A Body Politic – Part 1 – Awareness

I have never thought much about my gender in the context of my civil rights, my place in society or even with regard to politics. To be honest it has never occurred to me to think in such a manner.  I may have examined such things peripherally, but I haven’t thought about them directly in relation to myself or who I am or even how I might feel.

I suspect I have taken the rights and privileges I have so hard fought and earned by generations of women past, for granted.  In fact I should just be honest and admit that categorically, I have done just that.

I’m not sure why and I began writing this piece as a way to perhaps shed some light on the subject while also examining recent examples of women who have helped me come to a place of understanding the importance of  paying closer attention to such issues.

I wasn’t raised with any sense of the place of women in society other than through the examples afforded me by my mother, my maternal grandmother, my mother’s aunt as well as my paternal grandmother. All four women were strong unique women, whose lives were very different in many ways. However their one commonality was their notion of strength and individuality had little to do with the discussion of said attributes but more the action therein. 

Their strength as I reflect upon it was surely derived from a code of personal responsibility as opposed to something to ascertain or strive for or assume as an individual god given right. There was nothing overtly political in their strength, uniqueness and individuality.  I’m not saying these women might not have had opinions about such things, but I never heard them when I was growing up.  Not even from my mother who was from a very different generation than her mother, her aunt and my father’s mother.

Yet even as I describe them and their values as not being overtly political, I have to wonder what is meant by overtly political. Must it be a linear definition or is there room for more looser examples, those actions which aren’t directly political but just by their being  they give those paying attention to them an inadvertent political view? Can simply taking care of one’s family and offering up a strong code of ethical behavior which is particularly female constitute a female political act?? Should not generations of women whose acts which were passed down be considered the building blocks of later political action even while seemingly benign?  Actions which would then loosely connect them to a greater movement down the road??

I have to think so or I would have no way of being able to connect the dots to my own blossoming awareness of being part of a body politic more or less known as the women’s movement. 

I should interject at this point that while I have never specifically taken a direct interest in women’s rights, I’ve always been extremely interested in politics in general. This interest began at a very early age and was a result of both my parents and their roles in shaping what I saw and read as a youngster.  Both my parents were teachers. My father was an English teacher at a Junior High School in Novato. My mother until she had children and became a stay at home mother taught kindergarten and first and second grade. Both were college educated and were intelligent and well informed.

My father loved literature and my mother was and still is a voracious reader so our living room was always full of books.  One of my chores involved dusting the bookshelves which meant I often would stop, pull out a book and peruse it.  Many of the books were far beyond my age limit and yet I was allowed to read anything which might interest me. And I mean anything, whether it was “Black Boy,” Richard Wright’s searing autobiography or “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shirer! I began reading at a very early age and due to the physical constraints I’ve already written about, spent much time lost in books.  

Furthermore I was allowed to watch the news with my father, which meant I was quite aware of current events. I have a very strong memory of being in the car with my father crossing the Bay Bridge on a trip to Berkeley to see a friend of his and listening to the Watergate hearings on the radio. Even though I was only 10 or 11, I understood what was going on.  And it wasn’t because we as a family discussed it, it was simply due to my exposure to the events as they unfurled.

As I’ve gotten older and have spent time talking with my mother, I have more insight into what her view of her life is and how she feels about herself and her view of women’s role in society and politics. The conversations have been instructive and quite interesting — for both of us.

Despite my lack of attention to gender in politics, I have interestingly enough been fascinated by and drawn to women who follow their own path, have a distinct individuality, are unconventional and generally speaking of a strong personality type. 

The intense interest and occasional hero worship has not always been in concert with an understanding of what these women might have had to endure or struggle with in order to attain that of which I was so enamoured.  I understand my fascination was directly linked with who I knew myself to be and where my own life path was taking me.

Being drawn to such types of women was part of a desire to emulate who they were, without (certainly when I was young) really having a clue as to how foster that ambition. 

I suspect the desire to emulate had much to do with my sense of confidence, which despite all that was going on in my life, always seemed to butt up against my imagined sense of who I should be. I wished to be more than the sum of my parts, never quite satisfied, really.  Because of my dissatisfaction with myself I always looked to those examples to help me define who I was, without understanding that only I can define who I am in the end.

Furthermore and most importantly, I wrestled quite a bit with how I viewed myself as woman and how my femaleness seemed and felt so different to me in comparison to that of other women I would meet or come in contact with.  I always had trouble relating to women and connecting with them. I think I felt so alien and self-protective of my strangeness I simply didn’t know how.

I suspect some of this is a genetic trait passed on from both sides of my family tree. None of the women in my family were social butterflies (save my mother’s aunt who had a raucous sense of humor and was always the life of the party)  and often had to shoulder responsibilites far beyond their capacity in large part alone.  While they had one or two close friends, they were for the most part loners. This is not to say they were exclusively solitary or without vibrancy.

But I believe most of their ability to endure and grow came from within and from a closeness and dependence upon their families rather than from a retinue of friends culled from the outside world. In other words, their personalities however strong, were internalized within the cocoon of family and the occaisional close friend. Feelings were kept private, personal. Nothing was put forth any further than necessary. It was their generations way of acting and they followed it. 

I should pause to mention that outside of my mother, none of the women were college educated so their lives were very different because of the responsibilities they took on so much earlier than those of women from later generations, including my mother. 

In my case, my family became spread out all over the country when I was in my late teens and most of my early adulthood was spent trying to connect with the world around me without exactly succeeding. I’ve always been part of and yet very much apart. I left home at a very early age and was a part of a time and scene without actually really knowing all the people I saw and met. I knew who they were and what their roles were, but I never knew them well personally or formed really close relationships with them. In the end I was more an observer than a participant.

I also, to be honest, had a very difficult relationship with my mother for quite some time until we were able to connect in a way we never could when I was young.  I do believe the relationship had a bearing on my ability to relate to other women. But I think the bearing is partial, not total.

At any rate, I never had many close female friends and indeed I didn’t meet the close friends I now do have until I was in my thirties. And nearly all of them were men, with one or two exceptions.  Putting this all together it is fairly easy to see my awareness was dwarfed by my constant struggle to connect with anything and anyone, never mind thinking about where I belonged within it all as a woman.  To come to that realization simply took time, aging, wisdom and an openness that has never been within me until now. 

Part of the change began right around the time Sarah Palin was nominated to be a vice-presidential candidate in the 2008 Presidental election. It followed Hillary Clinton’s narrow loss as a Presidential candidate for the Democratic ticket.

While this all occurred, I found myself suddenly going through a series of events which along with all the political brohaha going on in the background, made me begin to think about how I felt about my place as a women not only within the political process and the world in general but within myself.

 

………………..and in Health

The change I mentioned in my previous post was in regard to my physical health.  Before I was diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease I was in a car accident (my fault, I admit) and sprained my ankle.  At the time I had a terrible general practitioner and the injury was not treated properly.  By the time anyone got around to prescribing physical therapy, my foot had atrophied and I basically had to learn to walk again. The whole experience brought back memories of my childhood.  I was born with cerebral palsy and as a result I had a surgery every year until I was 13 and wore braces on my legs until I was 14.  The surgeries meant every summer I’d have a cast (or two) on for 6 weeks or more, have it sawed off and would have to learn to walk again.   The car accident was a warning but at the time I didn’t realize it.  The whole business of dealing with Meniere’s began not much longer after I’d rehabilitated my foot and it wasn’t until much later that the underlying warning of the car accident came to be more noticeable and obvious.

Everyone as they get older puts on weight.  We live in a society more interested in advertising junk food than discussing a healthy diet. The closest we seem to get is lowering your cholesterol by eating Cheerios.  Before I struggled with Meniere’s I had gotten heavier and it was obvious and becoming problematic.  While I was sick I slimmed down considerably but once I stabilized, all the pounds were put right back on. Most likely I would have continued to ignore the problem if not for the fact that the weight gain directly began to affect my ability to walk.  My left foot has tendency to roll over due to the cerebral palsy and the extra pounds were causing it to roll over more and also inflicting pain.  I slipped and fell often, I couldn’t move around much, basically I was in terrible shape.

Various members of my family expressed concern and for awhile I stubbornly resisted until February of 2006 when I enrolled at a gym my company had on campus and tried to do something.  The experience was dreadful, the guy assigned to me as a trainer was not only an idiot but a jerk and I ended up with an injury which took weeks to heal from and drove me away from the gym. The first attempt ending on such a sour note only solidified my annoyance and stubbornness at dealing with the problem and it took another year before I tried again.

I must make clear at this point that my whole life I’ve pretty much hated, for obvious reasons, any sort of physical activity. Probably more so as an adult than as a child. Still, if it hadn’t been for the strictness of my father and much time spent on a bike as a child riding around the winding country roads to school in Sebastopol, I would not have been as strong as I was after all the operations. My father passed away from cancer after my final surgery and I did not bounce back from it as well as I had from others.  As I got older there wasn’t anyone around to enforce the discipline I needed and furthermore even if there had been, I wouldn’t have listened.  Being physical to me meant being vulnerable, having to face what I didn’t have and could not do.  This was particularly true while I was a teenager which was a time when much of my life was in tumultuous disarray.

At any rate in late January of 2007, I warily decided I would again attempt to deal with the state of my physical health. I called a few places but nothing seemed to click. Given my previous experience I decided I didn’t want to be in the confines of a traditional 24 Hour Fitness type gym (aka a meat market) which provides only cursory attention to the care of its members due to the overwhelming demand and volume of the membership. 

I determined I would need personal attention which meant a personal trainer.  I understood it would be expensive and when I narrowed down what I felt would be necessary to help me, I recognized finding the right person might be difficult.  Ideally I was looking for a situation which would be a cross between personal training and physical therapy.  It was important whomever I hired was aware I wasn’t the average person looking to lose a few pounds. Most importantly I needed to have a connection with the trainer based on respect and trust. At the time it seemed like a daunting task, but I determined I would just try nonetheless.

I began looking for places on-line and found a gym in the Marina which seemed small and intimate and sent the owner an email describing what I required. I was very upfront and specific. The owner responded and referred me to one of the trainers in her gym whom she thought might be able to help me. While the person she referred me to wasn’t necessarily the trainer I would have picked based on the description on the gym’s website, once I met and started working with her, I gradually realized I’d struck gold.  Because Lisa Corsello is worth her weight in gold and she turned my life upside down. 

 

The first thing Lisa did was get me working on exercises I could handle while also taking charge of my diet. I quickly learnt that exercise is not enough, what you eat and how you eat is as important as any amount of exercise you get. In fact it perhaps is even more important.  At Lisa’s request I started keeping food journals and brought them for her to peruse. Of course she immediately went to work on changing my eating habits.  Potatoes, cooking in heavy olive oil, cheese, starch, you name it, anything I pretty much overindulged in was removed from my diet.  I laid off red meat and ate an awful lot of skinless chicken breasts and had an awful lot of turkey sandwiches. One of the most hilarious arguments we had was over bread, which I can’t remember in full detail, knowing Lisa I suspect it had to do with corn syrup which she hates with a passion but at the time it underlined the seriousness she had in regard to my health, and well, health in general!

Despite the difference in food intake as extreme as it was when I began, and the occasional argument; I stuck with what I was instructed to eat and what I was advised to stay away from.

I work well when given boundaries and while in the beginning I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the overhaul in my dietary regimen as time went on I discovered I did not miss how I used to prepare my meals nor the food itself (okay once in awhile I’d crave a giant hamburger but I rarely if ever gave in) and continued with the plan. Part of staying within the parameters Lisa gave me was also due to the fact the overhaul was so intense.  I was terribly curious as to where it would lead me. Furthermore I got off on seeing how far I would go within the boundaries I’d been given. Would I cave, would I be able to hang, just how exactly would I handle everything, what would be different, what would make me nuts, just WHAT would happen???

As time went on I found opportunities to have food I shouldn’t have but I rarely wavered from the template I’d been given.  I began feeling so much better and was very pleased I had given the experience a chance to work.  As I began to lose weight and to sense the positive effects on my body, I had the impetus to stick with the plan to the point of my meal preparation becoming an ingrained habit. Going to the grocery store no longer involved what I could or couldn’t have, but what was I going to get for the week ahead. I no longer thought about it or at least not as obsessively as I had when I started.  I can no longer imagine cooking with olive oil or sauteing veggies in giant blocs of bleu cheese or really any of the old concoctions I used to whip up. While I love potatoes and starch, I don’t miss having them as perpetual sides during a meal. They do have their occasional place in my diet but mostly as treats and mostly are eaten when I’m visiting my mother and stepfather in Petaluma and am partaking in one her wonderfully delicious dinners.  

On the physical side, the workouts were a trip. And quite a challenge.  Lisa is a dynamic personable, tough yet kind angel with a devilish streak.  Her determination to find ways for me to do that which for most people is normal and easy was inspiring and continuously left me floored; she simply never gave up on what she perceived my abilities to be despite my limitations (imagined or genuine). Nor would she allow me to give up, teaching me in the process to open myself and my body to physical activity I never dreamed I’d be able to do, much less accomplish only to move on to the next challenge.

When I think of those first few months and my resistance to/fear of activities such as walking on a treadmill, doing squats, doing crunches, exercises which are now a piece of cake, I have to laugh. The treadmill is perfect example.  I was afraid to walk on the damn thing. Life post-Meniere’s has meant my balance can and is terribly off whack, particularly if I think too much about it and/or am in a situation where I am convinced I will be sent off-kilter. There are activities I genuinely cannot attempt because of the difficulty with balance. I cannot climb higher than one rung on a ladder to change a light bulb, it is impossible, and I’ve tried to conquer it and cannot. I get dizzy and have to get down. (This means, yes, if a light blows out in my house, I have to wait until I have a friend come over to change the bulb, and yes, it a complete and utter pain the ass, particularly for one as independent as myself).  So some of my hesitancy was based on reality.  

At any rate, for whatever reason I was utterly convinced that walking on a treadmill would be impossible for me to undertake. I fought it for quite some time until I discovered I had an artheritic knee and spinning on a stationary bike became impossible.  I suspect my stubbornness was in part due to the fact I have always loathed walking and everything about it. Namely because I cannot walk correctly and have always been acutely aware of it. I can’t walk fast, I can’t run, walking down a street or road or path has never been particularly enjoyable to me. At least until I started working out, which changed things immeasurably, much to my astonishment.

What makes Lisa so special is if she likes you, she isn’t about to give up on you or be easy about what she thinks you should be doing.  She’ll try every angle to make an exercise work before she’ll even remotely gives up and as she does so, she gets into your head and forces you to see the situation as she does.  I learned quickly I had to trust her and in turn, begin to trust myself, something I have had trouble with in my life.  Lisa forcing me to trust her was an incredible gift because it opened up an avenue of strength I hadn’t used much in my life and put me on the path of using it more often and with greater confidence. I have so much more confidence in who I am now as a result. 

All the attention I was receiving, I should have received as a child but because of the different approaches taken to post-surgical rehabilitation when I was young, I did not.  I did go through physical therapy when I was quite young; I wasn’t even in kindergarten yet I don’t think, but other than this one experience, I did not have any personal professional interaction on a medical or physical basis. It was all left up to my parents, who did a terrific job, particularly my father, whom I’ve already mentioned.  But the exercise my parents assigned me was more based on you must do this as opposed you can do this, you are capable and this is why. Obviously I knew why, but only from the much smaller viewpoint of your body isn’t strong enough and this is how it is made stronger. I don’t fault them at all, I was the eldest of three children and taking care of me and my needs was demanding enough without any sort of attendant psychology on top of it. It wasn’t their responsibility. Furthermore I do not wish to suggest they thought I was physically incapable, on the contrary I was always made to feel like I was like everyone else.  But I did not receive the professional attention needed which might have saved me years of self-imposed physical deprivation.

Therefore by the time I met Lisa, I honestly had no idea what I was capable of physically; my only vision was of what I naturally assumed I WASN’T capable of.  Another big lesson learnt from working with Lisa is to never assume you know what the human body is capable of or what ones own spirit is capable of until you’ve truly tried or in my case, been given the space to truly try. Having such an opportunity to challenge my preconceptions about what I could or could not do expanded my horizons both internally and physically. It also took me into avenues of exercise I certainly would never have dreamt of attempting. 

If this new found awareness wasn’t enough there was the utter joy of having my body morph into something else, and not just aesthetically.  I can’t express how awesome it is to feel your muscles grow and strengthen, to find yourself marching up and down stairs with no loss of energy, to carry a bag laden with stuff and have it feel like you are holding air.  And walking, oh my god, the walking.  Oh yes, the biggest gift is the walking.

My first clear memory of irrevocable change in this area took place one evening when I was on my way to meet my friend Michael at a show.  I can’t remember who it was we went to see, but the show was at the Cafe Du Nord and I arrived uncharacteristically late. It was a cold brisk evening and I parked on Castro near Divisidero. As I got out of the car, Michael called my cell to let me know he was standing outside the club freezing with our tickets.  I simply picked up pace and zoomed down the street. I was walking so fast and so smoothly I felt like I was either dreaming or walking on air or both. It was such an exhilarating trip, mentally I was simultaneously wondering if I was imagining it all while beaming with joy over the accomplishment. I’d never felt ANYTHING like it and couldn’t believe it was me. It was the closest I’ve ever felt to what I imagine heaven to be like — or rather my belief that when we die all the burdens are washed away and we are able to be how we were truly meant to be. There have been many moments in my life where I have felt like my spirit has been irrevocably chained to my body in a way I hated, namely because I thought my mind to be so much freer, stronger than my body. My will could do as it pleased in my mind, but not in my body.  I don’t think this way any longer.  I do not mean to suggest that moments of frustration no longer arise, but nothing on the level of what I’ve just described.

While many of my later experiences weren’t nearly as sharp or as monumental, the overall result has been the same. I’ve changed. Truly changed and not only am I immensely grateful, but I’m determined to keep the change in place and honor what I’ve striven for with Lisa’s help. 

I have also begun to push myself outside of the gym and the safety of Lisa’s direction.  Earlier this year a friend from Kentucky came out to visit and we ambled around town and ended up at the Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. I fell in love with the place, just utterly fell in love with it and because I live in the Sunset 10 blocks or so away from it’s location, I began to walk from my house up to the Arboretum during the Spring and Summer, exploring the paths, taking photographs of the flora and fauna and all the birds and other creatures which inhabit this wonderful space. 

Getting into shape has also created more physical energy. I’ve always had a tremendous amount of mental energy but having physical energy has given me something new to contend with.  I have trouble now staying still, I constantly want to be moving and doing.  This does not mean I’m hyperactive but it does mean there is something new inside which wants its place and its outlet and demands it to the point of my sometimes being unable to do anything else but go out and walk and do and be.  It can be a pain in the ass; my job is fairly sedentary in nature and there are times when I’d rather be out walking. At the same time getting myself to settle down and find a balance between movement and all the mental energy which also needs to be released has been very interesting to me. It is one of the reasons why this weblog now exists. 

I’ve also discovered something else I find fascinating; while physical exercise not only helps the body but the mind (um, duh), surprisingly sometimes physical exercise can also backfire.

When I first began working out I found that while I got off on working out, I’d leave the gym sometimes feeling quite emotional even if I was high on the adrenalin. The point is, while it helps, it also releases a ton of internal energy and not always in a positive manner. Or rather, the release in and of itself is positive but the way I might feel isn’t exactly upbeat.  As time has gone on, I’ve learned when to back off and not push myself too hard in order to not foment a meltdown.  For example, after Rufus died, I was obviously a mess. Not too long after his death Lisa wanted me to come back in, she felt I needed to get back to work. But I sensed I was still exhausted and overly vulnerable and I said no. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to see her or didn’t understand what she was trying to do, I just knew it would backfire and I was already fried emotionally and I did not wish to make things worse.  A week later I returned and we carried on as we had been doing prior.

The other benefit from all of this has been in my actual health.  I’ve rarely gotten sick since I’ve started and as such when I do, I go bonkers.  Particularly when I get laid up as I was a week or so ago with the flu.  I thought I was going to lose my mind.  As I mentioned I get too over analytical which has always been a problem but now I have the need for movement on top of everything else and I get very competitive about it.  Our society tends to be fairly fast paced and for whatever reason I’ve always been the sort of person who draws people to herself who are fairly driven and who live life much more frenetically than me. 

Now so that I am much more healthy, there is a part of me struggling to understand why with all this new energy, physique and so forth, I’m still not able to compete.  Granted most of my friends are male and male energy is, yes, duh, different than female energy, but even the female friends I have seem to be zipping hither and yon with no problem.  As I often tell my mother when we talk, my mind is always going faster than the rest of me, it always has. I don’t know why. It just is how I am I suppose. 

But in the bigger picture, I’m tremendously happy with where I am now compared to where I was previously and am so grateful.  When I started working out in January of 2007, I weighed 145.  I have lost 30 pounds and recently weighed in at 113, although I’ve put a few pounds since then. At this point I suspect I hover between 115 and 117.  115 was the goal and I have attained it and of course so much more…

Earlier this year Lisa moved from the gym where we met to the Sports and Medicine gym of the Presidio, a bigger space with more equipment and new ways to work out my body. While I still balk at a task I surmise I can’t manage, the two of us have such a rapport that she’ll simply give me crap while explaining visually what I need to do, thus once again getting into my head and adjusting the psychological resistance. Eventually I give in and generally have to tell her she’s right and I’m wrong. I thoroughly enjoy her company and her wise ass personality (one minute she’ll be gossiping away about something, the next minute she’ll be ordering me to do something or telling me my body isn’t aligned properly for whatever exercise she is setting me up to do) and I know she enjoys having me as a client. I’m always giving her crap and even came up with a name for the process in which she challenges me “Eviluotion” because she is kind of evil in her wonderful way.  I used to complain about being sore, now I get mad if I’m not sore. When I was sick with the flu, I cracked us both up by telling her via email that while I was puking my guts out I was wondering if my abs were sore enough and I was serious.  Naturally I have to watch it, if I ask for it, I get it, but really I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

In the end, I owe much of my success to myself, to Lisa but mostly to the lessons learnt while recovering from Meniere’s which is again the simple act of just trying.  If I had not done so, I wouldn’t be where I am now.  Amazing isn’t it, something so simple, so little, enabling something so much bigger.

To learn more about Lisa please check out her website: http://www.equilibriumpersonaltraining.com/index.htm

 

In Sickness…..

On Friday September 26, I was driving home from work and suddenly felt horribly nauseous.  I managed to get home before tossing my cookies.  I had a party to attend that night and while I felt awful, I chalked it up to indigestion. I had gobbled down a massive burrito for lunch - something I rarely do and I figured I was paying the price.  I went to the party had a big glass of champagne and enjoyed myself, staying up until 1 a.m. 

I slept in late the following Saturday and ambled outside on foot to run a few errands. I quickly noted the frenetic traffic emanating from Golden Gate Park as a result of the grand reopening of the newly remodeled California Academy of Sciences. The traffic spilled out into my neighborhood and created an amazing cacophony of bumper to bumper entanglement; a cacophony which lasted all day until 7 p.m. (!!!) and flowed from 9th Avenue all the way down to 19th on every street and side street. The usually sleepy turpitude of the area had been turned upside down and I figured the smartest thing for me to do was to stay at home, sit on the back porch, read and enjoy the sun.  I felt fine and had a perfectly lovely day.

Sunday morning I awoke and felt just awful. I recognized what I thought had been indigestion was really the beginning of a nasty flu virus. However instead of immediately caving, I forced myself out of bed and off to church, thinking, well I’m sick but I’m not dying.  Furthermore I had plans to go to a show that evening to see Calexico, a band I wanted to check out live for quite some time and I was furious at the notion I could end up not seeing them perform.  My body kept giving me ample reason to quit, but I wrestled with the notion of staying home vs. going.  Once I discovered my former roomate Tod whom I’d not seen for several years was coming along, I fully committed to attending the show as I really wanted to see him.  I threw up just before I left but soldiered on nonetheless.  Since the show was at the Fillmore and my friends and I were meeting for dinner, I lucked out as we went to a noodle place in Japantown and I got some udon into my system which calmed down my stomach and enabled me to get through the rest of the evening. I had a wonderful time and didn’t get home until 1 a.m.

I thought I was going to stay home the next day.  My boss was out of town, things were quiet, it would have been perfectly reasonable for me to call in sick.  But I didn’t.  I went in.  My rationale was that I’d knowingly gone out the night before while sick, and therefore I couldn’t find it in me to stay home. I thought of parents who have kids who have to get up every day and go to work whether they want to or not, teachers who teach a slew of kids every day, nurses who nurse, well you get the picture. The point is I just couldn’t do it.  

I got through Monday fairly well because I was so tired I was almost buzzed.  I slept horribly that night and yet still went in the next day.  I can’t remember how Tuesday went, but I’m fairly certain by then the flu was starting to sink its teeth in.  But I slept well on Tuesday night and zoomed into work on Wednesday as most of the folks I worked for were out of the office at a training and I knew it would be a mellow day.   For a variety of reasons too long to go into here, the day was anything but mellow, and an incident occurred that infuriated me so much I was a bit of mess by the time I left. 

However I couldn’t go directly home as I had to go to my regularly scheduled work out. I was looking forward to it even though I was feeling nauseous again.  I decided the day had been so awful it would be a welcome distraction, which it was and by the time I got home I felt pretty good. This despite the fact my trainer gave me a bit of a lecture about coming in while sick. 

She was right of course. I woke up the Thursday morning too ill to even get out of bed and called in sick.  I ended up staying home from work on Thursday and Friday and even now as I write I’m STILL feeling like crap.

Once I called in sick on Thursday, I thoroughly gave in to the situation;  resting, doing all the right things does when one is ill and enjoyed lying in bed which gave me ample time to catch up on listening to music and let myself relax. I did more of the same on Friday but by the time the evening rolled around I was cranky, still feeling lousy and bored out of my skull. But because I knew I had to continue to take it easy, I did so.

However being bored and cranky meant my mind was no longer distracted and I started thinking. This was NOT a good thing.  I’m fairly mental as it is, having an overactive mind and imagination.  Me sick and over analytical is never a good combination. When I’m not feeling well and lose focus I start ruminating about things I want to do, things I haven’t done, things in my life that are bothering or worrying me, etc, etc. Basically I turn into a raving neurotic.  And the reason why I do is because at heart I can’t stand the fact that my life is suddenly at a complete halt and I have to wait to get going again.  I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to halt. I don’t want to deal with any of it.

I haven’t always been this way.  Before I was diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease and lost a huge chunk of time out of my life, I tended to not really think about anything. If I was sick, I was sick.  If I didn’t want to go into work, I didn’t.  My life rolled along at a desultory pace and I lived it as such, rarely challenging myself or at least not nearly enough as I should have when I look back on it now. I mostly refer to the period between 1997 and October 2001 when I was first diagnosed. I think I was in a bit of a slump then.  And I think had I not had to contend with Meniere’s I would have continued on in that slump for god knows how long.

Meniere’s Disease is a not terribly well known disease which affects the inner ear.  Here’s a fairly clear definition of the disease and its symptoms found in Wikipedia: 

Ménière’s disease (pronounced /meɪnˈyɛərz/[1]) is a disorder of the inner ear that can affect hearing and balance. It is characterized by episodes of dizziness and tinnitus and progressive hearing loss, usually in one ear. It is caused by an increase in volume and pressure of the endolymph of the inner ear. It is named after the French physician Prosper Ménière, who first reported that vertigo was caused by inner ear disorders in an article published in 1861.[2]

The symptoms of Ménière’s are variable; not all sufferers experience the same symptoms. However, so-called “classic Ménière’s” is considered to comprise the following four symptoms:[3]

 

• Periodic episodes of rotary vertigo or dizziness.
• Fluctuating, progressive, unilateral (in one ear) or bilateral (in both ears) hearing loss.
• Unilateral or bilateral tinnitus.
• A sensation of fullness or pressure in one or both ears.

Ménière’s often begins with one symptom, and gradually progresses. However, not all symptoms must be present for a doctor to make a diagnosis of the disease.[4] Several symptoms at once is more conclusive than different symptoms at separate times.[5]

Attacks of vertigo can be severe, incapacitating, and unpredictable.[citation needed] Some patients experience vertigo for hours or days, and this combines with an increase in volume of tinnitus and temporary, albeit significant, hearing loss. Hearing may improve after an attack, but often becomes progressively worse. Nausea, vomiting, and sweating sometimes accompany vertigo.

Some sufferers experience what are informally known as “drop attacks” — a sudden, severe attack of dizziness or vertigo that causes the sufferer, if not seated, to fall. Patients may also experience the feeling of being pushed or pulled (Pulsion). Some patients may find it impossible to get up for some time, until the attack passes or medication takes effect.

In addition to hearing loss, sounds can seem tinny or distorted, and patients can experience unusual sensitivity to noises (hyperacusis). Some sufferers also experience nystagmus, or uncontrollable rhythmical and jerky eye movements, usually in the horizontal plane, reflecting the essential role of non-visual balance in coordinating eye movements.

Studies done on both right and left ear sufferers show that patients with their right ear tend to do significantly worse in cognitive performance.[6] General intelligence was not hindered, and it was concluded that declining performance was related to how long the patient had been suffering from the disease.[7]

I was told I had a “classic case of Meniere’s Disease” in October of 2001.  I had been suffering from the disease on and off since 1991 when I had my first full blown attack which was never properly diagnosed nor were other episodes which followed in the late 90’s.  This is probably just as well as the disease is incurable and some of the treatments used in the 90’s would have been so severe I probably wouldn’t be as functional as I am now.

I was lucky to have a doctor who knew what was wrong right away and who understood better than I did how much my life was going to be thrown upside down. I owe her a debt I can never repay for her kindness, attention, empathy and availability.  She immediately put me on a low salt diet (salt is a big factor in causing the fluids to build inside the inner ear and causes the inbalance in equilibrium), took me off all caffeine (surprisingly not a problem as I was more a salt junkie than a caffeine junkie!!) and told me I could never have red wine again (not a big deal as I was never terribly fond of red wine).  She also prescribed large quantities of valium, as the drug can fool the inner ear into thinking the equilibrium is not off-balance. She also put me on a diuretic to help drain the fluids built up inside my head. She tried several new treatments to help diminish the attacks but none worked, and I began to get worse.

Once she understood she couldn’t help me herself, she referred me to a specialist at UCSF Medical School who recommended a gentamicin shot inside the inner ear to help minimize the effects of the attacks. Neither my original doctor nor her partner at her practice had wanted to send me to the specialist because while results using gentamicin against Meniere’s were quite good they also carried a price. The ear in which the medicine is injected loses its hearing.  Given that the tinnitus would eventually wear away the hearing anyway, it really was a matter of how rapidly one would want to lose their hearing as opposed to whether or not one was going to lose it or not.  As of today, I haven’t lost all the hearing in my right ear, but I’ve lost enough to know that at some point it really will be gone.  It’s still a trip to find myself straining to hear certain things and it’s annoying to ask people to repeat themselves but overall I really don’t care, I’m too grateful for what I do hear.

The first shot was administered and it helped but as time passed my health began to degrade and a second shot was necessary. The medicine the second time round seemed to flow directly where it was needed and slowly I moved toward genuine stabilization.  The amount of valium I was on was lowered considerably – I now only take 5 milligrams a day; one half in the morning and one half in the evening. This is nothing compared to what I was ingesting when I was first diagnosed. I was a zombie for quite some time. The diuretic I quit taking altogether earlier this year. At the time I was told I would have less attacks, probably one every 6 months.  To date I can’t even remember the last time I’ve had an attack, I think I had one very minor one this year. I don’t recall when the last major one occurred. This is very unusual and I’m well aware I’ve been terribly blessed.

As you can probably tell the time between being diagnosed and becoming stabilized was absolute hell. I literally gave up  two years of my life to the disease.  Furthermore I had contend with everything while trying to keep my job.  My life revolved around getting up, taking the massive dose of valium necessary to keep my inner ear stable, driving to work while hoping I didn’t have an attack during the drive, which was about 45 minutes long each way. Yes it was rather dangerous but I had no choice. I would work as long a day as I could, go home, take more valium and lie down and stay still. Then get up the next morning and do it all over again. Weekends were set aside to recover from the stress of the week.  Both times I received the shots, I had to go on disability for 6 weeks but once I recovered, I went straight back to work.  In the midst of all of this I would have attacks which I had to endure, recover from, and then move myself along again back into the boxed repetition my life had become.  Losing full control of my life was so physically and mentally distressing it nearly tore me in half.  One part of me simply wanted to give up and die and the other half was fighting so hard to get back what had been lost. 

Luckily the side of me fighting to get back ultimately was the stronger of the two pieces and I got through everything.  Once I began to recover, it took another two years or so for me to really begin living again because I was so emotionally traumatized by what happened.  I went into therapy and dealt with the emotional side of things, and while working on sorting everything out, I also found myself attending to matters I simply hadn’t been dealing with all along. 

Besides going to therapy I also had to work on trying to become part of the world again.  It took time.  When I had been ill my life had been very constricted as I’ve described. As I began to get well and saw that the effects of the second shot were not going to disintegrate, the real work began.  I had to overcome a tremendous desire to overprotect myself. While I was sick and unstable I had so many attacks both at home and in public, that I was for quite some time terrified of going out or doing too much because I was so worried it would provoke an event.  I had to get over the nearly paralyzing fright and simply trust that my body was stabilizing. I had to let go of being so scared and move outward again in order to rebuild my life. It took time, but I did it.  And while doing so, I found I recommitted myself to the notion of being responsible in a way I’m not sure I ever had been before.  I’m sure those who know me would argue I’ve always been a fairly responsible person, but there’s a difference between being responsible and simply coasting along.  I no longer wished to just coast along.

As hard as going through all this crap was, I’m grateful it all happened. I think God put his thumb upside my head during that period to get my attention. The lesson I needed to learn was that life is worth living and living as fully as one can. It is not to be taken lightly or for granted.   

Furthermore while battling Meniere’s I developed a habit which actually is more a mindset than anything else. One which would change my life in more ways than I could have imagined when I first began to use it.

I narrowed my life down to one thing:  to just try.  I wasn’t going to worry about the end result, I simply was going to just try. Just trying got me through the period where I was struggling to keep above water and get myself to and from work every day and just trying helped me get to a place of going to therapy and ultimately just trying got me to a place of wanting to live life in a manner which was not simply just coasting along but instead living within a code of responsibility and action which involves being as honest as possible with regard to action and deeds.  Finally just trying enabled me to embark on something last year which changed my life dramatically.

 

Love Without Security – Part I

This year I have come face to face with the above phrase both literally and figuratively. Where it comes from and what it means to me will be explained in time, but first I need to write about a defining event of the year so far. A year I sensed was going to be tough from the get go, but not probably not as tough as it has turned out to be. Mind you, I’ve learnt over time that tough can also be relevatory even if you have to hurt in order to have the revelation necessary to grow.

On July 30th, my cat Rufus passed away. He was 20 years old.  He had been very ill since July 1st and probably sick long before then. I had known for awhile, but was in denial.

He had 3 infected teeth, two cysts on his face, a urinary tract infection (which had cleared up at the time of his death) a heart murmur and, finally kidney disease which ultimately made it impossible for him to recover.

Rufus was an extraordinary cat who came into my life in early September of 1988 when I was 25 years old. A friend at the time arrived at my house distraught, explaining through tears that she had brought him home and her boyfriend said he was “too much of a responsibility.” She opened the box and he bounced out like a jack in the box, and eyed me with a fearless joyful confidence as if to say, “You’re going to take me, aren’t you??”  I looked down at him, amused and mentally said, “well, yes, I guess I am.”  He was so happy he slept on the side of my head the first night.  He was only 6 weeks old. At the time I was living alone, wasn’t sure what was next, or even if I was going to stay where I was living. But I couldn’t resist such uninhibited confidence, nor turn down a little jet black runt whose ears were too big for his head and legs too long for his body with piercing green eyes.

The first two years we were together, I thought he would never calm down. He was terribly hyperactive, extremely smart, full of verve from the get go and almost always on the move. At the time I lived on Page Street in the Haight in a long elongated flat. Rufus would come tearing down the hall from my bedroom zooming straight through the living room, with a giant couch in his path – he would jump over the couch (and whomever was sitting there) (i.e. flying kitten over one’s head) land, and zoom all the way to the back bedroom and turn around and repeat back and forth ad infinitum.  During that time a life long devotion to sitting on my lap whilst I went to the bathroom was developed. Those first years the amount of scars on my bare thighs was unreal, as he tended to, well, express his joy by scratching a helluva lot.  

Another memory from the time on Page street was his first mousing experience. He caught a mouse without me really being aware of it and brought to me, alive, wanting to present it to me, his mother, as a gift. I who have an intense phobia of mice went screaming into the bathroom to hide. After a few minutes I peered out cautiously around the door. He was standing there, the mouse now dead on the floor, looking up at me cheerfully. I shrieked again, closed the door and waited a little longer. The next time I opened the door, the mouse was gone, presumably in Rufus’s stomach.  He captured many more mice in his life, but learned to sort of, NOT bring them to me.

Our second residence together was up on Waller street not far from where I’d lived on Page Street. The girl I shared the flat with found Rufus a little too smart and therefore didn’t like him. Her boyfriend however was a much more mellow personality and adored him so there was a balance of sorts.  The roomate had a fight one day with the boyfriend. She lit a “relationship candle” in her bedroom, took a nap, got up and left to go see the boyfriend, closing her bedroom door behind her. Of course she’d forgotten to blow out the candle. In the middle of the night Rufus nudged me awake and kept staring at me intently, walking in and out of the bedroom as if to indicate I needed to follow him. I finally figured out he was desperately trying to tell me something. I walked out into the kitchen and saw the smoke. I walked over to the roomate’s bedroom opened the door and half the wall was on fire.  Had Rufus not been there and been so insistent, I have no clue what would have happened.

We moved not much later after the fire to a 1 bedroom apartment on Clayton Street up in the heart of Haight.  We both loved the place, and my favorite memory of Rufus there was his proclivity at night to pace the length of the apartment (it was a large place with a long hallway) after I’d gone to bed to make sure all was safe and secure. He would do this every night.  He was my protector, always.

In September of 1994, we moved to my current residence, a poxy old house out in the Sunset, at the time a roomate situation. At one point  4 people were living in the house along with a giant German Shepard type dog. The dog and Rufus were obviously kept separated, but one evening, we were all sitting in a small room at the top of the stairs, hanging out, talking and watching t.v. I’m sure I must have interacted with the dog or something during this time. At any rate, Rufus who generally stayed away from such things, suddenly came ambling into the room and nonchalantly directed himself over to where I was seated and arrayed himself directly at my feet. However subtle the delivery, the message loud and clear: this is my mom, this my territory, and you’ll have to go through me to get to her. It was such a defiant act of bravery and so indicative of his character and how he felt about me. I realized at the time he was really simply pissed off at all the attention the dog was getting and besides wanting everyone to know I was “his” mom, he also wanted “his” mom to understand who was first. I got the message, of course.

In November of 1999, the house became mine to rent, and Rufus and I spent the next (nearly) 9 years living here alone together.  So much happened between 1999 and 2008 – namely my battle with Meniere’s Disease (an incurable inner ear disorder which causes massive vertigo) which literally took a year and an half away from my life. During the time it took to get me stabilized, (2001-2003) I could hardly do anything except go to work, come home, take meds and stay still. It took time to stabilize and even more time for me to get over the psychological effects of having fought it. But I did and learned so much in the process.

During the entire time Rufus took care of me, kept an eye on me and comforted me.  I did have a friend stay with me for 6 months and his help was immeasurable in its own right but even through that,  Rufus always hung around, no matter what. One night I was having a horrible attack and my friend Eugene was helping me get through it – Rufus did not stay away, he positioned himself on the bed and stayed on top of my legs, watching, waiting to make sure everything would be okay. He watched me battle many more attacks when noone was there and helped me get through all of them.

His devotion to me was immeasurable and I never realized how deep it was or how much I took it for granted until he became ill. Faced with the inevitable, I recognized how much I had and how much it loved me and how intensely interwined our lives really were. I recognized too, how deeply dependent on him I was, both emotionally and physically. 

His final month while terribly difficult was also terribly revelatory. He initially fought so hard even when I was overwhelmed and wanting to give up at times…I’d say, well perhaps we need to let you go and the response I got was personal and very direct. NO. No way.  So I did everything I could during that time to enable him to fight as much as he wanted with as much dignity as possible. It wasn’t until early the last week of July when he sent me a different message that everything changed. He refused regular food and was very direct about it. By then I had him on antibiotics and was also injecting him via an fluid system not unlike a IV bottle with fluids every two days, something I never would have thought myself capable of.  I tried baby food which worked for one day and then again, he said no, and I understood it was time although I had to work out within myself what that meant and what to do etc.

I was very lucky to be blessed with an incredible vet with a tremendous devotion to his job, to animals and who had a gentleness both with animals and with people which I found quite affecting. I realize in retrospect he was a bit of an angel.  He called regularly, even on Sundays to check on Rufus’s progress and gently guided me through everything. When it came time to make the decision, he did not make it for me but gave me all the options while being completely truthful about each possibility. I decided that compassion was the better road to take and while it took a little bit of a struggle to accept, by the time his last morning began, I’d accepted things and was merely girding myself for the final act.

The last year or so of his life, Rufus brought the whole sleeping on my head phase back full circle by suddenly deciding, after years of habitually sleeping curled up on my legs, that he was going to “share my pillow” which really meant, “take over my pillow.”  It was a very simple dictatorial arrangement. He would settle himself down regally on the pillow and I was to move all the way to the far end of the pillow and sleep on my left side facing him, with yes, his butt in my face. I wasn’t allowed to try to change the arrangement, move to another pillow or do anything otherwise. At first I was somewhat annoyed and amused, but as time went by, I of course grew to love it. And he did mellow a little bit allowing me to move him around so he would face me and my head was placed somewhere between his front paws and stomach. Of course this had its risks as he began a habit of clawing the top of my head, something he found especially useful if he wanted me to wake up. (Walking across my throat was another tactic). 

The morning of the last day of his life, he came to my room and although he was by then too weak to jump on to my bed, I brought him up. He came and laid down on the pillow, putting his butt in my face for a final time. For over two hours, the two of us had time together which was almost surreal in its seeming normalcy.  I will be forever grateful for it, because taking him to the vet was anything but normal and not the controlled experience I would have liked.

I will forever be grateful to my friend Michael Mullen for coming over, helping us get ready and being there with me the entire step of the way.  I did not witness Rufus’s death but we both took him in, we both spent time with him and said goodbye, and Michael being the gentleman he is, allowed me to walk out while still holding him until the doctor who passed me in the hall and gave me a hug went in to take him away.  Michael then spent the rest of the afternoon with me, refused to allow me to clean out his litter boxes and made the entire experience so much easier to bear. 

During the entire process he gave me wise advice about myself and about the cat.  He was throughly adament that I had made a serious of right decisions and had done everything to the very best of my ability.  This was incredibly helpful to me, because when Rufus first was diagnosed I was so freaked out I very nearly fell apart, because I felt so vulnerable. It was Michael who helped me get through this.

I also am very grateful to my mother who also provided equally wise council and who called me every single day the first two weeks Rufus was ill.

I’m mostly grateful that I realized while Rufus was dying how important he was and that I had the time and space I needed to thank him for who he was and how much he did for me. He was far more than a cat, a pet or an animal. I never looked at him this way when he was alive and I certainly don’t now that he is gone.

There are many things in my life that have not happened or things I regret. Rufus was something special that happened and something I certainly do not regret.  I can’t imagine what my life would have been had I not been open enough when he looked at me so cockily and I’d been afraid and said no, I can’t take you.

Life after his death has been tough but also a profound learning experience. Writing about the after is one of the reasons I’m here.

 

An Introduction

Between thought and expression is a phrase from an old Lou Reed song “Some Kinds of Love” written while he was in the Velvet Underground.  It’s a proper title for my unfurling as it were, as I’ve spent so much time hovering between thought and expression without using the ability to write I know I have.  As such, I am taking the plunge and seeing where this adventure will take me, hoping as I do that I’ll learn from it even as open myself up in a way I’ve never done previously.