So we are back in real life again, its amazing how easy it is to slip into what is familiar. Somehow I have managed to bring back from Brazil some of the calm I found there. I hope it doesn’t fade, but somehow I was able to drive around in the rain during rush hour in Brooklyn today and still sing along to the radio. I have been dreaming like crazy since I have been home. Vivid dreams that seem to go on and on, but I never recognize anyone in them. When we flew out of the clouds at sunrise and cruised over Sao Paulo, I got a swift reminder of how big this world is. Sao Paulo is the third largest city in the world and I was amazed at the miles of high-rise apartment buildings there were there. Not one light on in any of them made them look like a set in one of the trendy apocalypse themed films of late. My dreams thankfully are not apocalyptic but are full of interesting people with distinct personalities and places of intense detail. I believe the trip helped open up the flood gates of my imagination. I was having only anxiety dreams when I left. You know the ones where you repeat tasks and make lists over and over in your head.
I didn’t go on my trip in order to have an epiphany or work on a problem I had been trying to solve. I used to be the type of person who ran from themselves and would do anything to avoid depression and sitting still. I took many trips to distract me from any pain I was in and worked and worked. But this trip was different, I went to spend time with my daughter, and pay attention to her without interruption. I have a close relationship with her anyway, but experiencing something together is always something we can look back on and talk about. But even though my focus was on her, I ended up learning a great deal about myself.
I have spent countless hours in my life trying to choose my next move or path. I am a chronic indecisive, and over the years have lost trust in my ability to make a decision about myself and the direction I want to go in. It has literally been 20 years of this. I am addicted to it. I feel passionate about something for 2 days and then it fades. On one hand I am passionate about many things, and I have always said that the worst thing about me is that I am not passionate about just one thing. I was not one of those girls who in high school knew their career path already and would stay on it for life. That was just never going to be me. I had way too many other issues to sort through first, and much of my life after high school was just survival. I didn’t have a lot of choice sometimes. Ultimately I ended with a long career in the music business that I am very proud of and amazed at how fortunate I was in all of it. But I am not talking solely about career here, I mean things outside of it that we do like yoga, or riding motorcycles, or sewing or drawing or traveling or writing…there are a million things one could spend ones energy on. But you can’t do it all. And unfortunately we put labels on ourselves and each other and define ourselves by what we do. This is the first time I haven’t worked or been actively looking for work in a long time, like since I was 14. Yup, I know, I have two one year olds and a pre-teen, but thats different. I don’t consider that work…sorry feminist ladies who feel otherwise. I have met so many mom’s who within 5 minutes of meeting them want to know what I do. And it is still strange to say “yer lookin’ at it”. Then they want to know when you are returning to work and what is it you do when you DO work. I know that I am lucky to be able to be home with my kids, but I am vowing to never ask that question of another mom again. In mom’s groups I may be able to relate to a woman who dances burlesque in her working life than one who manages a hedge fund, but I will not pop the question “So what is it that you do?”. It shouldn’t matter so much. We are so much more right?
So on my trip I realized that this way that I think is a total crutch and I do it so that I can avoid committing to just one thing. I am afraid that if I do just one thing, I will be that thing. That will be my badge. Ill wear it like a “Hello my name is” sticker, it will say…hello my name is Kristin and I ski….no, that will be crossed out and replaced with ….speak German …bake …drive monster trucks …quilt ….live in an ashram ….do capoeira ….play the saxophone… Actually I have some desires make it to the top ten over and over again and always keep them around like warn shiny stones I have pet through the years. So en-route on this trip I decided to give this little addiction a rest. I was at the point where I was really needing a break from all of the continuous racket going on in my head. I wanted to feel passionate about nothing. I wanted quiet. I realized that I allow my thoughts to run around in my head without any supervision. They are like toddlers bouncing off the walls, faces smeared with chocolate, grabbing at whatever they want and fighting with each other like in the book The Lord of The Flies. I decided that I was going to be gentle with myself and like meditation I was going to calmly brush the thought aside leaving nothing to replace it but silence. I became like Russell Crowe in the film A Beautiful Mind. I could see them (the thoughts) but I did not pay them much attention and allowed them to fade on their own. After a week of not allowing myself to be anything when I grew up, I felt finally rested. I realized that when these thoughts were gone, what was left was just me, and I found that I was enough. I don’t really struggle with my identity really, even though this seems from this post like I do. I am very happy with who I am and feel self confident for the most part. I have long term goals for the future that don’t waiver and have been the direction I have wanted to go for a long long time, I have interests that are constant for years like writing and yoga and reading. But I needed a reminder about how great I was really I guess and I needed to sit out of the mad game of pong in my head for a match or two.
Funny enough that when I got to Brazil my friend Mimi and I were reading the same book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert … we were pretty much on the same pages in more ways than the book so I knew I was somewhere I could fall on my face if need be. But I didn’t have a cell phone or a credit card that would work, I didn’t know the language in Brazil nor did I know many people. I was in a strange place and the rug was pulled out from underneath me and the training wheels taken off and I was pushed on my merry way, just me. At one point I found myself doing one of my favorite things…taking a walk in the woods (or jungle as the case may be) and no one can reach you on your cell phone or knows where you are exactly. So it made sense for me to leave behind an old habit and try for once to get my negative and repetitive thoughts out of my head. I highly recommend it. I didn’t need Brazil to do this, I hadn’t even planned it, but I made sense at the time. I think what spawned it all was when I had an anxiety attack at 6:30 am at the Sao Paulo airport when the lady behind the counter told me that our flights didn’t exist and we had to go upstairs and stand in the slowest moving line in all eternity. I have had anxiety attacks since I was a kid, and this wasn’t much of a surprise. They pass and I get through it. When you look at all of the things I have done in my life it doesn’t make a lot of sense that I would have this problem. I hid it well. I think a lot of it is hereditary, but it is a learned behavior too and I have been working hard on it this past year like never before. I have found that they come up moreso when I am feeling stuck in my life somewhere. I feel very happy in my relationship with my husband and happy to be a mom…its not that at all. Amazingly this is the first trip I took outside of work that I didn’t spend most of the time agonizing about my relationship, I didn’t think about it at all to tell the truth. So where am I stuck? Well folks, that is a much longer post, but I will say simply that it relates to me allowing my thoughts to run amok, and not allowing myself to let go and feel peaceful. My need for control has brought me further from it.
I have just started to explore meditation. It does not come easily for me which is a reminder of how much I need it. I always figured I needed an outlet for my anger but that never made me feel any better. I have blamed others for my discomfort and distracted myself from it and I have done all kinds of bends and twists in order to avoid sitting through it. It was nice to discover how much less painful it was once I let go. These few days since coming back have been really great. My husband and I have somehow grown fonder of each other if that was even possible and my relationship with Ruby has noticeably drawn closer too. But most amazingly I have found that I am much more peaceful. My head still tries to slip back into what is familiar and begin with self defeating, negative and distracting thoughts, but I just laugh at it and encourage it gently to pass. Its amazing how much room there is for other things, like vivid dreams. I am learning to be a better passenger, and anyone that knows me knows that I don’t do that easily, I have just always driven. I am not passionless now either. Instead I am not chasing them around anymore, I am going to let them come to me.
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