wanted to jump up and do something productive instead. But then I knew if I went in to take care of dinner preparation I would only get down on myself all over again. Only this time, for not completing my Meditation.

Instead, I said, "Hmmm. Negative Mind working hard at nothing." As I listened to the chanting on my CD I decided to sing along and see what happened. With that sound rumbling in my chest, suddenly there was no room for my mind to worry and ruminate. I was in the moment. The singing in my belly created "no-thought". Ah but the peace passed as my mind got busy judging again. Then, once again, I was in the moment. Ah, I felt bliss. I realized that was the by-product of not thinking, and then I was thinking again! And so forth. But slowly I saw I was breathing and getting in between thoughts. And each time there was no thought, I was free to be. In and out of watching my mind THEN getting side-tracked by it.

Once I had meditated like this for fifteen minutes, most imperfectly perfect, I allowed myself the small glass of wine with dinner. Dinner helped change my perspective, tasting, chewing, swallowing a creamy broccoli soup. Breaking bread and relaxing with my son and husband. In and out of conversation, spooning, chewing, swallowing.

I'll do that again tomorrow...or maybe in the tub tonight before I go to bed. Meditation. It helped my sidestep, then my recognize my negative mind. Helped me see beyond the problems of the day, to feel who I really am.

Looking back I see that when I sat, I was just listening for the voiceless peace of the self-love that comes from my Higher Power. Meditation for me, just for today, is being Love.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Coincidences. Some say they are God's way of being anonymous. 

There are events  in my life that parallel my mother's; sometimes I sense that I too am leaving my own shadow across the generation that comes after me. I want to do my best, to not leave breeding ground for coincidences.  

Sometimes I fear that those things in our family stories that repeat themselves are the price of unconsciousness.  Optimism might see that repetition is God working towards greater understanding. 

Even as a child, I noticed how some things repeated themselves. Some were big life-changing events we had no control over. 

When my mother was still seven years old, her family was on the move.  It was 1943, in the ravages of war, and her parents were trying to avoid being sent to Siberia by Stalin, or worse. As a child, when I moved with my family from the east coast to the Pacific Northwest, I was on the verge of turning eight myself. 

When I grew up and had my own child,  a crack opened in my psyche and landed me in the hospital.  I was involuntary only because I languished too long in the emergency room without action being taken. My child was four years old at the time. 

Coincidences.  Once I had some perspective I could see my vulnerability was a repetition of something similar in my own family. How I wish to God that there had been less secrecy around my mom's own recovery. 

In the year I was four, my mom, too,  was put in the hospital by my father. Her story to me was that she had had a miscarriage. I picture it this way: all of her that was untamed was released in the surge of hormones, the grief and the loss of a child who would have been my sibling. I remember there was chaos and lots of emotional drama and then there was peace and a sense of loss. Dad was the one who arranged for a babysitter while she was away. I reveled in the peace of the babysitter's home. I was happy to be alone. Happy to spend alone time with my dad in the kitchen each evening while he concocted meals created out of  cans.  Green beans are still a comfort food for me to this day. 

From my own perspective, I know that nutrition can affect women's mental health during pregnancy.  So can emotional stress and isolation.  My mother's new family in the early 1960's  was small and she had no extended family nearby to help while I was very young.    

I know my own break with reality forty years later had multiple triggers. I nursed my son well beyond the usual time of one year.  I'd not known I needed to supplement for the omega-3's hre was needing in order to maintain my own brain health. 

On the psychosocial side, I'd discovered a low self-image around motherhood. I did not measure up to other moms, even though I had made it my primary job.  I had given up, willingly,  a work identity to be a mom at home. There was a lack of structure in the days, so that it was a challenge to have fulfillment for both my son and I.  

Further, I realized very recently that I have few memories of being held and nurtured by my mom. Somehow, my mom was honest with me about my early rocking behavior as a baby and toddler.  I comforted myself, because she did not. Witnessing my self-comforting made her angry.  Still, I know that she left me in my crib for extended periods.  I think there were parts of me that were broken still, when I came into motherhood. That I was able to do as much as I did for my son, until the time of my own hospital stay, means I have left a different legacy. But how different? We shall see.

My son's roughest years with me would have been the pre-K year following my crisis,  when I was most afraid of relapse. The following summer was another big challenge in which I did a dance with fear and stumbled again.  In kindergarten our family achieved greater normalcy, but the following summer was again touch and go, with one last relapse this time just after school started.  

During those three summers, I had a hard time knowing where I stood and initially lacked any confidence to deal with the psychiatric profession.   I knew there was no diagnosis that fit me, but the professionals could not allow that.  Even with my last relapse, I had a doctor who insisted on a superficial assessment and  insisted I was a chronic case of schizophrenia. It was very aggravating to be ignored and discounted. Getting angry and taking back my authority over my own illness was what finally restored m to my place in my family and gave me back myself.  

The turning point was the summer after second grade.  By the mid-point of my son's third grade year I was in the midst of menopause and the crisis of hormones had largely passed. I asserted myself, told the doctor the story that I felt best explained each of my crises,  and came off medications with my doctor's blessing. 

Today I feel very much out of the woods. Two years in which I've not needed the serious drugs usually given for people who have had crises like  mine, demonstrates fairly conclusively that I am not chronic. Am I ever grateful to  have been allowed the freedom to find this out. Had I simply followed doctor's orders, I likely would still be on medications. No one would have taken the chance to take me off given my history. Intead, my current level of  sanity would be attributed to the medications, rather than all the other things I have done to foster my health. 

But back to coincidences.  A final coincidence came to pass this past November. It was a terrifying one for me. I have always known there was something amiss with my mom, but rejected my brother's conclusion. His diagnosis was schizophrenia. In light of my own experience, I knew that to be impossible. I chose not to argue with my brother about it, thinking that my mother had just been damaged by her war experiences.  I thought we could redeem her by being kind and compassionate.

Then, this fall, I came face to face with my mother's need to repeat the past and her complete inability to see my brother as the good person that he is. My stomach did not like the stories I was hearing from my brother, nor his assessment: that she could never change. And indeed, that she could relapse to the dangerous person we witnessed during times of childhood crisis. This shook my foundation, almost as much as my fear of relapse had several years before. 

Next day, while I was at the point where I was ready admit defeat and write my mom off, a book in my therapist's waiting room literally jumped off the shelf at me.  Stop Walking on Eggshells had a checklist on the back and I answered yes to each one. Finally there it was. The characteristics my brother had thought were schizophrenia, were  Borderline Personality Disorder.   I would not have brought the book home with me. There was so much still I did not want to know. My therapist told me I was welcome to borrow her book. 

Thankfully bringing the book home to read, helped me to let go of  my  picture of my mom as a real Wicked Witch of the West. It helped me see her humanity, giving me understanding that set me free. It opened a new path for me to grieve what I will never be given by my mom. For in our mom's case, we likely have someone who is incurable. For a BPD must seek help and our mom never will. 

Now my brother and I had something to agree on. As soon as I shared what I had learned, he began the work of locating books for himself.  Later, comparing notes, we were stunned to agree on too many points in our experiences of our mom.  Further,  my brother always knew it was my dream to do the right thing and redeem my relationship with my mom, by bringing her into our home to care for her as she aged.    So, he made sure I listened while he read aloud, that caring for a borderline parent is not safe for parent or child.  I found my stomach again lurching, even as I knew he was right. 

Everyone needs a wig

Thank goodness for humor...for the power of perspective. (My best H.P. of all, humor power!)

With my mom, appearance is everything and substance is.. what remains.

And so, enter me. I am pretty much "what you see is what you get." I've been graying, since my mid-20's... beginning from the temples.. and speading.. by now have little original color remaining even at the hidden nape of my neck. Rather than fight, I have chosen not to color.

Interestingly I have been complemented by friends, often enough to believe it is not just kindness.

This brings us to Friday morning, when a friend at my house spontaneously told me how great my hair looked. We got to laugh about the whole hair gambit folks can choose to go through.

Anyways, right after my friends leave, the phone rings. Private caller. MOM. I am in a good enough mood and I have things I will do shortly so I trust myself to carry on a conversation that will end whenever I am ready. I pick up the phone.

My mom doesn't take long to get to her point. "I got your photo. Thank you. That was a nice picture of all of you." This is a good start.

Then she drops the bombshell. "You know I have been thinking, I'd like to buy you a wig."

I am at the kitchen sink and I almost drop a knife on my foot. "A wig?" I am already laughing. Of course, it was hard for her to witness my hair in our family photo and feel comfortable. I should still be blonde in her eyes. My mom still is; she's worn wigs of all lengths and shades for the past 40 years. She is so uncomfortable with gray, that she wants to cover up her daughter's gray hair with a wig, too!

"Your hair looks really nice," she says, too late.

"Yeah right, mom," I say. I'm really laughing now. "That must be why you think I need a wig."

"Oh, Zena, really, " she protests. " I saw some wigs that look just like your hair."

OK, so my hair MUST look nice if she wants to give me a duplicate. But do I really need two heads of hair? Smarty me, I have to ask, "Why would I need a wig that looks just like the hair I already have?"

"Well, your head isn't covered properly! Isn't it cold there in January?"

"In New York state maybe. Mom, I live in Georgia."

"People out here wear them. They are nice and warm."

Still non-plussed, I protest. "A wig isn't a hat."

"People wear them like hats," she insists.

Now, I have turned off the water and am holding my side, I am laughing so hard.

"Really mom, you have created the weirdest picture... You have me imagining everyone in Seattle wearing a wig like a hat!"

She's speechless. So am I, and my side is beginning to hurt.
Finally I can speak again. "Isn't a wig a bit expensive to be used for a hat?"

"Didn't you know?" she says, "Good hats cost money!"

It is time for both of us to give up as I continue to chortle, knowing she is UNDENIABLY uncomfortable with gray hair.

Zena, and powerless over people, their perceptions of me and... wigs.

Scotty, a long look back

Scott Scurlock died 12 years ago, Thanksgiving Day, 1996, after nearly pulling off the biggest bank heist at that time in history.   Others knew him as Scotty.  But I would never know him that well. My first year at Evergreen State College we kept crossing paths with one another, late fall of 1979. He made such an impression on me that I could have sworn he was there at Evergreen during my entire undergraduate degree, until 1983.   I realize now that he disappeared from my view after the spring quarter, when he was getting familiar with the laboratory wing on campus, making other plans for success, outside of academia.  

Likely it was not simply his choice that we didn't become close; though we studied together, I never indicated the faintest interest in seeing his tree-house. I think I was supposed to be so impressed that I would implore him to let me come and see it. I am not sure quite why I didn't. In so many other ways,  I demonstrated both innocence and a willingness to know more about him. Maybe it is the way that I look directly at people that made him uncomfortable. The other part, was that it being my first year, I was both naive and cautious. I never felt he was dangerous at all, in fact I felt the opposite. Yet,  I did not go anywhere with him where we were totally alone. Even in my dorm apartment, he and I studied in the common kitchen, not my room. 

I'd heard of his then-famous last robbery, just because I happened to be catching up with a roommate from that time,  who had shared that dorm apartment with me.  It was winter of 1996-97 I believe. She assumed I might have already heard, that Scott had taken his life rather than face the consequences of his actions. But no,  my life had had its own large trajectory from Olympia, Washington... to graduate school in the Bay Area, to my current home  in upstate New York. The idea that Scott had been a bank robber, nearly pulling off one last heist (which would have been the largest one in history up to that time), seemed so much a story of fantasy that I did not pursue it then.  My last recollection of him was that he had been like a boy playing chemist that spring quarter we  were laboratory aids at Evergreen State College.

Why this look back at Scott Scurlock, so long delayed?

Eating dinner on Tuesday last week, December 30th, I heard the news that New York City may have had its own record number of bank robberies:  five that day.  The radio reporters spoke glibly about the reasons why; Christmas, the economic hard times from the mortgage debacle and failing banks. When I heard the statistics, about the percentage of bank robbery attempts that fail, the story suddenly had pertinence in my own life.  I wanted to know about Scott and see the person behind the statistics. 

I seized the moment to do a quick study of the internet to see what remained of Scott's story. I expected to see just crumbs of information to give me a scent of the person I knew and the tiniest bit of insight.

Instead, I was surprised to see a three part article on the CBS site that was done almost six years after the robbery.  I learned more than I had bargained for.  One link led quickly to another.  His story had had such compelling interest that Ann Rule had written a book that featured Scott's crime, his story,  first of four. Her book would be the only witness to tell all of his stories would be in one place. Rule would create a complete picture using the perspectives from others in his personal life--his accomplices, friends, professors--who had all just  been given  a  few pieces of his story. Not only did Scott not stick around to tell his own story, but he never got to have it mirrored back to him. 

God gives us free will to do with as we choose. Scott made many choices in his life. Each led him farther and farther away from the understanding of those of us with more simple appetites. I've read how, in his twenties,  he led others to jump into the azure ocean,  from high cliffs in Hawaii. Was it those countless dives  that gave him his first tastes of exhilaration, that would create a craving for more..accelerating him towards his end at 41?  How does a person decide that they won't try a conventional life, but will live outside the law... taking college chemistry into the Pacific Northwest woods, making a killing manufacturing crystal meth.. and then robbing banks?

Me, I am admittedly Pollyanna. I  believe free will is supposed to challenge me  to  live a life that does good while I am here. From the outside looking in,  Scott's life is an example to me of what can happen if to any one of us who don't test and verify our choices, transparently with others.   Compartmentalizing secret lives within ourselves, leads to a life of  self-deprivation. 

Scott missed out on the perspective of growing old with his free will intact.  What if he had allowed  himself to be known (and loved) completely by someone who would have challenged him to live his highest good, rather than his highest thrill?

Perhaps Scott's only choice was to die alone.