My truer response to evil

Recently, I've been experiencing a lot of pain in my head- upper left above the old sinus surgery site and behind my eye.  Had the CAT scan and nada.  Then last week, I had a flashback about the childhood sexual abuse.  Skip to Paragraph 3 if you want to avoid the gory details.

I remembered being tipped upside down and held by my ankles as a two year-old.  My grandfather reclined and forced my mouth over his penis and held my head down while I struggled to breathe as he ejaculated into my mouth, throat, and sinuses nearly drowning me.  Damaged my head, the bastard, and now I've got these blinding headaches as all the old nasty energy pours out.

When I remembered, I got mad.  This was a big step for me.  Most often when I've had flashbacks I've felt scared or terrified or sad or unworthy- that sort of flavor.  This time, I felt mad. 

I re-watched an old Bones episode, the pilot (season 1, episode 1) in which the victim's family asks if their daughter suffered.  The forensic anthropologist begins to answer truthfully as to the full horror of her death and the FBI agent answers that she never saw it coming.  On their walk to their car, the agent justifies his answer claiming that they don't want to know the truth.


Something rose up in me and I saw that I have done the same thing.  I wanted the easy truth.  I wasn't going to read the full report.  I haven't wanted to tell myself the ugly truth about my experience.  I didn't want to know.  No one really wants to know.  I was hoping that I could just scrinch my eyes up and avert my face while all the old nasties paraded on out of my life without my ever really having to acknowledge them.  Close my eyes, cover my ears, and hum loud until they've all marched out.

Yeah, that's not working for me anymore, good people.  I'll wager it never really did.

This is one reason why Bones has so captured my attention.  They look, really look, at the fullness of evil and then respond.  Maggots, smashed eyeballs, adipocere, bone bits, crushed skulls, bloody chunks, rotting flesh- they look at it all.  Then they pursue, prosecute, and/or shoot the perpetrators.  Honest look, genuine response.  Because people matter and life matters and therefore stopping evil matters.

If I refuse to really look at the fullness of evil how can I possibly be prepared to respond?  How can I be prepared to protect myself and my kids if I refuse to know what I'm up against?  How can I teach my kids to protect themselves if I won't read the report?  So I looked and I saw my own experience of suffering and I got mad. 

I decided it was time to revisit his grave, salt it again, and paint "Pervert, Murderer, Pedophile, Rapist, Traitor" on his gravestone.  I planned the art I would do to commemorate my defiance.  I thought of where my stash of paints are and how much salt I would bring. 

But then something happened I didn't expect. My next blog is going to have more detail on this but let me sum up.

I realized that acknowledging evil was only the beginning.  Remorse and striving for atonement.  Oppose evil.  Do good.  Pursue righteousness.  This isn't enough.

Living a happy life.  Finding pleasure in the world.  Working for healing.  Gratitude, awe, and creating beauty.  This is my deeper, more vital response to evil. 



Not participating in evil is important.
Preparing to respond and protect is important.
I need to give my mashed skull and injured nerves a real look along with the evil that set them in motion.

But paramount to that, I must live.
 
Evil is true and I must stand against it because life is more true.


Being mad isn't going to work any better than flinching from evil did as a strategy.

Happiness and pleasure and kindness and laughter- that's going to work for a life.

So, I've decided that instead of going back with paint and salt and pouring my energy out on his grave as a victim, I'm going to make myself a list of pleasures, a checklist of happiness, and I am going to do at least one every day.  My own version of a Bucket List with stuff like:

Sing to live music.
Eat fabulous flavors. 
Play a game.
Watch some comedy.
Feel the breeze.
Stand in the sun.
Indulge in a great conversation.
Hug someone I like.
Breathe deep on a fabulous smell.
Stop to examine natural beauty.
Dance.

I am going to hang my Pleasures Checklist up and check it off.

I will cultivate my happiness until it grows roots and bears fruit.
I will tend my pleasure until my body is permeated with it bones to skin.

Then I will laugh and touch and listen and teach healing.

My life is so beautiful.

Impervious

I thought this was several separate blogs until I started writing and somehow it all belonged.  It's a long one but then, so was my life process.  I eventually saw why and so will you. 

Once again, Bones got me.  Just when I think they've lost the touch, they pull out a conversation like the one at the end of Season 6 episode 16, "The Blackout in the Blizzard."

Brennan starts talking about how she's getting stronger.  Booth interrupts and asserts that she's always been strong.  She elaborates by describing how being strong is different than being impervious.  If something is impervious, if nothing can touch or affect it, it doesn't need to be strong.  She says that she used to be impervious, allowing no one to touch her, but that she's becoming less impervious and more strong.  She hopes that soon she'll be strong enough to engage him.

I watched this several times and have been reflecting today on these themes in my life.  I, too, am growing and can do things now, can hold things and live in ways I never could have 10 years or 20 years ago.  Maybe equally importantly I want to live in ways that I would not have valued or even seen before.

I, too, have been impervious.  I think back to high school and how hard I was, how calloused.  With good cause.  I was overwhelmed and afraid in an environment of indifference laced with just enough cruelty and disdain to send me into chronic anxiety which colored my every perception.  I secretly believed that I was irreparably flawed and I hated how I felt in my body so I became judgmental and superior and hard.  Self-righteous, smug, holier than thou, ferociously Christian.  Brittle, rigid, driven, impervious.

I heard a sermon on Sunday about kindness and I found myself stuck in a moment- equating kindness with codependent dysfunction and kindness with Christianity.  I'm in the pew, trying not to get sucked in to all the old craziness I've labored so many years to climb out of and I leave the sermon asking myself, "What does it mean that when I think of kindness, many of the people who have been most kind to me are the people from whom I'd least expect it?"

It took me a couple days of sitting with that to remember where I've been and what I've learned.  Jesus consistently interacted with the people the good religious folk of the day knew were complete losers:  a heathen mother of a demon possessed girl,  a loose half-breed and a foreign royal, an officer in the occupying army, the unclean who could not live in decent society, and a woman whose flaw kept her unable to enter the temple.  And not only did Jesus talk to these unclean, indecent, heathen people, he touched them, did what they asked, and then to really top things off, he praised them and made them the heroes of his story.

And so it should come as no surprise that my healing came through the very people I had been most impervious to.

Now when I'm thinking impervious, I especially think of beautiful, thin, and extremely physically competent people- the exact combination most likely to put my hackles up.  I can't tell you how many of these beautiful, thin, athletic people have dismissed me or mocked me.  There was junior high phy ed where the school washed and provided swim suits.  To keep sorting simple, each size was color coded. There were the slim reds and the average blues aplenty but I was a muddy purplish brown as I recall- the only one in sight.  In 7th grade, I joined a volleyball team, got bullied mercilessly, stood up to the bully, and quit, never returning to sports.  Then there was downhill skiing, the popular pastime of Bloomington, my new hometown.  I tried it since the kids at my bus stop raved about it and I wanted to be included.  After two humiliating nights of unending falls and crashes on the bunny hill, strategically located right under the chair lift where all my athletic peers could jeer and point on their way to the black diamond, I declared that there had to be a cheaper, less painful way to commit suicide and never set foot on a ski hill again.  And then there was "running the mile," that quintessential humiliation of high school, repeated every fall and spring. My classmates groused about it, but got down to business, and faster or slower, running or jogging, finished in minutes.  I walked the 6 laps and it took me 20+ minutes with everyone standing around for the last five or more, rolling their eyes and tapping their toes or chatting up a storm, with as much regard for me as for a late bus they were waiting for.

Even worse were the beautiful, thin, athletic people who tried to coach me in learning physical skills.  They would tell me how to do the activity and show me and then would grade and coach (read criticize) while I tried to do what they did.  I never could.  They'd tell me to keep trying like I hadn't been.  They'd encourage me to keep practicing which didn't help.  Ski instructors, gym teachers, youth group leaders, typing instructors, my parents- all these well-intentioned people tried to pass on their know-how to pretty much no avail.  I was uncoordinated, slow, awkward, and seemingly unable to learn the simplest things like how to throw a frisbee with accuracy or to snow plow down a hill or to touch type with speed.

But perhaps the worst of all were the beautiful, thin, athletic people who included me in their activities, over-riding my protests with assurances that it was a piece of cake.  My one attempt at cross-country skiing comes to mind.  My sister, a beautiful, physically competent person, invited me to go cross-country skiing with her because it was a sport as easy as walking, really.  We left our parents at the chalet, telling them we'd be back within the hour, and set off around the park.  My legs simply wouldn't  glide straight ahead so I basically did a slip-step-hobble which my good-sport sister assured me would turn into a glide with practice.  So we kept going way past an hour and whatever gains I had made in technique I had lost in exhaustion.  The light began to give out but we were past the half way point so there was no choice but to trudge on.  In the pitch black, we were met by a naturalist with a rescue sled 50 yards from the chalet.  Last time I skied. 

Other people seemed to have physical competence and I didn't, despite my best efforts to learn and their best efforts to impart their skills and include me in the fun.

Speaking of fun, these athletic people would talk about the high they'd get and how great they felt, how their stress melted away, and how that pleasant ache the next day reminded them of their good times.  I'd do an aerobics class and I'd tone the intensity level down or risk feeling exhausted.  If I hadn't worked out in a while, I'd feel nauseous and light-headed.  In my 20's I had a walking partner- yes, you guessed it a thin, beautiful, competent lady- and even though I enjoyed our walks, my feet ached so badly even with orthotics for my shoes that I could barely go.

Pain.  That's what I remember.  Pain and failure.

I've never written this all down before and I see now how flawed I felt, how I internalized all this failure, became extremely jealous, and came to hate the beautiful, thin, athletic people.  Not overnight.  I see now that I did try over and over, different years, different activities, until I had taken as much as I could.  Then I became impervious.

I was 30-something, in a lot of chronic pain and the person who eventually helped me find a position I could sleep in with minimal pain was Tara, my massage lady.  Very talented.  And thin, beautiful, and extremely physically competent- a yoga instructor, no less.  Blond, even.  Her help gave her a lot of credibility with me and she tried over several years to teach me various yoga things- stretches, techniques to shake out muscle tension- that she would model and then have me do.  Performing under her observant eye made me uncomfortable in ways I couldn't articulate, even to the point of silent resistant hostility.  She did mention to me once, very calmly, that I seemed very resistant to trying this stuff and she wondered why.  I didn't wonder.

She mentioned her work teaching yoga at an eating disorder clinic and then invited me to her beginner class.  I told her that I wasn't comfortable with people who were focused on physical perfection and she made a memorable comment about "yoga ass."  She talked about her own instructor and how she encouraged everyone to step onto their yoga mats for peace.

A year and a half ago, I decided I'd like to try her beginning yoga class so I asked for a private lesson or two to catch me up to speed beforehand.  She treated me like a standard beginner and I was completely overwhelmed in minutes.  I challenged some instructions saying they wouldn't work, and others I couldn't understand and others I simply couldn't do.  I felt humiliated and like I had disappointed yet another physically competent teacher.  I stayed for my massage, then went home distraught.  I wasn't starting on the ground floor; I was going to need to start in the sub basement.  I left Tim and the kids at home and drove to my high school track.  I began to walk in the rain.  I did a mile lamenting all the past failure and shame and cruelty.  Then, I turned around and walked a mile in the rain in the opposite direction for me.  Soaked and determined, I decided that no matter how many years ago I had abandoned myself, I was going to come back for myself every time.  I went to Conversation Circle within a couple days and lamented the whole thing again, wondering if I should just quit.  I remember Angela saying, "Well, if you left yourself by the side of the road years ago, get your keys, go back and pick yourself up."  This clinched it for me.

I approached Tara with a new proposal.  Would she give me 10 minute lessons?  This was as long as I felt I could handle.  I would practice at home between times.  Although she'd never heard of such an arrangement, she agreed.  I began where I really was- one minute on my hands and knees, a pose called Table.  I put post-it flags where my hands and knees were supposed to go because I couldn't even tell if they were under my shoulders and hips.  A week of practice later, we added Cat and then a week later Cow.  I was skeptical of Tara and her perceptive observation of me.  No that's not true, exactly.  I was afraid of Tara and her keen eyes.  I was really afraid that I would never be able to do what she said, that I would fail her as I had failed all the other thin, able people who could never understand how it could be this difficult.  How I could be this difficult.  But I tried anyway, with this odd attitude- part willingness, part defiance, part this false positive attitude, part self-deprecation.  Defensive wasn't the half of it.

But then we got some traction.  I learned some basic stuff and I experienced some success.  My post-it flags fell off and I could find my position without them.  Tara got the hang of giving me instructions, learned how much I could adapt at a time, and gave detailed instructions, one little piece at a time, over months, refining until I felt some mastery.

She also started demonstrating for me.  I was intimidated at first by her strength and agility but soon her matter-of-fact attitude about it all started to calm me.  And then I began to see in her body a pattern, like an archetype of where I was going rather than a standard I was straining to live up to.  I wondered if I touched her body if my body could learn directly.  As I grew stronger and more flexible, something began to give way inside me.  I began to bring problems to her and she would watch and then give feedback which actually helped me.  I began to feel proud of my progress instead of just embarrassed by my physical retardation.  I tried modifying poses or transitions into and out of them, trying to accomplish the goals she talked about but in my own way.  We added on and I had a routine going.

This is all in one paragraph, but it happened over like 9 months.  Very slowly yet steadily.

I remember the day she had me get on my knees and try to get my butt to my heels.  I moved like 1 inch and had 8 inches to go.  I laughed outloud! Hilarious.  It was so far but for the first time I knew that I would steadily improve and get towards there eventually.  "Yeah, that's going to take some practice."  And I started doing it three times a day.

We started abs.  I told her I couldn't find them and she instructed me to my best.  Ginger helped and Tara massaged and I practiced to my best some more.  Within a month or two, I could find them and now half a year later, I can actually contract my abs without contracting my chest muscles which I'm particularly pleased about.

And then my shoulders.  She wanted me to pull in my shoulder blades to support and lift my heart.  Couldn't find those either.  I'm about 6 weeks into this and am still trying to separate my upper and lower back muscles from each other and from my neck muscles.  But I'm getting better.  It'll come.

I've come to realize that I lost track of myself.  I literally couldn't find parts of myself.  I attribute this to the sexual abuse coupled with pain and other nasties.  My parts couldn't find either other, couldn't coordinate or communicate so whole structures of accommodations and work-arounds formed.  I was uncoordinated- my parts didn't "co-" anything.

This is a sad truth but it is not the final truth.


This last week, I had a new experience.  Since Tara got married and is moving away for a grand adventure, I asked to do a yoga recital for her.  She moved her massage table, I threw down my yoga mat, and I yoga-ed for 40 minutes, doing everything I knew to my best.  I was so proud of myself.  This was not one of many accomplishments by someone who always knew they could.  This was my first accomplishment and I was surprised and pleased and deeply moved.

I've got a new yoga instructor and am starting her beginner class in November but she will never see what Tara sees because I will come to her as a beginner like every other beginner and not as the frightened, impervious, stunted learner I was with Tara.  No one else will ever appreciate exactly how far I've come.  No one will ever see me again like Tara and I find that I already miss her kind eyes and her strong hands and she hasn't even left yet.


I've been reflecting a lot on a Bible verse which says that "love covers a multitude of wrongs."  I didn't get this.  It says "love covers a multitude of wrongs" but what what I heard was "make love cover a multitude of wrongs" like somehow if I believed hard enough and clicked my heels together and said that it would, my love for others would cover their wrongs.

In the days since my recital, I realize that it is Tara's kindness and goodness and competence which have covered over a multitude of wrongs done to me and perpetuated by me.  I had lost myself but she came all the way back and taught me how to find myself.  I will never again believe that I can't learn physically and I will never again put up with teachers who shame or blame or guilt me about how far back I am.  I will come back the long road for myself every time, as long as it takes.  And I believe that there will be good teachers with kind eyes ready to cultivate my strength. 

Doing everything I'd learned for the kind eyes of the woman who taught me everything, who remembered how I started at one minute with post-it flags- this changed me and what had begun to give way inside me broke open and spilled out.  Without trying I find that I have forgiven.  I have been wronged but now I have been righted.  What I have learned from her is more powerful than decades of failure and pain and cruelty and disregard.  After everything and everything, Tara's kindness has tipped the scales forever and I am healed. 


So, Tara, in your honor, I am going to release all of my bitterness and jealousy towards all those physically competent people I've always resented.  I will not hold grudges against them in the future but will remember you, release them with a blessing, and go looking for a helpful teacher instead.  Like Jesus who touched the losers and rewrote their stories, you've touched me deeply and I find myself less impervious and much stronger for it.  I have so much more to remember than pain and failure now.  It has been, as you said, a good run.  I am more grateful than I can say.

To commemorate all this, I intend to walk 6 laps on my high school track for you and then 6 laps the opposite direction for myself. 

I sit here with a soggy shirt from all the tears running down my face.  I don't know how to end.

Oh, now I do.

When he preached on kindness, I thought of you, Tara.  You're my hero.

Hollow Men

I just remembered this poem.  It really impressed me in high school and I wanted to remember the last part especially.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.