Various R words and liberation

Rest — there has to be Rest in liberation, but I create

Resistance to that rest, because how can I rest until I am liberated? Ignoring that it’s essential to rest along the way.

Repetition — liberation is so repetitive. The chains weave and lock themselves around me when I’m not resting, when I’m resisting truths, and I have to unlock them and myself again and again and again.

Does that count as a Revelation?

Reason(s) — I cannot reason my way into liberation. I know, I’ve tried. My intuition is there, I just chose not to believe that is a reliable guide to

Reality, which I have encouraged others to define while I follow along. I am, intellectually, an immigrant, a translator, a diplomat, finding myself in a world I didn’t make, and flourishing, and I could

Release myself from criticism of how I have done things in the past. Last night I found myself

Re-living the corrosive story that I am not successful in my career, which I tell myself without

Reflection on what I mean by success: I have almost always been interested, well-paid,

Respected and respectful of others. Sometimes I made things better, and I rarely made them worse.

Resources– here’s where I get

Resentful because I think people I envy got more and I was left to figure it out on my own, which is

Ridiculous, but then again I am moving outside of reason and putting aside trying to find reasons and

Root causes so that I can see that I am liberated to the extent that I can choose to

Rest.

Quitting and liberation

I love it when the light is like it is now: dark when it should be bright because a giant thunderstorm is going to happen. When I had a door that opened to the outside (instead of to more inside, to my apartment building hallway), I loved to open the door during storms and participate in them a little bit. I want to participate in this storm that’s rolling in right now. I could open a window.

So, quitting and liberation. My mind wandered during my last call, and I thought about “the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” And I wondered if a thing ever feels really really hard once it’s done. And then I wondered if the hardest things are ever really done. Which is the question I’ve asked for most of my liberation alphabet.

I am waiting for so many things. I have offered invitations to action, demands for response, and now I am waiting for the reply, and there is nothing I can do to hasten the reply. Eventually that wait will be over. I will (Will reassures me) be legally divorced. I will have the money that’s mine. I will have a new job. I will, eventually, quit waiting for those things.

But are those the essential things? The essential thing is to quit yelling at myself. The essential thing is to stop the destructive ping pong of too much/not enough/too much/not enough. That is the hardest thing I am always doing (but not doing enough!). The hardest thing I am always doing is not listening to myself, and yearning to listen to myself except not enough to, y’know, actually listen.

I thought about this in the context of working out — and I’m coming even to hate that phrase “working out.” (I know what I need to work out, and it’s not my body.). I have a message, piece of mental mail that was sent to me by mistake, that says that if on one day I decide, because it’s 110 degrees outside, that I won’t move, and instead I’ll have an evening nap or have sex (which I did yesterday), then I’ll stop moving entirely. I’ll devolve rapidly into permanent sloth.

Have I met me? I can’t sit still for three hours at a stretch. I love to move, I love to see what fun things my body can do. I love the mental and physical challenge of new movement, or the mental and physical comfort of familiar movement. How do I have so little trust in myself, so little knowledge of how I actually live, what I love to do?

I believe myself to be a quitter, and I believe that I cannot quit anything because then everything will fall apart. I am not enough. I am too much. I believe that I have jeopardized what might be an amazing job because I had too many recommendations on my behalf, because I overwhelmed the CEO with my support, my strong network, because I showed him too much of who I really am and how powerful I might be. And I am afraid of this job because I might have to work too hard. And I am afraid that not working hard enough right now– RIGHT NOW, when I am getting divorced, navigating Milo’s transition to adulthood while he lives with a father who is a terrible, toxic, baleful influence, looking for a job in a recession/pandemic, living in a pandemic, and staring at the essential tension that has kept me from peace and prosperity my whole life– yeah, anyway, not working hard enough will become a habit and I won’t ever be able to work hard again.

What would it be like not to work hard, to discard that as a category? To work lightly and joyfully and gloriously and never ever to ask whether I was working hard enough because the question was never relevant, because I was so curious and lit up and balanced.

Could I quit, could I opt-out of all the messages about work (and workouts) and say, “I don’t believe in that,” in the way that some people don’t believe in God? Or rather: I could quit. I can quit. I can opt out of all of the messages about work and workouts and what my body and mind are supposed to be and do. I can not believe in that.

Pleasure & Liberation

Perfection, liberation from.

I want not to struggle with pleasure, and yet I can barely type, so weighted is pleasure for me (weighted blankets, and the weight of many blankets: pleasure. My lover’s body as a weighted blanket: pleasure). I can hardly write a straightforward sentence about it.

(The arrangement of In the Wee Small Hours streaming currently on Spotify: pleasure).

Someone inflicted incalculable pain on me in his pursuit of pleasure, his prioritization of pleasure, his belief that unfettered pursuit of pleasure was a moral principle (the protection of his ego was another, the sacredness of his leisure — not rest, but leisure– whatever it cost others, was another). So I seek another word or approach.

All of my pleasures threaten to slide into self-improvement or duty. I would like to collect some guilty or even simple ones: A walk at twilight– should I be going faster? Should I be running again? Mystery novels — close to uncomplicated, but even then, shouldn’t I be reading improving things, reading more Black authors? Did I actually pay for a hardback book, rather than waiting for the library or the paperback or the used version? Dark chocolate — okay, solid on that one, but even then, one of the things I love about dark chocolate is its self-limiting nature. Reading on the deck, glass of wine in hand, on summer Shabbat evenings — yes, but I lack a deck at the moment. Clothes — there’s an entire category of old posts about my struggle with clothes. And now it’s a meta-struggle: I struggle with Milo’s lack of struggle with sartorial extravagance.

(Putting on clean clothes after a shower, rather than my customary robe: pleasure.)

Dammit, pleasure is like fun: if I have to ask if this is really it…

What is the difference between pleasure and joy? The inflictor of pain mentioned above had, I suppose, pleasure at every turn. I saw very little joy in him when we lived together, even as he shouted at me that I was the one making our house joyless (that dishwasher, again!).

I have a lot of joy, abundant joy, even in these hard days.

I could walk away. I could say, buying clothes is so complicated with me that it’s not a source of pleasure. Lots of people are like that. I could flip entirely and say, it’s all about pleasure and not at all about practicality or correctness, it’s something I do for fun, an expensive habit. Some people travel, some people buy cars, some people renovate kitchens, or gamble. I don’t gamble! (Don’t I? Don’t we all, always? Well, what’s then, the difference between gambling and risk? We always risk, and we always are mistaken about our risks. Every day is the day we could lose everything, despite all our efforts.)

I unsubscribed from a wise-money newsletter today. I read an old post recently, in which I said I couldn’t leave until I had saved 6 months’ worth of living expenses. I told a friend who is a divorce lawyer that I needed to consult a financial planner before I could leave. I wanted to be yelled at. I wanted to be told I was bad and wrong with money and therefore I couldn’t leave. As I happened, I did neither of those things. I left with very little money and spent that making a place to live, paying rent I couldn’t quite afford, and it was exactly the right thing to do.

AND WHO AM I CONVINCING? WHY DO I WRITE IT SO OFTEN?

Sex, money, and time. My former therapist told me that’s where we put our anxieties. And where pleasure lands or doesn’t. For a very religious person, it’s surprising I’m least punitive and moralistic about the first of that trio. This is why. This is why I yell at myself now about time. And money. Because I am getting divorced, actively — papers drop on Monday. Because I am unanchored to employment. Because Milo is 18 and doesn’t live with me. Because I imagine that using money and time “correctly”, aka blamelessly, unimpeachably, explicably, rule-bounded-ly, will save me even when it didn’t before.

The peanut butter: Will and I aspire to perfection in our various supply orders in these days when we don’t enter the grocery story. We agonize. We spend money. We spend time. And yet, I still ran out of peanut butter, which is the key ingredient in peanut noodles, which is Milo’s favorite dish of this time, which I make every time he comes to my house. I ran out of peanut butter and didn’t know I had. So in four orders in three days (two for “emergency” supplies at Will’s house), I left out peanut butter. This fact delighted me. Perfection is not possible. We can’t get it always exactly right, no matter how hard we try. So perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, try less hard. And eat chickpeas (we always order chickpeas).

Optimization and liberation

That’s actually a null set. There is no optimizing liberation, except insofar as liberation is, itself, optimal. Liberation is a slog, but it has grandeur. Optimizing is small, small, small — life hacks, second-guessing, a series of microaggressions to the self. It’s playing the lottery every day with time and energy: the wins are so rare and so small compared to the quotidian drain.

Do I exaggerate? Not for me, not now. I need to excise optimization so I can do the small things that matter and the big things that might not matter at all. What do I even mean by that?

Today I started walking when I had some time between meetings. By walking, I mean pacing the 7 feet of available space in Will’s bedroom, the 4 feet of space in his bathroom. I mean doing that 90s aerobics warm-up movement, side to side, feet touching, feet apart. This seems important to me. I am getting thick and sluggish, and this seems like a response. It doesn’t matter (that, really, is the cry of this phase of liberation: “It doesn’t matter”) whether this is the best response. It is the response that seems necessary and at hand. This is the small thing that matters.

It is the big things that stymie me. It seems like a good idea to learn relevant things… but which things? Where to start? It might not matter what… it might matter most to start. Yet I’m too… something. Too scared, too tired, too fearful. Why, in this period of waiting and stasis, am I scared to throw myself into something? Why am I scared to be interested? Why do I choose to anesthetize myself with “no”? Well– because anesthesia sounds excellent right now.

Also, the existential fear that has come over me while writing might have everything to do with my plan to send Daniel the divorce complaint in a week. Pursuing an 11-month course in data science will not make that go down any easier. Pacing might. (I’m not kidding. Motion for motion’s sake is in my genetic code. My parents are strangers to stillness.)

Also, most writing, even highly praised writing, is not very good. I’m not sure whether I mean that as self-criticism or self-encouragement.

If anyone asks…

(NO ONE WILL ASK! THAT IS THE POINT!). But if anyone asks what I did with this time, I will say, “I did a gut renovation of my mindset.”

Normal and liberation

I started this post last night, after a flat day, in which I struggled to write a single email, and wondered if I would think again. I wrote:

One day, will it be normal to be liberated? Liberated from the ghastly worship of the false god of productivity. Liberated from voices and beliefs about myself that are not true yet so persistent that they might as well be. Liberated from particular fears, boredoms, bad habits. What would it be to normalize fun? The struggles I have, have always had, with fun. It’s medicine now, which of course crushes its potential. No one is watching my liberation…. which should be liberating! But I need an audience, although I am an introvert. I don’t see the contradiction: I want attention of my choosing, and then to go away. I want a spotlight I can step into and out of at will.

Today is a different day, perhaps because I decided to turn down the volume on yelling at myself. It turns out that yelling at myself is actually different from the beating of my heart, the course of blood through my arteries (why do we always speak of veins not arteries? Arteries take their revenge, my friends). Just because it’s always been there doesn’t mean it always has to be.

One day it will be normal to be liberated. One day, I will decline to yell at myself. One day I will read and believe what I wrote about owning my surplus labor, about calling bullshit on work culture. One day, I will believe that the best thing I can do with my day is to feel great about it.

Who was I yesterday, who doubted my interest in doing hard things? Damn, girl — the hardest thing for me to do right now is what I am doing: to wait, wait for my visa into the country of better employment. Wait, despite the yelling-at-myself that says “no, you must hustle to deserve your visa! You must process the pulp, synthesize the ink, design the paper, imagine the bureaucracy, write the law, recruit the staff, source the rubber, and hand deliver the stamp.” Who would say that? Me. To myself.

And when I arrive in the country of better employment, of all my money, no one is going to ask what I did while I waited. They will say, “That was such a long wait. We are so glad you are here.” And I will say, “Yes, it’s hard work to wait, and I have so much energy now to give.”

Let’s imagine that whatever I do next will not need what I read, or write, or anything I can point to during this time. What I do next will need — will root into and grow from — my ability to stop yelling and start listening to myself, to be curious, to question received ideas, to imagine, to invent. AND NONE OF THAT IMAGINED AND INVENTED HAS TO BE IN A PLACE OR BE A THING I CAN POINT TO. Okay, that is me yelling at myself. But only so I can be heard above the other yelling, which is so pervasive & rooted after 35 years it barely has to raise its voice to be effective.

What is the story I want to tell MYSELF (good yelling) of this time? That’s the only thing that matters.

Moribundity & liberation

I didn’t think moribundity was a word, but WordPress is letting me get away with it. The irony of getting away while moribund amuses me.

I crave stability and novelty, simultaneously. That’s why I liked to go out into the world and come back home. I am both easily bored and easily overwhelmed. Maybe not easily overwhelmed, maybe I have just gotten much better at recognizing what it is when it happens and endeavoring to stop it. The circularity of shrunken world.

Multiplicity and liberation: both Will and my therapist drew me into conversations about vacations today. I very much would like a vacation: from uncertainty, from the perverse cultural screaming that reaches me even though I try to stay away from it, from wondering how my divorce will unfold, from COVID, from job fear. How do I create that distance? How do I vacate, or liberate, from those things? Everything is work now. In yoga, teachers will ask, where can you work less hard, put in less effort. Where can I work less hard?

Another way of asking “where can I work less hard,” is “where can I trust the unfolding of time?” “where can I trust that other people also care and are doing some of the work?” “where can I enter and learn, before trying to solve?” And perhaps the most relevant question: “Where can I remember that my life is neither a test nor a malevolent competitive dinner party (I have been at many of those!), so I can take my time in arriving at an answer?” “Where can I remember, no one else is watching or judging or grading?” “Where can I remember that the biggest impacts I might have had in my life are ones I will never know about?”

Losing the thread, and liberation

I know. I wrote it all yesterday, and I was convinced. I believed in my own bad-ass presentation of facts. But, alas, there are still the facts of my feelings. The dreariness of Monday, the unpleasantness of saying, “just get through the day, get through the day” not because this particular day is more difficult than any other day, but because I experience most days as bleached of meaning. Bleached or drained — neither are true. They imply that the day was replete with meaning inherently, and something happened — a leak, a spill, a blast. My days don’t start out with enough meaning — is that a lack of imagination on my part? Lack and liberation. I am worn out, right now, from generating meaning. The meaning I long for is communal and relational, a big damn potluck of meaning. So what’s the adjective (or past participle? I’ve lost my parts of speech)? Underbuilt? Unfilled? Empty — but that’s a cliche. The glass of meaning persists in half-emptiness.

Laughter and liberation is countered by loss and liberation. I can’t discern my gains (even though one of them is having a busy, productive, normal day 20 feet from me and knows I’m sad so gives me extra hugs to help). I am crying now for two years ago. Two years ago today I went to the Apple store to buy a new phone. My old one didn’t hold a charge all day, and it felt unsafe to be in my house without a fully charged phone, a line to the outside world for protection. My new phone is not D’s phone. My phone is named Integrity, which raises eyebrows when I pair it. Two years ago I couldn’t cry (although of course I did). I was too shocked, too determined, too focused. I can cry now because it’s safe enough. I perceive that, but only barely. I can cry now because Will loves me. Love after divorce is paying debts you never incurred. Or maybe that’s all love.

And… it’s also okay to be a mess. How often I have to remind myself of that. I like my bad-ass narrative and believe it. And I’m a mess. I’m having a hard time. I’m allowed. Lucidity and liberation. Loss of faith and liberation. Lachrymosity and liberation.

I would like to achieve a lyrical liberation. But not today. Two years from now, will I feel the joy from this time, or will I have another installment of deferred pain?

It’s okay that I don’t want to make meaning by myself. It’s okay that I am demanding what I can’t have right now, that big potluck supper of meaning, admiration, mutuality.

Is the whole lesson here (lesson and liberation, many) to detach from praise and recognition and admiration? To do the work quietly and not care? Yes, that’s always the lesson. The lesson I never pass so repeat endlessly (Loops of liberation). Except… why should I want invisibility? The lesson is perhaps to be visible and also detached from praise, recognition, and admiration. To understand — which I do not now– that they are different.

Long road to liberation.

Knowledge and liberation

Two years ago today, I walked into my house, dragging my suitcase. A 4- business trip had been cancelled. I found unfamiliar food in my refrigerator — things no one in the household ate.

I went upstairs and told Daniel (I would like not to use his name. I alternate between wanting to eradicate him from my writing and wanting to write all the way through my rage and the less convenient feelings). I went upstairs, told him I needed to talk to him, and said “I don’t want to be your wife anymore.” I remember that I went to yoga that evening, came home, watched baseball. At 1am (I suppose that would be July 6), he burst into the room where I was sleeping, toppling over the furniture I had stacked against the door, cursed me, and said he was going to stay with friends for a few days. In fact, he was going to stay with his mistress, who rented an air-bnb for them after I inconveniently appeared and interrupted their weekend in my home, in the bed I bought and brought to the marriage. I made sure I was gone by the time he came back several days later — I packed with shaking hands. I found friends to stay with for two weeks, before Milo came home from camp. I wouldn’t sleep in the house if we were the only people there. I never did, after that.

This is a horror story.

Why did I tell this story under the heading “Knowledge”? (K words are hard. The last time I did an alphabet exercise I wrote that twice, but came up with excellent titles.). The commemoration. Two years I did the bravest thing I had ever done to that point. In the moment, it felt inevitable. Knowledge. I lived a horror story. And I need that memory (and the feeling of intense fear I get from writing it) to keep me steadfast during the coming months.

My writing is flat. I don’t like it. I like the blog better when it’s essays, not a diary. If this is what I’m doing these days, I’d like it to be better than this.

Knowledge: I can— these days, I must — describe things in the way that is both accurate and advantages me. So I say to myself that it is really impressive the way I am 100% committed to finding a new job. So committed that I’m content to earn very little right now, to delay purchases (not essential ones, comforting ones… but isn’t comfort essential right now?) rather than fundraising while trying to find a new job. Committed to the humbling situation of depending on my parents for funds. I am committed, entirely, to things that are going to take me forward, not to things that are going to hold me in place — the pandemic is holding me in place. Writing, new job, holding my energy and my stance for the divorce, my love, my child, and the blended family. (When two people with anxiety… let’s not say disorder… let’s say, anxiety situations, anxiety sensitivity, anxiety awareness and high level management… with that try to clean house together, we fight over who has the privilege, the power, the control of cleaning.)

This has been my rubric for months, but I haven’t described it in a way that makes me seem smart and powerful and ALL IN. I described it tepidly, in terms of lack: exhaustion, inability, disappointment, incapacity, impossibility. Now, kaleidoscope-like (I used kaleidoscope in my last series), I give the instrument a shake, and see bravery, determination, good decisions, fortitude, trust, restoration, wisdom. I see not settling. I see truth-telling, curiosity, bad-ass-ery.

I did the writing competition for law review in the 48 hours before Milo was born. Daniel’s assistant dropped off my packet when we were in the hospital. One version of the story: I was bored to tears because Milo was overdue and I needed to fill the time. One version of the story: I am that much of a bad ass. Maybe that’s all there is to being a bad ass: choosing to tell the story that way. I will sell my house during a pandemic because I am an Amazon. I will steer my child through this time, including his disappointments, because I am that strong. I will prioritize my reality (and the reality of my parents’ limited resources) over the comfort and ease of a man who harmed me for decades.

The harpies in my head say, “Oh, she’s the kind of person who gets what she wants, and doesn’t care who gets hurt!” I care very much who gets hurt. I care very much that it’s not me anymore. There are dozens, scores, hundreds of things worth the risk or reality of my hurt. The comfort and ease of the man who lives in my house is not one of those things.

I am that strong.

Joys of Liberation

I had written, “joys along the way,” but then I’m back into the question of what liberation is. Is it an always-becoming, or a done deal? History says, an always becoming. All the more reason to find joys along the way.

1. Making up my own mind. People who knew me when I was married, including Daniel’s closest friends, believed I had strong views and a strong will. Maybe so. But there were so many things about which I declined to have views, because disagreeing with Daniel was costly. I now have views — and they might be correct or incorrect, well-informed or ill-informed. But they are mine and I am happy to have them.

2. A bigger world. There are so many things to know! (And about which I can make up my own mind.). In the last 18 months, I’ve been to places in my own city that I never knew about, and I’ve lived here 26 years. Before sheltering in place, I loved the library. I buy my own damn delicious wine.

3. Saying I have a boyfriend. Now I say “partner,” but for the first few months Will and I were together, I loved calling him my boyfriend. Many women my age think the term sounds juvenile (it’s right there: boy), and, sure, but that’s what I loved about it. It does sound young, and silly, and summer sugar rush. I was living in a delectable rom-com after decades in a bleak cinema verite, one of those movies that’s important but unwatchable. When we are alone, I call Will my lover. I never had the confidence to call anyone my lover before, to imagine myself as also a lover.

4. A better relationship with Milo. In the early weeks after I moved out, I told Milo, “You have a mother you’ve never really met.” This was infelicitous phrasing — Milo thought for one mind-scrambling moment that I was saying he was adopted. It wasn’t an insane leap, there had been dramatic reveals in his past. But, particularly in the final years and intensely in the final months I was living in the house, I was a shadow of a self. Or rather, I was a shadow of a self while in the house. Divided, heads’ down. Preparing for my exit was like having an affair but without the good parts: hiding, subterfuge. Now, I am free, and that includes with him. He has spent most of the shelter-in-place with his dad, in the big house that he grew up in, with a yard, in-unit laundry, all his stuff. It’s excruciating that I am missing the day to day time with him. But it can be gorgeous when we are together. We are better able to know each other.

5. Shorts. At the moment, I’m wearing an exceptionally un-flattering pair of shorts. I don’t care. I like them anyway. “Shorts” stands for all the things I want to possess that I wouldn’t have with Daniel (he hated shorts, for himself and women, or maybe just me). Shoes I can walk in. Functional bras. Big earrings. Shirtdresses. Things that remind me of myself before. Sifting through — what do I want to bring forward, what serves or doesn’t, what do I want to go back to, what do I want anew. This assortment changes a lot, and I watch it change, and I hope I don’t make expensive mistakes along the way.

6. Wasted time. Not exactly a joy, more of an experiment. I am getting more comfortable with undirected time. Like today. What have I “done” today? I had a phone conversation with Milo that inspired #4 above. I have wandered around this post. Applied lipstick. Scrolled instagram. This day will never exist again, and I am not applying myself to it as if time is scarce. I imagine (work with me here) that I am a spider, unconsciously weaving a beautiful web of relationship with Will and his daughter, while we are all in this place together. That is a good use of time. I am declining urgency. I am trusting (HAH)… okay, not trusting, but experimenting with the idea of rest coming in unexpected ways, rest looking like not-doing. Okay, this is not a joy, more like an examination, but still. I’ll let it stand.