Willing (Blog #1070)

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This morning I worked backstage for the national tour of Trolls Live! This isn’t as sexy as it may sound. My first official duty when I got to work? Sweep and mop the stage. Which, by the way, was covered in glitter, which one of the characters (Guy Diamond) farts out his butt. (Sheesh. Fart glitter. Toddler humor.) Anyway, just as I was really getting into the mopping part, a screw came out of my mop handle, and the head fell off. (I hate it when my head falls off.) So I picked up the screw, threw it away, took the mop out to my car, and repaired everything with a spare bolt and nut I found in my toolbox.

Well.

By the time I got back to the stage to finish mopping, a curtain (the main) had been lowered onto the stage. No problem, I thought, I’ll just mop behind it. But first I decided to look in front of the curtain, which is where the mop broke, just incase there was another screw or piece that had fallen out. Someone could step on it, I thought. Alas, one of the crew was behind the curtain, and when they noticed that someone in front of the curtain (me) was ruffling it, they sort-of started freaking out and (albeit gently) reprimanding that person (me again). “Don’t touch the curtain,” they said. “The doors are open. People are coming in.”

Of course, they didn’t know WHY I was touching the curtain. How could they? They didn’t ask for an explanation, and, being on the other side of the curtain and not realizing until “too late” that they were even talking to me, I didn’t offer one. This is an example of the idea that we all live in different worlds. I was living in the “I need to move the curtain to keep someone from getting hurt” world, and they were living in the “that curtain’s delicate and expensive, and the show’s about to start” world. And whereas there was a time I would have thought that their world was right and my world was wrong or vice versa, more and more I don’t see anyone else’s world as better or worse, morally superior or inferior, than mine.

Just different.

This being said, a part of me was still upset by the interaction. My Inner People Pleaser has been “online” for so long that it’s never fun (like, how exciting!) for me to be corrected. Plus, apparently my personality has been intentionally designed to be largely independent and function via an inner mantra that sounds like, “Don’t tell me what to do.” I accept this about myself. Not just because it resonates as true for me, but also because I’m tired of trying to change it. Not that I can’t improve or that I’m always right, but I am who I am. Accordingly, who and what I am IS right–for me.

Getting back to accepting myself in the above situation, years ago I would have fretted for hours, if not days, about what happened, thinking both that I had done something wrong and that–oh no!–someone didn’t like me. After almost six years of therapy, almost three years of daily writing and introspection, and just over a month of EMDR treatments, I’m happy to report that I got over it pretty quickly. My point being that you don’t have to be a slave to your emotional reactions forever. Your inner demons can be tamed and quieted. This being said, I truly believe that our emotional reactions only downshift once they’ve been given permission to speak and once we hear them.

Once we hear ourselves.

In Trolls Live! it’s said that one of the characters won (I think) the fuzziest hair contest in 2016, 2017, and 2019. “What happened in 2018?” one of the other characters says. The answer?

“We don’t talk about 2018.”

Alas, this is how most of us handle the distressing emotions and situations in our lives. We shove them down. Ignore them. Bury them. Cover them up. We don’t talk about IT, whatever IT is. And whereas I understand and am completely and utterly familiar with these strategies, they simply haven’t worked as a permanent and healing solution for me. What has worked? Talking about, feeling, and accepting every scary and uncomfortable whatever. Listening to and learning from my body, feelings, and emotions, however unpleasant or gross that process may be. Looking at IT. Mr. Rogers encouraged, “Feelings are mentionable AND manageable.” When you’re stuck in embarrassment or shame (I did something wrong), it can feel like you’re going to fall apart, to implode. But I can absolutely promise you that regardless of what you’ve buried inside you, you’ve been given an inherent wisdom that knows how to handle its resurrection and transformation.

Several minutes after the “you’re on the wrong side of the curtain” incident, I got excited about the fact that I was having a very ancient emotional reaction. Why? Because it let me know there was a part of me that needed to be heard, that I imagine has been wanting to express itself for quite a long time. That’s been wanting to take the stage and be my teacher. Along these lines, ore and more I’m grateful when someone pushes my buttons. Because they show me where my buttons are located. They show me the parts of myself I’ve been ignoring. (Thankfully, after all this time and trial-and-error–I now know what to do with this invaluable information.) Likewise, I’m even beginning to find gratitude for the pains in my body. Because they too are crying out for attention. And they make me curious. Like, Sweetheart, what’s going on here? What story do you have to tell me? What have I not been willing to hear until now?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Aren’t you perfect just the way you are?

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On Dead Batteries and Patterns (Blog #889)

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This morning I began painting a client’s fence and ended up spending all day–eight hours–completing the task. And whereas the project, which involved rolling and brushing two coats of sealant on the fence, went well, both the hot sun and the labor wore me out. Seriously, I can’t tell you how done I was when it was all over. In more ways than one.

I’ll explain.

Before I stained the fence, my client and I agreed on a price. No issues there. But we also agreed on another price for me to take down no small number of decorations that were on the fence (because they didn’t want to take them down, and I obviously couldn’t work around them). Anyway, that was the original question–“What would you charge me to take this stuff down?” Again, we agreed on a price. Well, today when I finished the fence, they said, “Now you just need to put the stuff back up, and I’ll give you a check.”

I paused then said, “Let me put my things in the car, and we can talk about that.”

On my way to the car, I talked to Jesus. By this I mean I thought about how I was going to respond. The old me would have sucked it up, put the shit back on the fence, and effectively cut my rate in half. But the new me knew that if I did the work without additional pay, I’d end up resenting this person I’m currently on good terms with. So when I got back from the car, I said, “We agreed on this price for the fence, and that price for taking the stuff down, but nothing was said about putting it back up.”

“Well I just assumed,” she said.

“That’s not a good thing to do,” I replied. “If you’d asked me to take the stuff down and put it back up, my quote would have been twice as much.” Then I added, “As things stand, I’ve done everything we discussed.”

For a moment they didn’t say anything, at which point I said, “Why don’t you think about this, and I’ll be right back.”

When I returned, we agreed–I’d put the stuff back up, and they’d pay me for my time.

Recently I blogged about checking in with yourself before having important conversations (especially about money), and I’m using this as a real-life example of how it can work. When I checked in with myself, I knew I needed to confront. Did I love doing it? No. My inner people pleaser was on the floor in the fetal position screaming, Don’t make them mad. But my inner business man, y’all, was online, ready and able to speak calmly and clearly, ready to let the chips fall where they may.

This evening my friend Justin helped me–how do I say this delicately?–put a dead dog in a trash bag. Obviously, for the dog’s owner, someone I care deeply about, this was a sad event. And whereas I admit it was sad for me when I got there, it was mostly another odd job. Get the dog out of the dog house and into the trash bag. Well, Justin propped his phone up and turned his flashlight on (don’t worry, I’m not going to go step-by-step through what happened), and I said, “I have a light in my car.” But damn if not one but both of my flashlights’ batteries were dead too. Ugh, today is seriously the day of death. This evening I found out a dear acquaintance is in hospice.

After Justin and I got the job done (in the semi-dark), we went back to his house and visited, and it was only after I got home (at two in the morning) that I realized the synchronicity of the dog dying and my batteries dying too. Anyway, I’ve been chewing on it, since the idea behind synchronicity isn’t that one thing causes another thing to happen, but that two related things happen at the same time–and here’s the important part–to convey meaning. So I’ve been thinking about the meaning of the dead batteries.

For me, flashlights help you through the dark. They help you see clearly. They show you the way. Batteries, however, are what charge flashlights–they are the source of power behind that which allows you to see clearly. Well, lately I’ve been talking about changing old patterns (old batteries) for new ones, and I think this is just another way of saying the same thing. Old batteries, old patterns can’t last forever. They weren’t designed to. Yesterday I talked about seeing clearly, and I think it’s important to say again–how clearly you see others is a direct result of how clearly you see yourself. That is to say, how clearly you see your patterns. For example, today my client didn’t choose to directly ask me to put their stuff back up, but rather assumed I would and conveyed this in their full-of-assumption statement about my coming back to do more work. Well, the only reason I could see this for what it was is because I used to assume constantly, especially when it came to money.

Consequently, I got screwed a lot.

And not in a good way.

While painting today I listened to a spiritual-type podcast in which a guest told the host she’d been working on not shaming herself and had just been asked to shame someone else as part of a politics-related job interview. “What should I do?” she said. “Is just makes me sick.” Well, the host said they thought her feeling sick was a good indicator of how she felt about the job offer. They also said that sometimes the universe tests us. Said another way, sometimes life gives us opportunities to step out of old patterns and into new ones. I’m not going to shame myself or others–period. I’m not going to let people walk all over me. Sometimes life gives you a chance to change your dead batteries for new ones.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It's the holes or the spaces in our lives that give us room to breathe and room to rest in, room to contain both good and bad days, and--when the time is right--room for something else to come along.

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