A Lenten Thing?

One of the best, longest friends I've ever had emailed me this in one of our standard, traditional epistle-length email exchanges and I just kind of dismissed it because, well, a certain hippo-flapjack ex of mine had brought it up during a conversation and it made me so uncomfortable I nearly cried. That was because of one million other things going wrong at that point, but that's another rant and ramble for another time. 

Anyway, she knows pretty much every gory detail of my life. We share similar levels of tribulations - not comparing the incidents themselves, but the distraught level of emotional fallout from collateral destruction - and values. We share a LOT about the guilty Catholic thing when we branch out from traditionalist views. We debate our differences of opinion with a HUGELY developed, renewed respect. So she offered this concept to me to take it for what it was worth.

Then she told me she had her own blog! So I read through it only to find she had responded to this exercise. A normally otherwise very private person, she bared it all, and I could just feel her pain. It had been very healing for her and Lord knows we all need healing where we can get it. 

So, in the spirit of digging in, of self-helping myself all the way to the moon, of trying to just be able to put it all away, of tipping my glass to her, I will dissect and strip down my own mess.

Chakra Meditation

1. Root Chakra (Earth chakra) located at the base of the spine. It has to do with survival, and is blocked by fear. What are you most afraid of?

   I don't really know what I'm most afraid of. I'm afraid of getting bad credit, of forgetting to pay bills on time, of never, ever, ever seeing the light of day with my $4500 overdraft debt. I'm afraid I'll never get to spend money freely or without guilt. Money. I'm afraid of money and how the way I deal with it will affect my daughters' abilities to manage it (or not). I don't know why it's such a big thing. I certainly have never had it, so it's not like I've had the chance to be superficial about it. Probably comes from the way it was always a ginormous, ever-present clamp-down, kill-joy in my childhood. It's what scares me the most.

   I'm quite starkly afraid that I'll mess my daughters' well-being/sanity/ability to process things in life for what I've put them through generically, but also more precisely for the point in time I hightailed it across thousands of miles away from everything that was familiar to them on a fucked up mental whim. I'm afraid of how they'll see me after they've grown and become adults with adult life experience. I'm afraid that I say too much to them or too little. That they'll see me as fragile or frantic. That I'll miss that one piece of advice that could have been a tool for them in the real world. Unstable. I'm afraid they'll have their own dysfunctions in their own future relationships because they watched me hypocritically tout morals and religion that I outright contradicted in the way that I treated their father, the way I handled (or didn't handle) the shortcomings I was dealt, and the way that I left or entered subsequent relationships.

2. Water Chakra- located in the lower abdomen. It has to do with pleasure,and is blocked by guilt. What do you blame yourself for?

   I blame myself for a LOT of things. I blame myself for the way I initiated my divorce. I blame myself for lacking integrity. I blame myself for dragging my kids through every part of of my entire messy process. I blame myself for ignoring any semblance of intuition for so long that I gravely and meticulously conditioned myself into missing BIG red multiple flags. I blame myself for allowing myself to be led four-THOUSAND kilometers away, across the country, and for following. I blame myself for not stopping it. I blame myself for lying to everyone around me. For lying to them because I was lying to myself. For never cementing my values before or after being married (in the way that is ME). For being a divorced Catholic. For having a heavy hand in the outcome of my girls living apart and them having to live away from me in the first place. I blame myself for not trusting in and applying the same gut feeling about being the mother I desired to be ON my own self during circumstances that were in and out of my control. I blame myself for being a skittish ditzbag. I blame myself for allowing the social experiment I started so long ago of initially wanting to allow for all opinions of all kinds to turn me into this waffling daisy of a wimp that could be easily swayed with the wind.

3. Fire Chakra- located in the stomach. It has to do with willpower, and is blocked by shame. What are you ashamed of? What are your biggest disappointments in yourself?

  
   I'm ashamed of being a liar at the most critical junctions in my life. I'm ashamed of knowing better and doing the opposite. I'm ashamed of the mistakes that have resulted in the decay and subsequent trashing of a marriage that could have gone the route of dissolution in a much more civil, logical, rational way; and exactly the mistakes that resulted in the destruction of my daughters' spirits. I am SUPER ashamed of going to Quebec - the how, the why, and who I went with. I'm ashamed of having EVER knowing him, much less going with him anywhere. I'm ashamed to have been sexted by any of the losers in the small town we lived in. I'm ashamed that I quit holding my marriage as the most precious, valuable thing on earth. I'm ashamed of things far too humiliating to mention on here, even for this exercise.
   
   My biggest disappointment is being a waffling, indecisive ninny because I only wanted to consider other peoples' views. What started out as an experiment in accommodating others with what I thought was an open mind (trying to be loving, accepting, or empathetic) was something that actually turned and whipped an unprepared, unstable me in the face. I had never made the time to plant my values for ME before letting everyone else's values move me like the wind blows. In other words, lacking committment.

4. Heart Chakra- located in the the heart, or center of the chest. It has to do with love, and is blocked by grief. Lay all your grief out in front of you. 

   
   Grief. My grief lies in all the people I've hurt. My grief comes from wanting to repair friendships that I will never get back. My grief lies in losing friends because of the above-mentioned stunt. I have a lot of grief in the lacking relationships I have with my parents and brothers, either because I've put strain on our ties by moving here or writing lashing emails or because because none of us know how (nor have the desire) to maintain them. I have lingering grief over the first few years spent in Canada with all the cancer stuff, feeling alone and lonely, no recourse. And lingering grief over how I handled my life in college because I had very little help, because I wasn't aware of my options, because I just didn't have the life experience or the maturity to span out or reach out. I have grief over the car accident we were in. Still. I have huge grief over being a divorced woman. Whatever stigma that carries or that anyone could judge me by is still just a drop in the bucket of how I harshly I sear that on myself.

5. Sun Chakra- located in the throat. It has to do with truth, and is blocked by lies. What are the lies you tell yourself?

   Lies that I tell myself - this is a good one. I try to make sure I'm not lying to myself anymore, be transparent and truthful, but a real big one I struggle with now is that living with my fiancee will be all right if this or that certain thing can be reached - like - our annulments. That it's not okay now, but that it "will be." That it's okay that he's not even officially divorced, that if I get my annulment, even if he gets his when that part happens, that somehow everything will be okay. That my ex getting remarried without even going the annulment (Catholic annulment) route is okay.

   I've told myself so many lies before this life that I just can't get into them here. If my daughters were to read this, I would rather they not see that lesson here, but in discussions over what self-lies are. And as far as truly seeing myself - I know I am not a really great person and certainly not above myself in my life or in my faith ideas.

6. Light Chakra- located in the center of the forehead. It has to do with insight, and is blocked by illusion. What are the negative thoughts that you have? What don't you trust about yourself?

   Illusion! This is a good one! I have been the championing queen of illusion, delusion, and disillusionment! I had been SO negative throughout the whole of my life! My negative thoughts now seem to have come into check. But anyway, here goes. Negative thoughts. That I'm not smart or savvy. That I'm fat. That I'm going to royally screw up at work. That I'll never make good money. That quitting college means I'm a giver-upper. That I've already done so much damage in my girls' lives that they don't even realize right now. That I don't know my brothers and they don't know me. That I must be a real pain-in-the-ass, hard-to-understand person because my parents don't talk to me about my life or ask questions - I have to gab it all out, thus exacerbating the talks-too-much stigma.

7. Thought Chakra- located at the crown of the head. It has to do with pure cosmic energy, and is blocked by earthly attachment. What attaches you to this world?

    Far too much, I'm afraid. Unfinished business. Mainly my sins. Sins of the purgatory kind. My spiritual status - I don't want to die before I've had the chance to make my status in God's eyes right. Which means trusting in Him to move closer to Him, which means letting go of having to "fix" this situation in my life by "waiting out" the whole divorce/annulment process, which means also letting go of one ideal for another reality and kind of "sinking" back into a life that involves worldly worries.



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