Discovering Me Isn't Going To Be Easy

...and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be~

Patanjali

     Yesterday I felt good, today I feel like I'm falling to the floor in a thousand tiny pieces. I did my yoga and meditation yesterday then I pulled out my research for a project I'm involved in. I'm highly passionate about my work and spent hours taking notes and googling information, then dinner with a girlfriend I haven't seen in a while to catch up. Fast forward to today and I'm not speaking to Pete over a fight about...wait for it...cereal. What the fuck is going on with me? I worry that the bipolar my mom suffers from is finally manifesting itself in me and that scares the shit out of me. My mom has lost everything that is dear to her because of this disease. She refuses to stay on meds and continues to add alcohol to the mix. Her craziness has driven all of the people that she loves away; I think of my own departure from her life as self-preservation. In order to maintain my sanity I moved five states away from her and I don't answer the phone when she calls anymore. Too many conversations ended with her screaming obscenities at me by way of the “shitty daughter” speech and saying things like, “Oh, if Jack (my dead brother) were only alive he wouldn't treat me like this.” I so don't want to allow my own self-pity to turn me into someone who hates the people I'm supposed to love most. I feel out of control emotionally and it scares me. I wonder if my mom feels scared by her own instability? Or perhaps just the awareness of my own instability means I'm not crazy?

     I can't decide if I should cut myself some slack or shake it off or just grow up. It has been a hard two years and now I'm looking at my only child, the main focus of my life for over eighteen years, heading off to college and creating her own story. I will only be a footnote in her story from now on, no longer the mother lifeline I so loved playing. I have been healing my childhood wounds through the act of nurturing my own daughter for years now; I'm feeling a little wobbly at the idea of no longer having that. It has been achingly painful at times and just as equally beautiful. After what seems like a lifetime of yoga the message is suddenly crystal clear to me: It is time that I begin to truly love and nurture myself, to be far greater than I ever dreamed. No longer am I able to use the excuse that Jayne must come first, or the dogs, or Pete. All are self-sufficient and that terrifies me. I must truly face who I am, this painfully flawed human with an overflowing abundance of both love and anger, and find a way to make peace with myself once and for all. I think I'm truly ready to find some equanimity, but that may have to wait until I have a good cry.  

Weak-Willed Lisa No More

      The yoga studio that I teach for is also the studio where I practice. Every March they have a thirty-day challenge to get students to recommit to their asana practice. Think Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 1:14, “This practice becomes firmly rooted when it is cultivated skillfully and continuously for a long time.” I, being the weak-willed woman that I am, have not participated in the past. This year I inadvertantly stepped into the challenge. I noticed that by sheer happenstance I had practiced asana for seven days in a row; I just started a few days earlier than the challenge, so I thought I'd just see how it goes. Then I really went out on a limb and announced to Phil and Sandrine, the owners of the studio, that I was following along with the challenge even though I hadn't registered for it. Great, now there is someone to hold me accountable! I have avoided situations like this for many years; I like to keep it loose. Goes along with my weak-willed mantra quite well don't you think? So, I was cruising along having made it to day eighteen, I was feeling proud...then we took a college roadtrip to Flagstaff with our daughter.

     I had planned on doing some yoga in our hotel room before we headed to NAU to tour the campus, but my body had other plans for me. I woke up on Friday morning looking and feeling like Johnny Depp in the opening scene from The Rum Diary; it was bad, and I hadn't even been drinking. My allergies had been kicking my butt for days and seemed to intensify with the new location, and I slept for just two hours thanks to my cough that night. I was looking at a five and a half hour tour of a college campus and then a six hour drive home. I told myself that I would surely feel better when we got home and I could practice then. Right, after a twelve hour day? What I did when we got home was pour myself a glass of wine and watched Grimm with Pete. Later we talked about how disappointed I was in myself. I really wanted to follow through this time. I talked about getting up and going to yoga anyway the next morning and Pete suggested I just start over. Note: My husband has run an ultra-marathon, he is not weak-willed. I laughed at that suggestion and thought that maybe I would just give in to the mantra once more and quit. Then, I must have felt Patanjali tapping me on the head, because I realized I could just pick it up today. I didn't miss a day because I was feeling lazy, I was following through on a parental obligation that I felt was very important, not to mention I felt terrible. So, I got up and went to yoga this morning for my (almost) twentieth day in a row. I think I will just tack an extra day onto the end to make sure I actually hit thirty days. It feels to me like Patanjali would approve of this arrangement.