All I want for Christmas is to be Anne Frank

This morning my husband coaxed me to kneel with him and pray.
I was still in my pajama pants with the zebras on them.  I cradled my second cup of coffee as if it were "the antidote."
I begged Grace to let me write.
Which is a ridiculous prayer, as perhaps most prayers are.
But it was all I had.  It was the most honest thing I could say.

I know, I am only one rivulet of voice into the cacophony of storm that is the world's appetite.
Who cares if I write, save me?  Please.  God.  Save me.
I will surely be swallowed up, digested and account for little more than a rice cake.
The current of story will swell and break on the shore regardless of whether or not I add mine.
Hers is a timeless momentum which cannot stop, and she has been freed of ambition.
Her task is to ebb and flow and inspire and she ~ the wave ~ is no longer burdened with the crackle and burn of choice.  She has cooled that fire with her consistency.  She has rolled away all hard edges and she is hurt by nothing.  All around her is white noise, and the sun's radial stars off the water.  I find her in the drops from my finger tips when I swim.
I am not so free.  I am not the ocean.  There is a fire in me still.

My choice has fizzled out with only a hint of smoke where I tried to ignite it.
Since I set out to "Write A Book" in September, I have written less than ever.
I thought if I read The War of Art I would become a more powerful warrior.
Instead my awareness of the enemy named "Resistance" has caused me only to hesitate.
I did not charge in like Braveheart with blue paint smeared across my cheeks and blood in my hair.
I was the one who donned someone else's clothes and tried to pretend I was just a house wife.

I hate to admit this.
I'd rather just do more Christmas shopping on Amazon.
But I don't have any more money.

Also, I prayed today.  This makes it hard to hide.
I don't know what Grace I pray to.  I only know I cannot lie to her.
I know that sometimes, when I kneel down everything else falls away and I am left with one voice.
As daunting as that can be, in the face of the whole wave, it can also be the most comforting truth.
At least I can be her, this one voice, and perhaps I have not failed entirely.
Because I have been writing for 20 years.  I haven't given up.  In my stories, I don't lie.

In college I learned that after it's all over, the dreamers bow down to the workers.
It is best to be both.

As I look back on all my writing, I wonder, if I do a little more, could it be a book?
Is the book already there?  Is it like a painting that could be finished if I'd just ask a few more questions and stare at it a little longer?  Will I look back and wish I'd worked a little harder and pushed to the end?
This answer is clear.
I realize I am still a rice cake.
At least I am free of the burden of "greatness."
But I would like to join the ranks of Anne Frank.  I would like to be someone who told her story without pretense and who helped a few people make sense of a chaotic world.  I would really like to do that.  I would like to give back what has been given to me by so many authors who will never know I read their story.

Anne Frank's original diary

My prayer: to speak often and honestly so that when the wave spreads me into a whisper on the shore it is my final deliverance.

rules for tight rope walking and art

A flurry of art has been dispersed through my hands this last week.
I find myself picking paint chips from my fingers while I talk on the phone.
The skin is dry and never quite clean.
I have been circulating through my painting pants, the ones I wore in college.
They have swipes of red, black, and green from my palette knife across the thighs.
There are no words for this state of mind.
Everything is immediate and I loose track of time...of children.
Yesterday Beckam fell into his forehead on the cement floor, after which a golf ball tried to burst through his skin.
My response was, "Where did these kids come from...oh yeah...they're mine...and one of them is hurt."
I extricated myself from the tight rope I was so intently walking and stepped onto solid ground.
Into the real world where children need their mother's warm voice.
I cooed softly at his ear, and cradled his thick body into my painted jeans.
"Maahhhmm....I bonked my head off!...." he wailed.
But I know he is gonna be okay.
I let him trickle off to the next injury, take a deep breath and step back onto the tight rope.

Philippe Petit walking the tight rope between Twin Towers 1974

I watched a documentary once, about a man who walked a tight rope between the Twin Towers in New York City.
An animated French man who wore tight black clothes and spoke with his whole body.
If he fell from that height - over 1,300 feet - there would be no question.
But he wasn't on the ground where his death waited.  He was in the immediate space of the cable upon which his feet were poised like a dancer's.

Philippe Petit lying on the cable between the Twin Towers in NYC

I gaped at the screen where I watched him lie down on the wire and rest easy right in the middle of it. I knew it was real, but didn't know how.  How could a human allow such a thing to happen?  There can be no holding back, no hesitation for such magic to occur.
This is how it feels to paint.
Granted, I will not die if I loose focus, but the state of mind, I imagine, is the same.
I stand back from art that I have made, I know I made it, but I don't know exactly how it happened.
There are basic rules...breath,...always breath...
       - start with big shapes and move to smaller shapes
         - value is more important than color - it decides everything
            - let the art be what it wants to be
               - fall in love with your work at every stage
                 - have fun...sometimes
                    - keep going until it's done.

Sprites in the woods

I am refusing to be well.

I have stopped asking why I do this to myself.
It is enough to know that I am human.
All I know is that when people ask me,
"How are you?" it is not their voice asking the question.
It is their digging eyes trying to excavate a person they expected to find.
They figure it must be buried, so they linger on my lashes and reach deep into my pupils.
As you might imagine, this is uncomfortable.  I look away and mumble something about being tired.

Last night I took a personality test with my friend, Lauren.
http://www.16personalities.com/
I score ENFP.  Great.  What does this mean?
 http://www.16personalities.com/enfp-personality

She says I am an "Inspirer"
I like the sound of that.
So I ask her to go on reading.
She tells me it is important for me to stay centered.
I need my alone time so that I do not become too scattered.
If I am not mindful, I will skip from one inspiration to the next, never finishing anything.
I have seemingly endless enthusiasm which is contagious and causes me to be spread too thin.

I think about the unfinished mural I started at USARA.
The wall painted into an ocean with sun setting into it.  Orange, pink, Purple, green starfish litter the beach.  It will be inspiring...when it is finished.
It has been on my List of Things Which Nag Me for months.

She is right.

I have not been writing.
When I don't write, I get disoriented.  All the words dissolve into each other, and I am lost.
I don't know how I feel.
I get confused by people's response to me.
As I am by my husband's reaction today.

"ENFPs are fiercely independent, and much more than stability and security, they crave creativity and freedom."

When I don't write, it feels like someone else is sucking up my creativity with a straw.
In reality, I am letting it drain right out of my feet without ever tasting it at all.

There are so many projects available to me.
I am overwhelmed by them.
I don't want to get organized...but I do.
I am excited to paint murals.
I ache to write every day.
I want to have a vigorous response when people ask, "How are you?"
It's just hard.  Domesticity is hard.
And sometimes I feel like I ought to put my head down and just fold laundry.

Another friend once said to me,
"I realized the other day that the problem with Sarah is that she is too domesticated."
I had never thought of this before.
I thought I could be content at home.  In reality, I thought I "ought" to be content.
But just as the personality test says:  I crave creativity and freedom.
So I must find a way to honor both, my home and my ambition to chase sprites through the woods.

simply writing

dating :)

I realize as I read my friend's blog...that I have been going way too fast.

She posted pictures of love notes from her husband.
A simple gesture of their initials scribbled inside a heart, in pencil, on the backside of paper scraps.
It only takes 1 minute to slow down and to remember why I begin and end each day with my husband.

Instead I've been shouting to my him, "I....love....you....!" from a moving vehicle.
That vehicle is me.
He does not hear it.

The other reason I know I'm going too fast is cuz I have not posted a blog in weeks.
Now let me clarify, when I say - going too fast - it is not a productive kind of speed.
It involves searching the classified ads for used rock climbing shoes, re-organizing my car (which is a joke), scrolling through Facebook, examining my skin for blemishes, and the worst offender - scanning celebrity photos on OMG.com.  This is how I know that I'm avoiding my own soul. Celebrity gossip is the antithesis of spirituality.

So it ought to be no surprise that Lydia came hissing up from the basement yesterday.
Hers is the voice of escape, of entitlement, of self-loathing and of isolation.
She fears everything.
"You are a writer who is not writing.  An artist who is not painting.  Everyone is in your way.
You are a failure.  You should run away...Run....Get OUT!"
She loves Radiohead, Ryan Adams, and the soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream.
She relishes the empty belly and she takes pride in her own ribs.
She is smug and rarely speaks.  She is a watcher of people and she writes it all down in her notebook.

I have not heard her screams for a long time.
She wants out but does not know there are no bars.
They are painted on her eyelids.  The cold of their steel is in her own palms.
She makes herself sick because she is afraid of everything.  She wants an excuse to stay indoors.

But I know her.  I know what she is.  She is me.  And we are in this together.
So I take her cold fingers, and we walk out into the sun.
We look up into it and let the waves roll over us, all the while keeping eyelids up.
I breath in my nose and air fill my chest.  It goes down into my empty belly and swirls.
Tears slip and the top of my head tingles.  My ears relax and my shoulders are untied.
"God please take this.  I don't want to run away.  I'm scared...I'm scared...I'm scared.  I'm sorry."

Ugh...and this is how I stay.
I stay and there is more work.  There is always more work.
But it is work I chose.
I want to be a mother.   I want to be Andrew's partner.  I want to be a writer.  I want to be a painter.  I want strong muscles.  I want to be a teacher.  I want to give all that I have.

Pepper and Sophie

Sometimes I just get empty, but life keeps demanding.

So I go to the source.  Now I wish I could say:
No more celebrity gossip.  No more laundry.  No more Facebook.
From now on I will write and paint and love and see it all the time.  The great reality will never again be forgotten.

But instead, I am simply writing this blog.

At the end of the day, I went to an FTR meeting.  I told the real story of my day.  I brought my kids and they watched a movie in the other room.  They interrupted the meeting.  They are kids.  They were being kids.
Afterwards my Mom picked them up in her little white tic-tac of a car.
I went for a run with my group through downtown streets and the moon was a magnolia petal floating over pink mountains.
With my sweat also trickled out the last bits of acid and I felt smooth.
Thank you to that group for holding space for me when I needed it.

"You can get through anything in life by simply breathing."

~ Aunt Lucy (one of my best teachers)

Enthusiasm is contagious

I laid in bed trying to convince myself to sleep longer.
But I could not be convinced.
Instead I woke up, put on my FTR t-shirt and made coffee.
Today is Recovery Day, and I am running in the 5K.
The running part is not remarkable.  I do that all the time.
The exciting part is that I get to be with all my people.
It feels like that bench in the hall at high school, the one where I know all my friends will be.
We would drip from the window sill like curtains in back-packs and teenage apathy trying to decide whether or not to go to class.
It feels like Halloween night when the air is crisp and I run from house to house on scuffed tennis shoes.
It is the club when the right song comes on. The whole room pulses with energy and people dancing into the roof, sweat flailing like lady bugs from our foreheads.

After I aloud myself to be excited for this day, I read my meditation:

                             

I know that we will not change the whole world.  But Recovery has changed mine.

Exercise has been a vital part of my recovery since the beginning.

It is a way to quiet my head and center my body.

It soothes anxiety and resets my world back to the basics:

I am simply one human body.

I am temporary and I have limits.

I can also be strong, vibrant and free.

What I seek is found only on the other side of hard work.

That's why it simply makes sense for me to hang out with these people who are doing what I've been doing for years.  We are celebrating our freedom.

My husband likes to tease and calls me an "FTR groupie."

But I don't care.

I am no longer plagued by teenage apathy.

I can be dorky and excited and off I go!

I weigh more than a blue balloon.

I popped a blood vessel in the corner of my eye yesterday.  I did it while purging.
French fries.  Forbidden french fries.
I don't want to tell you this.
I want to tell you that life is grand and I've moved past all this bulimia stuff.
I don't need to write Chrysalisbreak anymore cuz I have emerged a butterfly.
But that's not the truth, and I am here to tell the truth.

My husband could see it.  I am pretty sure he noticed.
I'm sorry husband, I know it makes you sad.
I get this grey swelling around my eyes from the pressure in my head
It was a violent one too, thick and uncooperative and choking.
It was the kind of purge that happens in nightmares when I can't force it out.
But I was determined, and I did a real number on myself.

Afterwards I took a shower and washed my hair, twice.
I scrubbed the toilet.
Then I went to sleep for an hour without brushing my hair.
It was a deep sleep where I forget what day it is and who I am.
I woke up to a throbbing swollen head, and Pepper chattering,
"Mom, I'm hungry."
Food.  There is always food.  I can never get away from it.
When Andrew got home I couldn't look him in the eye.
It wasn't intentional, it's just a side affect.
My eyes stayed down like when I walk by a huddle of men on State street.
I can feel the eyes on me, but I am not equipped to deal with them.
Now I am hungover from it still.
This is the cycle of an alcoholic, of a bulimic, of an addict.
I know it all too well.
It used to be the only thing I knew.
It is the reason I labeled myself, "Crazy"
________________________________________

I just looked in the mirror.  The red spot is still squatting there inside the corner of my right eye.
Pepper pointed it out to me.
"Mom, you have some blood, right there, in your eye."
"I know,"
I told her, and in my voice was the ability to walk on.
It was not the deflated voice of self-loathing.
It was acceptance of the Sarah who hides in dark corners, who is wounded.
She is still with me, even though I have been in recovery for 9 years.
It seems stupid or shallow to say that after all this time, I'm still scared of gaining weight.
My fear is loosing control.
My fear is that if I stop, I will sink.
I'm afraid to get soft.  I need to stay sharp.
I'm terrified of finding that doughy person in the mirror whom I have known before.
I never want to be her again.
But I don't want this either.

I looked up images on the internet for this post.
I did a Google search of bulimia.
Google didn't get it right.
I found a series of staged, over-dramatized scenes.  It looked like a circus freek show.
Girls puking up blood, and gorging on donuts, super-models in fishnets bent over the toilet.
I found pics of Lada Gaga and Demi Levato, as is they are the only two women in show-biz with eating disorders.
Everything was stark and blaring and strangely assertive.
Really my experience with bulimia is quiet and lonely and grey, like my afternoon nap.
The goal is to be weightless, and small and free.  No one is watching.  I have no audience.  There is no drama.  I am chasing the impossible utopia like a zealot wailing for heaven.  In reality I am a concrete body with weight and needs and weakness.
I weigh far more than a blue balloon could ever float.

It's always scary to venture out into the next day.  It is easier to purge when I did it yesterday.
I can't make any bold promises to myself or anyone else.  The way out is not the path of absolutes.
I treat myself as if I were actually sick, as if I were actually on the verge of vomiting.  The way out is with slow steps and deep breaths.

spandex at the grocery store

I'm still hunting for fear.  It is not sitting on my chest where I last left it.
And I wonder, is this how people feel who never needed God?
Is this why I sprinted full force into the dark where deamons rule and there is no light to keep us from killing each other?
Is this how it was for those people at church who made no sense to me, who believed in God because their parents did?
I am without the bitch of angst screeching in my ear,

"This is all trivial!  None of it is real!  
Only your pain is real.  These people are living an illusion!"

Some days I feel that I have joined the illusion.
I drove my mini-van to the office of contentment and signed up willingly.
Now I go to soccer games, and help kids with homework, fold laundry, work out every other day.
I have added myself to the ranks of Moms in spandex at the grocery store.
I don't eat artificial sweetener.  I attended Back-to-School night.
I have a hair-care regiment and I prep the coffee pot the night before.

The darkness and the deamons are far from me...

It used to be that I woke up shaking and nauseous.

I didn't have to go looking for fear, It swallowed me up in its' acidic pit like that monster on Return of the Jedi.
Some days I envy the acute nature of living in crisis.
At least then I can see clearly who the enemy is, and sometimes chose to curl into his scaly under-belly.  There my world is small and nothing is expected of me.

Now my world displays in 76 tints of beige.

I once took Sophie to church.  She was about 7 years old at the time...maybe 8.
She was respectful during the prayer, she listened to the speakers and sang the hymns.
Afterwards I asked her what she thought.
"Well, it's ok...but there's just no color there.  Everything is brown."

This is why I need music and art and journals and especially my fellow alcoholics.
They bring the color and the sound and their stories.
So I can remember the time when I longed to be on the other side of the window.
Before I was sober, I'd look outside, my brain pounding against the glass.
I'd see women walking their dogs, and college students hurrying to catch the bus, all full of purpose and ideas and ambition.  They'd sail down the sidewalk with long strides and eyes forward.  They had backpacks full of completed assignments, printed in the right format and lined in thin plastic folders
I just wanted to wake up not sick.
I could not go one day without needing a substance to take the edge off.  Then came the days when nothing could soothe the burn of acid eating away my last sprouts of dreams.

Now it has been 4 years since I graduated from college.
Now I walk the sidewalk lit by sunrise.

The view from my walk this morning

My painting professor once taught me the difference between a new painter and a mature painter.
He said a novice will use bright colors straight from the tube.
An older painter looks for the subtleties within one hue.
They mix paints and end up with colors that are more neutral.
My life reflects this.
I will always relish color as I saw it for the first time.
I have fallen in love with so many things:
Writing
        Painting
                snorkeling in the ocean with Uncle Gary
                           Smashing Pumpkins
                                   Jack Kerouac
                                             Andrew Roberts
                                                     the Appalachian Trail
                                                             Ani Difranco
                                                                     Pepper - Sophie - Beckam
                                                                              running - swimming - climbing
                                                                                        alcohol
                                                                                                suffering.....
The list is too long to write....

........and there was always a first.  With each love there was a moment of awe where my surroundings fell away and I really saw the thing for exactly what it was.  A pure color, vibrant and glowing.
Now all these loves have been mixed together, and I am left to paint the picture of my life.

On the other side of obsession is a vast expanse, too wide to fill.
If I am afraid of anything, it is that I cannot live up to the space.

Open Window

I was awakened this morning by a rumbling cat trying to crawl inside of my mouth.

It was cute, but hard to sleep through.

Our new cat, Tank.  He is what Sophie calls a teenager kitty.
His name came from Beckam.  Ironic.  Tank named by a Tank.

Yesterday he broke Pepper's heart by using her arm as a scratching post.

She didn't react at all except to cry like a girl stood up on prom night.

"Honey, if he's hurting you, push him away and tell him to knock it off."

"....okay..." she sputters, as if this thought never occurred to her.

Then I wonder, is this foreshadowing?

Is she too wispy to stand up for herself. Is she too surprised to find that life has claws?

My hair is wound up into a bun with the curly little short pieces lacing my neck.

This is the hair-do which happens when I have sweat into it too many times, but have not showered yet.  

It could stay this way for days.

It is sweaty because last night I ran down State street with my friend K.
He looking like Tom Hanks from Castaway, long beard and far away eyes.
I a slice of cantaloupe in melon-colored shirt and shorts.

I wrote a blog about him and exactly one week later, he appeared.

Casually we huffed and puffed and talked about metaphors of transformation.

When I am with him, I feel like a sister.  I bee-bop along with my ponytail flagging and my toes light.  He probably slowed his pace for me, but he never said a word about it.

With family, there is so much unsaid, and this is as it should be.

No explanation is necessary, because how do you explain the whole picture of a life?

That is why we grow up together.  So we don't have to explain ourselves, so we have people who simply know us.  As I age, and realize that I am not separate, my family circle grows.  I have adopted people, quite unintentionally, into my heart.  I can't help it.  The bonding is an organic thing, like how a vine will simply grow long and wind around anything within its' reach.  My heart is the same, as it thrives, the reaching is intuitive and it just keeps going.  I hope in the end the vines have grown so thick and fat, that none can be pulled apart.

As I ran with K last night, I wanted to call each person in my family whom I have pushed away.

I wanted to say,

"I forgot that we are supposed to do this together, no matter what.  I'm sorry I have been distant."

It is so hard to stay.  There are so many justifiable reasons to disconnect.  Sometimes distance is best for both people, but it is equally important to come back.  I forget that part.  Or maybe I don't always see the window to crawl through as it opens just a crack.

Childhood Skill Set

My eyes are burning, but my coffee is good.
I'm wearing my favorite holey jeans.  The ones kids point out to their parents,
"Look Mom, her pants have REALLY BIG holes in them!"
Sometimes they ask me,
"Why?"
To which I respond,
"These are my summer pants.  It's air conditioning."
They giggle, and think I'm a funny kind of Grown-up.

Sophie is always giving me sideways smirks when we drive in the car.
I have a habit of flaring into song in strange accents, or waggling my finger at a glowing sunset.
She isn't quite sure I am an adult at all.

My theory is:  none of us are actually adults.
We each have certain skill sets.  Some appear more Grown-up than others.
However I believe a Grown-up is simply that - a certain skill set.
It just so happens that I have retained a lot of my childhood skill set, because I find it useful.

Here a few of my skills:

I laugh when I get hurt   (also when others get hurt, which isn't always a skill)

I climb anything and everything I can.  The first thought to enter my mind is often:
        "I bet I could climb that."

I share my toys, even the really cool ones.  I do this because I know it is more fun to have a friend to play with, then to hoard all the stuff.

I have play dates all the time.  Kids are better when they move in a pack.

I am quick to forgive and move on.  Holding a grudge brings me down, and like I said.  I want to climb stuff.

I am amazed and delighted by the little things.  I will go to the pet store just to look at the fish.

I like to draw pictures, write stories, and sing songs.  a skill set often lost by "adults"

I understand that a couch can also act as a trampoline, fort, or a battle ship.

I wear Vans tennis shoes cuz they are the best for doing tricks.

I can still do: hand-stands, cartwheels, and back-bends.  I can climb trees, and cross the monkey bars.   I can also swim like a mermaid.

I cry when I get hurt.  Have you ever noticed how kids let events flow through them? I just watched Pepper get scratched by our new kitten, Tank.  She cried because it hurt.  She was devastated...for 3 minutes.  Now she is petting him and watching Tarzan.

I may be guilty of encouraging this kind of behavior.

Empty Stage: Prayer part 2

______________________________________________________________

Grace, please quiet my pacing mind and help me stay in one place.
Please bring me back every time I drift.
Help me remember that what I seek is found only on the other side of honest work.

Grace please help me remember to go slow
for it is only when life slows down that I see the details 
It is the details which tell the story

Grace please help me remember - I am not inventing anything.
I am merely a witness who records what she sees.
Help me honor what I see by writing it down.

Thank you for love and fear.
They keep my senses sharp and my soul singing.
Help me honor the mountain of journals which have brought me to this morning.
Grace, please sit with me while I tell my story today.

______________________________________________________________


Ok...so...now I've written this inspiring prayer...so what do I say?
My mind keeps drifting away to yard sales I might go to this morning.
I've already been on the classified ads and written down two possible addresses.
I've been awake for an hour, drank 2 cups of coffee and it is 6 a.m.
I watched the cats wrestle and relished the tiny galloping sound their paws make on the carpet.
My kids slept over at Grandma's, so I have no excuse not to sit at the computer for hours.
But I have nothing to say to myself.
In my prayer, I mention love and fear, how they wake me up.

I am experiencing the eerie numbness of an Absence of Fear.
I pray all the time for Grace to remove my fear and show me what is next.
So, now the fear is gone, and I don't know what to write about.
Even when I fight with my husband, which I did yesterday, I don't get really afraid.
I do not experience that terror of:
"What if I chose this person and it's not gonna work?  What if he sucks out my freedom, my identity and my soul?  What if it's only a matter of time before we hate each other?"
When I am this afraid, a song can make me cry, and the temporary nature of everything is almost more than I can accept.  Apparently I need more than to simply "go slow."  
I need the salt of fear.  
I no longer get the impulse to jump into my mini-van, ditch the car-seats in the driveway and peel out onto the open road.
I haven't wanted to do that in years.
And this is why I create drama...because this eerie Absence of Fear is ... scary.
I don't know how to orient myself.  
It's as if I am standing on an empty stage waiting for someone to direct me.

It is lurking there somewhere.  I just don't see it right now.  I would never assume that, at the age of 35, I have outwitted fear completely.  I suppose it is time to go hunting...

my prayer part 1

This may be the first morning I have sat down without going first to Facebook, the News, E-mail, and back to Facebook.
I read my post from yesterday.  I was reminded of prayer, of muses and intent.
Now here I am watching the movie of yesterday played back to me.
I see Sophie at sunset.
We are sitting on the sidewalk side by side with legs stretched straight out in front.
My feet are crossed at the ankles.  I see the bulge of my left ankle.  The one I keep rolling when I go running. The damn thing just won't heal, but I run anyway.  My toenails are painted coral pink.
She is wearing blue jeans and boots.  Her leotard shows through her shirt at the neck.
As usual, her ponytail will not behave. It looks like a kitten went rooting through it in search of a mouse.  She has the eyes of her father, rich lashes and a brown so deep it could lead straight to her heart.  She is copper and amber and chocolate.

She wanders away to snap photos of sunflowers with orange light behind them.
My head lops to the side and I smile at her.
We have so little time left, she and I.  Soon there will be hardly any little kid left in her at all.
I already see it being replaced with adult mind.  The type of consciousness concerned with responsibility.
I see it when she packs her lunch for school without my help.  With assertive swipes, she chops vegetables using the biggest knife.  I see it when she rolls her eyes at her younger siblings.  I see it when she walks briskly from the shower, one towel around her body, one tightly wound in her hair.  

Grace please help me remember to go slow
for it is only when life slows down that I see the details 
It is the details which tell the story

Grace please help me remember - I am not inventing anything.
I am merely a witness who records what she sees.
Help me honor what I see by writing it down.

This is the prayer so far...

Prayer to the Muse

I don't need to try to identify as a writer.
I've been writing for 23 years.  I've been writing longer than I have been menstruating.
I do however, need to mount my defense.  I need to take this aspiration seriously.  Not because someone else told me it is serious, but because it has been in my soul since I was 12 years old.
My husband watches soccer.  He always says,
"The best defense is a good offense."  I roll my eyes at his propensity to make the same obvious statements repeatedly.  However, I think he is right.
The War of Art is a call to arms against the tyrant Resistance who seeks to plug the flow of creation.  
I know this tyrant.  With me, he got really clever and morphed into bulimia and alcoholism.  But I called him out.  I named him a Lie, and I am still acting in opposition to his stories.  This was not a gentle move. 
I did not accept excuses.  My mantras were absolutes.

 Artist Mark Demsteader
Muse Emma Watson

  

"Alcohol is no small thing.  I cannot take one drink."
"Got to a meeting every day no matter what."
"In recovery, I take action.  Regardless of how I feel or what I think."
"This is life or death.  Either I get sober, or my life will end."
"Accept the food I eat, however imperfect and do not purge."
"There is absolutely no reason I need to starve my body.  It will not serve me.  It does not equal freedom."
"I cannot have the life I desire, and indulge in this eating disorder.  I do not get to have both."

Just as it scared me to get sober and to release the ED, I am afraid to own my decision to write with intent.  I am afraid to declare war on Resistance and to claim my shield.  The shield says, "My voice matters.  This art I have crafted is important.  I call it complete.  I will stand behind what it says about myself and the world."

I was reminded this morning, there is a softness about this whole endeavor.  Yes, my decision must be solid if I am to create change.  However all the power does not come from me.  In fact most of it is Grace.  It is a light which seeps through the cracks my hammer makes.   My job is simply to take the tool in my hand and pound on the nearest surface:

Sit down to write everyday.
 Accept no excuses for why you cannot.
Don't worry about whether or not it is "good"
Tell the truth.  Use concrete details.  Say what IS right in front of you.  

When I do this, I am the  clean  lake of my most sacred meditation.
In order for a lake to be clear it must have inflow and outflow.

___________________________________________________________________
These elements are timeless.  Artists have always known, by these truths beautiful things are made.   So, this morning I read about inviting the muses, the juice, the flow, the Gods or angels or the madness...with a prayer.
In The War of Art, he uses a prayer to the muses.  He begins his writing with an invitation and a request to this Grace I have mentioned.  He uses Homer's Odyssey.  It's a little too thick for me.  
Tomorrow I will write my own prayer.  Until then, I offer up this from a blog I read this morning:
_______________________________________________________________________________

May your days upon this earth be blessed
May the poetry of your being be freely expressed
May the light of compassion always shine in your eyes
And may your heart flow with a tenderness that never dies

May you hear the universal melody
May your song sing on endlessly
May the kindness of your spirit never be broken
And may your heart always be open

May you wake each day as if you were born anew
May you realize the beauty that’s in you and all around you
May you always see a rainbow in the sky above
And may your heart always burn with the living flame of love

"The odd thing is that once I say the prayer, I feel like the matters I’m about to craft are more serious, and so I am far less tempted to check my e-mail or FB or Tweet or what have you. I’m all about the work."
http://www.howardandrewjones.com/writing/invocation-to-the-muses

Water bucket

Yesterday I ate leftover birthday cake for breakfast.
This seems significant because Chrysalisbreak started out as an eating disorder blog.
I began writing it nearly 2 years ago.
I paced like a caged tiger in front of the computer the first time I posted a link to Facebook.
I was trapped between the lies an eating disorder demands, and the vulnerable truth of freedom.
Any freed prisoner will tell you, it is scary to suddenly hold the reigns of your own life.

"Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."

Mary Wollstonecraft

Ironically, now I will refer it to anyone.  Just last week I scrawled "chrysalisbreak.blogspot.com"
onto a slip of paper and gave it to a fellow writer whom I had just met.
This is how little shame I carry now, as a bulimic woman.
I have been a woman afraid to eat and afraid not to eat.
My entire identity has revolved around how my clothes fit and whether or not I can resist birthday cake.

I started telling the whole truth because I was inspired by one woman.
This woman, as an ammends to herself, wrote her life story.
She wrote about 40 pages.
Mine is certainly going to be longer.  I suppose because I am still alive, and still learning.
But the important part has been to share it.  I share each post on Facebook.
I know Facebook has the potential to suck the life out of my muse as if she were a juiced orange.
However, it can also be a tool to connect.  Were it not for Facebook, my blog would not be read.
Now I usually get about 50 readers within 4 hours of posting a new entry.

At the root of this tree, is simply myself.  I must write.  Since the age of 12 I have been filling journals. Whether you read it or not, I will continue.
However to have you, as a witness, makes it more vulnerable.
It is the difference between singing in the shower and singing on a stage.
There is a heightened awareness and a standard for clarity brought by an audience.

Now I am aspiring to have a bigger audience.  I am compiling a book.
I have no idea how to do this.
All I have are pearls of my soul accumulated into a bucket.
I'm afraid if I go peddling them around, they will be spilled or wasted.
The trick about being an artist is realizing:  my droplets may be only a few, and may never matter to anyone else.  This has to be enough.

All the rest is bonus.  It is a gift to be allowed an audience.  It would be a privilege to publish a book.
The story is out there.  The story of a woman in her mid-30's who just can't quite shake the remnants of shame tethered by an eating disorder.  The story of how she made peace with her humanity and ate cake for breakfast without punishment.  If I get to be the one to tell this story, I would be honored.
What I have learned is that I am not separate, or worse.
My fear manifests in a compulsion to control food and shrink my body.
It is an attempt to shrink my needs.
We all try to hide.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

Nhat Hanh

The Great Wave - Hokusai - 1830

One Day

Most of my friends are alcoholics and drug addicts.

We either shine or we die.

K and I climbing in Big C

I just finished running in the rain and thinking of my friend.
It will suffice to call him K.
Those who know him will know.
During the summer of 2013 we rock climbed like kids trying to beat a Nintendo game.
He had been sober for 1 year.  He was getting strong.  He is an athlete to the core.
He is 6'2" of muscle and resolve.

There were three of us.
I'll call her Tiny.  Those who know her will also know.
She was just coming back to life after an overdose.

He called me one day and said,
"Tiny needs a friend.  She loves you.  You should call her.  We should go climbing."
I had a list of justifiable hesitations, but the simple fact is:  I love her too.  So I called,
"K says we need to go climbing together."
"Yes, I think we do," she said.
Thus began our adventure.
It was the kind of summer they make movies about, that I've read in books.
It was the Sandlot.  It was My Side of the Mountain.  It was Goonies and Karate Kid.  We were the Outsiders, and I have never been more gold.
We stayed dirty.  We were perked up, ready to throw our gear in the car and drive to the mountains.

In my most peaceful spot

He pushed us, he yelled at us, he filled us to the brim with compliments.  He saw the nuances of movement which only a coach can perceive.
We climbed until our hands gave out under the granite and our forearms were coke bottles full of blood.
I always left blood on the rock, and the distinct smell of adrenaline-laced sweat.
Sometimes he yelled at us.  Sometimes he made Tiny climb when she really wanted to cry.
We would do the same sequence 15 times until it was fluid.
He sent us up routes we knew we couldn't ascend, and we made it.
We went to the desert in Southern Utah and climbed on Potash road at sunrise.

Me doing the same sequence for the 10th time
This was a good day

While K racked up his gear, Tiny and I exchanged timid smiles which said,
"Well, here we go...I guess."


In return, we mothered him.  We listened to his monologues of self-doubt.
We accepted him in every form, and he had many.
Grouchy.  Up-beat.  Hesitant. Introspective. Scared.
To us it was all good, because it was all honest.
When he struggled, we reminded him, at least you are here.  You are sober.  You are climbing strong.  You are making progress.
Above all, we trusted him.
We rappelled off 300 foot sandstone in Lake Powell.
We went up every route he set for us, and we gave him every ounce of our strength.
He was our coach, and our friend.

I have hardly climbed at all, since he started using drugs again.
I don't really want to.

K and Tiny

Tiny and I went a few times, determined to continue what we started.
The energy just wasn't there.
We drove down the canyon trying to feel triumphant, but I know we felt the same thing:  Lost.

Now I am getting strong again.
I've been going to Boot-camp workouts with a group called Fit to Recover.
We push each other past what we could do alone.
Every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. I go to the park and sweat into the grass.
I sweat for K.  I sweat for Tiny.
It's not the same, but I don't expect anything ever will take the place of that summer in the mountains.
It is helping though.
I feel the same momentum in my body, and it propels me to reach further.

I am nagging Tiny to come, but her heart has yet to find it's way back to her muscles.  I'm not worried about her though.  She is hearty like me.  She will fight the apathy because she knows the truth.
The truth is:  Any alcoholic.  Any drug addict.  Is blessed to have one day.  One day to be strong.  One day to love their family.  One day to be well, and not sick.  One day to progress.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fit-to-recover-salt-lake-city-s-only-sober-gym

birthday gift

Today I turn 35 years old.
I've already received the best gift and it's only 8 a.m.
It came from my daughter Sophie who is 12 years old.
She attends a charter school in downtown SLC.  It is about 20 miles from our house.
This year she will be riding TRAX into the city for school.

Sophie boarding the train.

My gift was watching her walk tall onto the platform to board the train.
Like a tiny dancer who knows her routine, she didn't miss a step.
"You can just drop me off here, Mom."
I don't question her.
"Ok, here ya go honey," I park my mini-van at the gate.
"Thanks Mom. I'll just go stand over by those ladies, they look nice."
She pops her headphones in and sails away on long strides and brown leather boots.
I know I'm supposed to drive away, but I can't.
Not because I'm worried, but because I just love seeing her standing there.
It's as if I'm watching my heart outside my body in a bright pink tank top.
I try to hide my van behind the other parked cars.

She sends me a text,
"Go away.  Love you."

So I obey, and I pull away with a smile that tingles the top of my head.
I smile because she is experiencing the freedom of being in the world on her own.
I relish this as I do my favorite song on the radio.
I feel it every time I walk through an airport with my suitcase rolling behind me.
My senses are activated because I am just a little bit scared.
I am away from home, and I am aware of my insignificance.
I see mothers kissing their babies in delicate blankets.
I see long faces of men in unfriendly bars sipping drinks and wishing they had someone to talk to.
I see our human tapestry sewn together in every color.  I read each face I pass,and each one adds to the richness. I know I am only one small square.  One small square is enough.

"My Square"
birthday gift from my husband

The Twilight Blue Coffee Mug

The blue mug

I bought the book.  The War of Art. by Stephen Pressfield
I wrote yesterday,
"Today I am going to buy this book...5 years after my professor told me to read it."
Now I am reading about writing rituals.
I hear they are important.  I feel guilty that I do not have them.
Maybe I should get some.
Then it occurs to me, they already exist.

I wake up early.  Before the world begins.
I do this not because my alarms tells me to, but because my mind is zinging with unfinished sentences.
I have been this way since the age of 12 when I wrote my first poem in 4 stanzas on lavender-colored lined paper.  I read the poem in church.  It was a long poem so I had to tape two pieces of the lavender paper together.  I felt my voice melt over the heads of the faithful as I read it aloud.
I don't know if they heard it, but I did.

I wear my pajamas.  This is another way of staying out of responsibility mode.  Once I get dressed the flow of Things-to-Do has begun.  In the summer I wear belly shirts so I can feel the air on my skin.  In the winter I like slippers and zipper hoodies.

I drink coffee from one of my 3 favorite mugs.
There are lots of mugs in the cupboard.  But I only like the round ones that taper at the top and the bottom. They are a little bit bigger so I don't have to get up for more coffee as often.  They cradle my palm in a way the straight ones don't.  There is a shiny black one, a creamy white one, and a mug the color of the sky at twilight given to me by my Dad.  It's my favorite.  Right now I have the black one. Hold on, I have to go refill it...

I cannot listen to music.  I need silence.  Music...and my children...interrupt the words I hear.  I hear the sentence before I write it.  There is a rhythm I listen for, like the footsteps of a familiar person.  I know it is my husband walking down the hall because I can picture his stride.  I know my writing voice.  There are fifty ways to express the same thought, but only one that is mine.

I have to sit up straight.  If I start to sag in my posture, my brain gets soggy.  When my body is alert my mind reflects this attention.  I never knew I did this until a boyfriend pointed it out to me about 15 years ago.
(God how long have I been writing?  22 years...)
He said,
"I love how you always sit up straight at the computer.  It's beautiful."
I turned around 12 seconds later, after I finished listening to the stream in my head.
"Oh really?  I never knew I did that."

So this is what I am discovering today, my rituals need to be honored.
Why change something that has been working for 22 years?
I may become lax at times, but I always come back to my coffee mug before sunrise.