Wanderlust and Music Therapy

“I hand myself over to the music,” he wrote. 

You might use this trick often, if you were born with a hairtrigger scale. Music - like any art - can be as superficial or deep as you make it. I make it medicine. It’s the drug that helps turn spine to steel when dealing with life’s heaviness. Useful alchemy when all your fine-tuning efforts don’t seem effective enough alone. 

Maybe this emotional thing is a defect. Maybe it’s a blessing. Like most things, it depends on what you make it.

“I hand myself over to the music.”

The words cut a string invisible to the naked eye. There was a little shock, I shuddered, and a piece of self awareness broke the surface. I hung it out to dry in the sunlight and chewed the side of my thumb cuticle like my brain chews thoughts.

I run far more from the heavy than I’d care to admit.

I drive long distances to nowhere in particular. I grab a random to-do from mid-air and throw some clothes on, hurry out the door.

All for the unconscious therapy teasing me in the form of my car’s speakers blasting what I need into my ears - be it razors, ocean, bullets, ice, silk, canyons, sticks to break bones and remend in a fiery resurrection of some kind. Meanwhile, I get the Windex I think I need or browse the bookstore to thrust myself into a crowd of others looking to lose themselves in other people’s words.

Now that I’m a bit more aware of my behavior, the medicine seems to work better. I feel closer to whole, closer to solid and not quite so mercurial. There is nothing right or wrong, better or worse with your head in the clouds but a lifeline to the ground seems a healthy option for me.

It IS about control. Life seems unwieldy but if you’ve got some of your shit together, then you’ve got what you need to navigate with some dexterity. Sometimes the music helps carry the weight so that I can devote myself far more to living and less about worry, shame, fear, self-destruction.

Not the perfect solution but sure a lot closer to functionality than without.

Basketball

Right now, life is watching a basketball circling the rim. If breath had fingernails, it'd be gripping your thigh.

Dunk? No dunk?

Only time knows. I'm following it. Waiting to see. Are we really that temporary? Do I need to let go?Everything is temporary, even illusory.

But I'm talking about us. We. I can tell myself that forever is relative to my finite lifespan. It doesn't change the drumming beating my insides. To deny it would be a lie. I tried that once.

Yeah. Fuck that.

I acknowledge the truth, or the beginning of what I can see of it. In one dimension I scream and claw away all of my skin. In another I'm laughing and dancing.

It hurts. Always like fire. But I have few alternatives, because burning the other way is unacceptable.

I am small without all the weight. My hands find the ribs poking close to softness on the outside. Too soft. And all the hollows between. I don't know this person. I don't know what she is or if I even like her.

"You know, I never wanted to have children. Your father tricked me. I wanted to enjoy my life."
"Get the fuck out of here."
"Get out of the way."
"Leave me alone."
"You are draining me, Chance."
"I don't want you near me."
"Don't TOUCH me!"
"I should never have had kids."
"Go get it yourself."
"Ugh. Let me do it. MOVE."
"Whatever."
"Get off of me. Just go. Go to your room."
"You are stressing me out."
"Goddammit, why? Why are you here right now?!"

I ate myself sick often as a child. Beyond childhood. Between trying to be quiet and sense her moods, I developed a passive self hatred and empathy large enough to swallow an elephant. Survival techniques to better sense her moods and navigate around them however I could.

She didn't mean to hurt or ruin me. It was her pain. Her own journey of emotional neglect and abuse that hurt so badly, it bled in to mine. Heavy inheritance to work through. I try to give myself the love and acceptance she simply could not. It feels wrong every time - like loving yourself is a selfish thing and selfishness is a dirty word. Self absorption. ICK.

But I've grown from depressive anxious to regulating these these moods on my own far better than I ever thought I could. Even played with anger which has been very useful, strangely. Mothering myself has been a exercise.

A couple of months ago, someone told me "Chance, you are not broken; your self perception is. Fix THAT. You don't need to be fixed." It has helped immensely.

But, I circle back 'round the rim now.

Because that - along with 6 months of focus - has also spun up this curiosity and awareness of all life areas. It's why I'm tormented now. Taking a hard at what I thought and felt were stable places. Unchanging anchorage.

Now I am adrift. Scared in the river again. No paddle and a branch threatening to make this a whole lot more REAL.

What about US? We are open about our situation. I can't seem to stop crying.

Fear

Feeling like it's much later than it is. 

A rhythm out of sync.

But this feeling is something with roots, beyond jet lag. It's been building, confusing me, whispering, growing agitated.

It doesn't speak my primary language but I understand. It's begging to crack through the surface into the light.

It unnerves me. I'm not sure if it's a monstrosity I should kill on sight or if it's an unknown, yearning to BE known, something I should observe and decide to nurture. It's too soon to know much of anything.

All I know is, it's part of me. 

~

A friend of ours told me last week that I write well. His word choice was more eloquent than that but suffice to say, it meant a lot coming from him. I consider him one of the most brilliant, talented human beings I've had the pleasure to know in my life - an amazing writer whether song, prose, or joke. 

Despite his own uprooted life journey in recent times, his ability to ground those that flail to get their feet back to Earth does not seem compromised while he picks up the pieces from the shipwreck he's (mostly) survived. 

My main ship still sails, but I have this impending sense of doom. It flutters its wings against my ribcage, pecking holes in all my bones. Sometimes its screaming echoes up my esophagus, threatens to escape through my own mouth. But ultimately, it circles past the larynx, into my skull, muffling my prefontal faculties in a cocoon. 

One day, the bird will make its way through and take over my body. Until it does, it will burn in me, dying and regenerating, until it has its day in the open air, feral, free, fighting or flying.

I worry about what this means. I bite my fingertips to keep the fear from seeping too far into reality, safely tucked inside where all it does is burn and feed and destroy. I figure better in me than outside to destroy what's been created. 

Dali's Persistence of Memory implants firmly within my amgydala.

There's another voice in there too. Calm. "What if the end you fear is the beginning you need?"

I hate that voice sometimes. The Pioneer. That son of a bitch.

But I'll write about it anyway. Maybe it will help me figure out how to get through whatever it is I'm going through. 

Facebook post - July 22, 2014

Dreamt of holding a baby boy up to my chest and liking it. Of having a black rottweiler/wolf puppy mix that attracted 3 adult mixes from the wild to come indoors. At first, Shawn tried to protect me from that knowledge by entering the room the wolfies were in and quietly wrestling them. For some reason, I knew what was happening and tried to help .... But my efforts, I ended up letting the biggest one get through the other door, deeper into the house.

Eventually we got them out. But I kept the puppy with me. He came everywhere with me. One day, I was caught up in a crowd of friends. We were goofing off. One of us thought it would be funny to purposely cram is together so we leaned on each other. I joined in but after a few minutes, I felt the familiar heat spot my against my left hip get less warm. My antics had left me to smother my puppy. I tried to bring him back but he was gone.

Facebook post - July 21, 2014

"Expansion" - A mixed media sculpture with bronze and electricity by Paige Bradley

Expansion

“From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a box already built for us to fit inside. Our umbilical cord never seems to be severed; we only find new needs to fill. If we disconnected and severed our attachments, would we shatter our confinements and expand beyond our shell? Would the world look different? Would we recognize ourselves? Are we the box that we are inside, and to be authentically ‘un-contained’ would we still be able to exist? This is the irony of containment. As long as we don’t push on the walls of our surroundings, we may never know how strong we really are.” PAIGE BRADLEY

Facebook post - July 18, 2014

My doctor recommended/prescribed:
*For anxiety:
Xanax 0.25 mg only as needed for bad attacks 
Continue Holy Basil

*For migraines: 
B12 - 400 mcg sublingual 2x/wk
Magnesium 400 mcg 2x/day 
Potentially cease all oral contraceptive 

*For anxiety, depression, & migraines
Psychiatrist (finally a referral!) because the doc agrees my silly brain is causing me lots of strife and contributing to my physical ailment

Facebook post - July 17, 2014

“You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.” 
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls