Happy toes

Its really not a good thing when I get bored.  I don’t mean your average, “GAWD, there is NOTHING to do.”  I get cabin fever, as in climb the walls, get me the f*k out!  I get caught up in my head, with an incessant tape, playing over and over and over, and it tells me how lame my life is.  There gets to be this mirky hurricane stirring in my brain, but I can’t get out of it.  My brain doesn’t open up all four lanes of the freeway and tell ya to get out.  It doesn’t offer a bus to Houston.  It locks you in the Superdome to swim in the misery.  And when it gets to the point of eruption, I do really stupid shit, like think I can spend two weeks in China alone (I never would’ve made it out of the airport) or decide to snow shoe to the medicine wheel when its 40 below in a blizzard.

    

I like to get totally lost, and mostly, I do it because I know if I get lost inside my head, its gonna be bad.  And, there are times I find myself going so far in, the only thing to do is to go out and get lost, because I know how hard it is to climb out when you get that far in. Get lost in a moment, or a feeling I haven’t had for a while, or a place I’ve never been.  I want OUT, out of the house, out of the walls, out of my head.  If I can get lost, I know I’ll find what it is I need. 

I get this urge, like an itch you can’t reach, to breathe.  To wander aimlessly and watch things happen without thinking.  To not wonder, “Why?”

I’m a big why-er.   And, why can be dangerous…especially if I’m the one answering the question. I prefer a place without the why, where I can smile…with my whole being.  I want even my toes to be happy.

 I’ve been bottled up for a couple of years. I’ve heard of writer’s block, but it never hit me until about a year and a half ago.  I’m not much of a talker, but words have always poured out onto the page.  Then… it stopped.  Nothing but a blinking cursor and a feeling that I just needed to get it out, but I wasn’t sure WHAT.  

I got scared, and it stopped my words.  Because, I discovered, when you write it down, when you give it a voice, people are forced to listen.  I’m still not sure how that works, but they can turn their back on you when you speak, and ignore you, but they never do that when you write it down.  They don’t turn you off.  They can’t make you disappear….

Moreover, I discovered people close to you don’t like you admitting your problems…despite the fact we all f*n have ‘em...somehow it means you had a bad childhood or your reality of the situation was off.

What I learned a while ago though, is this: those heart wrenching moments of grief and heartache, those trials I didn’t think I could climb out of, they were a gift.  A new opportunity and a new life.  A chance to be better…to fulfill a potential I felt for a long time I had wasted.  

I was in a serious funk when I booked my trip to China. I had not written a single word with a meaning in a year.  I was telling myself I didn’t know what to say, but as long as I’m being honest, and looking back, I knew.  

I wasn’t going to get lost.  I was running away.  Looking in the rearview, I didn’t want to write it, because then I would have to listen.  It would force me, like writing always has, to make sense of it, come to terms.  Deal.  Cope.  Accept.  I didn’t want to.

I wasn’t happy—with a lot of aspects of my life.  I was tired.  Tired of laundry and cleaning and getting up at  4:00 in the morning.  Tired of hearing the teacher glad I could make it in a condescending tone, despite her unwillingness to schedule a conference after 5:00 or on a Friday.  Tired of the Schmoo crying because she wanted me home like I used to be.  Tired of the battle with my husband who hated his job so much that it gnawed away at every ounce of   happiness and every brief moment.  We were starting to hate each other.

He quit three days before I left, and to say I was pissed is an understatement.  I cried the whole 22 hours to China, and it seemed to seal the deal on the decision I thought I had made.

But, I got there…to China.  A place I had always wanted to go.  I don’t know why I always wanted to go there.  Probably because growing up in a town with two ways out, it was as far away as a kid could get.  So foreign and different, and a long, long ways from everything and everyone that seemed bogged down and sad and fading.  

I told my sister I wanted to get into Tibet.  THAT has been number one on the bucket list, and it remains because of protests.  I’d rather be locked out, than locked in.  So, we went to some Buddhist temples. I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t the hardest time in my life coinciding with something I never thought I’d see.  Life falling apart, but at the same time, a realization that you are exactly where you were meant to be, tried to be.  The realization that I could actually afford to go, because I worked to get somewhere, despite the ever-playing tape in my head saying I would never get “there”…to that place, the literal and metaphorical “there.”

But, we made it, sweating and tired, after walking in the heat and humidity, and me putting everything in my head into a confined space, to think about later, as Scarlet O’Hara always did, to the temple.  I burned some incense, and found myself standing in front of the biggest Buddha I have ever seen, and THIS hit me:  “If by renouncing a limited happiness one would see an abundant happiness, let the spiritually mature person, having regard to the abundant happiness, sacrifice the limited happiness.”

I was standing in a temple, thousands of years old, dedicated to happiness.  I can’t tell you how many times I had read that quote…probably daily.  And it hit me, mindfulness, happiness, compassion.

Sometimes, its hard to have compassion for yourself, we are, after all, our own worst critics.  But, I came to the realization, in one swift moment, that happiness is a choice.  It isn’t a path or a journey.  It just is…always and forever there for you to grab.  It’s a decision, really.

I just turned 37.  I’ve made mistakes; I’ve loved deeply; I’ve grieved intensely; I’ve lost a few times.  I didn’t try as hard as I could have on more than one occassion; I’ve made mistakes.  But, if I can’t control that tape in my head…my thoughts…only then have I failed.  If I can’t reach out and grab the happy, and smile with my toes, well, that’s my own fault.  

As cliché as it sounds, shit happens.  It is what it is, and it boils down to which tape you decide to let play in your head.  I’m just happy to get the experience…of living, of breathing, of loving…of totally screwing up, but loving myself just the same. And it was a long road, but that loving part, that happiness part, it includes me now.

I don’t want to run or get lost.  I want to sit in the now, and be grateful for the now and everything it makes me.  

Acceptance is hard.  Its REALLY hard, because I tell myself what I don’t deserve and sometimes settle for a limited form of happiness.  I want abundant happiness.  I want happy toes.  At the end of the day, it’s the one I decide to accept into my life.