Flight.of.Colors.

           I sit looking at the pristine white of snow falling gently. The world covered in pure whiteness catalyses thoughts of the intensity of color over the past year. Deep, rich hues streaking through my life. Vibrant reds and oranges of heartbreakingly wonderful love; deep turquoises and mauves of heartwrenching loss; inky blacks of depression and pain that swallow you whole; trudging browns and a return to the whiteness of detachment.  It’s enough to make a girl want beige for the first time in her life. Eclipsing love sank me into the never-ending blackness of pain. I needed that time to find my feet again. And I’ve begun to tiptoe gingerly out of the abyss.  Here I am, finally feeling a bit more steady, a bit as though I’ve come out the other side. If nothing else, it was a gorgeous smattering of colors, a kaleidoscope of emotions that dazzles me with its beauty. I feel a bit like a rag doll, soaring through the sky, the Universe (always on target) smashing me with paintball after paintball, each one sending me soaring, spinning, reeling.  Each one, a new explosion of color, so bright and intense that I want to shield my eyes, I want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, remain there in the safety of the dark forever. But those colors prove too enticing, and although I almost got lost in that safety, I always crawl back out, back for more.

            The colors, the emotions, the experience of it all.  Get too caught in it, and it can break you. Step too far away, and beigeness sets in.  Neither is the place I want. I want the freedom to soar through the vast expanse of colors, I want the delicious joy of watching it all unfold.  So I’ve come to rest in a place of gratitude. Gratitude for the beauty of it all, for my ability to dive into it and feel it wholly, achingly deeply. Flight through and out and back into the colors, dipping, diving, soaring. Such is life. 

Hurricane.Stillness.

           Spinning. She knew the feeling as if it existed in her bones, as if the cataclysmic spinning of electrons in her very cells whirled her entire being into a state of fundamental unrest. She longed for those fleeting moments of rest, of peace eked out through so much work, but had again vanished. She longed for stability, but knew instability almost as a comfort, a place she’d been for more than half her almost thirty years. She knew that peace existed somewhere in her breath, in slowing down and tapping the vein of quiet solitude within, but couldn’t bring herself to find it. She knew that somewhere the choice existed to lower her outstretched arms, slow her twirling feet, let gravity take her hair back to down to rest on her back. But the maddening exhilaration of the twirl had taken over. She feared desperately that the velocity would increase until she was obliterated and would vanish in the fastness and speed of uncontrol until, in one perfect moment, she would combust. The obliteration sounded lovely, to vanish into a million tiny particles, spread out into the vastness she couldn’t feel while still contained in this tiny body.

            But she also couldn’t shake the experience of her recent past, of the desperate hopelessness that had funneled her into peace, and knew that she had a choice. She could swirl herself into oblivion, or somehow, again swirl the ineffable beingness into herself.  

            She found the one, tiny, pin-sized dot deep within herself, that one dot of stillness, and breathed into it. She became that speck, realizing it like a black hole, infinite even in its smallness. And therein she found the vastness she yearned for, found it, against all odds, contained within herself.  Within that speck she was suddenly connected again - energy whooshing upwards to the expanse of the cosmos, energy funneling down, becoming a divining rod connecting her to the slow moving quiet of the earth.  The spinning still existed, she could sense it, but remotely now. As if she had created her own axis mundi, and while the world spun outside of her, gravity held her still within the hurricane's eye.

A Twirling Tidbit.

Swirl. Swirling. Swoosh.

I am so drawn to the energy of the swirl. Again and again I return.  Again and again I find answers to my struggles contained within the beauty, the freedom, the exquisitely open-ended swirl.

I imagine dancers gliding across a stage, swirling brightly-hued and silken scarves behind them.  The ethereal delicateness of the silk, the aliveness and never-ending variations of blues and purples, turquoise and magenta.  One can easily get lost in the delicious dizziness and otherworldliness of ballerina feet leaping, twirling, swirling.

I see cream, swirled into coffee – at first separate, pristine and bright, then gliding into the dark; circularly integrating, spiraling it’s way into homogeny with the thickness. The swirl releasing the bitterness, liberating the pungency.  Leaving a softer, creamier version; a viscose that glides down your throat.  And therein lies the problem with cream. It is heavy. It is thick. It evokes viscosity, which is the dampening of swirl. So we must return to something light, airy, dreamy.

If only I could live within the clouds, weightless, floating above. But I have had to learn how to descend, to live grounded and within my body.  Here it can be a difficult place for me. I associate the heaviness of earth with responsibility, control, pain. It is much easier for me to float away, to sink into the upward spiral.  It used to be so easy.  A sip of that devilish vodka, and away I was swept.  And now, in an odd twist of fate, when the fear starts swirling around me, I no longer hitch a ride into the ether.  Instead thickness settles in, precision, control. I trudge and I sludge, all the while frothing control into an ever-thicker gel that holds me captive and prisoner. 

How do I enjoy the weight, the comfort of creaminess, the soundness of being grounded, without getting caught in viscosity?

The Skinny on Physicality

In a previous post I talked about The White (skin), The Blue (eyes), and The Blonde (hair), but I put off delving into The Skinny.  The physicality.  Shape, size, weight.  Or rather, the lack of it.  I have always been skinny, tiny even.  My brother and I joke that we can sit on a couch, eat a box of donuts, and at the end, weigh less than when we started.  The gift of high metabolism.  As with the white, blue, blonde, I was never much aware of this physical fact of self when I was young.  I was blissfully free to be whatever I wanted, my dreams and imaginations never interfered with by pesky physical traits.  

I started middle school at about eighty pounds, high school somewhere around ninety.  And of course, it is impossible to be a kid in middle school and still remain unaware of your physical self and the judgments it produces in others.  I became acutely aware of my long, gangly limbs, my awkward skinniness.  On the other hand, I discovered that my physical self seemed to blend perfectly with my emotional adolescent self – shy, quiet, unassuming.  Being physically small helped me to be emotionally and personality-small, to hide, to blend in, to not make waves. 

It wasn’t until college that my skinniness became sexiness, became an identity that I could use to manipulate attention from others.  It gave me plenty of attention, positive and negative, from guys and girls alike.  Girls inwardly sneered, jealous in the middle of their own struggles with weight.  I had two roommates my sophomore year that conspired in their mild eating disorders, sometimes eating only carrots for days on end (I swear an orange hue was slowly tinting their skin), other times taking huge doses of laxatives after meals.  My natural skinniness always kept a barrier between us; it was necessary for them to keep my skinniness at arm’s length, away from their ravenous bodies and hungry emotions. Guys at parties and bars, men I didn’t know and had never spoken to, would scoop me up into the air, high above their heads, using me as a prop to boast of their strength.  Looking back, I remember how disconcerting it felt to be suddenly swooped into the air by strange, unfamiliar arms; I was no longer a person, just smallness, just an element in their ego-play.  Yet still, I reveled in it, my skinniness making me the center of attention.  Another time, as I walked across the street towards a bar, dressed in a short skirt and high heels which made my already chicken-thin legs looks even skinnier, I was suddenly accosted by several male voices, screaming at me to “eat a hamburger, you skinny bitch!”

As it did in middle and high school, my tinyness worked in perfect symbiosis with my personality.  Now, it allowed me to play the victim, the helpless young girl who needed to be rescued by the strong masculine.  I needed a guy to fix me, to complete me, to hold me together.  So I naturally attracted guys who needed something small and fragile in order for them to feel strong and worthy.  They played the hero, I the damsel in distress.  I play-acted this fairytale love-affair over and over, with guy after desperate guy.  It always ended the same – his need to control me as an object took over, I became a possession, a prop.  The suffocation strangled in, and when I could no longer breathe, and it no longer felt wildly romantic and tragic, only frightening, I would bolt free.  I continually ran away with vodka and bars and male attention, leaving a shattered, suicidal shell of a man behind.  Until the last guy, who was there as my ephemeral savior finally switched completely from a man to vodka.  Then I could no longer run, for the codependent controlling guy was the only thing that still picked me up, wrung me out, dolled me up and boozed me up again, making me feel pretty and important and needed.  Finally, the cycle came to a screeching halt; the guy was gone, and I was finally alone with my vodka, alone and so lonely.

The road to sobriety was not just about putting down the vodka.  It never is.  It has been a redefining of my physicality.  A friend of mine once described to me the image she holds of our first meeting: I was sitting on the kitchen counter at our friend’s house, curled into a ball with my knees tucked up under my chin.  I always sat like that, knees pulled in, making myself even smaller and less noticeable.  The image haunts me; I can still feel that ghostly need to be small, to not take up space.  Getting sober has required that I learn to fill up space, both physically and emotionally.  I have had to learn to stand up for myself, literally practicing in therapy sessions to stand tall, to feel myself enlarge.  To give myself permission to take up space, to tell myself that I deserve, require, and warrant space.

Not only have I always had a high metabolism, but I’ve also been sick a lot in my life - not just struggling with the disease of alcoholism, but with endometriosis, celiac disease, and a general high level of sensitivity to many things that most people don’t have (all perfect fuel for my victim persona).  Add to that the cigarettes I smoked for fifteen years that made my appetite non-existent, and the vodka that fueled me for days on end without eating, and I was a very skinny and unhealthy ninety-two pounds when I entered rehab a few years ago.  Since then, I have been learning how to take care of my body.  Previously, I related to my body only through the infliction of pain.  It was all an attempt to escape the emotional pain that lay deep within my cells.  Escape, or distraction with physical pain; anything was better than finding myself face to face with those cripplingly painful emotions.  As I emerged from my drunken fog, I found that switching to a mode of life-affirming self-care was petrifying.  Learning to listen to my body, to descend back into it, was baffling.

After putting down the alcohol, and slowly, diligently, courageously facing the emotions, I have also gradually moved back in to the physical residence of my body.  I quit smoking.  I started eating regular, healthy meals (amazing what keeping your blood sugar levels steady will do for ya!).  I started seeing a naturopath, who had me pouring amino acid pills and protein powder and digestive aids and neurotransmitter precursors down my throat, all in an attempt to regain some sort of normalcy in my system.  I quit eating gluten (see my last post for all my complaints and struggles with that nonsense of a process).  As my intestines have started to heal without constant glutinous assault, I have begun to absorb nutrients again.  While all of this is spectacular, and I was feeling healthier and better than ever in my life, it also meant that I was gaining weight.

For someone who has defined herself through tinyness her whole life, I did not swallow (pardon the pun) this well.

Again assimilating the lessons I learned in recovery, I pushed forward, taking it one day at a time, repeating to myself that it’s not about the weight, it’s about being healthy and how I feel.  It’s about learning that it’s ok to take up space, to exist physically.

I hadn’t weighed myself since we arrived in Hawaii six weeks ago.  As I’ve explained previously, I have absolutely fallen in love with food here.  I ravenously pour through recipes, through articles on nutrition, through studies on gluten, on amino acids, on antioxidants and medium-chain triglycerides and omega-3 fats.  I spend hours creating recipes with whole, organic, and super foods, and devour the results.  Being an addict, I am a master at rationalization, and told myself that it was ok to gorge myself, because a) I was exercising for the first time in my life (riding my bike, running, swimming, paddle-boarding) and b) it was such healthy food!!!  So when I got on a scale last night - my curiosity got the better of me – I was shocked when I realized I’ve gained weight.  No doubt some of that weight is muscle – exercise is changing my shapes around, filling out muscles I never knew I could have.  Nonetheless, I wasn’t expecting weight gain.  I felt deflated.  That old part of me that created myself solely through your judgment of me crept back in, needing to be physically perfect in order to feel like I existed.

(To repeat the ending of probably all of my previous blogs), after the initial upset and feeling like my life was over (oh the dramatics!), I slowly began to breathe.  The process of recovery is rather simple: praying for the courage to face and walk through the fear, then taking the first small step into it.  I will face the petrifying fear I hold of taking up space.  Learning to expand into emotional space was the same process: debilitating fear of what "your" reaction and judgment will be, followed by immense relief and healing when I find I don’t need or care about your reaction.  I need only honor that frightened little girl inside me, take her hand and lead her into strength.  So I trust that learning to occupy physical space will net the same result.  Slowly, I will let go of needing to be small in order to create a personality or fulfill some lost man's search for masculinity.  Instead, I will delight in being healthy.  In having muscles.  In being able to breathe during a run.  In flying down a hill on my bike (and laboriously grinding up those pesky hills).  I will exhilarate in the ability to wake up energized, in hiking over treacherous terrain to reach 2000 ft waterfalls dropping into deserted lagoons.  I will revel in being able to swim half a mile into the open ocean to play, deliriously happy, with a pod of wild dolphins.  I will find bliss in my body.

Dope-sick/Gluten-sick; Lessons of Recovery

The problem with having fallen in love, in lust with food in Hawaii (see my last delicious post) is that I have a violent case of celiac disease.  I cannot have wheat, barley, rye, and usually, oats (the highly debated controversy of celiacs).  I cannot have flour in any of its concocted spongy forms - breads, cakes, muffins, pancakes, flour tortillas . . . flour tortillas are one of my most favorite things on this earth, the soft, flowy texture gets me every time.

If I am cooking at home, which I have recently discovered a passion for, this is not a problem.  In fact, it has been a fun challenge, forcing me to new heights of healthful eating.  I can't have pasta?  No problem, I'll whip up some raw zucchini noodles instead.  Can't have breads?  No matter, refined carbs aren't good for you anyway.  Can't have any processed foods because they all contain gluten as an additive for some reason?  Who cares, processed foods are crap; I'll take intact and whole foods please.

The problem lies within the walls of restaurants, with their wafts of sumptuous flavors, soft lights and clinking glasses, exotic tastes caressing your palate.   Oh how I delight in eating out.  Champagne tastes - I've always had them.  Restaurants pull me in, sucking away reality in the outside world and affording me an hour or two deliciously free of all my cares.  Until gluten.  Back in Boulder, this wasn't as difficult.  Boulder is a mecca of health, and gluten-free is the latest fad.  Every restaurant has a separate gluten-free menu, or at least a plethora of gluten-free choices on their regular menu.  Kitchen contamination (flour has a tendency to poof-float into the air and get microscopic particles on every available surface) means that most things really aren't one-hundred percent absolutely gluten-free, but at least the wait-staff knows what the word gluten means and will try to accommodate (or at least humor) you.

Hawaii is another story.  Everything operates on "Island Time" here, and the gluten-free craze hasn't arrived yet - it's probably still floating over from the mainland on a coconut, and will wash up on shore in a year or two.  Waiters and waitresses look at me as if I've spoken greek when I mention gluten.  So I have a little prefabricated story, explaining that I am deathly allergic to flour (I hope the dramatic flair catches their attention), and can't have anything like bread or flour tortillas or sauces made with flour, or soy sauce.  Soy sauce ...  Known here mainly by its Japanese name, Shoyu.  It is a staple here, and everything is marinated in it.  Some of the waiters are nice, and try to help.  Most act as if I've suddenly become a whining and spoiled child, and I can see the cogs turning in their brains as they scramble to make up answers out of thin air when I ask for the ingredient list in sauces, marinades, spice rubs.  I should ask them to double-check with the kitchen.  I should be firm.  But I hate those disdaining looks.  If you read my "White, Blue, Blonde" post, you'll know that I struggle with desperately needing "you" to like me.  So instead I fold, and just hope for the best.  Which, I have found, in the case of gluten, is really to accept failure.  Just one teensy tiny gluten particle can make me sick, and when everything is cooked on the same grill, or waiters make up ingredients, I am doomed.

I have been gluten-sick a lot since we've arrived in Hawaii - confined to my bed, exhausted, puking, and swimming in the delirium of drowsiness that comes with my anti-nausea medication.  It is so reminiscent of withdrawal.

I can spend all of these paragraphs explaining the situation and blaming waiters and shared grills, but in reality, the solution lies with me.  Uggh sometimes I just hate having to be an adult and take responsibility for things!  Oh how I wish it could be "your" fault and then "you" would have to fix it!  It's the same childish foot-stomping retreat of denial.  But, then, at the end of the day, the nondescript "you" is never going to do anything about it, and I am the one lying in bed, violently nauseous, exhausted, and miserable.

I spent most of yesterday indulging in self pity, wallowing in the unfairness of it all.  Until my boyfriend cleverly reminded me that perhaps I was wasting my energy fighting it, and perhaps I should accept what is.  Ahh yes - let go - the theme of this entire blog and my life since I got sober almost two years ago(!).  How easy it is to forget.  So again, for the one millionth time, I take a deep breath, and I exhale, letting go of the struggle.  Letting go into the pain and the frustration and the fatigue.  The only way out, is through.  Slowly, I repeat the serenity prayer - Spirit, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage the change the things I can,  and the wisdom to know the difference.

Accept the things I cannot change - I cannot change the fact that I have celiac disease.  Not just gluten sensitivity (I have an allele for that as well), but full-blown, autoimmune celiac disease.  When I ingest gluten, my body attacks itself and I get sick.  It seems silly that I have to consciously decide to accept that I have an allergy.  (Eerily similar to learning to accept my allergy to alcohol.)  I also cannot change the fact that people have no idea or interest in what gluten is, and therefore, have no sensitivity to my plight.  I cannot change that almost everything in restaurants is made with gluten or will be contaminated with it.

Courage to change the things I can: this is always, simply, myself.  I cannot change other people, situations, etc.  I CAN change how I react to those people and those situations.  I can choose what I put in my body.  I can choose to take care of myself - mentally and emotionally so that I will be secure enough in myself to not fold in the face of annoyance by waiters, and patient enough with myself so that I make good choices.  I can take care of myself physically so that I don't spend days in bed and then addictively repeat the pattern: eating gluten because I don't want to be a hassle or because I want a certain delicacy, and then insanely expecting different results.

Last night, I decided that I would start taking care of myself (again).  And today, I did.  I woke up, and I ran - a great feat for someone who smoked for fifteen years.  I quit cold-turkey ten months ago, but my lungs still burn at a high pitch when I force my body into exercise.  Surprisingly, as my feet rhythmically hit the pavement, I felt fantastic.  I came home, and started a gentle detox - a simple program of fresh, nutrient-packed whole foods blended together to give my digestive system a break.  I am determined to cleanse that nasty gluten out of me.  I am determined to realize my intentions for this trip - adventure, strength, and health.  Every day, as I take life one day at a time, I am astounded how the simple lessons of recovery apply to all of my struggles.

Ingesting.Aloha.

I am deliciously in love with my life right now.  With Hawaii.  With food.  It started with the fruit.  Farmer’s markets stacked with rows upon rows and boxes upon boxes of drippingly ripe fruit.  At first I was naïve enough to believe, to hope that it was all locally farmed.  Then I heard a vendor muttering beneath his breath to the back of a woman complaining about the prices, “Eh Lady, I buy it from Costco youknow, I gotta make da profit somehow.”  My dream was shattered just a bit, but I am so headily enraptured with the fruit here that I blaze forward, recklessly buying abundantly more than can fit in my backpack or my little muscles can carry.  I am in lust with fruit.  The smell of passionfruit is intoxicating.  I feel luxurious scooping out the soft, pink-orange-red flesh of papayas every morning.  I wake up to the view of a pineapple on my counter, it’s sharp poky leaves silhouetted from behind by the fuzzy light of early dawn.  

Daily, I treat myself to an avocado the size of a child’s football.  Mashed with onions, cerranos, cilantro, and lime, it is heaven.  Or simply sprinkled with salt, I scoop it from it’s shell with a spoon while standing in the kitchen – I can’t even wait the two steps to the table or couch.

I began a love affair with coconut.  To be fair, this obsession started in Colorado; I was in the hospital for four days from a terribly mean stomach bug, and my electrolytes had taken a dangerous turn for the worse.  Coconut juice was my savior, pouring potassium into my system with each drop, it became like crack to me – I was a coconut water fiend.  Here, I want coconut in everything – coconut milk curries, coconut milk folded in to the rich and creamy carrot-ginger soup I made yesterday, thickened coconut milk drenched as a sauce over raw zucchini noodles.  I have started cooking.  I pour over recipes on the internet, my mind piecing together ingredients into combinations like an artist painting a canvas.  And my creations have been good!  

And then, there is Hayashi’s – the sushi heaven nestled into a shack in the back of an alley.  Rolls that are decadently large, crispy fresh, oh-so-satisfying.  The spicy ahi roll with avocado – eight humongous pieces crammed into a little plastic container – the most perfect lunch a girl could ask for (when paired with coconut water to drink, of course!). 

Here, in the land of Kona Coffee, a delicacy the world over, I am somehow infatuated instead with chai.  I have a little morning ritual that I look forward to all day - pouring the warm chai into my mug, stirring in thick cream and pungent, local, raw honey.  I slowly breathe it in and am surrounded by the opulent aroma, savoring each slow sip.  I could luxuriate in it for hours.

This petrifying thought keeps scurrying through my mind: only two months left.  I want to catch it, to smash it with my shoe, but it’s too fast, hidden in some dark crack before I can get to it.  Hawaii has slipped into my soul and taken up lodging there.  Already, in one short month, it feels a part of me.  The never-ending colors of the ocean, the salt and the sand stuck to my skin – skin so sensitive that I couldn’t contemplate getting wet without a bucket of lotion on hand to soothe away the resulting irritation.  But here, my skin (and everything else) is deliciously free.  Years of defensive, protective layers sloughed off in an instant of contact.  Facing me, stripped, hasn’t been easy – at times I’ve wanted nothing more than to crawl into the comfort of my usual masks and defenses.

But the sense of peace that has pervaded my soul since we landed has held me steady, has held me afloat as each rush of waves pounds at me, threatening to pull me under.  I feel sheer awe for the power, the mana here—it is in the waves, pounding the shore and thundering my ears.  It is in the lava, Pele’s goddess verocity coursing through the island like blood through veins.  It is in the mountains and the cliffs of Waipi’o, rising majestic above me, housing secrets and whispering sacredness.  And it is in me.  I breathe it in from the island, from Pele, from the sand and the salt and the sea and the fruit and the coconuts.  It awakens the mana within, dormant these many years.  I have waited and prayed for and evoked my mana, and now, finally, I feel it pulsing through me, deliciously flavoring my blood.

Darkness.and.Dawn.

One of my two best friends from rehab killed herself a few weeks ago.  But for our alcoholism, our lives would have been parallel lines that never met.  Instead, the trajectory forms an X; life lines meeting briefly in the middle.  Such disparate beginnings, such opposite ends, stumbling into each other in our drunkenness, gliding away from each other with promises and high hopes.  I cannot decide if our paths were preordained, an effort of will, or simply random float.  I cannot comprehend how one of us ended there, and the other, here.  Why mine became sobriety and hope, while hers remained misery and darkness I continually ask.  It is easy to claim that the wings of some sort of spiritual grace have flown me here; it is easy to denounce the existence of that grace in the face of her continued wretchedness.

I lay aside the constant question, for I cannot find an answer.  Instead I ask for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  I cannot change her pain, her loneliness, her struggle, and I cannot change her death.  I can somehow find my own serenity in the middle of it all, though sleepless nights are more inclined to contemplation than serenity.  It is easy for me to recognize that we collided in pain, that the string of melancholy running through and underneath and slipping to the surface of both of our lives is what bonds us together.  But perhaps I can begin find our connection in joy.  I wrote the other day that I was so grateful for the darkness before the dawn, because the dawn is so beautiful right now.  I didn’t even realize as I wrote it that perhaps it was my answer – my friend’s name is Dawn.  So once again, I let go, I surrender into her darkness, knowing that it helped to bring about my dawn.