Soprano Out

a songbird flying over the rainbow


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Clear the Decks

As I start the new year, I’m spending some time contemplating what lies ahead.

Once again, I’ll be vying for a spot at my workplace.  I went through this six years ago, and was not hired for the position.  The good things that came out of not being hired were many: I was able to rebuild my singing voice and start a concert series that continues to this day.  I had the opportunity to conduct a local men’s chorus.  I reconnected with my father.  I learned that I am a pretty good voice teacher.  I moved into my little yellow cottage.

The really hard thing that came out of not being hired was knowing that the people who had worked with me and sung under my direction had specifically chosen not to have me, they chose a stranger instead.  The stranger turned into a friend, the situation turned everyone’s lives in a positive direction, and ultimately all was well.  But sometimes, as I look ahead to the application process, again (!), I remember the hard part and forget the good parts.

Now about the little yellow cottage (hereafter to be known as the little green cottage, since it has been repainted in the past several months): I spoke with the owner, expressed my interest and described my situation.  He let me know that he understood and would like to work with me if we were all agreeable once it came time to talk it over.  We’ll talk again in April, if not before.

I ended up the year 2013 by calling it The Year Of Unpleasant Enlightenments.  I did not blog very much because the discoveries I was making about myself, and specifically about my perceptions of others, shocked me so much that I had a great deal of difficulty talking about them.  I learned, to my enormous discomfort and astonishment, that most of what I have considered as love, caring, or sharing in adult relationships has really been a form of emotionally predatory behavior.  I learned that I did not have a reliable way to determine if a person cared for me or if they were simply looking for new emotional/psychological prey.  I learned that because of my experiences in childhood, I had actually been groomed to be picked up, as it were, by emotional predators.  I had no idea that this could be true, especially since I was never in a relationship characterized by physical abuse or name-calling or any of the more obvious/criminal sorts of abuse that happen all too often.  What I have lived for much of my life has been a never-ending walk through an emotional minefield where momentary pauses in the emotional storm have taken the place of true peace.  And where I am still learning that what I want, who I am, and what brings me true joy, may be quite different from anything any of the folks I have tended to consider trustworthy would understand.

I went back to talk this over with my therapist several weeks ago.  I mentioned that now that all of this has come upon me like a flash of lightning (or more like being struck by lightning), I can look back and see the signs that I knew something was wrong all along.  I remember wanting someone to come along and notice that things were not right in my home, even though I couldn’t say anything clear about why I felt this way or what it might be.  I couldn’t articulate what was off.  No one beat anyone.  No one drank (at all).  No one called anyone names, except on very rare occasions.  But when emotional chaos is the norm, and when my job has been to bring emotional calm to a never-ending chaos, then it’s no wonder I would arrive at my current age with sapped adrenals, high blood pressure, and an autoimmune thyroid condition.  It all looks like I brought it on myself, by needlessly worrying about everything.  But that’s a mirage, and it’s not true.  I was groomed to worry endlessly about endless emotional chaos, and to not attend at all to my own inner truth.  Somehow, though, that little voice inside my head was asking, always asking, for someone to notice that this was all just not right.

My therapist pointed out that I probably have trouble articulating this, and I probably am just now realizing this, because it started when I was born – and because it was a fact of my life from pre-verbal times, verbalizing it and even noticing it clearly have been difficult.  She recounted a statement she made once regarding her own life: “I was two years old and I was the only adult in the house!”  I’ve thought of that many times over the last several weeks.  Sometimes I have the sense that I’m seeing clearly what’s really true – I sense it in my gut.  Everything just sort of thunks into place and I can see what’s happening.  But I have such a long history of sensing something wrong in my gut and then working really hard to make myself believe that if it feels wrong, it’s right – I’ve done that for so long that even now I’m tending to default to it.  What it amounts to is second-guessing my own truth.

So I’m clearing the decks.  My word for 2014 is real.  It’s real when I can feel that it’s real.  Obviously I’m not talking about scientific inquiry here.  But I’m talking instead about what it feels like when I’m not flailing at myself to make something so completely wrong for me into something that fits into a package called right.  I’m slowly realizing that I don’t really feel anxious in my natural state (thankfully!).  When I feel anxious and I have that heavy, creepy-crawly feeling in my gut, I’m slowly realizing that it’s a sign that I’m not working hard enough at finding, believing, and living my own truth.

And I’m thankful for folks in my life in recent years who have come along to help, to befriend, to be family.  I’m so incredibly thankful for my father, who may never understand me fully but who loves me unconditionally, and who helps me understand and re-pattern some of the old patterns of childhood.  I’m so incredibly fortunate that he’s such a powerful force for good in my life.  I have other friends who are similarly wonderful.

I’ve been highly reluctant to open myself up to the possibility of romance, and I’m not feeling ready for that yet.  Maybe in 2015.  For now, for this year, I’m clearing the decks of all those beautifully wrapped packing crates full of ick, and I’m making room for the various oddments that arise from my inner truth.

Real.

VelveteenRabbit_500
By Carter


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How to be a Grown-Up

Howdy, and happy holidays!  It’s been a quiet holiday season over here, and I’m delighted to report that I’m going to be giving a concert at the end of January.  I have a new voice teacher and, as my pianist says, I’ve found my opera voice!  The concert is called One Charming Night.  I’m hoping to go as a flapper of sorts.  If I had unlimited funds I’d buy something vintage on Ebay, but as it is I’ll jolly something up with Mary Janes and a long strand of pearls, maybe something with feathers for the encore.

Now.  Here’s the thing that has come over me in recent weeks.  I’ve been checking off lists of things I needed to do to be a grown-up.  Maybe these are things I thought I needed to do in order to prove to myself (or unnamed others?) that I could stand on my own two feet without a man to support me.  Never mind that there were only a few years of my marriage when I relied entirely, or even partly, on my then-husband’s financial support.  Never mind that my earning capacity is pretty damned decent, shockingly so in today’s economy.  Never mind that I really don’t fit the suburban housewife image I tried to fill for several years back before I came out.  Somehow, I still felt, pretty deeply, that in order to provide stability for my children, I would need to have a certain kind of life, a certain kind of home.

And, specifically, a certain kind of house.  The classic suburban three-bedroom ranch.  The good news?  I can afford one!  Continuing good news?  One was recently available and I bought it!  The unsettling news?  I want my little yellow cottage back.  The surprising news?  So do the children!!!!

So – here I am with a house that looks amazing on paper, in a neighborhood that anyone would be proud to live in, on a corner lot no less!  A fenced yard for the dog!  Helpful friends and local tradesfolk to provide needed repairs and updates!  And it’s no good.  It’s really, truly, madly, deeply no freakin’ good.

It turns out, that to be a grown-up, I need to toss the list of everything I thought I needed to do and be in order to be a grown-up.  It turns out that to be a grown-up I need to sing.  I need to wear glittery costumes.  I need to worry about my hair (who does this?!).  Well, not worry, but, you know, THINK about it.  I need to contemplate my shoes.  And I need a little yellow cottage that has a huge and positive energy that’s full of love and life and light and sweeping mountain to ocean views and is just absolutely nothing but cozy.

So – I’ll be singing soon.  Probably in shoes I can’t stand in for long, and with hair that was carefully planned beforehand with my worlds-best-kept-secret hairdresser.  And, soon, as soon as I can get my courage up, I’m going to be talking to the owner of the little yellow cottage.  What will result?  I have no idea.  But my new list for how to live my life best includes throwing out all the ways I thought I needed to grow up.  My new list starts and ends with following my heart.

And my heart wants my children close, my shoes impractical, and my cottage old and lovely.  And my voice as sparkly as my dress.  I picture myself at 80…

LittleYellowCottage [Janus Cottage.  Painting by Glenn Perry.]


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Open Again

Howdy, world!  I’m taking a step back out into the blogosphere with some hope and some trepidation.

A couple of months ago I put everything on hold except for making sure things were OK for my children during some transitions that were difficult for all of us.  I wrote a bit about my feelings at the time, and then turned my focus entirely to making things better for them and for myself.

Recently – as recently as the past week – I’ve been pondering opening myself up more emotionally again.  It’s a small step, to return to posting here.  And I’m thinking maybe I won’t swear off women and relationships entirely forever.  LOL  And I’m pondering that I might have some dreams that deserve some room in my brain.  I’ve had lots of help from friends, family, and medical folks, and I’m relieved to report that breathing easier is – easier.

I turned a corner last week when I sang a concert, the first one since all of the changes that threw the children and me into such stress.  I sang a song that made me think maybe there’s a  thread of something, somewhere, that might be worth opening up for emotionally.  And – no coincidence I think – as that realization began to seep in, friends began reaching out in ways that felt very sweet and safe and caring and gentle to me.  That is such a great gift.

The song I sang that gave me a glimmer of hope and optimism was “Anyone Can Whistle.”  I don’t have a video of myself singing it at the concert (note to self: get video next time I sing that song – it’s great!)  but here’s a lovely, sweet, evocative version I love:

Broadway star Sutton Foster sings in rehearsal (her part ends at about minute 3 of the video).  I love this.  The words, for those who don’t really want to listen, are just as lovely.

Anyone can whistle, that’s what they say, easy.

Anyone can whistle, any old day, easy.

It’s all so simple – relax, let go, let fly

So someone tell me why can’t I?

I can dance a tango, I can read Greek – easy.

I can slay a dragon any old week – easy.

What’s hard is simple, what’s natural comes hard.

Maybe you could show me how to let go, lower my guard, learn to be free –

Maybe if you whistle – whistle for me.


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Burning down my life

The past several weeks have brought a deep new realization about my life and about how I’ve been relating to folks very close to me.  While the insight is valuable, it hasn’t come at a time when I can easily process it or integrate the new knowledge into my daily life.

I’m kind of used to that – at least, I was.  When I first came out to myself, I had no clue what to do about it, and it took me several years to figure it out.  A big part of that was because I had really boxed myself and my identity in.  That meant, for one thing, that it was a very multi-layered coming out experience – I had to come out of my emotional box, as well as just plain come out.  Another thing, though, was that I was able to live on two levels for a while.  I had the reality I knew was emerging, and I kept that reality largely to myself; and I had the reality I was then living, and I carried on as normally as possible there.

Now that I’m all the way out, I don’t have an emotional box that provides both unwelcome confinement and welcome retreat.  I just don’t.

So this new understanding about how I’ve been living has come with a high price tag.  I simply don’t have a way to act as if things haven’t changed for me.  I’m discovering a level of anger that I never knew I had.  I’m incredibly upset at how this has affected my children.  And I’m realizing, over and over throughout every day, how many decisions I’ve made in my life that had nothing to do with my own thoughts or goals, and everything to do with appeasing someone who exercised inordinate control over my life.  Even now.  Even now.

I truly do not know where to go with this.  If it were just about me, I almost feel like I could handle it.  But I’m seeing and living the effects on my children, and that makes me so anxious and upset that I have difficulty functioning in everyday life.  And I don’t have a box to go back into.  And my children are just living their lives.

I’m deeply concerned about the whole “children are resilient” idea here.  There are things that have happened to my children that I don’t want them to be resilient about.  It’s not that I want them to suffer needlessly.  I just don’t want them developing calluses on their senses of self at such a young age.  We talk about owning your own thoughts, about living those thoughts regardless of what’s going on around you.  But they are swimming against a powerful tide, and it’s my decisions that have put them into that place.

I hate that so much.  And it’s not easily reversible at this time.  I want it to be.  But it’s not.  And I hate that.

While I’m glad for the new insights and the potential for freedom that they provide, I’m truly in agony over the effects this has all had on my children.  The pain is physical, it is so intense.  I know they will weather this, and I know I will support them.  But I really need not to shorten my life any more than I already have, just by my stress level.  And I really need to be able to think clearly about how to guide my children.

And right now, I am not in that position.  And I can’t seem to shake myself into that position.  And I can’t even describe how much I hate that.


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Here, still

Howdy folks,

I’m still here, still hanging out in the blogosphere.  Over the summer I got scared about privacy online.  I discovered I was being searched.  I don’t, as far as I can tell, have any way of being searched for here.  But I put the site into “private” mode for a while, and now I’m back with some caution, and a hope that the “discourage web links” button will keep me flying low.

I think I need this kind of space again, and yet I’m somewhat frightened to try it out again.  I am discovering so many ways that my upbringing has played into my current life and relationships, and I’ve found myself going quiet.  At the same time, I’m seeing how the life I have led affects my children.  I want more than anything to keep them safe and emotionally free.  I feel overwhelmed.

It’s one thing to write, as I last did in this space, that it’s OK with me that everyone in my life choose their own relationship with my mother.  It’s another to discover that it’s hard to get far enough away that I’m no longer interesting enough for her to pursue.  And it’s yet another to discover that some other key relationships I’ve had in my adult life have been based on some of the same dynamics that I experienced in my upbringing, albeit on a less obvious level.

But, selfishly, I miss you folks, and your comments, and I miss this space, and I think I need to be back here posting again.  Right now things don’t feel great – I don’t feel any longer like I can simply protect my children by holding them in my arms.  And as their world widens, mine must focus.  And where I want to be is not where I am.  And, again, in so many ways, I am left with only the dream of a life that will shelter them appropriately while giving them wings.  I am left with only the dream of a life that is truly free for myself.  And I have, underneath a life of apparent success, a dream of true inner freedom that could then be lived out in my every day world.

So, with some hesitation, but with deep need, I’m back here to blog and to dream and to say I don’t know how to do it, but I do know how to dream it.  So here I dream.

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Is this possible?

Today something shifted for me.  I found out that my mother had contacted yet another relative (one more prohibited form of contact, in other words).  In recent weeks I have moved my website, taken my former blog private, changed my phone number, and changed my address to a PO box so a street address will be harder to trace.

And still she did it.

And at first I got that shaky horribly panicked feeling.  But it was quickly replaced with anger – how could she choose THIS instead of honest communication and a good relationship?!  And then, something just kind of shifted.

I realized that my children are old enough that if she approaches in a way that requires explanation, I can actually give it – abbreviated and redacted, of course.  But I can say, in simple words, that I’ve tried and it hasn’t worked and it’s better to stay apart now.  I’m not yet in a position of needing to do this, but I don’t feel like I have to actively protect the children from her like I did.  I do feel like I am doing well by keeping them away from her – but I don’t think I would need to actively protect them from all knowledge of her behavior if it came and got in their faces again.

As soon as I realized that, I discovered something else.  Every adult member of the family gets to choose their response and their relationship with her.  If other folks want to relate directly to her and support her current strategies in small or large ways, that is between them and her.  It’s really none of my business, and I mean that in the most relief-filled way possible.  I don’t have to worry about the other adults in my family.

Something about today just gave me the focus to see that I don’t, anymore, need to protect everyone from her.  I have set up the firmest boundaries I can set without calling the police.  And I know what I will do when the need arises to explain the situation to my children.  Beyond that, everyone gets to make their own decision.

And that includes me.

Is it possible that this will lighten my emotional load?  Oh I hope so.  I really hope so.  This is the kind of luck I am looking for in my life right now.


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The Only Real

In recent months, I’ve found myself in a quandary.  What do I believe is real?  Sometimes, what’s real feels very real because it is immediate and in my face and quite painful.  Sometimes, what’s real feels very real because it lives only in my imagination.  My therapist would say, “Hey, how about a little middle ground here?!”  And of course my therapist would, as usual, be right.

But today I was thinking this over as I played with my new phone and read a mystery novel and ate artichoke hearts with chicken (yeah it was a rough day).  And I came to the conclusion that somewhere in this experience, I have made “it’s real if it feels bad” my default setting.  This is an old pattern, but one I had worked to retrain myself out of/away from/into a different feeling.  And here I am again, noticing it, wondering about it, conversing with it.

Since I have this lovely new phone (I am trying to decide on a name.  My top three contenders are Bessie, Georgia, and Sweet Cheeks.  Thoughts????) I am playing around with the settings.  Here’s what I notice on this particular phone: the factory default settings drain the battery really quickly.  Those settings are for maximum warp, so to speak.  Fastest internet, brightest colors, most interaction with every single aspect of your phone AT ALL TIMES.  Vegas, baby!!  So I did a little reading up on how to lengthen the time between charges.  I mean, I found it a little disconcerting to be sending a couple of tweets and at the same time watching the battery percentages tick down almost minute by minute!!  It was intense, the battery drainage!  Well, it turns out that there is a whole lot of stuff set to go on and on and on and on and on in the background.  The phone is set to work as fast as it can all the time, and look as bright as it can all the time, and connect automatically in about three different ways to all of my apps all the time.  Dang, with all that going on my phone is going to need a therapist!

The fix?  Simple.  Just go into the settings and turn off the stuff you don’t need.  Close out apps that you don’t need to have running in the background (hint: none) all the time.  Make the screen a little less bright (it’s still very pretty, promise).  Turn off the thing that makes the phone as fast as D@nica P@trick’s race cars (it’s still faster than I can possibly comprehend).  It takes about two minutes to alter the settings, and then the time between needing to charge the battery goes (at least on my particular phone) from NOW to maybe tomorrow I’ll need to charge it sometime.

I’m not a phone, which is good because I don’t plan on becoming obsolete within 18 months.  But having unnecessary programs eating up battery life – this is a pretty neat analogy for what I think might be going on with me recently.  There’s really no reason I have to move at warp speed toward next thing I’m aiming for in life.  There’s really no need for me to burn out emotionally trying to connect with this and that and the other aspect of my psyche or some person or situation that needs X attention RIGHT NOW – nothing is, at the moment, at that level of crisis for me.  There’s no need for me to act as if I have to be absolutely and brightly diva-esque all the time or just give up the effort – please!  Even divas read really silly mystery novels and have sloppy golden retrievers shedding all over the place.

Most importantly, there’s nothing going on that is so bad right now, in my immediate experience, that its badness takes over as the only reality in my life.  And yet I think that I have eased back into the habit of finding The Current Worst Thing and messing with it until it pops up on the home screen constantly and runs in the background even when the home screen isn’t showing.  Ya know?  But – bad isn’t the only real.

In fact, if I really think about it, when I’m not actively in crisis (I reserve the right to shelve this for the kinds of crises that take my breath and my courage away, but I’ll keep it on the shelf to bring out again as soon as possible in those instances) – when I’m not actively in crisis, the only real is open.  The only real is the feel-good stuff.  The only real is love.  The only real is imagination.  The only real is heart.  The only real is peace.  The only real is that I have good memories because they make a bridge to a good present and a launching pad to a good future.  The only real is that this moment is sweet and soft and gentle and sacred and full of love and tenderness.

The only real is love.

 


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Where the Wild Trees Are

I just got back from two weeks of travel!  Visiting the until-recently frozen north, family, friends, singing – it was truly lovely.  One of those visits that made me want to come back, pack, and move there NOW.

Every time I take this sort of combined family/friends/singing trip, I come back with a larger perspective on my life and on what’s next for me.  Sometimes I return ready for action, sometimes I return knowing something new about myself.  This time, I realized that I’m there.

Every day there was an exercise in enjoyment, in friendship, family, music, nature.  I kept telling myself that this was not a reliable gauge for how daily life there would go, should I move there – I would be chauffering and working a day job and basically running around all the time just like I do here.  I know this.  And beyond that, the timing is not right for a move.  My life right now does not support this.

At the same time, this trip left me with the certainty that one day, when life does support a move, I will move.  I will move to a place where I can breathe the air, see the trees, be astonished by the seasons, sing with other LGBT folk, and live my daily life.

As soon as I returned, I realized something that I had never been consciously aware of in the past.  This place where I live has represented many things to me: escape, freedom, and beauty, to start with.  But also, sadness, isolation, hard work in situations where there is nowhere to go with that work; and ultimately, a shrinking of my world.

For a long time, that shrinking of my world felt right.  I felt as if I was distilling the essence of my being down to its true nature.  I felt as if what I had here made me more versatile, stronger, more able to handle what life would bring.  And I felt grateful for the opportunities for work, life, acceptance in a small community, that I have had here.

But many of the folks I count as true friends here, have come here because this is a place of freedom for them.  A place of opportunity, of ease, of rest after being battered about by life in other places.  And other folks are here because they are the third or fourth generation in this community and their entire lives are lived, richly and deeply, right here.  These folks inspire me – but I’m not in either category anymore.

I feel somewhat careful as I approach this subject, because I have worked so hard to make my life here work; and because I know that I will measure my time until I move in years, not weeks or months; and mostly because if you had asked me whether or not I’d ever leave, until fairly recently I would have said, “Never!”  I know that I am able to visualize myself somewhere else, leading a different life, because of what I have lived and continue to live here.  I can think about moving forward because I have such a solid base here from which to move.

But this is about moving forward.  I came back and felt the sadness I’ve lived here over the years in a way that I hadn’t consciously felt before.  I’ve worked really really hard to make a life here, to find meaning here, to work well here.  And I have done all of those things.  It’s almost like a new kind of coming out to admit to myself that though I have had a wonderful, rich, supported life here, with many friends and even fans; with family and work and music and what folks like to call paradise, this place is not my forever home.

I could tell just from going outside into the northern air, just from walking in the tree-lined streets, just from singing, just from going to my first LGBTQ choir concert (One Voice – they are so good!) that I felt different.  I didn’t feel as if I were trying to create an escape from life situations that I simply didn’t want to face.  I didn’t feel as if I were evaluating my life unrealistically.  I simply felt different.  I felt as if I had come out of hiding.

How to proceed?  It is very true that packing up and moving now would not be the path to more freedom.  But it is also very true that over time, I will feel more and more free to be there, until finally I’m just there.  Will “there” be precisely where I’ve been visiting the last couple of years?  I think so, though I’m open to the possibility of elsewhere.  But I think that’s the place.  In many ways, it brings the parts of my life together.

When it really hit me, this trip, that this life I live on the island will not be for the rest of my life, and that I will be moving away as the years go on, I first felt peace.  It was like a question had been settled in my mind – a question I didn’t even really know I was asking.  Then I did what I always do when I’ve made a big realization – I woke up in the middle of the night with a feeling of dread about it.  Fortunately I have done this process enough times (realization/peace/dread) that I could actually identify the late-night dread as a key indicator that this is really going to happen.  Heh.

I live in a place people want to go all of their lives.  I live in a place where people work and dream and scheme for years to come, just for a week or two – and some very very lucky ones get to come here and live out the rest of their lives here.  I live in a place where generations of close-knit families create quiet, rich traditions that sustain the community.  I live in a place that has helped me grow, find myself, come out, and collect a paycheck doing some of what I love to do best.

And I live in a place that is going to send me out into the larger world.


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Yes and No

I am noticing that I have yes days and no days.  Some days, the yes days, feel peaceful and calm and flowing.  I feel OK inside and out.  Other days, the no days, feel heavy and upsetting and stuck.  I feel like getting out of bed is too much trouble, except that I don’t feel any better in bed than out of it.

This can be fairly intense.  There are days when I am genuinely OK in the moment; and other days when I feel tearful all day.

As I go through these days, I’m remembering how I got through the roughest times of coming out.  I held on to a belief that I only partially, err, believed.  That belief was that things would, somehow, work out all right.  As a corollary to that belief, I kept going back in my mind to the time when I very first realized that I am not straight.  I felt such relief and such euphoria, that I understood that I needed to move, to live, to breathe, to be, to make decisions, in relief and happiness.  Making decisions in stress and fear and upset just didn’t feel right after that deep down YES that I gave myself when I realized I’m not straight.

This is not to say that I didn’t feel plenty of stress, fear, and upset.  It just means that one thing I decided, early on, was to not make any decisions that would change my life, when I was in a place of upset and fear.  Since I felt a great deal of fear about the unknown future, coming out later in life, a stay at home mom and wife, wondering what would happen to me, well, I waited.  I waited a long time.  And I took it slowly.  I really, desperately, for the first time in my life, needed my insides and my outsides to match up.

I can’t say that all of my decisions and actions have been taken in relief and happiness.  Far from it.  But I can say that when I have used that baseline state of mind as the goal, it has helped me make decisions that felt right even if they were also stressful and made me feel afraid.

As a corollary to this “here’s my baseline” goal, I felt pretty strongly that none of this would be best accomplished by working really hard to make it happen.  And to some degree, this also inspired my moving more slowly than I might otherwise have done.  I simply did not feel like working excessively hard at coming out reflected my joy in self-discovery.

So I was looking for the relief, happiness, and ease that I felt inside of myself to make its way to the surface and influence how I did life.  Along the way of coming out this way, I hit some bumps internally and externally.  But when I look back, I can see that my decision to pay attention to myself, to my inner experience, made my coming out quite unique.

At some point I really jettisoned this strategy of feeling relief and ease and moving forward from there.  In different parts of my life I felt scared, left behind, and in several pieces of my outward life, I simply had no framework for understanding what was happening to/with/about me.  The state of confusion and upset that all of this generated became a motivator, in a way.  I wanted to eliminate confusion and get rid of the sources of upset.  It makes sense, of course.  But I was working on outward solutions to get rid of the sources of upset.

I’d like to go back.  I’d like to work on changing the inner baseline.  I’d like to look for ease and relief inside of myself, use those for my baseline, and let those inner experiences take my outer life to a new place – wherever that may be.

As I’ve been looking back at the experiences that I’d like to approach differently now, I see that while the outward circumstances had very little about them that I myself could control, I could certainly control my inner life.  My inner life could conceivably remain untouched by these outward circumstances.

I don’t want to aim to be a robot.  I want to be deeply touched by life, by those dear to me, by the joys and the sufferings that we all experience.  What I don’t want is to have my fears cut off access to those profound human experiences.  I want to share my heart and life fully with those I love – and I want to be willing to receive the relief and ease that comes from being open.  I feel like I’m re-learning to be open after closing off parts of myself in a feeling of self-defense.  But I would like to take myself wherever I go, if that makes sense.  I would like to say yes, and say no, from deep inside.  I would like to feel ease, and relief, and to know that this is my experience of myself and the world around me.

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Inner Landscape

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This image, minus the rather cryptic instructions across the top and the time stamp across the bottom, reflects part of what it looks like inside my imagination.  The hill is a bit more expansive in my imagination, and it’s a bit more covered in yellow and white flowers, and the sun is shining a bit more brightly in the areas outside of the shade.  But this idea, of a hill with a tree and sunshine, reflects the outdoorsy part of my inner world.  I spend a lot of time here.  It’s a great place to get away, meet up with people I never really see, feel free, take a nap.

My inner landscape comes out in words here on the blog, and I am happy to be rediscovering it, both in words and to some degree, in images.  There are parts of me that I’m realizing I don’t have to share in any way that I don’t want to.  And there are parts of me that want a special place all their own – and for reasons I can’t quite describe, this blog and its predecessor have been that place. 

When I was first coming out, privacy was so important to me that I learned to keep my private thoughts, words, and world private simply for self preservation.  There were so many things about my developing sense of self that those geographically closest to me just did not need to know.  Now, I’m coming back to that almost sacred sense of privacy because it’s here, in this private space inside of myself, that I find out who I am, what I want, what’s important to me, and how to breathe, really breathe.

I’m discovering that my privacy matters a great deal to me.  When I’ve felt that privacy to be intruded on, or taken as something that didn’t matter very much, I’ve felt very unhappy and exposed and rejected, all at once.  When, on the other hand, I’ve felt strongly that I had the power to know myself all the way deep inside of who I am; and then the power to choose how much to share and with whom, then I’ve felt like I can get through my day.  I can step clearly through my life without dodging what other people try to throw at me.

There have been some important times in the last two years especially when I’ve surrendered that private world to different people in different ways and for different reasons.  I’m realizing now that there are parts of my own self-knowledge that deserve a great deal of inner space, and that may not need to be shared directly with anyone – or at least with very few beloved others.

The irony of coming out of the closet fully and completely was that I went back to my old ways of dismissing my inner life.  It was during my time in the closet where I learned who I was, how I operate, and how private my sense of self really is.  Now I walk around happily public about being a lesbian – no way I’m going back into the closet.  And now, it’s time to remember how precious it was to have that inner landscape.  It is a refuge, a home, a place to find out my own truth.

And it’s back.  And mostly, the first thing I’m figuring out, is that old lesson – that thing I think I need to worry about?  No need.

Time for a nap under that tree.