May 22- One Year One Day at a Time – Content

Damn.  Where do I start?  How do I write about contentment.  I only know how to write skilfully about depression, anxiety, sadness and the like so I have a problem.  I do not feel depressed, anxious, sad, etc. Is it worth writing if the subject of one’s writing is “another good day?  I was taught that dram and turmoil at the great subjects of true literature.  Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Reservoir Dogs, Catcher in the Rye, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  More recently Doubt, Grace, Angels in America.  

I have nothing related to pathos about which I am compelled to write.  So I write Haiku. It’s okay, but it lacks the depth I long for.  Perhaps I am hovering over something I am afraid to see, afraid to look to face.  I don’t think so.  I am content.  I feel whole.  I am healthy.  I am happy.  I like the work I do and I believe I am very good at it.  I love my husband and am grateful for my children, their success and their well-being.  I do not feel deprived or helpless or down trodden.  I no longer feel like a  victim of my god awful childhood.  I have no fear about the future.  I have a comfortable life filled with meaningful work and good friends, new friends.  Today I have friendships I value, people with whom I want to spend time.  My friends are no longer just my drinking buddies.  I have girlfriends with whom I share a deep connection and with whom I have never had a drink.  That’s different.  Not even something I went looking for.  They came into my life.  I liked them so we spend time with one another.

I sit here now at 8:00 pm in my bed with my stuffed animals, Fruffy the dog.  That is what Amelia calls him.  And the green Monkey also known as Papa Monkey.  Jimmy, my husband, said this morning that he no longer knew with whom he was sleeping, me or Amelia.  He was referring to a bed full of stuffed toys.  I hold them, at night, next to my breast.  They are for me, the childhood I never had and my connect to the granddaughter whom I love.   They are joy.  She is joy.  I am joyful.

Tomorrow we leave for DC and from there to Little Washington, Virginia for  our friend, Steve’s 60th birthday, a blue grass festival on the lawn of his gentleman farmer’s estate.  I will definitely be posting pictures.

This is contentment.

April 8 – One Year, One Day at a Time – Anxiety Free

Whew, I have been on a tear since last Friday.  Scurrying about asking why and what if and how, trying to figure out my cancer, how to plan to deal with it, what caused it, why I have it again.  Asking over and over, “Why do I have cancer again?”  Looking for an explanation that would help me deal with this life reality.  No luck.  I finally gave up.  I got tired of being miserable, anxious and upset.  So yesterday I decided to practice gratitude for the life I have.

I made arrangements for Amelia, my grand-daughter to spend the night on Sunday.  I was still pretty much wallowing in self-pity when I awoke Monday morning.  I had a fitful few hours, taught a private lesson the entire time watching my mind tell me how messed up I was and asking, “Why don’t you want to be here?”  Then on the way home, I woke up.  I looked out the window and saw spring exploding in the trees and the grass and in the dark cloudy rain through which I was driving.  I returned to the present moment.  God only knows where I had been for the past three days….in some phantasmagorical world similar to Dante’s Inferno stuck on one side of the River Styx convincing myself of any worse case scenario I could imagine.

I came back.  I came back to the view out my car window and somehow managed to keep waking up again and again all day.

Day 3…two days without alcohol, 38 to go.

Love you Sarla.  We will get through this.  We will.

Seeing Something – keep it simple

Seeing some thing about myself –

the need to create drama.

i would have never dreamed

I was a drama queen

but i am –

I am . . .

even want a cigarette now

a cigarette, really?

how long has it been since

I smoked, cigarettes?

What is up with me?

fear of cancer?

concern for son

who has moved back home?

No telling.

This was going to be a simple

uneventful year.

So much for that.

I need help.  I do not know how

to keep it simple.

Or not.  I will just do it.

I can do this.  I can.

But I will learn.  I will.

Riding the Bucking Bronco – Repost.

Wow.  I wrote this two years ago.  Things have changed so much.  No more thrill seeking.  No more anger.  Not much sarcasm.  Lots of gratitude.

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Sarla Nichols

Yippee.  I lurch back, hollering my head off.  I am Debra Winger riding a bucking bronco in the movie, Urban Cowboy, hoping that my love, John Travolta is watching (which of course he is.)  How many years of my life did I spend trying to get a man’s attention.  Not just any man mind you.  No, I chased the hard to get ones…the guys who never called back, never spoke when spoken too.  My heart smashed into my chest with the idea of not being wanted.  What a challenge!  Just give me a challenge and I am all over it.

Don’t you see.  I yearn to ride the bucking bronco of life.  I thrive on attention especially that derived from thrill seeking.  I straddle the beast, hugging my inner thighs tight to his sides. I feel his beating  heart in my loins.  Now this is living.

I am proud to say my Daddy taught me early on to exploit my own sexuality. ” Need a new pair of sneakers, do you?  Come on then my Little Princess.  Sit right here in Daddy’s lap. “Oops, what is poking up between my thighs?  I kiss Daddy on the cheek and jump right back down. The next day, he comes busting through the front door with a box of Keds in his hand.

I never sold sex for money, but I traded it for attention, for what I like to call “added value.”  At James Whitcomb Riley High School I made a habit of walking between classes with one arm around a letter-jacketed, football player.  Honey, I was stylin’.  With a stud on one arm and straight A’s tattooed on the other, I garnered a movie stars gallery of spectators.

Like Debra Winger, I drank with the bad boys, dated the jocks, and when no one was looking, hung out with my good friend Tom.  Tom, the go to guy…the one that comes when you call; who gives a girl a shoulder to cry on.  I can see him idling his woody wagon up my driveway on Donmoyer Avenue.  I slip out the front door and into the bench seat of his beat-up car.  He’s got a six pack of Schlitz beer and Marlboros in a box.  We are ready to ride.

Physically, we never left the drive, but in our hearts we traveled to the far corners of the universe.  We were determined not live our lives under the smoke stacks of South Bend, Indiana. He will forever be my link to God in, what I then considered, a Godless world.  His family of 11 children was, no surprise, Catholic and Tom exemplified the Doctrines of the Church.  He never pushed me to have intercourse.  We dabbled in sex, as teenagers do, eyes tightly shut, groping one another,  but never consummated our relationship.  He wanted a commitment, one I could never give.  I was not a one guy girl.

Tom didn’t really “do it” for me.  He was no bucking bronco, just a  “steady Eddie.”  He was the one you could let get away  because he would always come back.  Kinda like a rescue dog.   There’s a great line from a song.  Can’t remember the artist.  Goes like this.  “How can I ever miss you if you won’t go away.”  That was Tom,good through thick and thin.  Not much of a challenge.  Boring.

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January 25 – One Year, One Day at a Time – Miraculous

It is that time of day once again.  I am here, at home, watching the Grizzlies beat Houston.  Half time.  Wiping the smudges off my I-phone trying to think of what to say.  Lack of drama in my life.  Our society loves a little drama.  Strange how my life is just going a pace.  No drops into oblivion, no high-flying.  Life goes apace.  Odd that I am not jonesing for something grander, something about which I could write that would be sure to draw your attention.  I.E.  Child abuse, depression, alcoholism (got some of my biggest hits on alcoholism), fear, struggle and generalize doom and gloom.  What else gets the world’s attention?  Pornography.  None of that in my life. Murder?  There is a lot of that in Memphis but not around me.  adultery?  No.  Love my husband.  Not interested in anyone else.  Angst.  Not really.  I am sure I could dream up something to cause turmoil.   NO, I choose not to do that.  Shit.  I got nothin’ to complain about.  Why would you want to read my blog?

Okay, well reporting in as promised.  Got up, drank coffee, meditated, posted a blog, taught a private lesson, and then the high light of my day… I want to the First Presbyterian Church in Memphis to help with a craft’s day organized by  Choices of Memphis to make decorations for the annual Condomonium fund-raiser, held this year on March 1 at Playhouse on the Square.  Here is a sample of our work.

Condoms, condoms everywhere.   What a treat for me.  Out of the house, away from the computer, with other women , laughing about how great it was to be pasting condoms to paper lanterns.  Priceless.

Wow, maybe what happened after was even more wonderful.  Came home to an empty house.  Jimmy want on a long bike ride with his friend Ward Archer.  I had my first marathon TV afternoon in as long as I can remember.  I watched Law and Order, SUV, and then went through all three new episodes of Chicago P.D.  Loved it.  I sat on the floor and cut out pictures for a new image board to high light  novels, completed and published books,and the possibility of teaching yoga workshops across the country,  I include images of meditation. I will paste it all up tomorrow.  I did hip opening poses throughout the experience.  My hips are so tight.  I attribute this to spin class. I am having chronic back pain.  I know that i have to work to remedy the inflammation.  I do  feel better, less back pain, more openness.  Yoga works.  What a concept.

Jimmy came home with Ward who stayed a drink.  We visited for over 2 hours.  Love Ward Archer.  Jordan came just as Ward was leaving. I made him an omelet with sautéed brussels sprouts.  Always so glad to have him here.  Wish I could also see more of my wonderful daughter, Katie Nichols Cook.  She will be bringing our grand-daughter, Amelia over tomorrow afternoon to spend the night. Amelia will be with us Monday too.   Very grateful..

So we, Jimmy and I, ate dinner, roasted chicken and brussell sprouts, with red wine and chocolate covered almonds for desert.  The Grizzlies are still beating Houston and I am finishing a day, not so different than any other day writing this post.  Miraculous in its normalcy.

Amen, Amen