Crampy and Teary
We all feel a little crampy sometimes. Sometimes it's the literal kind of crampy – the kind us women get, around that time of the month. Mother Nature's way of reminding us that there's no getting out of being a woman. I used to hate that. I don't anymore. It can be a good thing, when you embrace it.
Like yesterday – when I was talking to my spiritual coach, and I just burst out into tears. Well, I wanted to burst into tears. It didn't happen until we were off the phone. She could tell something was off, though – I just didn't want to get into just then, as we were running out of time. But she recommended I journal about it, and so I did. After the call.
I had a good cry about it. After the call. I figured out some things, all the call. Always easier to explore my real feelings in a vacuum, apart from humans, where I feel safe. In the past it used to be in a forest, by a brook, or by a river. Laying on the grass or a bed of pine needles, or a cold slab of granite. Those were the places I could let it out. Not around people.
But the good thing about being crampy and teary is that all those emotions are so close to the surface – they're right there, you can't avoid them. That, too, used to be a nuisance. Worse, it was a weakness. But the real weakness is not knowing what your weakness is – it's having a parasite eat you from the inside out and all the while you're acting like nothing is happening, nothing is wrong.
That's weakness. It's also just stupid.
Now, I don't exactly embrace my emotions all the time – though I'm getting better at it – but I am getting better at letting them flow where and how they need to. Like a bathtub overfilling, I let those emotions just flow out of the tub, and spill where they need to spill. There may be a little cleanup involved, but nothing close to the mess I'd have if I tried to hold all that water in and ended up with bust pipes or a ruined floor.
Now I feel them welling up, and if they're right there, I let them spill over. Tell me what I'm feeling. I'm feeling it, anyway. It's happening to me, anyway. So show me – show your face. Show me what's happening to me, for real. The hidden inner world that feels a millions miles away from my outer world, my conscious world, and all the BS stories I tell myself, about myself.
It happened at a great time, too – that's exactly the work I'm supposed to be doing with my spiritual coach, anyway. Figure that shit out. Remove those blocks, face those demons head-on, and slay those dragons. First, you have to find them, identify them.
So this – this teary episode – was real. It tapped into an old monster in me. Perhaps the oldest, strongest. The kraken, deep in my soul. This one huge, ugly, terrifying bastard that has always kept me afraid of myself, and inner depths, and of exploring all there is to explore within the vast ocean of my own infinite soul.
This Kraken is the idea that I'm broken, and always have been. That I always needed to fix myself – and save my parents from having to do it. Saving them from the mess that is me. Figure out how to patch myself up on my own, or go down trying. You're on your own, do or die.
The thing is, the more I tried to fix myself, the more entangled with this creature I became, and the more it took me down. The more fucked up I got. It was then just my personality being weird, or the way I fucking colored in my peaches and blueberries in kindergarten, then scratched off the edges (which was fucking brilliant, by the way), which bitchy kindergarten teachers didn't like; it wasn't just shit like that any more. Now it was physical shit – my knees always aching, shin splints, this and that.
The more I tried to fix myself, the more fucked-up I got.
And that compounded – I just got more and more obsessed with fixing myself, and more and more entangled with the Kraken, and had more and more problems. It just got worse and worse. All along, I'm just trying to fix myself – this mess that I was born as, apparently. But the more I tried, the worse I got.
Here I am, 40 years old, still fighting this Kraken. Just as I think I've slayed it, and it's never coming back, up it rears its ugly head in out of the dark, murky waters of my soul. There it is, grinning at me and strong as ever, after all these years.
That can definitely get me teary. Fucking Kraken. You bastard. I was doing so well.
Maybe I don't need to be fixed. Hard to believe, but maybe it's true. That may be the only way to get that fucker out of my life. We'll see.
For now, though, I'm giving into my crampy and teary time – doing some good stuff like this writing, and getting some rest. But also eating a shitton of chocolate and feeling sorry for myself.
So yeah. It's that time of the month – the time I'm teary and crampy. It's also when my Kraken is swimming dangerously close to the surface. At least I know the bastard is there. At least I can see and identify what it is I'm dealing with. It's not hypersensitivity – it's emotional vigilance. And it will one day save my life (if it hasn't already).
More chocolate. Less Kraken.