Dammit, I used to be the Salad Queen!

Tags

comfort food, Depression, diamond shards, Food, fox hole, half-life of trauma habits, jigsaw puzzle, PTSD, salad queen, sleep, smack down, time, Trauma

Recovering from trauma and depression is not unlike trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle: one made of thousands of tiny shards of a diamond. Sometimes those broken pieces are blatantly obvious, while others are almost invisible and you just can’t find ’em for quids no matter how hard you look. That is, until you end up slicing open your foot, blood everywhere.

There’s always, it seems, more to do. More to heal. Unravel. Soothe. Re-program. Sure, the pieces you recover might get smaller and smaller, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less important.

Time moves on and regardless of when the initial impact occurred, you’re still picking up the pieces for years and years, because they hide in the darnedest places.

The half-life of trauma habits

2009 was huge for me. So much happened! I became a yoga teacher, was unemployed for almost four months and took enormous leaps in healing my PTSD. At the same time, I very nearly succumbed to a most heinous and black-natured episode of depression.

In 2010, life was still up and down a whole bunch but gradually a sense of lightness encroached on the territory previously staked out and defended vigilantly by trauma. I felt rather absurd in my enjoyment of life, with the stark comparison of blacker times in my very recent history. But it was all good because those feelings of lightness kept coming back!

Okay, maybe they didn’t come back every day, and maybe there was plenty of hard work still going on. But suddenly I felt supported in my struggle. For every crappy time where I still wondered if stepping in front of a bus was a viable alternative to my empty, pathetic life… there was a yoga class that drastically re-organised my inner world, or a beautiful sunset that entranced me.

Despite my improving state of mind I was still barely coping with the bad habits that trauma had engraved deeply into my life: bad eating, sleeping too much and being quite hopeless at getting anywhere on time. Others were more subtle: withdrawing from being around people, avoiding conflict at all costs, and let’s not forget that broken stress reaction that causes anxiety attacks over a storm in a teacup.

It seemed grossly unfair. PTSD and depression had moved in, trashed the joint and even though they’d been evicted, they hung around outside a lot, yelling abuse and getting drunk in the driveway. And of course, they left behind one hell of a mess.

Thankfully, a couple of those habits have recently begun to break down. Kinda. I mean, I’m still not entirely in the clear. But things are better, y’know?

The first is food

Eating regularly and properly. For a good long while after that initial impact, I had no interest in or capacity for cooking whatsoever. And because I lived alone there wasn’t anyone around who noticed, and I certainly didn’t.

I’d eat ice-cream for dinner for weeks on end. Or cheese and crackers. Or grilled vegemite and cheese. Or nothing.

Occasionally I’d get my shit together and make a huge pot of soup. I ate a lot of take-out and really boring, repetitive meals because I hadn’t the energy or appetite for anything better. Comfort food was a staple, as long as it was easy to prepare or order.

Of course, I’d still pretend to eat well – buying groceries and then regretfully throwing most of them out. I didn’t care though really. It was all just more of the same as far as I was concerned: more days of trauma and fear that left me wishing life would just call time.

So you could say that caring about what I ate was very low on my agenda.

It’s still hard. I’ve gotten out of the habit of making food for myself and it’s not like the cat is going to encourage me. I reckon I still eat too much take-out, and I keep “convenience” meals around, like rice cakes and tuna to substitute for a “real lunch”.

I sure as heck eat far less ice-cream and cheese than I used to – they give me a belly ache anyway. And I’m working on encouraging myself, which generally boils down to making sure I have plenty of time to prepare my food.

Dammit, I used to be the Salad Queen! I made completely EPIC salads, full of tuna, eggs, nuts, seeds, herbs and all kinds of crunchy green goodness. I’d make them day after day, varying the contents or the dressing. And I loved them!

And I’d be all over making simple but tasty evening meals as well. Meals that I now struggle to find the energy or time for. But hey, I have plenty of time for other things, just not making my own food.

Good news, kids: the Salad Queen is making a comeback. It’s kind of on the quiet side, but it is happening.

The second is time and/or getting out of bed

The seductiveness of spending hours or days in bed, barely moving. Comforting. Safe. It’s a rough gig when you feel that awful and still need to be somewhere on time. Like your regular 9-5 day job, for example.

Granted, I had something of an issue with time before all this happened, but that was more to do with being young and irresponsible.

Depression changed all of that and for a long time the only way to feel safe was in my bed (well mostly, anyway).

Waking up was like trying to stop myself from falling. Impossible to do, balanced on a precipice and desperate to hold on to that relatively painless state of mind, ensconced in a bubble of beautiful disassociation. Nothing hurt there, when the nightmares were at bay. It was worse than the time I had glandular fever which left me deathly exhausted from merely walking up a short flight of stairs. Worse than that. Way worse, because at least with glandular fever, I wanted to try.

Leaving the house to go anywhere was an enormous act of will. It still kind of is. That feeling of home as my fox hole is very strong, and it’s very easy to spend all day there if I don’t have anywhere to be. Perhaps that’d be okay if I lived with other people, but as a solo act it’s pretty anti-social, right?

Structure is what I need to keep my weekends operational. Places I’m expected to be, things I’ve gotta do. I’ll write a list to remember what has to happen (buy extortionately expensive cat food, fix my bike etc) and then string those activities off whatever structure I’ve managed to form in order to do stuff and not waste an entire day, again.

Though, these days I’m naturally waking up earlier. There’s more of an impulse to leave the fox hole – gasp – just for a walk in the sun, with nowhere in particular to be. More often than not I can even get places on time – having to show up to teach yoga classes has strongly influenced my time management skills.

And heck yeah, having these things in some sort of order is kinda nice.

Smacking down those habits!

The shrugging off of trauma habits moves perhaps as slowly as everything else has. Piece by piece, and I notice another non-operational part only when I see it. It feels disabling to still be lumped with habits formed for reasons that are no longer valid, but it’s exciting to know that I’m now in a position to do something about them.

Yeah, I used to be the Salad Queen

The Salad Queen!

The Salad Queen!

Once upon a time, that was then

That’s right, I used to be the Salad Queen

The Salad Queen!

The Salad Queen!

And I’m coming back for my crown once again!

~Svasti

Everything is different, nothing has changed

Tags

aftershocks, Birthday, detachment, faeries riding rainbow coloured dragonflies, Mexican, muddle-headed, Pinot Noir, radically altered, self-birthday present, Shadow Yoga, tamasic, time, Yoga, Yoga teacher

Friday night I drank perhaps a couple too many of a totally lush Pinot Noir (note: too much in my books is still relatively sober for others). Alcohol and yoga don’t mix very well… seems to mess with my balance and joint flexibility. Weird but true!

Next morning I awoke another year older and feeling somewhat tamasic, but not enough to keep me lying down. See, I had work to do.

At my yoga school for the last official day of my training – a place I’ve spent nearly every Saturday of this year and many other days in between. Taught my final practice class (a little Pinot muddle-headed), and walked out with a letter in my pocket suggestively claiming I’m now officially a yoga teacher.

Weird.

Exciting.

Best. Birthday. Present. Ever.

Hung out with my fellow fledgling yoga teachers and discussed our plans for conquering small patches of Melbourne with our mad yoga skillz.

Yeah!

Ate at my local cafe and chatted to my favourite proprietor (I’m soooo brave now!), shopped and eventually wandered home to find this in my mailbox…

No silly, not the contents! Just the wrapping… (thanks Yoga Dork, and also for the little YD sticker that came in the package!) 😉

All gussied up, ate a truckload of authentic Mexican food that night (as verified by a newly acquired American friend we prevailed upon to join our little sortie).

Sunday, final Shadow Yoga class for the year, pedicure, facial (self-birthday present) and late lunch with the family, purportedly in my honour, even if I was the last to be invited (don’t ask!). Ah well, that’s how it goes here sometimes…

But actually, I’m not different to who I was yesterday (or perhaps I am?). I’ve been becoming both this age and this yoga teacher all year. Some (including me) might argue, it’s been going on for much longer than that. And yet, Saturday marked an official status for both. Curiouser and curiouser.

See, I have this theory about the passing of time, in that it doesn’t really pass at all. But then, I never quite know what to do with all that stuff that looks very much like time gone by? Maybe I’ll figure it out one day. Til then, I simply nod and smile, looking at the pretty coloured lights.

Guess the point is… I still feel like me. But the ‘me’ that I feel like was never a yoga teacher before right now. I recall the non-yoga teacher ‘me’ but she isn’t here any more… there are vast miles between the ‘me’ of five, ten, twenty years ago, and now. But would I be here if not for that person?

Ageing, I increase my happiness. My self-knowledge, self-honesty and wisdom. But was I never not this age?

There’s a quote that says something like… “you must lose yourself before you can find out who you really are”. Which I interpret as having as much to do with concepts of detachment from materialism, as it does with beginning to see the world (including oneself) as it all really is.

I’m almost certain I lived a large portion of my life in some kind of imagined version of the world, starring an imagined version of myself. It all looked pretty much like reality, but slightly veiled or tinted with imagined flourishes: perhaps a spray of violet overlaid with a mother of pearl mosaic here; a host of faeries riding rainbow coloured dragonflies over there, just beyond my very own pirate ship anchored off-shore in the distance.

And I resided as much in those flourishes as anywhere else.

Still do sometimes – I think it’s just a part of who I am. Things have always made more sense as pictures, energy and colours than in any other form. But nowadays I can see the difference, because I did it: I lost myself.

I lost who I thought I was when a fist connected with my face and the back of my head smashed into a concrete wall. All illusions were shredded as I was terrorised by a stranger I previously thought I’d known. And my view of the world altered drastically when I was more than half-convinced I was going to die… I burned and descended into hell, taking everything I thought I knew with me. Which, it seems, triggered the emergency warning signal – resulting in a re-boot of my brain and sense of self.

‘Course, I had to deal with the aftershocks and the confusion… so much confusion…

Spent four years being lost (or maybe it was much longer than that?), wandering aimlessly adrift.

But… I’m beginning to see how my new operating system works, especially now that it’s all loaded up with new programs (e.g. Yoga Teacher v1.0) and a healthy dose of (growing) confidence (note to self: must keep up maintenance on confidence!).

I’ve learned I have strengths I never imagined I could possess. And I’ve begun to understand what makes me truly, utterly and inexplicably happy. Things that make my soul sing.

So here I am. All new and yet not. Radically altered and yet the same.

~Svasti