Beyond the Agony and the Ecstasy

-->

They talk about broken hearts like they’re a bad thing; like they’re only something that can happen in a romantic relationship. I have found neither to be true.

Instead, I have found my heart breaking over and over again, having little to do with romance at all, and everything to do with finding myself with a deeper capacity to feel inside my broken heart than I ever did when I thought my heart to be whole. Whole, or, perhaps more accurately, wholly closed.

There’s another word that we’re missing in this language, invisible audience. It is the word for whatever lies beyond the limits of agony and ecstasy, when suddenly you find that your heart has split nearly in half. It is like fresh road rash exposed to the air: it hurts more than you can imagine to allow oxygen to brush against it, never mind anything tactile. It hurts that it is open to air, and it also hurts to know that air is what will make it heal the fastest and with the least amount of scar tissue.

In the case of emotional road rash, it’s not actually pain. It’s something else. It’s not love; it’s not hate. It’s closer to grief, hangs next to anguish, but also near to the ecstasy that comes from deep passion, connection – orgasm, even. It rides a tightrope between agony and ecstasy and feels like a delicious terrible concoction of both at 100% potency.

It, well, it feels far more than anything else, and that is what it is. It could feel like pain, but it also feels like change. It’s scary, messy, causes tears to well up and overflow, and an ache in the chest. It is a deep unnamed feeling that leaves everything beyond and outside of it pale in comparison.

What is it? It is heartbreak. It is the nerves exposed to air, measuring the humidity, the heat, a better barometer than anything manmade, and it is also completely inexplicable, try as I might to explain.

Oftentimes, in a moment of profound pleasure, be it sexual, emotional or physical, I find that a lump appears in my throat and my chest begins to ache. It is not pain, necessarily, but it is certainly not all pleasant. Instead, I think, it must be the feeling of my heart expanding: cracking open over and over again, each crack creating more space, more room, more heart.

And that is where I find myself this week, invisible audience. I am heartbroken, in a way that causes me to weep openly, to shy away from touch as if it burns on the nerves laid bare within my skin, although the wound is invisible. It feels as if the bandages I have wrapped around myself are unraveling, and my pores are drinking in the air as if they have been starving and deprived.

Although there is pleasure in this feeling, there is also a lot of pain. Although it is growth, it is also a shrinking of an old self; a withering of old ideas as new ones burst forth to grow something wild and different.

I can’t say it hurts, but it sure as fuck doesn’t feel good. I suppose that all I can say is that it feels, invisible audience, in a way, a depth and a mixture of burning hot and icy cold that it has never felt before.

Though it is near impossible to explain without having the word, it is there nonetheless, like a scar peeling away from the inside of the skin, finally allowing the air to come in, the lungs to fill to capacity, and the world to burst into vibrant, violent color before my eyes.

Nothing in the world has changed, except me. And in me, everything is different.

Love and ecstatic agonized kisses

Morgan

The Truth of the Matter

Her: “Who told you that you were a big woman? You seem pretty normal sized to me. You might want to consider letting go of that idea, especially if it isn’t serving you.”

 ~

Me: “I wish we’d had this conversation much earlier.”

Him: “Why?”

Me: “Because I somehow had the idea that you would be critical of what I believed or thought if my ideas weren’t based in science, and it kept me from telling you things about myself.”

Him: “I tried to disabuse you of that idea. More than once, in fact.”

  ~

Her: “I don’t believe in THE truth. I believe in MY truth, and that my truth is going to be different from others’ truths, even if we’re recalling the same situation or moment.”

  ~

Oh Jesusfuckingchristonastick, invisible audience.

So it turns out that reality IS what you make of it, and over the last couple weeks that’s become so apparent, it’s like someone has taken a baseball bat to my reality and beat it repeatedly until I saw stars through the cracks of what I always believed to be true.

I’ve talked about this a lot, but it turns out that I’ve actually been injecting meaning into conversations that wasn’t there, because finding proof of the reality I had built was much more important than hearing the truth of what the other person was saying.

I recently sat down with a woman who asked me to tell her my story – my life story; what had brought me here, to this point in time. What I told her was basically what was in the book I’ve been writing, in the same way I told it in the book -- a book that I now could care less about publishing.

She listened, quietly and respectfully, and said, “You did a great job. Now, I want you to tell me that story again, but I want you to retell it so that, ever time you chose something different, you claim responsibility and credit for it instead of claiming you were a victim that was forced from one part of your life into another.

“For instance," she said, "Instead of saying, ‘I was drowning in depression and felt like my only option was to move to Panama,’ what if you said, ‘I chose to break a pattern that wasn’t working and move away, and because I am adventurous and resourceful, I knew that it would work out and I’d be able to take care of myself, because I’d done it countless times before.’?”

I thought a long time about it. She sat patiently and waited.

The new story that came out was jilted, lumpy, and hesitant. It took me four or five times before I could say it with any sort of fluency. I could actually feel the new pathways trying to form in my brain; trying to pull out of the paths they’d been in for so long -- paths that had cast me as an unwilling player in this game of life -- and reform me as a courageous woman who had managed to make a monstrous change despite deep fear; a woman who somehow knew under all the other chatter that the unknown held much more freedom than the predictable.

That new story has freed me, invisible audience. Not only that, but many subsequent conversations have made it clear how deeply I had subscribed to the reality of the victim, even as a braver, wilder part of me would sneak out every now and then – but with more and more frequency – grab the reins, and yank them to a new, thornier and incredible path, away from everything that had ever been and into uncharted territory.

Now that I can own my story, I can see that that person was me.

I have realized that I took the words out of peoples’ mouths and twisted them into stunted little beings that would better fit into my idea that I was worthless. I realized that I have discounted the many, many ways I have been shown that I am loved and sought signals of my mundaneness in others’ eyes, looking right past the sparkle that came over them when they looked at me. I refused to see the magic, invisible audience, because there was no way to explain it, and it didn’t fit into an idea of reality that I’d picked up from others; a reality that has nothing to do with how the world actually works for me.

I have a magical existence. What I need shows up when I need it. The people I love show me that they love me in the ways that they know best. When I keep that in mind, I see huge, fragrant gardens where before I only saw dead, barren landscape.

All because someone helped me see that my story was writing my reality, instead of reality creating my story.

Love and choosing your own reality kisses,

Morgan

Take What You Like and Leave the Rest

Here it comes: I’m going to out myself. I am a member of Al-Anon, a 12-step program for friends and family members of alcoholics. Technically anonymity is a big part of the program, but I have decided that keeping myself anonymous in this is actually against my best interests, and so I am finally going to talk about something that quite literally turned my life around five years ago when I found it.

When I first went to Al-Anon, I had no idea that alcoholism had effected me as much as it did – I was not aware of how much I was aware of the people around me, to the point where I was counting others’ drinks, keeping score of others’ behavior, and living a life that revolved mostly around how much I could stay out of the way of whatever terrible thing I imagined could happen, regardless of whether it happened or not. (I wrote about this before without talking about how it was related to Al-Anon; you can read my post on codependence here.)

Now I know that a lot of my behaviors are related to having grown up in the company of an alcoholic; that many of my actions are actually defense mechanisms that were built into my childhood to cope with things beyond my control; some part of me created them to keep me safe in a situation that never felt safe to me on a very deep level.

When I first went to Al-Anon, I was already aware of many of the tenets of the program; the alcoholic in my life had stopped drinking when I was young, and I had been to meetings before, as a child. I knew the first step of Alcoholic’s Anonymous, which, coincidentally, is the first step of Al-Anon, too, although in Al-Anon we focus more on our inability to control another’s relationship to alcohol: 

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.

In my first Al-Anon meeting of about 4 people in a small village in Mexico, we read this first step, and everyone shared what their first meeting had meant to them. There was a silence when everyone else had finished. I looked down at the book in front of me, swallowing repeatedly to hold back the tears. 

Someone cleared their throat and said, very gently, “You don’t have to say anything, but we are here to listen.”

“I don’t want to be in charge of anyone else anymore,” I said.

And then I cried. 

Hard.

I think I may have spoken more. I think I may have explained that I wasn’t even sure I belonged there, because I hadn’t lived with an active alcoholic for more than 20 years; I probably expanded on the idea that I had always thought unconsciously that my job in life was to take care of others. I probably said all this, but I have no idea how, because all I really remember of that day was racking sobs and the relief that came from finally giving up the thought that I had the ability to control anyone, any situation, or how anyone acted. Best of all, it wasn’t my job to fix it. It wasn’t about me, and anything outside the sphere of me was none of my business.

At the end of each Al-Anon meeting, there is a line, and it has always been one of my greatest comforts, much the way that Al-Anon became a comfort to me in the fact  that I could go to a meeting anywhere in the world and the format was always the same; the ritual was always similar. That line says, “In closing, I would like to say that the opinions expressed here are solely of the person who holds them. Take what you like and leave the rest.”

Al-Anon – and other 12-step meetings – allow a person to talk about what is bothering them in an environment where people understand where they’re coming from and what they’re going through, but it also allows that not everything heard in a meeting is going to apply to everyone, and that is one of the most comforting parts, as far as I’m concerned.  However, I have not been going to meetings lately, and it has caused me to forget how important this line was to me, and how applicable it is not just in a 12-step environment, but in life in general. 

I’ve been so tired lately, invisible audience. I have stopped answering emails, I have stopped engaging, and I have found myself either holed up in my home or escaping to Costa Rican beach towns, all because I am having problems hearing myself think. This is not a new problem, but it is a cyclical one: when I am trying to grapple with new emotional upheavals or discoveries, I tend to get easily overwhelmed, and during these time periods, anything anyone tells me comes at me in stereo sound, with a lot of bass and not a lot of room for me to hear myself think.

What’s new, however, is an immediate connection to my intuition that wasn’t there before. Before, anyone could state how they felt about something with conviction, and I would find myself wanting to believe it was true because they seemed to know it was, and it very likely IS true…for them. It would take days or weeks for me to finally come to the understanding that just because they believed it didn’t mean I had to…that in fact, the exact opposite might be true for me.

The difference now is that I am suddenly feeling my disagreement in the moment, where I never could before; where, because of my experiences as a child, it was never safe to do anything but defer to the biggest, loudest and most insistent opinion out there. Now, when someone says something that is against my best interests or doesn’t resonate with me, I feel sick. Nauseous. And it is not until I consciously dismiss their words and own that I don’t agree – either out loud or simply to myself – that I start to feel better.

I have to take what I like, and leave the rest. And believe me, there’s a lot to leave: ideas about my role in life; what I am capable of; what is not my responsibility; others’ ideas on spirituality, reincarnation; my career, if I even want one. There is much more to leave than there is to take, and this is news to me. It is no wonder I have always felt overwhelmed, if I somehow thought I had to take all that was handed to me and treat it as truth, even if it didn’t fit.

In Al-Anon, we sometimes refer to emotional sobriety: of an ability to maintain equilibrium in the face of life’s storms. Many people in Al-Anon are still living with active alcoholics, and our own disease is often seeking out these people and trying to care for and change them; making their lives our own. Regardless of whether that’s the case, regardless of how each day shapes itself, the truth of the matter is that there will always be something to rock the emotional boat. I am finding that my own emotional sobriety has more to do with choosing the right battles. I have to work on letting go of the ideas that no longer serve me, and fostering an ability to manage stress that does not actually require an absence of stress, but a healthy awareness of what is mine to own and what I don’t have to; what is outside of the realm of my control or responsibilities. It is about being aware of what I get to take, and what I get to leave when I leave all the rest.

Love and all the rest kisses

Morgan

Always Go For Something Better

The public transportation between Boquete and the closest large town, David, is a fleet of old yellow Blue Bird school buses. When the little vans that serve as the main “bus” transportation in the mountains around Boquete are getting ready to leave, they honk their horns over and over again so everyone will get on board. All public transportation has two workers: the driver, and the guy who keeps track of when you got on, where you get off and how much you owe for the ride. They curl their collected fares around one finger: the dollars (they use American money here, although they also call them Balboa) are folded in half the long way, and folded around the ring finger of their left hands, in order by denomination.
These are many of the little things I love about Panama, the things that are easy to forget when I start to settle in. I don’t want to forget them, and I also want to make sure it’s obvious, since so often all I’m writing about is the inner struggle: I absolutely ADORE living here.
My new little house is at the back of a housing development called Los Pinos. That means I have neighbors whose houses are behind and uphill from mine; I look out on trees and mountains, and on the sunrise, but I am not isolated and alone. People stop and offer me rides and introduce themselves; the landlady introduced me to a woman who now pays me to make her meals, and a neighbor with a huge sweet Rottweiler may hire me to cater her housewarming party.  
All because I chose something better.
I have realized that as soon as I stopped fighting and simply accepted what I wanted and needed for myself, it has been much easier. As soon as I stopped trying to justify my decisions, as soon as I stopped trying to fit myself in someone else’s truth and simply tried to live my life as authentically as possible, the peace and quiet I was looking for arrived, followed by opportunity. 
I am making friends, being introduced to new people, and having a fabulous time. I am also getting a lot done, both in discovering what I want and need for myself, and also in writing. Even if not all the lessons are easy ones, its seems that letting go has made it all even easier.
This isn’t a deep and thoughtful post, invisible audience, but I needed you to know: by listening to my gut and to my heart, deciding to surround myself with people who uplift me and teach me things, and actually doing what I want instead of what I thought I should do, I have found an incredibly wonderful joyful existence. Regardless of the introspection that usually comes out on my blog, I don’t want you to be mistaken: I am infinitely, amazingly happy.

Love and cup overfloweth kisses,
Morgan

This, Or Something Better

I have had to come to terms with something lately that is more than a little uncomfortable to admit: I can be very manipulative.
Although I don’t necessarily do this on purpose, I will often present only enough information to make me look good. I fail to mention the pieces of the puzzle that will show that I have very little money, that I am afraid, or that I am not as happy as I think I should be in any given situation.
There is a huge difference between maintaining a positive attitude and drowning in your own hidden anguish. More than that, however, there is a very important difference between being authentic and  hiding the parts of yourself that make people wonder why you’re taking the hard way if it doesn’t seem to make any sense.
I have moved off the island, invisible audience. For all the positive things I presented that were my daily reality, there were many I didn’t mention. By themselves, they hardly seemed to add up to a legitimate reason to leave, and yet when I finally decided to go, I couldn’t even bring myself to stay one more night.
The decision has been coming for awhile, even as I wrote about the wonders of living there. I found myself agonizing about whether to stay, not because I thought I should be there, but because I wondered how on earth I would explain my need to leave.
Then I realized what I was doing.
I was walking around, scratching the bug bites on my legs and arms until I bled, waiting for the worker to show up to take me to the mainland for hours past when he said he’d be there, spending more money on transportation costs than I expected, and having less access to fresh fruits and vegetables than I needed. I kept thinking, “How will I explain this to all the people that I have painted such a beautiful picture for? How do I unspin the web I have spun?”
It’s my money, my time, my dream, and yet I was gathering courage to ask your permission, invisible audience. As much as I appreciate you, my decisions should have nothing to do with you. It is none of my business what anyone thinks of me, remember?
I have to admit that it’s hard for me to not incorporate other peoples’ opinions into my decisions. The volume seems to be turned up on hearing what others say, and often it drowns out my own ability to hear myself think. For this reason, I need more physical space than most; I need more time alone than many, purely to let my own voice fill the silence around me.
Part of my agreement with myself about coming here was to stop with the double speak and learn to live more authentically. It’s not easy, invisible audience. Its seems I’m going to have to keep practicing, but today is a large step in the process. Today, I will tell you that I am living in a hostel. I’m in a dorm room with 10 other people because it’s cheaper. I am searching for another place to live. I am hoping to find something that fits my needs: cheap, quiet, inspirational. I already have some leads, but no real idea on how it will all play out.
Before I left the States I went to listen to a speaker. She talked about how a friend tried to explain to her what life should actually look like; that God – or the Universe, or whatever you want to call it – wanted to give her what she wanted. “He doesn’t want you to suffer, Ellen,” her friend said. “Your choices are this, or something better.”

Boquete, Panama

I am now in Boquete, in the mountains near Panama’s only volcano, in a coffee-growing region. It is beautiful here: there’s a river that runs straight out of the mountains and through town. There are no bars on the windows – a rarity in a Central American town – and a lot of expats. I am not clear how my future will play out, and I’m slightly uncomfortable with this. At the same time, I am tired of staying somewhere, suppressing my desire to move away from anything that doesn’t serve me, simply because it will be hard to explain. I am experimenting not only with presenting myself authentically, but following my heart where it leads me, without fear or hesitation. In fact, I have found that when I leave others out of it, the fear and hesitation stay away, too.
So here I am, invisible audience. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay. All I know is that for now, it feels good to be here. Today, I’m going to choose this feeling, or something better.


Love and better kisses,
Morgan

The Truth of the Matter

There’s so much we don’t talk about, invisible audience. The list of people I know that post happy things on Facebook while suffering from anxiety attacks, depression and huge emotional upheavals is endless. The number of people I know who bought houses and feel weighed down by the responsibility instead of lifted up by it – and are unaware that anyone else ever feels this way – is long. The people who contacted me, both privately and publicly after my post on depression, telling me that I had said something they couldn’t say out loud, was almost staggering. And yet here we all are – me included – doing our best to pretend nothing is wrong.

There are many, many things going right for me these days. I’ve been looking back through old journals, and realizing how much better my life has become in the past few months. I have realized how tired I was, how defeated I felt, how bruised and battered I had been. Sometimes, it is only by walking out of this pain that it finally becomes possible to see it for what it really is, and to realize how much of that pain I handled alone, simply because I was sure that no one else could possibly be as insecure, afraid, foolish, or as ignorant as me.

I don’t necessarily feel this way now, but I wanted to share something that I wrote for my book. Every time I read it it makes me cry, because it is so chock full of my own personal truth. I wanted to share it with you, invisible audience, because so many of you have reached out to me – making yourselves visible – to tell me that you, too, feel the way I do; that I am not alone, and that sometimes what I share makes you feel less alone, too. 

“There’s a point that no one really talks about in the life of someone who leaps for a dream. Well, it’s talked about, but from the other side of it, when it is over: the period of time when you are alone with your thoughts, with your project sitting in front of you. It is the time that it feels like no one believes in you except you, and that’s only sometimes. It’s the time that you’re sitting in front of your laptop, typing out one word at a time, without knowing for certain whether those words will ever be seen by a single other person, and, if they are, if those words will mean anything to them.
It is the period of time that you have carved out of what could otherwise be a stable life to sit alone and create. This is the scariest point.

You are taking a chance on yourself. You are convincing others – at least half-heartedly; at least through your actions – that you believe you have a project worth making time for; you are investing in yourself with the idea that it will lead somewhere. You are battling with the voice in your head that wonders if this endeavor will lead anywhere, and you are leaning hard against the door that stands between you and the worst critics that keep marching into your thoughts to tell you how crazy you are.

When you get to the other side of this period, everyone congratulates you on a job well done. They tell your story for you: how Stephen King’s family was almost destitute before Carrie got him a huge advance; how the bloodied boxer in the Hollywood movie got to hug his girl and say, “See? I told you I would win.”

On the other side of this period, and from the outside, it seems like this period is romantic and sweet; from inside the moment, it can feel like the burning fires of hell.”

Writing a book is hard, invisible audience. Perhaps it’s not the same for you, but when I go into a book store now, I look at the endless titles, at the paperbacks and hardcovers, and I imagine them: the authors, hunched over their laptops, facing down their fears, typing one letter at a time; creating something out of thin air and making it into a mass of pages that somehow form a long cohesive thought that someone else can pick up and enjoy.

This can apply to anything: musicians, athletes; anyone who makes a decision based not on what is safe, but on what speaks to their soul. It is terrifying, and exhilarating, and it is not talked about enough.

My fear is not what makes me different. My fear makes me human. Perhaps it is natural to feel alone in my fears, but the quickest way to diminish them is to admit that they’re there. By doing this, I take away the power that fear has had over me. Sometimes, all it takes is someone else saying, “I feel the same way.” Sometimes, all it takes is assurance that I am not alone. 

Love and not alone kisses,

Morgan

Moving Forward Despite the Fear

I closed the door with the smile still on my face, but it dropped off with a big sigh as soon as I was no longer visible.

It is one of the somewhat fascinating parts of being human: the ability to experience more than one emotion at the same time. A stranger just drove away in my car, a well-taken-care-of 2002 Subaru Outback that was my pride and joy. I watched it leave from inside the slatted blinds with a mixture of excitement and stomach-roiling fear.

The stack of cash on the table looks so small compared to the car, and yet it presents an opportunity: it presents a long time in a foreign country if I live frugally: it is my escape hatch.

For months, I have been agonizing over the steps to take to get to where my heart has yearned to go. It was doubly difficult because the place was not a specific destination, but an idea: somewhere quiet, inspirational, and cheap.

I say that I’m going to write a book. Somehow I think this gives me a certain amount of credence; that I seem less like a flake if I have a goal in mind. It is true that I want to write a book, but it is also true that the real reason I am going is because I have found it impossible lately to hear myself think.

For months, I have tried to work up the courage to explain over and over again why I am leaving. For months, I have thought about how I will be received by many of my well-meaning friends that love me, yet either don’t know the magic words I need to hear, or can’t come up with them because of the emotions a move like this inspires in their own systems. I cannot know what anyone else is really thinking, and yet I have spent far too long trying to figure out the way to present myself so that it will be palatable, acceptable, understandable. It is only recently – although not the first time I have had to come to this realization – that I remembered something important a great friend told me once: it is none of my business what other people think of me.

I am not doing this for the shock factor. I don’t want the attention. I am not trying to inspire others. I certainly don’t feel as courageous as I come across. It is hard to admit because it seems so whimsical, illogical and ridiculous, but I am leaving because, despite having no idea what is ahead or where I will ultimately end up because of this decision, I KNOW, beyond logic, deep into my bones, that I am making the right decision. I have never been in a relationship like this, but I would imagine it is how people feel when they realize that the person they are dating is the one they want to spend the rest of their life with: that despite the unknown, the unpredictability and even a small measure of fear, the right decision is to say yes.

Next week I leave for Panama. I go in search of a simpler lifestyle, that can be fed with less paid work and more time to write. I go in search of inspiration I have not been able to find lately, and in search of silence. I am not afraid of the adventure – in fact, I have had more energy since I booked my ticket than in the last six months combined. What I still fear, despite my best efforts, is the look on peoples’ faces when I tell them – the energy it takes to explain myself yet again, to pretend that their doubts about my sanity don’t matter. I fear losing my footing before I even begin, and yet I am stumbling forward, the spent runner not quite at the end of the race. I am almost there, and yet these last few days will definitely be the hardest part. Once I’m on that plane, the phone is turned off and the doors are shut, I know from experience that I will finally be at peace. Not because there has been a mountain of criticism rained down upon me, but because once again I am making a decision that does not fit with the norm; the path I am taking has not yet been broken. 

The fear comes not from my seemingly uncertain future, but from the reflection of others’ fears on my behalf. As soon as I’m on the plane and there is no one to reflect their fear back at me, I will remember my excitement. I will remember my sense of adventure; my ability to fully embrace living outside the box. For now, surviving the box for another week seems like a formidable task all by itself.  

Love and New Adventure Kisses

Morgan