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Submitted by courtnee in public - 05.24.10 - 12:18 pm After heading off to see the world for a bit, I’ve come back home with a sense of renewal and calm about most of what’s going on in my life. I’ve been asking some big questions and confirming some equally big answers. I’ve also been getting in touch with some of the fruits of my labor, like having a bigger well of patience toward myself. Periodically, lately, I’ve been feeling like I’ve recently hopped another hurdle in life.
During a long overdue conversation last night, the disparity between what we think others think about us and what others actually think about us was illuminated.
This reminded me of my long forgotten Johari and Nohari windows, which are essentially an interactive personality profile to assist in uncovering holes in your perception of self vs. how you come across to the people around you.
I’ve posted about these windows a few times over the years, when I’ve experienced profound changes in how it feels to be living life. I’ve recently felt that again, and would appreciate the input of my friends and associates. Perhaps especially if you’ve done so before.
You can answer these anonymously. I also give props to those who choose to identify themselves. It helps very much to know the length and breadth of our relationship when cultivating how my personality effects those around me at varying levels of familiarity.
http://kevan.org/johari?name=nee2010
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=nee2010
Make one for yourself. They’re fascinating.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 04.11.10 - 6:06 am What is the strongest memory-inducing sense for you? Mine is scent.
How disorienting and painful it would be if we had more than our own perceptions in our heads? Food for thought when I think I want to understand everything.
The driver really does make or break the ride.
Namaste, motherfucker.
I’ve noticed that I have a hard time getting to sleep when I’ve been procrastinating something, even if I have absolutely no intention of doing it in the time I’m wasting not resting when I’m tired.
I wonder how the makeup industry is changing in film with the advent of the ridiculously invasive HD cameras
Is having bad drug trips is an indication that you’re carrying around guilt for things?
In general, my emotional tides are less extreme when I am not sexually active.
While insomniatic and unmotivated, I was just about to get frustrated with myself for being unproductive and wasting precious time. Then I was like, “Fuck it!”.
When I was younger, people thought I was older; Now that I’m older, people think I am younger.
What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?
Ever notice that putting on an anti-persperant actually makes you sweat more, initially?
Sometimes I’m like “Huh. Spider. *poke*” and other times I’m like “EEEEK!! GGUHH!! FUCKING SPIDER!! AACK!!”
Neecam has had the same backend since 1995
I LOVE tea.
I often don’t know what the undertones of my own loaded words are. I just know they’re loaded with something. Something heavy.
I miss sitting in front of a fire.
When I’m walking up the stairs from the freeway bus stop, I often think about hopping onto the roof of the bus and riding on top down the freeway like in a spy movie.
As ridiculous and I know it is, emotionally I still search for the one thing that will make it all click into place.
I often think of things to write here and forget them before I get a chance to.
The hate is a lie.
I use the unsightly wrapping of a half eaten chocolate bar as an excuse to eat the whole thing.
I wonder how much time the average person spends impaled on the fine line between love and hate.
I wonder if there is a spiritual significance when tears only cry from one eye.
I curl up under my bath water, and pretend I’m in another world.
I sleep sounder by myself.
It’s sometimes hard to wake up alone.
I wonder if parents force their religion on their kids because they don’t think they can be influential enough on their own mortal merits.
I suspect I may be incapable of performing secret/cool handshakes, as I seem to just become bewildered when someone tries.
My elbow skin is very stretchy. Is yours?
I think if I learned I would die tomorrow, I would more than likely spend today alone, curled up in a ball, sobbing.
I’m glad no one has ever called me a role model.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 03.25.10 - 9:03 pm Sometimes it hits me that I’m really going! I get this wave of awesome that sweeps across my skin, and permeates into my core. I get this happy, calm, purposeful feeling.
Lots of good things going on for me now. It’s the 25th and I am stable, focused, energetic. I think the maca is helping me, the awareness and attention as well. I’m finally well after a massive sickness, in which I discovered whole heartedly that I will indeed survive being bedridden ill without a partner to care for me. I’m connecting again with my body, my focus, my dreams (literally) and my rhythm. Remembering that I do know how to love myself, and that I’ve done it before.
One of my favorite massage clients got me this journal and pen as a gift, after I shared with him my plans to get a journal specifically for my trip to Europe. It makes me smile. It’s been really nice to soak up the support and favorable responses to my doing something so fulfilling for myself.
Additionally, I’m reading “The Wise Wound” by Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove. It took a bit to get into, it’s written in a manner that diverges from my aesthetic. I can tell it’s making a huge difference in how I perceive myself as a woman, and how that relates to my experience of life.
If every person, male or female, read this and took away a few nuggets of perspective, I think the world would be a much more reasonable place. Even better if every person had the inclination to read empowering things like this.
I’m even beginning to enjoy being alone! No wandering eye! I can spread out on my whole bed! I have to wash my sheets less often cause I don’t have another person mucking up the bed with me! I sleep soundly! And I LOVE waking up with my cat, who sleeps under my arm religiously, like a wing, sharing my heating pad with me.
This is about the time when someone has come along to fuck it all up, historically. Some tasty, emphatically irresistible obstacle course to frolick within. Not this time. I’m off the market until 2011, and that’s if you’re lucky. It may even be longer than that depending on how much fun I’m having.
It’s a relief to be connected, again.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 03.02.10 - 1:48 pm
I had the amazing opportunity to observe surgery last Friday. One of my clients is a foot and ankle surgeon and invited me to observe one of his operating days, when he had a set of cases that were varied and interesting. My day started at around 6am, scootering to the surgery center in the rain.
Over the course of 5 hours, I observed a lateral ligament reconstruction, excision of a ganglion cyst with decompression of the tibial nerve within the tarsal tunnel, a bunionectomy with proximinal crescentic osteotomy, and a cheilectomy.
You can find videos of this stuff on youtube, so I wont’ get into the gory details of surgery much here. I’m only about 2 years out of Cadaver lab, and I still remember a lot about that experience. The layers, tissues, joints, that kind of thing. The surgeries themselves were compelling and interesting, though I found myself most struck by the simplistic humanity of what I witnessed.
How amazing is it that we can cut into living people, while they are awake, and perform excessively invasive procedures on them, chisel away hunks of bone, tie off and cauterize veins, snip through layer upon layer of tissue, not only without killing them, but in a manner that eventually leaves them more efficient than they were before? Watch someone perform a bunionectomy and let me know. I think it’s pretty fucking unreal.
The eventually part of all this is what hit home with me, once the dust settled and I had some time to integrate what I’d experienced. By about the 3rd surgery of the day, it struck me that I was witnessing a physical representation of what I do to myself every time I sit down in my therapists chair, or read about dismantling and remapping my psyche. I’ve lived my life expecting not to have to be in a cast after that, or in a walking boot, or to have to wait a year to get my mobility back. I expect to tear into myself and rip fused, vital parts of my structure apart and not be injured or have to pay my dues.
Over the years, I’ve started gaining trust in my body. Recently, when I realized my skin sensation was dulling, I chose to change my perception from being broken, weak, and hobbling on the brink of collapse to being resilient, strong and capable. Because, let’s face it, my body is amazing, weird tweaky things and all. I am able to do astounding things with it, even when not taking into account the damage I’ve done over the course of my life.
So what about my emotional body, then? I’ve gained compassion for my limbs, my digestive system, my aching muscles, my wrung out connective tissue – as inconvenient as all that is. I’m fast running out of reasons to resist having compassion for my aching, heavy little mind, too.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 02.12.10 - 9:41 pm I try to be a big girl and stay focused, do good work and be a good person. I’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money on forward progression and overcoming a lot of shit, in therapy and beyond.
Sometimes, it’s just really demoralizing to be 30 fucking years old and still dealing with the ramifications of this in my life. Sometimes, it really does feel crushing and terrible and helpless. Still.
Hug your kids. It’s worth it.
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/parenting_bonding_reactive_attachment_disorder.htm
Submitted by courtnee in public - 11.18.09 - 1:48 am I joke sometimes and say that I need a nemesis in my life, at least one person I would have flattened by a freight train if I had the ability and the sac to live with having done it.
For the last year and a half or so, it’s been a specific person whos crimes were so numerous, so inconceivable, it’s been easier to hate than to fathom allowing them to exist without occasional protest or disagreement of some sort.
But, the crimes aren’t inconceivable. Sure, he’s a creep. Sure, he fucked around behind my back. Sure, he was controlling, manipulative and full of himself.
But what made those things about him so unbearable? So positively awful that when I catch wind of him in my social circle I often literally wretch in disgust? What is it that makes him seem so dangerous? It surely isn’t because he actually is.
I don’t hurt over it anymore. I processed the majority of my hurt feelings and insecurities over being dumped on by him. Yet I still remain completely resistant to any contact, particularly to reconciliation. That is odd for me. There’s only one thing left.
I have remained pissed and afraid of him because he fooled me.
It’s really just as simple as that.
How silly.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 05.17.09 - 2:20 am
Thinking it needs more bubbles. Done with it for the night.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 07.03.08 - 9:45 pm I drove by the school today, and the strangest sensation came over me.
Nothing.
It seemed in that moment that years had gone by since I went to school, or maybe months. I felt nothing raise, and only slight recognition. No desire to stop.
At graduation, I was asked how I felt about everything.. and I answered honestly. I felt done.
I’m not sure what it is. If it’s a numbness in a loss, or actually being ready and capable of moving on, or something in between. But I found it notable. I don’t much know what to do with many of my nights now, besides loaf around and go to sleep when I actually want to. At the same time, I don’t feel a pull to return to school, or really miss being there.
I have lots of plans with friends new and old, and spa sessions happening frequently. It’s looking like my license won’t be prepared until August, so I’m getting a bit of a break and slower start than I expected. I don’t mind.
The kitten is taking up a lot of my time, perhaps that is part of it. She is acclimating very well and has figured out that it’s best to pee in the litter box rather than my bed. She is growing on me fast and very cute, her personality is starting to show, and I think we get along well. I’m still calling her Norda, so perhaps the renaming project was moot.
By the way, if the site seems to be loading weird, dump you cache and reload. I redesigned.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 06.15.08 - 10:27 pm Guh. What a ride this has been. And what a train wreck, sometimes.
In less than two weeks, I graduate from BU. I passed the licensing exam last Friday, turn in my business plan and exit interview tuesday, and graduate Saturday the 28th. Then the school is going away.
I have a business plan that says I’m staying here for a while and I like that idea when I don’t feel like total shit. But my guts are periodically telling me to leave town when my lease is up in August and I barely seem to go 3 days without some fucking emotional meltdown.
BU has been an amazing experience, the single most influential and supportive thing I’ve done for myself in my life – but it’s no substitute for the therapy I had been getting, getting enough sleep and having downtime for myself. Something had to give, and those things were definitely part of what I sacrificed to go to school the last year and a half. Add on that I was in a demanding program for 18 months.. I’m pretty strung out.
The community experience I had in school was a first for me. I think that’s what I’ll take away from my time there as applying to my personal life the most. Communications, Cadaver and Clinic were my favorite subjects, but the community there effected me most wholely, particularly the staff.
In conjunction with this experience I’ve had countless self discoveries and strides over the last 20 months or so. I’ve been on a rampage since I was 19, reading self help, getting healthier in my eating and exercise habits, focusing on my artist and performance talents, going to psychotherapy. And I’m worlds better – better enough to seek out Brian Utting and be open to what I could learn there. But I’m still struggling far too hard.
Last year, through some interesting experiences with my partner at the time, I came to finally realize that I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. When I realized that, it felt like a veil had been lifted from my eyes. As I read about it, and talked to a couple counselors who specialize in it, I knew I’d found what I had been looking for all that time. I finally found something that fit me, the real, scared little sad me I’d systematically been uncovering, something that actually made sense to her. After priming myself and slowly peeling away the layers, I’d found the seed that had continued to sprout and grow through all my best intentions and all the work I’d done to get where I was.
Largely because of my experiences at BU, I found myself wanting to go to group therapy for the first time in my life. I wanted to reach out to other people and share my journey, feel the kind of support you can only get surrounded by other people who know you and understand what you’re going through. People who understand it in their core. I was excited at this indication of progress – wanting to be around people through something hard. I wanted to start immediately, and the counselors with the group really wanted me to be there, but the group met on school nights.
I tried to arrange some way to miss a portion of class for 21 weeks and pay for tutorials to make up the hours, but it wasn’t going to work, and the sessions themselves cost money too. I tried hard for a couple weeks to negotiate and brainstorm creative ways to make it happen. I even talked with my student manager about taking a quarter off school and not graduating with my class, or from Brian Utting, to be able to take that path.
I didn’t do it. It was another sacrifice and the right thing to do at the time, but a hard decision for me. I wanted to do everything at once and I could finally see how much those experiences had shaped my troubles, with myself, with people, and with life.
I think I’ve mentioned how much more mechanical and numb my deep depressions are, and how I find that extremely interesting and somewhat disturbing. That’s pretty new, overall. I used to reach out to my friends, even if it was just online. But I haven’t been. I may change that.
I cant even express how much I am looking forward to getting back into therapy with all the things I’ve learned. I want to explore what a new approach could do for me after years of patchwork and mostly living life on the edge of breaking down again. I’m hoping focusing on the sexual abuse is the key I think it is in continuing to strengthen my ability to bond with other people and get rid of this shit.
Tired.
Submitted by courtnee in public - 04.28.08 - 11:49 am Man. I am beat. And sore. And super happy. Or something like it.
The art-a-thon was largely transformative (or, transportive?) for me, in many ways. It was an intense weekend. More happened than I am willing to document, both for the sake of my poor body and because I want to hold some of it just for me. But let’s see what comes out.
The aerial piece I wasn’t going to do, and then decided to do, was a storytelling piece which in and of itself is a new thing for me. Incorporating acting and a storyline that’s clear enough for people to understand without alternate explanation is my latest progression in aerials, as well as slowing things down and expressing myself in less of the “look how strong and fast I am”. Expressing vulnerability in the air. I started by switching from rope to silks and doing “The Art of Self Love” act, in which the story is illustrated in the song lyrics.
This time, the story was illustrated by my actions, my face, and visual imagery. It was largely improv, a piece I’d only ever done in my head, which had come to me mid last week. Highly personal. Highly exposed. To those of you who may understand what it means to have finally done it – it was performed to music from the Batman Begins soundtrack (finally!!!). It was incredible, I got the most heart warming and appreciative feedback to date for my aerial work after presenting it. I will be doing the piece again at the Gold Show, on Saturday May 17th.
I painted some, sang some, spent time with friends, cultivating, supporting others works. I slept and took care of myself, spent a lot of time with Clayton that was beneficial and fueling for me, connected with new and old, past and present. I “acted” in a hilarious, incredibly fun dream theater play about superheroes and ninjas and girls who kick ass. I came to some heavy, wonderful realizations this weekend, which were fulfilling, nourishing, and highly meaningful for me.
After an intense and highly emotional conversation of the crack-my-heart-wide-open variety, I went to into the closing ceremony raw, feeling unprotected, impressionable, mailable, and a little afraid.
I’ve been feeling the presence of something, seeing it in my peripheral vision, something big, something I’ve worked hard for, as I’ve gone through the process of my blood paintings. The revisitation of needles, that process, which I have familiarity with in destructive senses, the spiral I see completing, the orbit I’m in, passing those experiences, washing them clean a little, redistributing new memories and associations to old hurts and self loathing.
I thought about that internal spiral while we walked a spiral maze that had been created on the floor during the weekend, in small groups. I thought about that sense of my life illustrated in physical reality, as I bumped shoulders with my chosen family, as I passed them while circling. Remembering that the last time I was using needles on myself, I was trying to die. Trying to run. Trying to lose my mind. I wasn’t safe about it. I overdosed. I used dirty needles, took risks. I wanted to hurt me. And now, I was surrounded by people I’ve cultivated in my life, to help me through that darkness. And they have.
To be drawing my own blood, safely (in perspective), sanitary, for the purpose of life, to express life, has been so grounding, confirming, strengthening for me. The bruises from it, while catering to my dark side, a part of me that recognizes the comfort I’ve taken in hurting myself, wanting to extract my pigment rather than wait for it to come naturally in my cycle (there are other reasons I don’t want to use menstrual blood, too) show me again and again that everything is a process, with polarizations, how much I adore soaking in all of it. All the aspects of it. How miraculous and intelligent our bodies are to heal themselves. And that we do heal. That damage is part of being alive, a part I don’t tend to hide from. That it doesn’t overtake my life. Not anymore.
Holding hands in a circle, a dear friend of the troupe and of mine personally gifted the studio with a giant dream catcher. She then offered us all feathers, which she had been collecting for the last 10 years, to attach to it to this new symbol of unity that will hang at the studio, and to offer something, or wish for something, or give thanks for something, in honor of ourselves while doing so.
I started crying. I couldn’t stop. I was holding something in view that I’ve rarely known how to hold where I could see it. It was glowing and morphing and brilliant. My gratitude for the space, for the people, for the experiences I had this weekend, for the love, for the gifts, the creativity, everywhere I’ve been, everywhere I am going – it was all wrapped up in this thing I was looking at. It was so beautiful to have, while I watched these people I share so much with participate in their rituals.
When it was my turn, as I tied my feather to the dreamcatcher, I cried harder, while what I had in my hands came into focus, in words, in my head.
I am so grateful, for my life. I am so grateful for my life. (I’m crying again writing this). I am so grateful for my life.
I felt liberated, and so substantial. Dense, and lofty. Dark, and light. Attached, and free. Flexible and sturdy. Vulnerable and strong. Overwhelmed, and grounded. I watched a great love of my life chose a place next to mine to tie his feather, mirroring its angle, silently holding his thoughts and wants dear to himself. I watched my sweet friend Cher give call to the universe to bring her sister back home. I watched one of my Heroes break apart a broken painting of his muse, and give a piece to each one of us. I watched my friend Gio honor his friends who have died of AIDS, a disease I’ve become intimately familiar with in the process of my education at school.
I watched so many wonderful people being present, being alive, being HERE, being them.
So much happened. So much I’m not mentioning. So many stories, paintings, pictures, songs, proses, dedications. So much space I’m holding for the world in this sore, tired frame, while I go about my dailys, integrating what I’ve experienced. Things that are happening for me, projects on the horizon that came about from this weekend and beyond, things to see, to do, to be, life to live. This was a fraction. Namaste. I bow to the light in all of you.
I am, arguably, on paper, in the worst financial situation of my adult life, right now. Rarely can I say I’ve felt so wealthy.
“I feel like a pearl of potential that’s finally been set in motion, snowballing down the favored slope of possibility I’ve only imagined the brilliant people must have randomly stumbled upon while slowly backing away from freaks like me.” Jan 28, 2007
Submitted by courtnee in public - 06.04.07 - 11:16 pm I am back with my therapist now, and boy, does it feel homey. Almost like I barely left. I want to write of this but I don’t have much time, my hands are falling apart and i dont want to type much, I need sleep but want to focus more on work so dont want to write about this tomorrow. So here it will be in all its unsanitized glory.
I gave him a 5 minute overall ‘this is what has changed in my life’ update, and then went straight for what I thought would be the most beneficial for me – Talking about my breakdown after learning about the CNS a couple weeks ago, how substantial that disconnection was, and how confused i was about why I may have reacted in that manner.
Now I will get brief, cause it’s getting late:
I am no longer in control of anything in my life. I go to work on another persons schedule, my body is falling apart without my permission, i am required to attend and meet deliverables at school that are not set by me, I am IN SCHOOL AGAIN WTF, I am in a relationship with a stubborn, reactive person who communicates his needs and disappointments, of which there are many with me because I don’t live up to the fantasy he’s built up around my posed idealized facets, and my life experience has conditioned my emotional state for that to read: DANGER, YOU ALWAYS GET HURT WHEN THINGS ARE THIS WAY!!
In the past my survival has depended on my incredible resilience and ability to channel my stress to gaining control and mastery over my situation, and the people in it. I don’t have that now, and while my mind is trying to convince my emotional impulses that this is a good thing, this is what I want, I want to be challenged and I want to grow away from having to have a perceived strangle hold on my life, stress and tension wise, it is not going well for me, and I am being buried under the strain like an avalanche.
CNS/Anatomy breakdown: See above, then add the gross realization that I, an extremely physiological person in my interactions and control in my life, know absofuckingnothing about the god damn human body, find it to be completely foreign and complex, difficult to understand, and intimidating. My faith in life was knowing humans, now I am fucking intimidated, I am doubting myself and my instincts because I am in a constant state of disarray being so taxed and out of control, and without that support in myself, I tumbled to the ground like a house of cards in a fucking hurricane. I’m sure it doesn’t help matters that generally when I’ve tried to work on my relations with clayton, it’s been awkward, uncomfortable and sometimes downright difficult – the energy is chaotic and guarded, he doesn’t relax with me and this is a person I’m supposed to have an intimate, intense connection with. I doubt.
Pretty much everything else that’s happened can be tracked down to this wavelength, this lack of control in my life. The human body is morphing into something tangible, something less mysterious, something.. real. Before, it was my instinct and inherent intuition about something that was so mystic that made me believe I had a purpose, made me feel special, made me feel deserving and good, mastered, capable, effective. I’d attached to this notion my sense of self, my reason for being, my understanding of being sentient. It’s what proved me spiritual and more than meat and chemicals.
Since talking about this in therapy, I’ve come to realize that learning all these things isn’t diminishing me like I’ve felt it has been – that I am there to learn this shit precisely BECAUSE that’s the truth for me, and ultimately knowing these things will make me even more effective at doing what I do well.
I feel better already.
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