Don't make tea for anyone! Only for me. (Can't speak unless I speak from the heart...)
You know that saying, "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me?" I'm not sure where it comes from. I've seen it on shirts, and people used to say it a lot in high school. Anyway... For me, right now it is thus:
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Can't talk. I will eat me.
[10:47am]
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Red Tailed Hawk: Hey Nuria! How are you?
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Me: Struggling with myself. I'm a battlefield on the inside. Cut myself off from talking with mysterious sore throat that isn't an infection that only lets me speak if I speak the whole, complete truth from a place of deep emotion. Otherwise it hurts too much to talk. >.<
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[six hours later]
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For four days now my throat has been hoarse and raw. The first day I tried all the traditional remedies that have worked wonders for me in the past. I gargled with salt water. I drank plenty of tea. I drank lemon-honey water using local, organic quality honey and organic fresh-squeezed lemons only heated to 120 degrees F so as to retain much of their potent life-force.
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The first day my throat just got worse. It was so hard to sleep that first night that I woke more than eight times just due to the level of pain I felt while breathing.
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The second day I tried meditating more, talking less, taking it more easy. I stopped the lemon and honey totally. I started watching everything I ate more carefully. I drank kombucha and vegetable juice and kept it simple. My throat didn't improve.
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Last night Paladin was touching my heart and I felt so much pain at his touch on my chest. It felt like his fingers reached into me and found a gaping hole where my heart belongs.
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Where is my love? Where is my gratitude? Where is my affection? Where is my glorious ability to forgive, to feel peace, to be contented? Why am I raw, bleeding and aching on the inside?
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His touch was more useful than even the emotional processing technique I learned from Oryx. I told him so. I got in touch with myself through his touch of my "wounds". You see how I doubt my own wounds? How I put them in quotations? I do that because I feel like my emotions are invalid. I should just "get over it". That is the cause of much internal controversy.
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I cried. I began to speak:
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I feel like I'm not a good wife. If I were a good wife I would give you a massage every night for an hour at least. My hands would be tireless. In the morning I'd bring you warmed salt water because that's what makes you feel best when you wake. I'd keep the dishes clean, the floors clean, the counters clean and it would be easy to do that as well as - apparently - make lots of money? [voice catches and I cry for a while]
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I don't understand. Nothing makes sense. I can't be the role I was brought up to be...
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It's her fault! She should have told him her feelings. She should have sex with him. She should have kept the house clean. My Dad would be happy if she were able to listen to his feelings and make him feel safe.
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I would be better. I would not make the same mistake. I was going to marry a man who I could make happy. [frantic] I had it figured out. I knew what kind of man I could please by just being me. [desperate] I had it all figured out! I figured it out! And yet... I married a man I can make happy at all! [screams/cries this last bit and cries and sniffles and blows nose]
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But I need help. I want someone to take care of me. I'm so small inside. [voice high and innocent sounding] Do you love me?
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Paladin: Yes. [smiles and continues to touch my heart where I feel like his fingers are daggers]
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Me: Oh! Look what I've said! I used to say that all the time. But I learned not to say it! [frantic again] My filters aren't working. [despairing] If I'm always asking "Do you love me?" then one might think I don't believe you love me!
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Paladin: You don't believe anyone loves you. [tenderly]
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Me: [calm] True. [then, hurried:] I mean, yes I do! I know you love me... because... [falters and looks around for evidence] because you made me tea! [frantic]
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Paladin: [laughing uproariously and still touching my chest]
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Me: I know it is true. One only makes someone tea if they love them! [sounds like a child attempting to sound grown-up] The last person to make me tea before you was Aloe Spine and I know she loves me. And before that, it was Porcupine, before our relationship went bad and he stopped loving me. So you see, that is proof.
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Paladin: [still chuckling] I'm sure I've made tea for someone I didn't love before. And if not, I'm sure it can be arranged.
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Me: Oh, don't be silly. If you made tea for someone, you'd probably start to love them in the process-OH! [exclaims in wild squeals of terror] -DON'T make tea for anyone! [clutches at Paladin madly]
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Paladin: [laughing uproariously again and holding me back, enjoying my authentic displays of emotion]
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Me: [blows nose, calms down somewhat] Hey, uhm... You said you like when I'm all emotional and stuff and being all uhm... authentic about how I feel... and that uhm... that it sometimes... well... [very innocently] Would you have sex with me?
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Paladin: [collapses into fit of laughter again] Well, I admit to being more in the mood than usual.
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Me: [smiles and feels warmth in heart] You do love me.
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Paladin: [smiles] Yes I do.
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Me: [child-like explainy-voice:] Where you're touching my chest it is like you're reaching into my heart and there is just a gaping hole there. It feels like being stabbed. [sniffles]
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Paladin: I'm sorry.
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Me: It isn't your fault. It is me stabbing me. I'm causing my own stab-ination.
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Paladin: [wracks with laugher] You're really cute.
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Me: [laughs at myself even as I cry] Why do I keep stabbing myself?
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Paladin: I don't think you're still stabbing. I think you're feeling old wounds that happened a long time ago.
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Me: [moans] That's an understatement. [recalls the emotional process where I had remembered a past life where I had been a rapist who had never known love in my entire life]
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Paladin: Those old wounds need to be felt.
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Me: [sobbing] I know! I wish they didn't have to hurt so much. [blows nose for a while] Hey, uhm... My throat doesn't hurt. Something about my voice... It sounds funny to my ears. [curious] Like I'm a little kid. But it doesn't hurt when I speak this way. My committee {-that's a term I picked up from Oryx to refer to the differing parts of myself-} is clever. I have a lot of respect for what it is doing. [calm] It is making me physical unable to speak unless I speak from my heart.
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[frantic] But I don't make any sense when I speak this way! I break off on random tangents! It is hard to express elaborate concepts! I'm unpredictable. People won't like me. People never like the real me. People don't want authenticity.
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...
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So that was last night. I had closed my laptop at 9:30pm thinking that maybe I'd get to sleep before 2am for a change. No such luck. I seem to get stuck in sleeping patterns that don't serve my body. Why does it seem so hard to get into the rhythm (and stay in the rhythm) of going to sleep before 11pm and getting up before 9am? I feel so much better when I do!
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...
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Ocimum.
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I felt tired and weak much of the day. Paladin helped me with steaming my face today not just once or twice, but three times. Also helped me get into a bath, peeled a tangerine for me, washed and sliced an apple for me, brought me water, brushed my hair and many other basic things. Last night I had him help me get undressed.
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Part of it is connected to this sore throat. Part of it is the injury to my right hand. Both have their roots in my emotions, although with the hand I did actually physically attack Paladin after the incident I asked for and initiated.
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And well, that was back on November 21st. It has been 15 days. Just a day over a fortnight. I only started wrapping my hand about five days ago when I realized it was still bothering me a lot.
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But one part of today I suddenly felt very strong...
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A started exchanging letters with Ocimum November 29th. To be fair, he wrote me back in June, but I hadn't logged into the dating site since April or so. But as soon as I read his letter and glanced at his profile, I was very enthusiastic about writing back. I thought it ironic to have a high match with another person who shares so much superficial appearance with Paladin.
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Scarab, for example, a charming man my own age on the other side of the planet shares the same hair color and hair style as Paladin. So does Fox, who was someone I almost was going to date shortly before meeting Paladin. The other person who I had a really high match rating with at the time I found Paladin also had similar hair and facial features.
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It brings me back to thinking there is a matching that happens between genetics, soul, path, energy, parents, and so forth, when a person is born. It isn't that genetics make a person a certain way, or that a soul makes a person a certain way, or that a certain set of experiences defines your appearance or energy or whatever. I think they are all co-defining each other at every moment, starting before one is even conceived.
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*sigh* I guess it is too much to hope that some incredibly sexy Caribbean man with long dreads will ever be a good match for me. Dragon terribly spoiled me with his very exotic appearance.
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You see? My emotions take me on tangent after tangent! I remember when I journaled back when I was thirteen and someone commented on my blog that my posts should have a "point" so that the reader felt some satisfaction when they finished the post, and that I should follow-up on things I left hanging in the past so they would know what was happening. I was a very obliging person, and so I did so... But every time I've obliged people in this sort of way I've drifted further and further from my authentic self.
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Authenticity is my buzz word lately. I used to fling about the word "honesty" like a weapon, secretly hoarding the belief that anything that wasn't a lie was honest. Well, okay, let's say that is true. It is honest as long as it is part of the truth and doesn't contain a lie. But authenticity... That is different. That is when you're your full self. That is the full truth, even if it doesn't make sense, even if it isn't coherent or cohesive.
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*deep inhale* *deep exhale* I like thinking about Ocimum. It is nice to have a break from all the doom and gloom happening in "my committee".
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I really want a different term for my internal selves. Paladin calls them his "tussle force" at times. It's apt. It fits. But it doesn't resonate with me personally. Mine are more sinister when they "tussle" - they war. They torture each other, quite literally.
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Can one really be masochistic without being sadistic? Because to be masochistic is to be sadistic to oneself... And to be sadistic to another person is to be masochistic as well, because to inflict pain on others causes a corresponding empathetic pain inside.
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Ocimum lives not far from where the polyamory gathering happens, which also isn't that far from where Rooster lives and where Oryx and Hare currently are staying again. (For a little while there were staying with one of Hare's partners far north from there.)
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His interests overlap mine all over the board. The only thing I've found us to disagree on thus far is video games, which are no longer an important enough part of my life to even care. But more astonishing than overlapping interests or coincidental location is that I feel that neither of us is presenting a front... I've been fairly upfront about all of what I'm going through right now, and he's been open about his misgivings about himself as well.
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How different. How beautiful. [sits silently for a moment in awe and gratitude]
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I told him a little bit about my chronic fear of phones. Asked him to leave me a voicemail. He sang to me. The first time hearing his voice... To hear it in song. The magic of this was not found in his skill at singing, but the bravery in it, the truth in it, the freedom in it.
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I was so excited by it that I suddenly was surging with energy. I ran down the stairs in perfect balance and sprang a hug on Paladin (which shocked him as he was washing dishes and didn't hear me coming). He turned to look at me and said, "You're smiling!" I nodded excitedly and hugged him again. "Well I'm glad you love me," he said. I smiled and jumped up and down and hugged him a third time. "I'm glad you're happy," he said, chuckling.
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"He sang to me!" I exclaimed delightedly.
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"Romantic," Paladin said.
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"Oh, if you heard the song itself..."
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"Not so romantic?"
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"Well... It was passionate... Something about how there is a lot of pain in living, but there is hope, and cleansing in water." Which is ironic, since earlier today I said to Paladin, "I see most in touch and able to get clear guidance when I'm in contact with water."
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Although I have more fear of singing than I do even of phone conversations, I left him a voicemail in return, singing "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield.
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I'm not a very good singer... Not because my voice lacks quality, but because I've been so afraid of singing my heart out due to the high level of criticism my voice received as a child.
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I sung today with a towel over my head, my head inches above scalding hot water. Between the steam and my strong desire to sing for Ocimum, I managed to do a fairly good job at singing. I don't think he'll be able to hear how raw my throat has been for days in the voicemail I left him.
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...
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I feel randomly called to write about what I've been eating lately. Paladin has been making me vegetable juice of lemon, celery, carrot and any other herbs we happen to have on hand or get from our CSA (community-supported-agriculture) winter share. We've been saving the carrot pulp from the juice (but just composting the rest of the vegetable pulp).
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Then the carrot pulp gets blended with honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. (If I was making this recipe for other people I would also add walnut and banana.) That becomes the raw carrot "cake" and is pressed into a glass dish. On top of the "cake" I spread a frosting made by blending soaked cashews, dates, apple and a little water. Ideally it would also have powdered vanilla bean in it, but I ran out of that a couple months ago and have not bought more.
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So one quart of veggie juice on most days, and 2-3 servings carrot cake on most days. (That averages to the following on a daily basis: 1.5 pounds of carrot, 1 head of celery, 1 lemon, ½ cup soaked cashews, 1 date, ¼ apple.)
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Then, also, I've been having a glass of kombucha each day, either home made or one of GT's kombuchas. I favor raspberry-chia and the green blend.
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I've been having apples, oranges, pomegranates, tangerines and blueberries here and there.
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I've been making nori wraps with kim chi, germinated&dehydrated buckwheat, kale, lettuce and a trace of organic&raw miso.
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Today I had another dish I've had several times recently which is just two ingredients prepared in a particular way. Take frozen blueberries and run hot water over them until they are warm. Then run reverse osmosis water over them until they are clean. Then take freshly-blended sunflower seeds and mix them with the warmed and wet blueberries. Delicious, satisfying and simple.
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I also drink raw milk. It comes from a local farm that raises their cows on grass and lets them freely move about as much as possible, weather permitting. I'd prefer goat milk, but it isn't available locally that I know of. Today I warmed some raw milk up in our "frother" and had it with a small piece of banana that had been minced.
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Yesterday I had the insight that all of the foods I have difficulty with are dry. It isn't so much that my whole body is chronically dehydrated, but that due to the convoluted history of my intestines, they are dried out and have bacteria in them keeping the area too dry for their benefit. So even though I've been drinking a gallon of water a day (plus tea, plus fruit), it isn't enough. Because every dry thing I eat (sunflower seeds, nori, cinnamon, cloves, buckwheat, cashews, etc) adds to the problem.
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My meditation told me to eat 95% wet to 5% dry at every meal. So that would mean 1 sheet of nori wrapped around very wet insides with no powders or oils added. What about flax oil?
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I think the answer is the same as it has been for years. I have to juice feast, and just do straight juice. It is just so hard... Emotionally. Come on torturous-tussle-committee, let's heal, shall we? If we heal we can have more fun. Besides, healing seems to be a good thing doesn't it? Isn't it indicative of something that I go through all these healing processes and then and only then does Ocimum arrive in my life?