Guts

I was reading somewhere sometime about the head, the heart and the gut in terms of how they function in our emotional and spiritual lives. The gut has nerves and feelings and whatnot that help it function as a sort of second brain, like how we feel things in our gut, or do a gut check. Sometimes we have to trust our gut more than our minds, as if our emotional memories are stored in our bellies and bowels.

So what happens to my ability to trust myself when my gut is being partially blocked by this unpleasant and unwelcome "benign" cyst on my ovary? When I get it removed, will I have some new clarity, new insights into my life, that were previously blocked?

Or, will I just be able to poop like a normal person, without the ball of blech sitting on my large intestine?

In either case, I'll take it. It will be better than what I have now. 

Benign

WARNING: This post contains TMI.

Benign.

What a bullshit adjective.

It means gentle and kind, mild and favorable, not not harmful or malignant. It sounds fun or good.

It's not.

So I have this "benign" dermoid cyst on my ovary as if "benign" is a good thing, a happy event. This cyst is bigger than my fist, bigger than my uterus, Of course, I am glad I don't have cancer or a tumor with its own blood supply, but I'd rather have no cyst, no need for surgery to get the damn thing removed. 

The cyst is 9x8x5 cm in size. (In inches, I think it is about 3.5 x 3 x 2.5.) I made a similar size object out of legos for comparison. Obviously, the cyst doesn't have sharp edges, but that is the approximate size. Dr. Who is there for comparison.

Dr. Who looks pissed. He's not happy about this cyst, either. It could be worse, right? Like the size of a grapefruit, or a cantaloup? No, I am not following that false logic. Let me have a few days to be sad and angry and pissed.

The doctor who called me last night (not to be confused with Dr. Who)  was straight and to the point. "You saw your chart, right?"

Yeah.

"You have a large cyst and it needs to be removed. It is benign..."

That is it. I appreciated her straightforwardness, her lack of bullshit. I get that this is benign, but root word of benign doesn't fit for a cyst. Benign implies something it an assets, a positive trait. No cyst is positive, and just because it isn't cancerous means that it is good. I want this thing out as soon as possible. I want it out now, please.

So what is this lump causing?

Constipation. It is squashing my colon, making it harder for me to poop. I used to think constipation was a character flaw, that people got it because they ate too much fried food and never heard of apples. I was judgmental that people couldn't manage their own diet. Ha! That was so mean.

Plus, I can't fully bend over to tie my shoes. I had thought it was a flexibility thing, so I kept going to yoga. Stretching is well and good, but I think this lump was causing me problems moving in certain ways.

That is enough for now. If you are super curious, you can google "dermoid cyst," but I wouldn't. It is gross.

Matthew Perry & Self-Love

This weekend I finished Matthew Perry's (aka Chandler Bing) memoir. A typical celebrity memoir might be name drop central, or list after list of bad decisions, but this book is about his recovery from addictions.

And his shitty treatment of women.

For years. 

Decades.

Okay, he is not a bona fide asshole. He was seriously afraid of commitment, pathologically afraid of getting close to people, and as a result, he pushed people way before he could get hurt. He had one girlfriend he dated for two years and she nursed him back to health during two years of him being in and out of rehab. As soon as he got out, he dumped her.

WFT? Who does this?

Repeat this pattern until he is fifty-three years old and still single with no family. He falls in love with woman. She falls in love with him. He turns into a chicken shit and dumps her. For no reason.

His book did him no favors, either, because now he can only date women who haven't read the book because they would run like hell to the hills if he came knocking on their door.

Or, they'd think "Oh I can fix this poor fucked up soul! I know he can change!"

Bullshit. And that would be the exact type of woman he wouldn't need.

I shouldn't be so harsh on the guy. Really, I shouldn't.

Around 85% into the book, I though he was an asshole and I hated him. I almost didn't finish the book, but I had to find out of he could stay sober. I am assuming he did, but ya know, I wanted to read how he got there.

I also know that sobriety is a fragile thing--people relapse all of the time. Some people with addition can be sober for thirty or forty or fifty years. Other people bounce in and out over the years.

By the end of the book, I felt heart broken for Perry instead of thinking he was a jerk. I felt bad for him that he could never feel settled in a relationship. 

But I also understood something I heard before: in order to love someone else, we must love ourselves first. Previously, I had thought that was maybe not quite true, or I didn't fully understand what that meant. I've also heard that people don't love themselves can be helped when they are in a healthy relationship -- that they can learn to love themselves when someone else loves them first. They can see themselves as worthy.

But sometimes the holes in the soul can be challengingly deep, and without a small baselines of self-love, it is hard.

So, Matthew Perry--and anyone else out there struggling from similar kinds of addictions and fear of love-- I wish you self-love. I wish that you could see yourself as others love you. I wish that you didn't have to face your demons and darkness all alone. I wish you peace.

Friends

I used to dream I was on Friends.

I was in my twenties living in a hip Chicago neighborhood when Friends was on the air. I am younger than Jennifer Aniston and older than Matthew Perry. Older people watched the show and remembered their youth. Younger people watched and dreamed this is what their lives would be like. People around the globe thought this is what is meant to be American. Meanwhile, I was living the dream, a young urban professional living around the corner from a coffee shop and across the street from Tower Records.

In my dreams (more than one, I am sad to say), I was an extra character on the set - one without lines, watching everyone chatter and carry on while I sat quietly on the couch with a large cup of tea. Did they know I was there? Did they care? I was invisible.

I'd be depressed when I'd wake up in the morning after one of these dreams, mad at myself for catching a rerun at 10:30 p.m. before I went to bed. No wonder I dreamt about being on the tv show--it was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep.

I started watching when I was young and single. When the show ended, I had gotten married, given birth three times, had a miscarriage and moved to St. Louis. I haven't watched reruns of Friends since it was originally aired. 

Now I am reading Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry about his brutal and nearly fatal battle with addiction. I've read and heard numerous stories about addiction and recovery, and this one is particularly harrowing.

In the 1990's, he was dating Julia Roberts, had a job he loved, was making a $1M a week and was not happy. He had everything except self-love. The only place he could find peace was at the bottom of a bottle vodka. He'd get the "handle" party-size, which also meant he was drinking shit vodka, not the fancy stuff.

WTF?

The scariest part of this book is my own reaction to it. 

Matthew Perry complains about being single. Could I date him?

The dude is sweet and handsome and charming and funny and an emotional train wreck. He likes art. He has a Banksy.

Do I think I could be special, different enough to save this guy? The answer should be an obvious and easy hard no. Instead, I ponder this hypothetical question instead of screaming "FTS. Run away!" 

Perry goes into lots of details about how he was the the worst partner. He dumped Julia Robert because...for no good reason. He said he was afraid of getting too close and then she would dump him. He cured his fear of being dumped by a woman he loved...by dumping her first. Which makes no sense. His own fear of abandonment caused him to abandon others. He wanted to be loved, but he pushed people away.

Later, Perry proposed to a woman while he was high. He didn't remember and couldn't figure out why she moved with her two dogs. She dumped him when he asked why she was there.

I am two-thirds of the way done with the book, and I can't put it down. Does he get sober? Does he peace and solace in the hole in his soul? 

God I hope so. It is heartbreaking that anyone could be so tormented, so haunted. I know he's not dead, but I hope he finds peace.

The Husbands: He Laughed, I Cried

When my friend Elena's husband was at the library a few weeks ago, he picked up the novel The Husbands by Chandler Baker. When he got home, he was laughing out loud reading it.

Elena suggested I might need a laugh, and threw the book out there as a suggestion, given the mountains of unhappy events in my life in the past few weeks.

I downloaded the book to my Kindle. Where Kevin laughed, I cried. Here we have a working mom whose educated, salesman husband can't figure out how to buy new shoes for a four year old, so he dumps the task on his working wife. 

According to Elena, Kevin related to the husband in the book. "I do these things!" Kevin laughed. "I can't believe it." To Kevin's credit, Elena saw an him step up. His incompetence decreased.

Yes, men who run multi-national corporations (I am exaggerating) can't figure out how to run a bath,  make a meal, or take a load of laundry from start to finish. No, putting the clothes in the machine, adding soap and starting it doesn't get you half credit. The clothes need to be folded and put away for the task to count.

Anyway, the world needs more men to read stories like this, and then have then take on more emotional load. Likewise, it would be nice if men had more awareness of the totality of the work mother do, and then demonstrate sincere appreciation and awe at the work we do every day to maintain our families and homes.

Self Love and God, Failure and Enlightenment

I am taking an interesting online course called "Breathing Under Water" by Richard Rohr. He is a Franciscan priest who finds the similarities of 12 steps programs to the original intent of the gospels and the roots of Catholicism. It is fascinating. Here are some of my thoughts from what I am reading and learning.

Part of 12 step program is the "praying only for knowledge of [God's] will for us and the power to carry that out."

So how do we know what God's will for us is? How can we tell which of the many voices in our heads and hearts should we follow?

I was reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, and in chapter 3, he writes:

"In all the situations of life the 'will of God' comes to us not merely as an external dictate of impersonal law, but above all as an interior invitation of personal love."

I never thought of it this way, but is self love equal to God, or knowing God equal to loving ourselves?

By self-love, I am not talking about the ego. The ego might need a new sports car to feel powerful and strong, or a bikini body to feel worthy or attractive.

What about failure? Are we learning from our failures, or are our failures an opportunity to exercise self-hatred? Hopefully, our failures are an opportunity for enlightenment and compassion. Can we maintain self-love even when we fall?

Can we have god without self-love? Good question. I suppose god can come first, and then self love will eventually follow.