What ya wishing for?

Tags

Anywhere but here, Broken bones, dandelions, Healing, living in the moment, modus operandi, Post-traumatic stress, progress, PTSD, Reality, Recovery, Swine flu, Therapy, Trauma, Truth

No matter how you cut it, there’s always more ways to slice and dice anything. You can take the tiniest sliver, and if you have the right tools, cut it up again and again. You can make shavings of slivers and get all microscopic about it.

What’s that got to do with anything? Umm, nothing. And everything.

It’s just that y’know, measurement is highly relative. So is progress.

Where do we really ever get to, other than right where we are at any given moment? We’re just where we’re at, period.

The wanting of other things, that’s where we get ourselves into trouble. Wanting to be somewhere or someone else, or another version of yourself – thinner, wiser, funnier, smarter and so on. We want to be healed. We can’t forget the past. We reminisce of happier times. Want to be on holidays again, go back to places we’ve been.

Anywhere but here.

Or, we think of where we want to get to – being in love with someone wonderful, being a parent, healthy and whole, nicer teeth, earning big money. Or, just more simply… we look towards a place where we’ll be really happy.

Trying to just live in the here and now is difficult. Western culture is set up to either think of the past or look to the future. There’s really not much here and now in our lives at all.

Sitting on a tram surrounded by strangers, most people are thinking about getting away from such close proximity (BTW, did you hear Melbourne is now Australia’s Swine Flu capital?). At work, we’re bored or annoyed or looking forward to lunch or going home or socialising after work.

We’re rarely living in the moment, but it can happen: riding a push bike consciously, getting a massive fright, meditation, having a really intense meeting, seeing an amazing live band or dance performance… these are just some examples.

When it happens, for seconds or minutes (if we’re lucky), we feel intensely alive.

Some people get hooked on that, and then get into adrenaline-based activities. Although, it then becomes less about being in the moment, and more about the ‘rush’ we feel afterwards. And looking forward to the next time.

During the worst of my PTSD, where it wasn’t so much ‘episodes’ – more just one long waking nightmare, day in, day out… I wished away much of my life.

Truly, I believed it was possible to wait out my trauma. I thought I’d get better over time, like healing a broken bone – sure it hurts for ages, but eventually it gets better.

And while I waited, I shut down the rest of my life. Just sat there, waiting. But never in the moment. I was too busy thinking about that unspecified time in the future when I’d be okay again.

Never worked out that way of course. Turns out the source of a lot of my pain was about avoiding. Didn’t want to be in the moment at the time (quite understandably) and didn’t want to know about it afterwards, either.

Thing is, to start to move forward and just to begin the healing process, that’s exactly what I had to do – get very present and very real with the pain, the terror and all of the rammifications.

Its the polar opposite of our standard modus operandi: dropping out of reality.

No wonder healing feels so scary and hard at times!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wrote a draft of this a little while back, but Brooks’ recent post reminded me it was there, casually sitting in one of my writing files. So I looked it up and thought… yeah, time to come out…

~Svasti

Mutant zombie people

Tags

146 Acland Street St Kilda, 217 Glen Huntly Rd Elsternwick, A Film With Me In It, Anger, Angry lady with Chihuahuas, Arch Demoness, Arch Demoness of Eyebrows, Awful bosses, bad customer service, Bad day, Bad eyebrow wax, Cocktails, day spa australia, day spa australia bad customer service, dayspa australia, dayspa australia bad customer service, Dylan Moran, Eyebrow waxing, Freaking out, Freaks, Freaky weekend, Kicked out of a day spa, Lotus Day Spa, lotus day spa st kilda, Lotus Health Spa, lotus health spa st kilda, lotushealthspa.com.au, Mangled, Mark Doherty, Meat market, Mutant zombie people, Orange fuzzy hair, People talking during movies, Pheremones, Swine flu, Waxed, www.lotushealthspa.com.au, Yoga

Ever have one of those days weekends where you realise it’d be better if you never left the house? Or if you do go out, you should just shut the hell up?

Perhaps there was a small outbreak of swine flu in the local area or some other disease temporarily rendering people quite mad? Myself included?

It all started out well enough. Yoga studies as per usual on a Saturday. We finished early, so I chose to cycle home the long way by the beaches and stopped for a late lunch at this gorgeous little cafe right on the cycle path.

The day had turned into one of those warm and sunny autumnal days, increasingly rare as we head into a bitterly cold and early on-set winter.

So far, it’s all good.

With a little more free time than I was expecting, I decided to do something about my rather shaggy looking eyebrows with a long overdue and much needed waxing.

Went to the place I usually go to if in St Kilda, only to find there was an hour wait. So fatefully, I decided to try another place. Hrmmmm.

What began as a pleasant encounter in a visually appealing environment, ended with my eyebrows being mangled and the owner of the business totally losing her cool, and yelling at me to leave her premises. Not because of anything I’d done, I promise! I certainly didn’t raise my voice to her or anything of the sort!

I’m gonna expand on that incident in a separate post (see Nightmare on Acland Street). But, I’ve never experienced such poor behaviour from a so-called professional business in my life!

I was somewhat bemused and freaked out by it all, and horrified at the state of my eyebrows, which were mercifully fixed at another salon. Thank goodness!

That wasn’t, however, the end of the day’s bad experiences. It was all so weird; I kinda wondered if I’d been inadvertently sprayed with a pheremone causing people to have bad reactions to me…

Almost home, I directed my bike to the footpath of a busy intersection (always a safer way to cross some roads). There were people at the crossing, so I slowed my bike to almost a stand-still. Yet, the woman with two Chihuahua-type dogs and a mass of orange fuzzy hair glared at me and muttered under her breath. Sorry, I’ve slowed as much as I can I say, and she tells me off, You’re not supposed to be on the footpath!!

That did it – the poor woman was the unlucky recipient of my anger at the salon owner. Fuck off, bitch! I yelled aggressively… which she totally didn’t deserve. But hell, cyclists are allowed on the footpath if required!!

Okay, so now I was upset at being yelled at, having my eyebrows mangled, and losing my cool at the frizzy-haired lady with annoying dogs… still, I didn’t see the writing on the wall, and kept my plans to meet up with L anyway.

We were going to see A Film With Me In It (hilarious dark farce from Dylan Moran & Mark Doherty) in which a series of very unfortunate accidents keep occuring. Kinda like my day…

Ended up sitting next to a woman who talked incessantly (a pet hate of mine) to her husband, including stating really obvious things like, Oh no, she’s dead!! Just as they happen.

I turn to her and (tempting fate, clearly) politely ask… Could you please stop talking throughout the movie?

What?? She half-turns her body in her seat and leers at me aggressively.

Can you please stop talking; I’m trying to watch the movie.

Really? she growls, Well, I have to listen to you laugh!

I didn’t respond any further, thinking, Yeah, everyone is laughing BECAUSE IT’S A FUCKING COMEDY!! But her husband then turns in his seat aggressively and starts mumbling. With a puerile gesture, I stare straight at the screen while flipping him the bird til he backs off. Sooo mature of me!

They both backed down, thankfully. Managed to enjoy the rest of the movie, but I was still marvelling at my (seeming) ability to bring out the worst in people that day.

I mean, it’s not like I was pissed off or unhappy – it’d been a good day to begin with! If anything, I was still feeling a little fragile, but doing okay.

Later, L and I have a cocktail at one of Melbourne’s many laneway bars, and decided to stop off at a dodgy pub on the way home for one last drink…

For someone teetering on the edge of depression, freaked out about their self-image and generally dealing with anxiety, a meat-market pub full of young people and lecherous older men is not the ideal place to hang out. To make matters worse, L is immediately approached by some guy, hoping to get lucky. In a loud environment, I can’t hear their conversation to join in, so stand there feeling very uncomfortable instead.

As much as being in nature soothes me right now, this artificial booze-fuelled bar completely unsettles me. I’m freaking out for no good reason. But then, given the day I’ve had, can you really blame me?

So the night didn’t end well. L couldn’t understand why I was freaking out and I really couldn’t and can’t explain why I did either. Just… I wasn’t up to being in a place where everyone was trying to pick up a cheap date.

Sunday I didn’t leave the house, but not because I couldn’t. Just… wanted to make sure the ‘curse’ had lifted before I came in contact with other people again.

But under the cover of darkness I went out… deciding to grab a Sunday paper coz it comes with my weekly TV Guide (not that I watch that much TV). Had to go to four shops, though, before I found one. The milk bar in my street had ‘sent them back’, the Seven Eleven had one left and the guy who walked in just before me grabbed it… the service station was out, too. So I had to walk to the freaking supermarket to finally get a paper.

Just not my weekend, really… though, I managed to get home without abusing or being abused by anyone, so I think I’m safe now!

~Svasti

***********************

UPDATE: A possible explanation in a post by Josh… if you’re into that sorta thing! 😉

P.S. Yes, I am laughing at myself very much, don’t worry!