Overwhelm - Week One

Right. Didn't quite get to the date I described. Yesterday I found myself in overwhelm mode. When I woke up, I knew I should go to the fabulous bookstore, I meant to want to, but on some level I knew I wasn't going anywhere.

In a way, in a big way really, the last two weeks have been like one long artist date for me. Backstory: I lost my job two days before Christmas but by Christmas Day was feeling happy to have been relieved of it. My husband could support us alone, and I knew I'd gotten what I wanted - to not work. To work on myself, and to prepare for motherhood (we are trying to concieve). A few days later, a friend suggested I join this group. Perfect.

This group is a big part of the larger program I seem to have started as I round this corner into the rest of my life. I'm also going through the workbook of A Course in Miracles for the second time and doing yoga every day (for the first time). I'm learning the electric guitar and reestablishing relationships with my banjo and piano. I have found myself propelled into virtually unknown inner territory where I am suddenly willing and even eager to sustain domestic order, to read instead of watching tv, to cook all of our meals. This is not forced or impelled by any exertion of willpower - it's coming naturally and with very little effort. It's as if this time God agrees: I am ready. I am ready to move on, to grow up, to let go. I am ready to be the woman I have been afraid to be, the woman I am. I don't need to hold myself back anymore for some kind of perverse misunderstanding of comfort.

It's a significant point of transition, I think. I have therefore been careful to take care of myself emotionally, too - to do things that occur to me to do which I know will help me feel good. You want to talk artist date? I have taken an hours-long bubble bath every day this week. I've been reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and Bridget Jones's Diary - covering all the bases. I keep music on, and I make sure it's what I want to hear. I took a lovely walk in the snow. I've been coloring mandalas because it's a low-pressure creative endeavor, but darned if it's not spiritually satisfying as well. When I feel sad or cold, I turn the music up and I cook. One long artist date.

Of course, there will be bumps. The thing is, I have a teensy self-harm problem. I've had it for thirty-five years. Not that that means I need to keep it any longer, but it did rear up yesterday. *Sigh.* [Sidebar: At the time I lost my job (and its attendant benefits - though I have different ones now), I had just started a six month program to hopefully help me address this stubborn issue, involving weekly class meetings and individual therapy sessions. It took a bit of maneuvering to get into the program because I do not have the psychological diagnosis it was designed to support. Since I have do some of the qualities and issues associated with the diagnosis, however (self-harm, overly intense emotional experience, and an invalidating home background), they signed me up. They wanted to help me. I felt committed - I knew I needed and really wanted to do something. That program, it turns out, wasn't going to be it.]

There's more! Still with me? I had an interesting set of synchronicities on Thursday. I have a monthly appointment to do Tarot readings in a quiet corner of a restaurant. It's a promotional thing for them, but it's great for me. I do ten- or twenty-minute readings, often for staff members or friends of staff that have come in on their recommendation to see me. The readings are short but it's as if time stops - they are as long as they need to be. Anyhow. I wanted to do something grounding that would help me feel connected before I headed out, so I tuned the radio to a New-Age talk station (satellite radio!) and began to color a mandala. I didn't think I would have time to finish it, but would just get it started. I got in the zone. Then the Voice - which provides intuitive nudges and outright instruction, not to mention occassional blurts of wild wisdom so pithy and personalized they actually make me laugh out loud - more on that later, I'm sure - the Voice let me know I needed to stick around for the beginning of the next radio show. It was hosted by a "psychic" and was about divination.

I have mixed feelings about all the trappings of this field I nonetheless pursue, and I take it all with a grain of salt, just listening for what resonates and letting the rest go. [One more disclaimer for the squeamish: The shows on Hay House Radio, founded by Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life, can be a bit airy-fairy but they ain't Miss Cleo's phoney charge-a-thon, either.] Sometimes I'm afraid to listen: I don't want to hear things that annoy me, because I don't want to be associated with my less prefered aspects of this field. It's hardest to listen to people calling themselves psychics, because though I don't use that word, that's what I am. It can also be very very cool, though. Sort of like going to a comedy show, in a way - fantastic when it's right, embarrassing when it ain't. So here's the Voice telling me I have to stay and listen to a psychic talk about divination.

Okay. I do what I'm told. That's how I've found and/or accomplished everything that has mattered in my life. I kept coloring. I kept listening. And of course, she had much of interest to say. Among other things, she prefered the term, diviner to "psychic" because of the word's origins. Cool! She had no objection to the use of Tarot cards, though she said, "If you have this ability, just use you. If you want to use cards or that sort of thing, just use them consciously as a kind of temporary tool." I think I'm paraphrasing. But, Yes! Yes yes yes. I've known that was my path with this since I started offering readings professionally eleven or so years ago. So she had me.

I colored away. The mandala would be almost finished afterall. I had some flexibility around when I was expected to arrive; I'd be well within the acceptable range. The phone rang. Didn't stress - I couldn't miss anything truly important. As I hung up a couple minutes later and tuned back in to the show, she was saying, "...if you have kinetic energy - meaning if you get near things and computers go haywire and light bulbs burn out and that sort of thing - if you have kinetic energy, chances are you're a healer." Oh! Hm. Well, (grain of salt, grain of salt, grain of salt, remain grounded...) light bulbs are forever burning out with a dramatic poof! when I go to turn on a lamp while angry, I thought. Computers certainly seem to reflect my issues as well. Then there's the good stuff, the way things seem to repair and renew themselves when I am feeling happy and aligned. The way medical problems that were supposed to be permanent have disappeared. Hmm.

But the positive stuff was not new ground; that made sense to me and was familiar. What struck me now was noticing for the first time the way actual sparks seem to fly sometimes when I'm angry. That got me thinking... maybe my work is not just the mental, metaphysical stuff. Maybe there's an attendant physical effect that a) has been causing problems interpersonally, and b) could be directed and harnessed for good. Yikes. Hadn't considered that. Thinking about it made me feel sort of tingly - good but uneasy. Heady. This was new territory, yet familiar. It was like suddenly remembering something important that had somehow slipped out of my waking consciousness, like remembering a significant dream. I was stopped cold in my tracks.

The phone rang again, and after this interruption it was time to drive to work. The mandala was finished. I'd heard what I was meant to hear. Then, in a flash, another connection - driving from readings! My car has some sort of electrical short in the dash which leaves three control knobs dark 99.8% of the time, and occassionally results in strange dashboard flashes and blackouts. These extra pyrotechnics have only occured three times: a combination of symptoms shortly after I bought the car, as if to introduce the condition (I decided it was going to be one of those things that took care of itself and did not seek service); a blackout the day I was driving around my home town having recently left another job, one I'd had for fourteen years; and a slowly intensifying flare-up of brightness that by its conclusion verged on the comical yet was also quite scary, which happened as I drove home after the very first time I did readings at the restaurant.

I was so wired yet so exhausted that night. I had done nine readings in rapid succession with no break, some of which were rather intense. I hadn't done multiple readings successively before, and I hadn't paid enough attention that night to keeping myself grounded and discrete. When I finally stood up to go home I nearly fell over. And yes, as I got on the road my dashboard had gone completely haywire, lighting up like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The scary aspect of that (oh crap - it's late at night - i want to get home safely - please don't go dark) actually helped me settle myself energetically, out of necessity. I breathed and drove and thought about God, and everything returned to normal.

The other symptom of the dashboard issue is of course that the three dark knobs light up sometimes. Naturally, that only happens when I am peaceful and balanced. And don't you know that I found them sweetly lit on my way home on Thursday, after a lovely evening of doing what I do, of helping people Listen.

Okay. This one last other bit might sound shallow, especially after the rest, but all the yoga and home cooking is having an effect on my appearance. I look pretty good, I think, and I had dressed up dramatically to go out into the world that night. Pretty good is good, right? Not so much. I carry some personal history residue that says looking good or interesting is bad.

The combination of all these factors - turning a real corner; doing what helps; all the Artist's Way/creativity stuff that's coming up and being dealt with; feeling good; looking good; getting the message that in addition to being an intuitive I may be also be a healer - well, it was a bit much for me cumulatively. Don't be fooled by all these factors being "good" things - intense emotional experience in any direction can be a challenge. The way I learned to creatively cope with overwhelm from childhood was first to pull my hair out, and later to break my own skin. With pins. I can't expect it to just instantly go away now, and yesterday it seemed the only thing that would help. So much for the utopian book store.

I understand that I will have to keep dealing with this, maybe to some extent for the rest of my life. I just want to do it less, to develop new creative coping skills, to live my life and do my work in such a way that I need it less and less.

So next week I will take myself out on an artist date. Because it's part of the program. Because it's a tool that I said I would use. Because I'm ready. And as for Week One, well, the pond has been stocked. The well has most definitely been filled.

Really sorry this is so long. Thanks for reading.