Red Cedar

One of the things about being a union steward I find interesting (and more often than I will admit, frustrating) is the glimpse into other people’s lives I get while working with them through stressful and angry situations. Although my role is as advocate only, I find myself at turns either compelled to give or asked for advice outside of the normal collective agreement interpretations. Advice. Which no one ever wants to receive, and I should know better than to give. But sometimes I can’t help it, especially when I deal with fellow beings who seem blind to the ways in which they are hurting themselves, or don’t have the self-care tools that seem so essential to me.

I am currently representing such an individual in a very serious case who is insistent that she does not need counseling, nor are there any stress reduction/self-care measures that will work for her. And she’s not sleeping. And she thinks about her case non-stop. And she’s having chest pains. And she is getting visibly frailer before me everytime I see her. So as much as I am loathe to, I give advice beyond my role, which I’m pretty sure is not even going in. She can’t hear it. And even worse, who the hell am I 20 years her junior to be giving life advice? It’s very frustrating to me, not because I believe myself to be a sage beyond my years, but because I know all to well that a self-care discipline can keep me buoyant when the worries are submerging my decks and putting holes in my craft.

There is certainly a part of me that wishes I could refuse to represent people on the basis that they are not doing their part or taking care of themselves, but of course, this would be a legal “failure to represent” and is also not in the spirit of accepting and working with people where they are at. (And of course I have to be honest and give gratitude to all the people who have supported me even when I wasn’t doing the things I knew I should be doing to support myself). It’s always a question of separating my pride from my cases, and that includes a certain pride in being able to fundamentally help shift people from one mode of thinking into another, healthier one. I have certainly been involved in situations where I have witnessed and/or participated in wholesale transformation – and I suppose on some level that’s what I am always aiming to achieve rather than a technical win on the collective agreement or some other policy. Who cares about the mumbo-jumbo of law and process, I want life-altering moments for everyone involved!

Oy. There it is. The truth of why I am frustrated has less to do with my compassion for others and more to do with the way I wish to perceive myself. Or the impact I wish to have. Simultaneously self-serving and altruistic, it’s good to recognize where some of that frustration comes from – a judgement of myself more than anything or anyone else. Of course I want to help only the people who will be self-successful, which is not unlike forgiving only those of egregious behaviour who you assess will change because of it. The motive is not pure in either case, an indictment on the self which provides much fodder for self-righteousness and self-criticism.

A recognition to sit with before I wreck upon the rocks in my attempt to right myself.

Rather than another long, introspective, heart-wrenching post – I merely present you this: my friend Michael (who I took to the Sunshine Coast on the weekend) looking as happy as one person can.  New photos on my Flickr account. And yes – I am having an excellent day which I’ll post more about later.

I think I’m finding form and I’m pretty excited about it. Since I decided to create a book out of refined and expanded blog postings I’ve been wrestling with the self-indulgence of it. Who the hell cares what I have to say? It’s not like I’ve had an exceptional life, or done anything great, or have anything to teach anyone… You know the internal monologue. We all do.

Fortunately I externalize most of my internal dialogue because I can’t help it, and usually when I do that I get an answer of one sort or another. In this case, it was in a phone conversation with my friend Anna who suggested that I pick up a copy of the anthology The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate, and read the introductory essay in particular. And she was right. I received a copy in the mail last night and dove into Lopate’s discourse on the history, context and characteristics of the personal essay – and I’m inspired to say the least. Turns out that vulnerable, self-critical, undisciplined writers like myself make the best personal essayists. Yay me and all my flailing insecurities (not to mention the need to share them with everyone I come into contact with).

I never realized that the personal essay was considered a legitimate form until now which is really because I’ve never thought about it all that much, having left literary theory far behind in college… So it’s nice to have an anthology of grounded essay tradition to peruse through and reflect on. Something to take with me to the Sunshine Coast over the long weekend and sit on the rocky beaches reading (if it doesn’t rain that is). Thanks for the recommendation Anna!

And so I’m starting. I’m starting to piece it together in my head and pretty soon I’m going to find the discpline to sit myself down at least an hour every evening to put it together on paper. Sexual distractions are gone. Serious face is on. And the goal more than anything is to prove that I can. To back up the claim that I am a writer. For real. It’s what I’ve always wanted to be.

The thing about sharing your life via a blog is that if you are terribly honest then you always end up being wrong, and there’s a record of it. It’s like humbling yourself in front of 200 or more people every day (and thank goodness you can’t see their faces or no one would ever do it!) – it’s like putting your life on a stage for inspection and amusement. Performance art – here is my life – the stranger it is, the better my blogging becomes (or at least, the more people want to read it).

I surprise myself with what I share here, and although I delineate between what belongs in my private paper journal and this public electronic one, they often merge in the intimacies I choose to reveal to strangers via red cedar. Yesterday’s post, for instance, is the type which makes me want to torch my blog entirely and take it down. Not because it is so revealing of anything in particular besides a proclivity towards cheap and easy encounters, but because I’m afraid that in two months time I will be posting here about how I am back at it or torn between one lover and another… And then I will be made a liar again. Or at least someone who appears to be hopelessly out of touch with herself.

I mean, just ten months ago I wrote:

“And what is it that I want? This is the part I have continually lied to myself about in the last few years – but now I can hear it so clearly that it can’t be denied. What I want more than anything else is to love and be loved in return – to be a part of a community of mutual aid and support.

….. I recognize too that my further self-isolation on the Sunshine Coast was rooted in similar, if not extended fears, the fear of continuing hurt. And now I am here, alone with myself and I am lonely for community and inter-connectedness. I am not sustained by only the trees and the ocean – I long for human love and interaction. I no longer value self-containment as the highest goal. I want to love and be loved and it’s just that simple.

And it’s the tremendous losses of the past several months that have made me realize this. I have been fighting the grief by building up my image of one woman alone – but it is a false picture – for this is not what I really want. It seems easier though to fake it than to admit that I am not really listening to what I have always wanted and never felt I had. The question then is, how do I go forward and make the changes in order to meet these long denied needs?”

Very clear. Very open. As true then as it is now. And yet as yesterday’s post attests I have been doing almost nothing to obtain that which I say is most valued. Yes, I moved back into my community, but rather than building the things I say I want, I have been pursuing a barren path as far as relationships are concerned. I am struggling even now to be authentic in this post. To not lapse off into self-indulgent analysis that makes me feel better about the whys of the whats that keep happening.

It’s not even that I’m angry with myself, because I am not. I feel quite good this morning. But still, I want what I write to be true and not just for the moment in which I write it but for me. For all of me. Otherwise I am inconsistent as a person, or at the very least denying myself of the life I am meant to live.

I have been seized lately by the need to right myself and clear the thorns from my path so that I might continue along it. It is not even as though I have been taking a side road all this time, but more like I have been standing still for eighteen months while the landscape moved by me. And now something has moved aside, and I can continue on in the way I so choose. I am tentative in my steps, I want each one to be true and consistent, the way I want my writing here to be. And yet, so much of this doesn’t feel like it’s about what I want, but what is, and what has to be. And that is where I am confused and afraid – that even the mistakes and missteps – are resonating through me now.

I don’t want to only get one more chance, but sometimes I am afraid that I have used up all my lives already. I have been too lucky. I have been too forgiven. If I step off in the wrong direction this time, will I ever get back on?

It’s been almost a month since I drove home from Eugene, car fire on the side of the I-5, shaking myself out from the tension of holdingeverything in – and it still hasn’t quite sunk in that it’s finished and I’m okay. There is an urge still contained in me to spill open fears that remain best unsaid, still slipping silent around the cracks in my heart when I least expect it. And the emotions still threaten my self-discipline when I think about my friends too much.

And yet, there is a rapid movement in me, a hand that has reached in to help me to higher ground; as much as it feels like I will never cease to be these stories, I am also sensing a greater possibility for being outside of them for the first time since their inception. Wow. Huh. That’s something to look at; even as I write it’s amazing to me to think about it being the truth.

I have long (and secretly) suspected that a great deal of my behaviour in the past year or so, particularly as regards my impertinent dating life, has been a coping mechanism for stress and grief. Rather than drinking or getting high, the rush of sexual connection – immensely enjoyable and uncommitted. Easy. Briefly amusing. A means to an exhausted end.

And yet, as quickly as my desire to engage in that world came on, it seems to have ended. Whether for a month or for good, I am not exactly sure. But at the moment, it seems very over and I am in the process of cutting off all of my liaisons (of which there are several, vague and scattered). I am polite and yet unequivocal with each: this is not healthy, there is no other way, I am on a different path at the moment, I wish you well.

I have not yet finished the task, though I expect that by the end of this week I will have.  It’s not at all painful, though, and that is perhaps the most interesting thing about it. I suppose I know that if I want it again, I can have it – and that’s a part – but mainly it’s the absence of wanting it that secures me in my motions. It’s also the recognition that the time for some things has simply come to an end as I accept back responsibility for my life and its direction towards greater and more interesting things than empty connections and late nights.

And so it goes. I know not where except that I am feeling pulled back to the woods and ocean and desert like I haven’t felt for a long time. And I am finding myself more often in meditation and prayer. And I sometimes feel as though I am losing my marbles entirely. And I expect there to be a lot more questions than answers right now. But I also know who I can turn to for help. And I am grateful.

So fucking grateful to be alive and loved and free. It’s like getting a do-over. It’s like remembering where to look.