Pages

Sunday, September 08, 2019

Pretty Good Year

When you're happy and you show it, shake your fist! Like, you're rolling a pair of dice. Because happiness is such a controversial topic (at least to myselves and to others like me), I'm going to say that happiness - as all emotions and states of somatic being - is trans and, well, it can be dicey too...depending on the flavor of happy. Which in my book is a sustainable sort of setting. Void of course is like active resting; muscles need time to rest in order to perform again; peak experiences wouldn't be peak without the valley below, the lowlands, riiiight amiright?

I often wonder if, on the other side of or on the banks of menopause when the estrogen tide has receded, I'll feel the peaks and valleys. I hear from others that not so much. Will I miss it? Yes. No.

See the thing is, the oscillations between ominous dread; fits of joy; calm assessment; deep absorption in (seemingly, or perfunctory) mundanity; awe; riveting realization of mortality (it is a real thing awrighty and not just for other people 'over there somewhere') tessellate in tandem at a pace I find adroit, incredible, and altogether surreal some days. The thing is, it's ramping up as I approach what I'm pret-ty sure is The Real Deal (menopause).

At the same time, at least this month season, I also feel way-hay-hay more capable of enjoying appreciating the inscrutable ride. Oh god yes! Still freaking out. Maudlin. Freefalling. All that. But (the thing is) I do not feel so utterly alone in it, or as alien (even to myself) as I have before. And that has made a megalithic difference.

Here are my latest reading recommendations:

The Body is not An Apology - The Power of Radical Self-Love / Sony Renee Taylor
Movement Matters / Katy Bowman
Flash County Diary - Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life / Darcy Steinke
Women, Food and God / Geneen Roth

Last year I made a vow to myself. It'll seem like not much to anyone without disordered / emotional / addictive eating patterns. But if you're an addict of any sort and degree (and everyone is, in our first world capitalist patriarchal matrix) you will appreciate it anyhow. I vowed to never go on a diet again. I gave up calorie counting yeaaaaars ago. It's not about that. It's about a bunch of stuff I don't want to take the time to write about but in a nutshell, refraining from using food (the restriction of) as a means to punish, reward, make up for, any overeating or emotional eating or a means to lose weight. So of course I gained weight and along with it the terrifying notion that I would never stop gaining weight and never get my shit together buuuuut 'getting my shit together' mindset is what got me in this mess (addictive patterns) to begin with.

So I've kept my vow. And things even out, and they go haywire, and for months it's mostly evened out in the realm of extreme eating and bingeing but more importantly the fear around all of that (I am out of control and I  will never be in control / safe / ok) has calmed and doesn't feel (at least this season!) like a Pandora's box inside of a Jack-in-the-Box just waiting to uncoil and vomit all over my carefully (re)constructed life.

So the thing is...I guess (today) I'm feeling more ok with feeling effed up (human); terrified; inscrutable; slippery; or at least I recognize that all that's real but so is effulgence and cool shit in life; other people feeling the same way and we are all on this planet together. And I can't ever 'figure it out'. But by god! I can sure appreciate my good fortune to sit in front of a computer and write all of this after a day of moving my body through space and planes to feel good, to feel, to create tension and torsion, to make myself useful, to gather and crack wild filberts, to meet other bodies with skin muscles fur feathers hair teeth scales and to make decisions all day long about how I want to be in this body alongside all the other ones.

My advice is to move your body. Any old which way, whatever feels good. That's the next vow I made for myself last winter although I didn't know how it would unfold, exactly. I just knew that I needed to ease off the cerebral and chart some territory in my own skin. For me this means slowing down. Paying attention. Living inside my one awesome body, dealing with chronic and acute pain, and listening; responding; learning how to tune in. I mean for reals. No shortcuts. Moving my body because it feels good and not categorically driving it around full throttle in order to burn calories so that I can lose weight is a huge difference in the way I'm feeling and doing things these days.


I'm going for a walk in this wild woolly watershed going on out there today.