Magnetic Poles Switching Inside

This experience of discovering the benign meningioma, struggling to get ready for it to go, having it removed and then recovering from its absence has been quite a process. For years leading up to the discovery of this tumor, I really was in quite a struggle to understand how my life had gotten so far off course from my dreams, and I had ascertained lots of bits of information about the past, and ideas of how to get back to what I had a will for really pursuing, but I couldn't quite put it together. As I write this, I can see that perhaps my journey is unique, maybe other people can get a grasp onto things much more easily. On the other hand, I also wonder if other people who run into these sort of monumental physical, emotional and mental challenges might be able to use what I've discovered on their own quests, so I'll share a particularly surprising part of this story...

The Sun XIX

A child's mind invents many future potentials, and sifts them as she grows. She sends them out looking for approval, and doesn't realize that approval often comes to the thing she's least interested in. She pursues the least interested future with all her energy because ultimately she desires the approval. The potentials she deeply loves, the ones that involve her so completely that time passes without her knowledge, get branded as distractions from the things she ought to do and so they're put on a shelf display in her head as evidence of bad habits.

At some point in adulthood the shelf falls apart and suddenly those future potentials start a mess in the mind. They play hide in seek with her as it dawns on her that her lack of happiness has something to do with the fact they've gone missing. There are marvelous books by worthy authors that help her find them (CG Jung, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Julia Cameron, Paul Ferrini, Leo Buscalia, M. Scott Peck MD, off the top of my head). Classes are taken, and yet even when one piece is found and put back on the shelf, others are lost. Therefore, a great swath of time goes to piecework while still giving the most time to those things that get some approval. The battle to actually take some discovery off the shelves of life and to wear them and live in them is already known to gain disapproval, and that is not something she desires.

Because approval has become so important, she is even likely to surround herself with echoing voices of friendships that agree with the approved choices, and that in turn leaves all of those shelved selves exposed to further disapproval. The internal battlefield between the bits of desired denials and the framework of desired approval leaves her frustrated with even having another potential at times, or frustrated with her approving friends and family because they don't see her true desires as worthwhile, except perhaps as a hobby. When the secretly loved potentials make unplanned exposures, her urge to quickly finish them and get them off her mind can lead to self-exhaustion and frizzle-frazzlement.

Am I making any sense?

Last post, I talked a bit about rebellion, and this story I'm outlining is a further exposure of the wrestling I've been doing for almost all my life. For some reason now that I have a flow of water again around the part of my brain that puts things in order, I am able to see that the approval/disapproval war is an old, old habit. I also have the sense that I may actually be experiencing a reversal of that order. Now, I recognize everything that I'm supposed to do for approval from many who have been a lifetime around me, and I am feeling disgusted by it, by my own former behavior, and finding that I simply cannot condone allowing it to remain in the limelight. It comes up daily, moment to moment. As if the magnetic poles of the order within me have switched, my strongest desire is to bring out all of those uncommitted desires and let them be experienced for the rest of my life, whether or not I'm ultimately understood. In turn the modes of operation that attain some sense of comprehension from much of my family  and some of my old friends are being boxed and labeled with things like "taking care of external perfectionism," "the right diet," "beliefs that have nothing to do with me," "rising to expectations," and "buying artificial pleasures."

Meanwhile, as I dust off desires that have been hidden away everyday, more potentials appear. It is as if I've landed on the island of misfit toys and they're all so happy to have me. These desires are not all quite working yet, and I'm not but partially developed on most of them, so I have the sense of practice and experiment. It isn't that I haven't tried all of them once or even often, but simply that now instead of killing myself to get something done and out of the way, I sense I have the opportunity to see what unfolds over time, and that as part of my healing doing it little by little is essential.

Life's Rebellious Surprises

One of the oddest experiences of myself after surgery is the feeling, re-feeling of being a somewhat rebellious teenager. Now, in fact when I was a teenager I sort of rebelled against expectations by succeeding on certain levels. I was “Head Girl” at my high school, East High in Denver, and I had a starring role in the musical, and sang in a National Award Winning Jazz Choir on the official levels, competed on speech trails, and kept up my grades sort of. But I was risque on unofficial levels. Like when I went with my family to Australia, I had a wild two-day affair with an absolute stranger named Les, who was the first young man I knew with an earring, tattoo, leather pants and a motorcycle. I scared my cousin Josh to being unnerved as I went for a ride away with Les, and later made out with him in an arcade, and then had us meet us at a bar in Manley. I bought my first red mini skirt the next day, and later introduced Les to the cousins, but honestly, I would only be in Sydney for one or two more days, and it was already fading even as I got stoned with him and rode over Sydney Harbor bridge on the back of his motorbike...

she was just 17, if you know what I mean...

So, at the moment I feel very allied with the girl I was who willingly tried a relationship with the world expressed by Les, that wasn't so darned predictable, or so I thought. Part of this is because I’m having a resurfacing of pain. Somehow Tylenol has not been keeping the pain of my left side at a minimum. I can’t stand the percocet or oxcodone and there was a great resistance by the medical group for me to try anything else...so even though I’ve been taking a maximum dose, the pain has been building me into a pretty grumpy, pissy person who expects some other people in the family to keep up the actions I normally do just exactly like I do them. Making peace with help coming in its own way is a challenge. I have become a finger-pointing, impatient shouter who has had to repeatedly disappear under the covers of the bed and count to ten as I dream about shaving off the rest of my hair and wearing the most grungeful expression I can find.

I finally started calling all the nurses from under the covers and telling them that they’d have to do more surgery or something because it seemed clear to me that as marvelous as it felt Monday, it was equally horribly just two days later. Something was NOT RIGHT about healing with so much pain, so little sleep and the inability to keep even my glasses on to see because of the trouble they caused.

The nurse I finally reached guessed right from the start about my grumpiness, and said, ah, yes. She asked about what I was taking and whether I wanted to get back on the narcotics, and I said not a chance unless they had to do surgery again. She agreed that the narcotics seemed to have made me sick even in the hospital. So, she said, “well, you’re two days early but why don’t you try Ibuprofen and see what happens.”

HALLELUJAH! My swelling brain is always the thing. I’ve had a near lifetime, well since rebellious teenage moments, migraines, and the accoutrement of aspirin and caffeine with Tylenol has always been the answer. Not being able to take the bits and pieces together has been pissing me off because I know what I know about my body and swelling. That’s why I’m avoiding wheat, dairy, nightshades, legumes as it is and that’s why I’m taking a gazillion anti-histamines along with the anti-seizure medication. Still that is not all enough to reduce the brain swelling and so finally a little addition of Ibuprofen, well, ahhhhh, it gave me hope.

Thus, I took three at first, then back to Tylenol four hours later, then four at bed time, and lo and behold I slept an entire four hours! And, took more Tylenol and felt okay for 2 more hours, and even though my head hurt there was this sense of opening a box of treasures inside, a feeling that I could begin to turn around the pain and become restful and peaceful again. This brought me back from the angry rebellion and into a notion of simple rebellious alliances that had more to do with ideas than with a feeling of trying things that could only last a few days in a hug of hopeless. You see when I had had that affair with Les back in 1981, I knew it was only for a few days. It shocked me when I received letter after letter in the following months from him with half a dozen stamps each. I don’t remember even writing back to him because already I’d sent myself into so many official experiences and projects and friendships locally. The few things I took back into my life from Les were a red mini-skirt, and how to roll my own cigarettes with Drum Tobacco. This appearance looked enough like a rebellion in 1982 to cause others to wonder what I was up to, and I felt ahead of the crowd as I wanted to, but in fact, had sunk back into routine.

Now that I’m a middle-aged woman with a plan to keep a connection to this brain surgery experience, I’ve concluded I won’t be the one who hides the scar in a new cover-up haircut. Rather I will show off for a while, this experience kind becomes of like a red mini-skirt from years before, and must be expressed by asymmetry and possibly some wild color after I get the staples out and the wound all healed. My willingness is to discuss the ups and downs of the whole affair this time, not just all pleasantries (for I was certainly frightened by the chance that Les could have really taken me down the wrong road, and this was something I put myself out for experiencing until it finally happened with some other lost boys, one after another), and at the same time understand it is actually a temporary upheaval. I will turn a corner at some point down the line and realize that brain surgery was something that happened and made an impact and scared the family even when I wasn’t particularly afraid but mostly was completely devoted to beholding the instance of the moment. Rather than abandoning its story, as I did abandon Les rather cruelly, this time I’m going to express this near rebellion with others who share the feelings, and celebrate the growth and travel through it, the good stuff and yes, the bad stuff even on my own part, too. I’m not willing to hide the distraction of this wondrous time, and I’m no longer willing to ignore the meanings of brief love affairs with life’s surprises.