Tuesday, November 15, 2011

(un)Occupied

My head was full of junk until last night.

I mean that literally, I had a terrible cold that started Wednesday and took its time subsiding.  Maybe there is a connection between head congestion and mind congestion.  Because my mind was certainly congested when last night's yoga practice began.

I thought Monday's "Vinyasa Challenge" would be perfect for my uneasy mental state.  After all, that class generally begins moving and doesn't stop until savasana.  Last night, however, Andrea took a different approach.

A fair warning: I'm going to start sounding like a broken record here.  Andrea's opening remarks had to do with - surprise surprise - stillness and sitting with things.  It's almost like she knew I'd been talking a lot about it but doing very little to live it.  She told us that we'd be flowing through poses slowly, allowing things to sink in instead of moving right along to the next one (sound familiar?).  Great, I thought.  This is not going to work for me.

And at first it didn't.  I tried very hard to stay present through an opening flow, but my mind was everywhere else.  I was just about to give up when BOOM.  First chaturanga, a mandatory moment of strength.  And the focus was there.  And it was liberating.  (Really, it was probably the first time I've ever hoped I could stay in a chaturanga forever.)

I spent the remainder of the practice fully in my body, total self-awareness.  Rooting down, I felt so expansive that I was sure I could touch every wall in the room if I really wanted to.  After a series of balancing poses (definitely kicked my ass... like I said my head was congested too), I felt like I'd finally retained all the focus that last week's "yoga hiatus" had forced me to lose.  And things were clear again.

Then, as we settled into savasana, Andrea read a poem.  Going into the subject matter gets a bit more personal than I'd like to here, but it was the single most perfect end to one of the most mentally-challenging practices ever.  The themes from her earlier remarks were all tied in: sitting with empty spaces, allowing room to breathe, etc.  The metaphor, though, is what got me.  It's almost as if the universe is throwing these things in my face on purpose.  I think it is... at least, I want to believe it is.

I spent the remainder of the evening at a wonderful GA for Occupy UNCG, had a drink with some friends, and came home to half-ass a first draft of a paper that's due next week.  I went to bed with absolutely none of the previous baggage that had been occupying my congested brain, and much of the post-plague congestion had left me as well. 

I truly hadn't slept that well in weeks.

The Left Behind

Unpaid interns need flexibile work.  Last year, this work took the form of afterschool tutoring. 

I was first placed with a fifth grade student at a High Point elementary school.  This child fell squarely in the "difficult" category.  Difficult, and clearly in need of special attention/intervention.  The first (and only) day that I worked with him, I was having him read aloud.  Testing indicated that he read at a 4th grade level, and the passage I had him reading was at the 3rd grade level.  Four sentences in, the child became frustrated.  I watched helplessly as he stood up, ran over to the wall and began punching it with his fist. 

When I finally got him calm and back in his chair, I realized his knuckles were bleeding.  After a quick trip to the school nurse, we got back to it, but getting him to do any more reading was out of the question.  So we talked.  We played tic-tac-toe.  I found the child to be incredibly sweet when he was calm.  He was also very smart with games that involved words or strategy. 

Still, his behavior troubled me so much that I later emailed my boss to tell her that I couldn't provide the kind of education he needed.  I was not a trained educator... tutoring was something that I signed up for to help me pay my bills.  The next group of kids they assigned me to were just perfect: easy, kind, and hard working.  I felt absolutely fine with passing the troubled kid off to a more experienced tutor.

Skip to today.  My former boss emailed me to let me know that the child I had "passed off" had been through three tutors during the previous year.  He had dropped from the tutoring program stopped after being suspended for pulling the fire alarm multiple times in a day.  He had been arrested (ARRESTED!) three times since, and was already facing expulsion from middle school.

This hit me hard. Even with my little knowledge about troubled kids, I knew the signs.  He was aggressive, resistent, and angry.  And I, like apparently lots of other people, had just passed him off as someone else's problem.

I know I can't be the person to save everyone, but hearing about this particular child has been weighing heavily on my heart.  Why?  I'm not an elementary educator.  I teach adults and teens about sex, relationships, contraception, birth, and breastfeeding.  I am no counselor, I am no school teacher.  I know many amazing teachers who work with troubled kids like this, and it's their passion.  They would have been able to handle this child, which is what I assumed would happen once I passed him along. 

Of course that hadn't happened.  Other people had taken the same approach as me.  And here we are... the kid is 11 or 12 and already has a record.  He is on the fast track to becoming yet another troubled-child-turned-criminal.  A statistic.  Had I passed him along because I truly didn't think I could make a difference in his life, or because I just plain didn't want to try?

This child is a prime candidate to just be written off like this.  He's African American and lives in public housing.  He is in a school where the average class size is 30.  He lives with his mother who works two jobs and is never around.  He has a social worker.  His teachers know him as a trouble maker.  So do the tutors.  All the red flags are there, and yet we pass him along to the next person.  Someone else's problem. 

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Pro-Life vs. Anti-Choice: What are abortion restrictions really all about?

A piece at RH Reality Check begins, "Restrictions on abortions just don’t work in that they don’t result in the desired outcome.  This is the predictable, yet bold, conclusion of a report to be presented at the United Nations on Monday, October 24th by Anand Grover, a UN-appointed independent expert on health."  The article goes on to discuss such restrictions in a global context, adding in quotes from the author's friends about women who have "too many" abortions.

I have to take issue, however, with the lack of discussion regarding what, exactly, abortion restrictions are really all about.

To be sure, a large portion of mainstream anti-abortion people probably do just want abortion rates to fall.  While these people still don't seem to want to hear arguments for better access to contraception and sexuality education, they do indeed just see abortion as an evil procedure that should be stopped.  I know this because I have a handful of anti-abortion ("pro-life") friends with whom I have been able to have civil, intelligent conversations.  Neither party has ever come away from these conversations with a total change of opinion, but I'd like to think we have - at the very least - obtained a slightly better understanding of why the other person thinks the way they do.  Such an outcome is hardly going to turn the tides of "The Abortion War" any time soon, but I can't help but think it's a step in the right direction.

Thing is, these "pro-life" friends of mine aren't exactly at the forefront of the anti-choice movement.  They don't set the agendas, and they certainly aren't in the driver's seat.  Many don't even follow the larger anti-choice movement: they're simply anti-abortion in their own right, which is why I am able to call them friends.

The anti-choice movement, on the other hand, has never been and never will be about simply reducing the number of abortions.  These people lead the way, set the tone for how all anti-abortion arguments will be made.  They are increasingly radical and dangerous, pulling more "moderately" anti-abortion people with them.  They use violence, threats, and harassment.  They spin bad research to make pseudo-scientific arguments poised as fact, exploit the vulnerability of people who have had abortions, and write large checks to make sure lawmakers put their desires first.

For these people, the agenda is far more dangerous: relegating female-bodied individuals to hapless incubators, reinforcing a culture of male dominance, enforcing social injustice that intersects every aspect of humanity (race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc)... this is their game.  And as leaders of everything anti-abortion, they have the weight to pull more moderate "pro-lifers" with them.  We see their militant tactics infiltrate the mainstream political climate as "personhood amendments" and funding cuts to preventative health care become the norm. 

Make no mistakes: it is true that abortion restrictions do absolutely nothing to reduce the number of abortions in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world.  But we need to be constantly critiquing the motives behind most of these restrictions.  Far from some sort of altruistic ideology, the anti-choice movement is not-so-gently reshaping the way women (and all female-bodied individuals) are seen, heard, and allowed to live.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

What's THAT supposed to mean?

Another contradiction I've noticed about myself: I believe all life exists in many shades of gray, and yet I have an overwhelming need to label things.  Even if the labels are vague, it doesn't matter.  I need them.

Someone recently told me that this would become a crippling social need if I wasn't careful.  If that comment had come from a close friend, I would have taken it to heart and owned it.  But this was someone I'd barely even known, and their ability to see into me so profoundly bothered me.  They were 100% right, and yet I got defensive.  And so I've spent the past couple of weeks dissecting it.

The conversation was innocent enough, focusing on mere political identities and nothing more.  I had said that I considered myself a "nomadic leftist," meaning I tend to float between far-left ideologies on any given day.  The offending comment came after I had mentioned that this is a common theme for me, adding labels (even if I just pulled them out of my ass) simply due to a need to clarify my place in the world.

My dissection of the conversation, however, was about way more than a political identity.  In the past six months, I've gone from having it "all figured out" to having absolutely no idea what I'm doing, where I belong, with whom I identify, etc.  When those things are clear (or just clearly vague), I'm in my element.  When they're not, that's when the dissection and over-analysis begins.  "What did so-and-so mean when s/he said that?"  I start to obsess.  It's really not healthy.

Same goes for my relationship with C.  I've been making people laugh by calling him "my ex-ish," but that's not a joke.  It's really the best I can come up with right now.  He's not my "ex" because that would imply that we're divorced, right?  Which we're not.  Ex-ish is, I suppose, a shorthand version of "the husband I'm separated from and probably will divorce," but with a smidgen of humor so that I don't have to follow it up with, "But really, I'm fine." 

A close friend told me not to worry about it, that such a tendency comes with a total openness about what I'm thinking and feeling.  I don't tend to hold much back.  I will usually tell you what I think, which not everyone is used to.  "It's mature," I believe were her exact words.  Mature or not, I can see how it would get annoying.  You could look at me with an innocently-raised eyebrow and I will spend the remainder of the day wondering why.  Not that my sense of self hinges completely on what you think, but because I just plain want to know.  Did I say something you found to be ridiculous?  Interesting?  Offensive?  I can usually read people pretty well, but now and then non-verbal interactions leave me clueless.  As do verbal ones, on occasion... "Hey, remember earlier this week when you said you 'liked' October... what did you mean by that?"  It can really be that innocuous. 

Don't get me wrong... this impulse (can we just go ahead and call it a compulsion?) stems from a vested interest in human thought and behavior.  Believe me - I've dissected this many times over - it's hardly about how people see me, at least not in the "I have to be loved" sense.  If I could have one superpower, it would be to be able to read people's thoughts.  Partly out of curiosity, mostly out of a true desire to know what folks are thinking at any given time.  It's probably my tendency to over-empathize.

(Sure let's go with that.)

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Zero to Sixty

When things are complicated, we tend to want to skip to the end, a time where the complicated has turned into wisdom.  A time where we can move on with our lives and dedicate ourselves to simplicity.

Of course this is impossible.  We may find a way to "fast forward" to some kind of conclusion, but in doing so we deprive ourselves of the valuable experience we wanted to run to in the first place.  And in the end, that can make things more complicated than they already were, and probably a whole lot more regretful.

I've written a lot, here and in a private journal, about the value of "sitting with it."  I have come to accept that this is the only way to handle difficult life events, but it takes a lot of reminding myself.  It takes even more energy to remind the others involved.  When you're in something with somebody else, you're tied together even when you're separated.  This is especially true when the relationship is long: not only are there emotions to untangle, there's also material objects and logistical matters that - let's face it - have their own share of emotional entanglements.

The real complicated stuff comes when you're ready to run with some things but still need to sit with others.  You're already stretched thin enough from emotional wear-and-tear and the exhaustion of your day-to-day life; one part of you running off while the other struggles to stay put is a true testament to our elasticity.  You have to have elasticity, otherwise you'll be torn in half.  Fortunately I've always been flexible.

Sometimes, though, the "ready to run" part takes off like a leashed dog who's just seen a rabbit.  It takes you by complete surprise.  Your arm gets yanked, your wrist strained from the leash almost slipping from your grasp, and you fight to keep things at a more reasonable pace.  It's still too fast for the part of you that needed stillness, but way too slow for the one that needs motion.  Onlookers view the event, knowing full well what it feels like but laughing all the same, mostly because your "no-really-I'm-fine" demeanor has cued them to do so.  Still and again, no amount of flexibility can sustain such instantaneous force applied, and you're bound to at the very least be sore from the event, even if your arm hasn't been completely torn from its socket.

The simple can be so complicated.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Sitting With It

I woke up this morning overcome with anxiety.  It was awful, a feeling I haven't felt in weeks.  Needless to say, I skipped my class and even crapped out on a consult.  That didn't make the anxiety any better, but I finally allowed myself to let it go, knowing that today needed to be spent for myself.

A quick self-inventory revealed what should have been painfully obvious: I haven't stopped moving since before I went to New York.  That was 15 days ago.  New York was non-stop go (and very little sleep to boot), and upon my return my life has consisted of catching up.  There was work, plus my doula mama had her baby, and I've been spending time at Occupy Greensboro cooking and helping out in whatever way I can.  Everything that has kept me strong over the past few months - good food, down time, yoga - has taken a backseat.

Not that I'm complaining.  All of the aforementioned "stuff" that has kept me in a constant state of motion has been wonderful.  I am truly happy these days.  But I need to remember to take the time to sit with these experiences whenever possible, even only for just an evening. 

It's kind of like running or any sort of cardio workout for that matter.  The real pain comes when you stop.  If you don't stop at your body's first cue to do so - out of fear or just the inability to sit still - you're just delaying the inevitable.  But the pain will be worse.

Let me back up a bit.  First off, I have come to realize that I have fallen out of love.  This isn't any big new breaking thing; like these things tend to go, it has been in process for probably weeks now.  But only in the past week or two have I realized what it was: falling out of love. 

Since coming to this realization was so liberating, my take on it has been almost completely celebratory.  Drinks with girlfriends, etc.  Charlie signed a lease on Friday, and that in and of itself made me want to celebrate.  Things are moving forward, and I no longer feel that they're going in the wrong direction. 

Of course, none of this is 100% good.  Had I taken the time to scratch the surface of what has happened, I would have realized the intense pain that also comes with falling out of love.  And so, with the good feelings and celebrations behind me, I allowed myself to feel the other side.  Obviously, it wasn't nearly as pretty.

There were warnings... last night, I went to a fun Halloween vinyasa practice that was as irreverent as it was challenging.  Lots of prana, lots of ujjayi, lots of crude jokes and laughter.  Sitting with that practice in savasana, I realized I was crying.  Or not.  My eyes were watering, a lot.  I wasn't sobbing or weeping or anything like that, but there were definitely many tears streaming out of my eyes.  It felt very therapeutic, and I left with a renewed sense of clarity.  My biggest mistake was that I didn't sit with it longer, and as a result woke up this morning with a slight hangover and a lot of anxiety.

The whole experience was buffered by the fact that the person I'm falling out of love with is a lovely person, and when I called he was ready and willing to talk me through it.  He'd been through the exact same process only several months ago, after all.  We talked for a while, and it made me realize how lucky I am to have such a great person to go through this with.  As I've said, none of this is malicious.  There's very little resentment, and only the occasional screaming match (which is to be expected). 

These ups and downs are to be expected, but I know I can ease the anxiety factor by allowing myself to sit with things more frequently.  Major life changes are usually wonderful and scary all at once, and I know I can do better for myself by simply letting things sink in before moving on to the next big  thing, even for only five breaths.