Chapter Four - Part One - Mud

Now, I feel pretty good about that higher perspective of this field I have found myself working in. I can see it for what it is so much better when I am standing up, instead of sitting amongst the clods of resistance and weeds of distraction. I still see them. They haven't vanished like a cartoon garden, but they aren't EVERYTHING. I've got my clod-busting hoe, and my rake with teeth to get them cleared out. I feel like taking a survey of the field, a walk to get a real feel for its potential.

Then guess what happens? It starts to rain. The smell of the wet soil is intoxicating, overwhelming in every way. I imagine myself wearing Wellies to deal with the mud because I'm fast sinking into -- what is this -- emotional distress. My heart hurts like a huge car-washing sponge being squeezed out over a bucket. Why, just when I start feeling like there is hope, would I be overcome by a storm of emotions?

For the past year, even as my life has steadily improved on so many levels -- my kids are thriving, I am very much in love with my husband (approaching our first anniversary), have been stable financially at least, have cleared out so many distractions -- I have been mourning very deeply the loss of so many fantasies and dreams that I had been fully vested in. All of the choices that I made that I thought were so smart, that led me to here, this empty field of mud and weeds. I feel wrong. I feel embarrassed. I don't feel like faking it anymore, and so I've moped around a lot in a drizzly way. And, while I can't tell you how thankful I am for my kids and my lover man, and so many other gifts, I have felt like I SHOULD BE MORE than I am and that has created a field of mud.

You really can't plant in mud. It's a big sticky mess. You walk along in it, and get up to your knees in no time. Believe me, I've tried. I've started several screenplays this year, a book about screenwriting, and well, you can see the blogs. Not a thing can grow in this morass. I must have some sober drying out. I must have some sunny days at some point.

I've concluded that you can't really force the sun to shine. Sure you could do a bunch of artificial stuff to move emotions to some new expression. You can affirm your contentment until the cows come home, but if you don't believe it then it doesn't stick. The drizzle returns and pretty soon there's more mud. Right now, it is raining outside, and I'm thinking about what I would do to stop it...nothing...there's a time for rain. There is a time to mourn, when it is safe to feel one's grief even if we'd prefer not to, and to feel it is as nourishing as a good rain is to a field. I'm really sad about a lot of things that have passed that I never grieved for at the time because it wasn't safe to be so raw. I'm safe now, and that's a good thing even if it means mud.

Chapter Three - Part One - Rocks in the Field

I'm sitting here looking at my resistance to screenwriting. It's such a big sucky clod in my pretty empty field. Is it a rock, I wonder, and not soil at all? Banging away at my resistance to screenwriting may at, age 45, not be the best use of my energy and skills. I hate giving up on things. I am still mad at myself for not making my marriage full of domestic violence and emotional abuse actually work out. No matter that it was clear it was never going to work out, I still hate feeling like a quitter. There are still remorseful moments even though my peace quotient is 100% better, and I love and am attracted to husband number two whole-heartedly. I just hate being a quitter. Though to be honest, I've also quit a number of occupations and friendships over the past year, that somehow, suddenly I realized were never going to be what I thought they should be, and so quitting and turning in a new direction IS AN OPTION TO CONSIDER.

I actually had to write an email to a good friend of mine who is a wonderful psychologist to ask him if he thought I was going crazy because I was rapidly dropping so many things out of my life. He assured me that this behavior was a normal part of the process of realizing my true self. And, I have a quote above my computer that says, "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need." - The Tao.

I am beginning to be able to wrap my head around this notion. For so long I have invested more heavily in the past than in the present or future. I have hung onto things, people, and ways of being like a freak hoarder, so that I could barely walk into the present without dragging these things unconsciously on my shoulders and hips. I said I would do it, so I'm gonna do it is the motto I had even when I got signals (like having my head pounded against the floor -- hello?) that sticking to something bad was futile and degenerate in every way.

Why, I have wondered, would I do this to myself? I have been too afraid of change for some reason. And, yet I'm a natural risk-taker, too. I've moved across the country several times, I've tried new and challenging things, I've walked away from many things and towards many others. Yet, there are essential things that I've stood by, that turned out to be bad ass stupid. It seems I may be addicted to pain. I'll tell you this, that if I feel a requisite amount of pain then I tend to be bound to that pain in a way that is harder for me to break the bond to that than, say, if something is boring or annoying.

Is this too psychological? Let me say then that, metaphorically speaking, I've finally started throwing the rocks out of the field. That's what tilling and plowing are for, after all. The rocks are plentiful, and not bad in and of themselves, but they're doing nothing to make the soil better for tender, young seedlings. I haven't yet decided whether screenwriting is the rock itself, or if it is merely a clod that is around the rock of something else holding me back from finally planting a high yield crop.