And Comb Your Hair

… If I’m to take you anywhere
I’ve got it made, while my woman is away
Off taming goats, with compassion I suppose…

Leonard Cohen sings, “Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in” over and over again in my head. Bittersweet optimism is what’s helping me get through these past couple days, which have been much of a downer for reasons of my own making, and no real fault of anyone’s.

In graduate school, someone once sent me an anonymous note that only read, “be kind to yourself”. I was going through a difficult time then, and reading that note made me burst into tears, in public, which is something I rarely do because it embarrasses and shames me so much to cry, even in front of people who are emotionally close to me. I’ve been reminded about being a bit too tough on myself by a few people of late, including my therapist who thinks I suffer from “emotional theft”, something I still haven’t been able to fully research online because I can’t find the right references. I’m probably not able to grasp the nuances of the term or diagnosis, but in simple terms I’m able to understand that he thinks that I allow other people’s feelings to take precedence over my own, and that results in pent-up frustration and a very intense cycle of emotional self-flagellation.

On my to-do list on my computer desktop, I have a checkbox next to “be kind to yourself” and it’s the first task I look at every day. I never check it off, because it’s a work-in-progress, a reminder of how much more I have to do, and how some things can never be crossed off a list. I try hard to remind myself that it’s okay to own my frustration and my feelings, disappointment and happiness – That’s what the therapy helps with. On days when I feel the universe is vast, beautiful, open and full of tantalizing joy to be bitten into, I can be so happy and really feel one with the universe. But on the darker days, I struggle with reconciling my intellectual understanding of what’s going on in my head with the bubbling frothy tumult in the pit of my stomach.

I have so much to work on, for myself. And so much to let go. I’m so humbled by the emotional rollercoasters I go through because they remind me just as I’m getting complacent about having found a comfortable place in my life, that I haven’t figured it all out. It would be nice if everything fell into place, because then maybe that would stop the not-so-great feelings, but I suppose if everything were the way I wished them to be, I wouldn’t have a foil to joy or yardstick for satisfaction. I know things aren’t meant to be easy. But because I know I have so much to work on, I know I’m not allowing myself to develop real (but then again, what is real?) intimacy with someone because I’d like to be someone’s perfect Pygmalion. I recognize intellectually that nobody’s perfect, and don’t fault people for not being perfect, because we are all a little knocked about and chipped. But somehow the expectations I have of other people don’t apply to me.

I feel like I’m out fighting windmills and someone has strapped mirrors to their blades.

Holy cow
I want you to get out
And tell all your friends
that I’m not myself again.