Idiosyncrasies

id·i·o·syn·cra·sy

1.     a mode of behavior or way of thought peculiar to an individual.

"one of his little idiosyncrasies was always preferring to be in the car first"

                  2.     a distinctive or peculiar feature or   characteristic of a place or thing.

This week, as I considered sharing what I experienced, I thought "Not about that" .   It's too peculiar.  Too weird!

Well...It starts with this...

I believe in the presence of energy fields.

Fifteen months ago, before I went to Hawaii seeking a new start, 'energy fields' were in the Woo Woo category. 

Before I tell  you what happened, though, I want to share something I read in today's New York Times Op-Ed section (therefore, not weird, right?).  It refers to American Sign Language.

"In more recent years, a new sign has been created: 

the fingers of the hand,

facing downward over the heart like a closed flower,

then rotating upward with opening petals

until the fingers are then placed back over the heart

with the "flower" facing in the right direction."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/opinion/bring-moral-imagination-back-in-style.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

This ties in with my experience, you'll see.  This new flower symbol, above, is sign language for 'transgender'.  Hmm! Yet, this morning, as I physically practiced this movement over my own heart, I felt its broader meaning for me: Transformation. And this broader definition ties in beautifully with  my 'energy field' experience a few days ago.

It all started with a meditation from an Audible book entitled Energetic Boundaries, by Cyndi Dale.  Energy, our own or others', is something we pick up on, in a 'sixth sense' kind of way, and Cyndi speaks about four energetic fields. 

1. our physical energetic field from our skin's boundary inward
2. our emotional energetic field, extending outside our body
3. our relational energetic field, extending beyond that
4. our spiritual energetic field beyond this

I'd like to tell you about how Cyndi Dale's meditation from this book, shifted my own story, from one tethered to historical circumstances, to one tethered to my greater spirit's.

My historical circumstances began like yours did, in a womb.  Mine diverges a bit, for I lived in a womb void of a mother's love connection.  A mother's love energy usually swirls round her fetus and sets her fetus's nervous system, in its deepest rhythms, with her own nervous system's love.  So, I've always experienced myself as lacking love and therefore unworthy of it.  Except, as weird as it sounds, my understanding shifted as I meditated on my energy fields with Cyndi.

The other day, I plugged Cyndi's Audible book and her voice.  I was walking on a beautiful nature trail, and though she advises one to lie down and close one's eyes, for this guided meditation, I figured I'd keep walking and avoid tripping.   During her energetic healing meditation I allowed myself to be drawn into almost a trancelike state.  Her voice led me through these four energy fields and backwards through time - to the moment in time  when I was a single cell, in somebody's womb.

Then she asked me to step back in time before I was even a single cell.  I was to feel what and who surrounded me, what was desired for me, before I entered a single cell.

I felt it.  I was surrounded by love, swirling round me.  I was love, its expression, its awareness. Around me I became energetically aware of spiritual beings, of my ancestors, and a great, maybe 'Source' spirit.  They supported me in love.  I supported me in love.  Cyndi instructed me to ask, in this place, what my true story is.  I did, and received one word in answer:  Behest.  (Likely these folks said additional things, but I grasped the key word.) 

Behest.  With that Cyndi brought me back to my physical surroundings, and thus ended my meditation. 

Behest:  At my behest?  At Love's behest?  There, a shift.  There, in my heart, a flower, upside down with closed petals, heard the angels? speak, hearing love, experiencing love.  And this flower turned toward love, up righting itself, opening up inside my heart.  Just like the American Sign Language's symbol for 'transgender', enacts.  O.K.  Not exactly in the gender department...

And so, I want to share what my real story is: I came at love's behest.  Before I was a single cell in my mother's womb, I was something - a soul? - who lived, maybe in some infinite spirit energy field, of love.  I chose to come here.  I may have even chosen to come in my mother's womb for very good reasons - to learn how to love.  To seek it and discover it when I looked inside my own heart. 

What's changed?  Instead of feeling unworthy, I feel myself to be beneficial.  I am intrinsically beneficial.

So that is my story of the week.  And by the way, I picked up my beloved RV the other day.  You single gals will understand this.  Needing a ride and having no wheels.  Yeah, I've heard there's Uber, and there are friends who will do a favor.  But there's also improvisation.  Hah!  So, as my repaired RV sat marooned day after day at its mechanic's 19 miles away, I remembered my regular local mechanic had seen my RV at the new mechanic's on his way in to work.  I called him with a proposal: I bicycle to his shop, only 7 miles away, and he gives me a lift to the other mechanic's on his way home.  Hah!   My darling is back in its carport.

Cleaning its mice nests out will wait until this heat wave's over.  Meanwhile, have a super day, everyone!

RV Love, Sweet but not Simple

For six weeks her life has hung in the balance.  Lovely. Imposing. Inspiring.  But dead in her carport.  Her fine battery was not enough.  Her RV road assistance was virtually useless.  This area doesn't have RV service centers.  Then, three long days ago one very professional, very handsome Mobile Mechanic, from a town 30 miles away, pulled into her driveway.  Rested and refreshed from his own vacation, he listened, looked, and found which particular glitch had kept her mute.   Came back with that part the very next day.

Hot dang, I have taken good care of my RV!  One $100 Crank Position Sensor and $200 for labor and she is back on the road!

Now, for all who would like an interior view...

under her sink

in her drawer

in the A/C unit on her roof

Hey.  All is forgiven.  My beloved is out of hibernation!

Now, does she look 18 years old?

Next month she and I will ramble through Maine, tasting its coastal breezes, coming to rest for a spell in perfect union with the tides on the Bay of Fundy.  Until then, she is off getting her engine and undercarriage tweaked and primed at a Mechanic's twenty miles from here.  But when she returns,  I'll wipe her innards clean, pick the nest out of her A/C, and polish her exterior.  And then, if the mice stopped chewing shy of her water lines and wires, I will commence her packing.

Now, another peek at her interior...

How can one NOT spread happiness wherever she goes?!!

Life As It Is

I don't know about you, but this month my readership number is in the pits.   I dearly hope this means my regulars are grilling hotdogs or hugging babies or taking road trips or reading Instagram instead of this confessional blog.

Anyway.  Now is the perfect time for me to practice not confessing, while few are reading.  Notice the new title?  I am now merely showing up as me.  Flawlessy Ordinary Me.  Hah!

I have this theory about 'ordinary'.   Inside each one of us is someone perfectly ordinary, and this ordinary person is the jewel of God.  But only this 'ordinary' person is the jewel, not the extra-ordinary or the sub-ordinary person.  It's up to each of us to stop, look, listen, and see with our hearts.  This ordinary person, who cannot speed read live, sits inside us without a voice, nearly invisible - until we get comfortable with being ordinary.   Then we give her air and space and time... 

I don't get much further than this in my theory. 

ordinary

Probably aren't too many ordinary mornings in this culture that don't begin with coffee. And mine does, too.

Ordinary...  My day starts with mewing, around 5:00 am.  I rouse myself and my cat guides me to the bathroom, where he gets his first petting while I do the necessary.  Then he vanishes into thin air and I have to pick up his trail in the kitchen.  There I grab my favorite cup, jam it under my espresso machine's nozzle, and press its button.  In the thirty second the machine takes to wake up and squirt dirty rinse water into my cup, I grab one bowl, one pouch, one 1/4 teaspoon, two laxatives, and one fork.  Then back to the machine to pour out its rinse water, place my freshly heated cup under its nozzle again and push another button.  For the next thirty seconds I pour the pouch's contents,  two laxatives, one dry and one gooey, and 1/8 c. water into the cat bowl on the counter.  Then I am faced with King Solomon's challenge: mix the cat food or add milk to my coffee to drink my first sip?

Since this is solo living other than at Tux's feeding times, I prioritize and do one... thing... s-l-o-w-l-y at a time.  Self- reflection (heart-to-heart connection with me, and me and God), bicycling, heart-to-heart sharing with cyberfriends and one 'real' girlfriend, posting here, gardening, then cooking.  Cleaning my house, opening mail, fixing my RV, speeding up sluggish toilets and painting bare patches on my house - these I only do when they are about to sting me on the ass.

If I die, I mean when I am about to die, I will look back and have little regret about a messy house and unopened mail, but when I take this longer perspective, I know I will regret not having fixed my RV.

My vacation calendar requires I fix it ( it turns over but won't catch), so I must rouse myself.  I've been doing so, s-l-o-w-l-y, over the past six weeks.   First - I roused my brother for his advice, second - I bought RV road assistance coverage instead of AAA, third - I showed up on bicycle to stage a sit-in at my regular mechanic's (who's an avid cyclist), who then -fourth - got interested enough to make some phone calls to rouse a mobile mechanic.  Well, we will know if said mobile mechanic is sufficiently roused when he returns from vacation next week. 

Please pray for my RV!  I suspect the mice are to blame. Despite my directing mountains of bad vibes to them, and plugging in one ultrasonic device inside the RV, mice bedded down somewhere in its bowels with pieces of sponges, paper towels and dishcloths from its cabinet.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that mice would have chewed into a brand new RV's wires, or nested in it air filter, but for now these scenarios are mere wails, until a mobile mechanic weighs in.   If only my RV were an easy tow.

It's $400 the mobile mechanic way and $400 for the complicated tow.

The 'conscience' in my head says "Why don't you have this all worked out?  It's not hard to multi-task, except for >>you<<"  But this is why I have APD and you do not  LOL

One ordinary life to be continued...

C.E.N. It Has a Name

from "The Princess Diaries" movie, 2001

Is there anyone who hasn't been touched by emotional neglect one time or another?   Emotional absence is one of hardest absences we widows and widowers deal with.  (If you were fortunate to have an emotionally intimate marriage.)

But losing your best friend to death is just a taste of C.E.N.  Childhood Emotional Neglect.

It's more than that.  It's more than the occasional snub we all suffer from.   It's the warp and woof of childhood existence for many children.    Too many.  It creates the Invisibility Scar. 

If you never heard of it, here's  where I did. http://www.drjonicewebb.com/about-emotional-neglect/
 It's been one of the engines of my recovery.

Childhood Emotional Neglect.   It's inflicted by parents who never look inside their children to feel who is inside there and learn about who they are.  It's the 'Shush!' abuse.   Beyond the "Shush!" is the lack of concern that they're hurting their kids' feelings when they discipline them, critique them, hit them, invade their sexual boundaries, and use them for their own ends.   If you felt badly when you disciplined your kids, that's not you!  However, C.E.N. is inflicted by even well-meaning parents so uncomfortable with feeling their own feelings, they can't tolerate them in their kids.  Yet the parents who seem so nice.

This is what C.E.N. does:  It turns a deaf ear.  It lets every child's plea for care drop. The poor child learns C.E.N.'s lesson well:  "I shall turn a deaf ear to my feelings, too!"  And so, the little person inside them becomes invisible, and stops asking for the milk of human kindness.

In my last post, I declared independence from my Invisibility Scar.  Even after four years blogging, I wonder, "Will this be the post nobody responds to?"  Do you wonder that, too?  Every self-revelation I write here comes with a big helping of shame, instead of the joy of sharing.  I never had a mother, or father, or siblings who cared to hear how I was feeling.  My mother was sleeping on the couch, or typing away for her volunteer activities, when I arrived home from school. "Shush!"

I can't live the invisible life.

Two days ago here, I broke the code of family silence, sharing two snippets of what happened in my family when I dared to speak up.  On their own, these snippets are just insensitive tactlessness in action.   As an adult, I can inwardly say "Kiss off!"  As a kid, I took everything to heart.

Inside every sufferer of depression, anxiety, addictions, and what-not, is the little child who was never heard for who she was, and cared for when she needed sensitivity.

There is a way forward out of Childhood Emotional Neglect.  More to come about that.  But hopefully you don't need it!

Here's  poem written by Vivian, 21 years old.  Her alias is Flawlessly Tarnished in the poetry community, www.poems-and-quotes.com   She'd lost a friend, maybe the first real friend she'd ever had, when she wrote this.

Because you saw me when i was invisible

"by FlawlesslyTarnished

Because you saw me
When i was invisible
You gave me back some confidence
Made me feel like i was capable

No one could see me
For who i really was
But then again..
No one really does

To the world i was invisible
Nobody was my name
But you saw me for who i was
Though things just stayed the same

Somewhere through this friendship
I don't know how it grew
But through our talks and laughs
I somehow fell in love with you

Because you saw me
When i was invisible
Losing you as a friend
I am now incapable

When i had no one to turn to
You were always there for me
For comfort and for help
Whenever it could be

When everything had failed
And i was ready to give in
You were there to make me see
To assure me i could win

You made me feel secure
You helped me when i cried
And when i planned on giving up
You were there to help me try

Because you saw me
When i was invisible
You always helped me out
When i got in trouble

We been through a lot
And i know you don't care
That you've landed me here
In a place so unfair

Somewhere deep down
I wish you understood
But i know that you wouldn't
Even if you could

Because you saw me
When i was invisible
That's the quality
That makes you so lovable

You gave me reassurance
My self self esteem somewhat high
You made me feel so good
That all i need to do is try

You made me a promise
That you'd never leave my side
The worst part is that when you did
You didn't even say goodbye

All this torture that i hold
All the things that i been through
All the pain that you have caused me
I've still fallen so madly in love with you

One day you asked me why i cared
Why i thought you were incredible
It was simply because you saw me
Those times i was invisible. 

http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/sad/poems.php?id=910210

Marathon's Over! 26 Weeks and I Am FREE

Marathon's over! WooHoo! Twinkie and I have now separated.  Independence is in the air!  I am cured of PTSD!  How could you not love the little metaphorical porcupine that's lived under my skin, shredding my self-esteem for 63 years.  She was a duplicate copy of my mother, haranguing me at every turn.

So now that she's (or I'm) not offender #1, my psyche is peaceful.  Glowing.  Soft.  Can you understand that my peace of mind is worth more than sacrificing it, to get along with one particular sister?   For four years I've avoided her.  She knows every button to push, and boy, does she push.  What would you do in the following situation?  Something a little tamer than punch her?

Two months ago my family got together for our father's 103rd birthday.  Afterwards, I was having a delightful conversation with my sister-in-law and brother, speculating about where and how the seeds of rejection may have been sown in our mother's character.  Judy had produced a spectacular genealogy report I presented my Dad on his 103rd birthday, and this sparked the conversation. 

" Could have been when our pregnant Catholic great grandmother had to leave her faith and join her lover's Protestant faith.  That was the price of this servant girl marrying into her employer's family."

" You don't know!!!"  My other sister retorted, then inserting her opinion that lovers, especially farmers, crossed the lines of faith in Northern Ireland all the time, and nothing bad came of it. 

I explained my own reasoning calmly.

" You don't know!".  Then her own opinion.

I explained myself again.

"You don't know!!!",  then her opinion.

The conversation ground to a halt.

>>sigh<<  Some people simply don't respond kindly when you stop playing lapdog and state your independent opinions.  What would you do?

And another conversation four years ago.  It was dawning on me that she needed me to play her lapdog.  It cinched it.  She had barely walked in the door, when she noticed a photograph of our great Aunt Flo on my counter. 

"Who's that?"

"Aunt Flo"

"No it's not."

"Yes it is"

"No it's not."

Ten times we went round.  I didn't back down.

"Well....Maybe that's a picture of Aunt Flo.  But I don't remember her with gray hair. And who is she with?"

You'd moved out years earlier, when her hair had more color" 

"I don't remember her with gray hair.  You sure that's Aunt Flo?"

>>sigh<<

She's not been welcome at my house since, for that and another 'discussion' I won't share here...

Dear readers, could you give me some feedback how to call someone out on their rudeness?  I need ideas so I can practice.

My counselor shared this story with me shortly after my sister's most recent outburst.  It's a story about a porcupine family and how they deal with each other, by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860 ).   From my perspective, it is my family's story.

“On a cold winter’s day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one another’s quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain. In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one another’s quills.” -Arthur Schopenhauer

Twinkie didn't come out of me easily.  Do habits die without a fight? I've been in porcupine mode since I was three years old.  Dang.  Whole family  has.  Why do families operate this way?    Did you know that each of a porcupine's 30,000 quills comes with backward facing barbs, barbs that snag and tear skin on their way out?  Have you ever tried to extract a porcupine's quills from a dog's nose?  A porcupine's quill enters flesh more smoothly than a hypodermic needle, yet requires four times the force to pull it out. 

I'm kind of embarrassed, but this post wouldn't be through without sharing what condition the Developmental trauma left me in.  I don't know what to call this new chapter, but more work is necessary.

I found out exactly what my diagnosis is ( or was ?) this week.

2.4% of the population suffer from this.  It's one of the hardest Personality Disorders to treat.  ( O.K.  Narcissistic Personality Disorder is harder, for obvious reasons.  Best not to elect one of those into office, but somebody's better than the other...) 

Here goes:

"It is characterized by marked avoidance of both social situations and close interpersonal relationships due to an excessive fear of rejection by others. Persons with this disorder exhibit feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and mistrust toward others...

Many persons diagnosed with avoidant personality disorder have had painful early experiences of chronic parental criticism and rejection. The need to bond with the rejecting parents makes the avoidant person hungry for relationships but their longing gradually develops into a defensive shell of self-protection against repeated parental criticisms. Ridicule or rejection by peers further reinforces the young person's pattern of social withdrawal and contributes to their fear of social contact.

Read more: http://www.minddisorders.com/A-Br/Avoidant-personality-disorder.html#ixzz4DMbJsuW8

Wouldn't you say that someone with an Avoidant Personality Disorder acts like a porcupine?  Not here. In real life!  If the comment section remains blank, I'll know you're avoiding me.

Hah!  Gotcha!  

Have a super Independence Day, all!  Tomorrow, real Independence Day, I won't be here.  I'm heading to central Connecticut to bicycle 34 miles through the historical towns created by our revolutionary forefathers, with some new friends.