Old souls & Live Oaks

….I think my soul might be an age far beyond the number of times my body has circled the earth.  
14 SIGNS YOU’RE AN OLD SOUL
….Yes/ No? You? How old?
….seems all 14 fit, what do you think?

After reading this article, what I’ve sensed about being an old soul – by which I do not mean to say I am wiser better more or anything in particular but especially not in an “I’m better than” sorta way. Is it good to be an old soul? Is the disclaimer needed? I don’t even know so……

I see the old oak trees – Live oaks- that are mighty, strong and be not fooled by the smaller stature as they grow slower but live to be older and speak for themselves, a sight for sore, searching, seeking eyes as windows to souls. Growing up along the coast where Live Oaks over 300 years still stand (barely I think) up around 100 feet many branches reach to the sun then out wide until the weight of the branch itself out balances the reaching up and instead some eventually touch the earth.

How it simply it set to seeing and growing toward the sun and down into the earth expanding with time another day another year. How time moves forward until a tree is the epicenter of a mini-ecosystem encircling it the birds sounds tell stories that must be beautiful tales and the soft moss on feet moist and cool and wondrous the dry moss branches hold drift down and sway with the wind.

Saying welcome, come and sit here for a while soul. As I lie under the mossy grassy root circle and gaze upwards at the light as it touches the tree or earth illuminating green everything I can see and the air tastes and smells of dirt and fresh dense humid air filtered mixed with sun’s heat radiated….the taste of being alive and the sense of contentment sinking into the earth and protected by the branches.

AND finally finally this soul feel free lifting it plays and feels the peace beneath in roots of safety I see more of who it is that I am. Windows open and flows out parts of me. I wonder what the tree has seen — the civil war and slavery plantations nearby before and after slaves lives here maybe stood here where I am and then soldiers and sea seekers and who else and what other sights — animals and plants that come and go and off off goes my imagination. Endless and limitless expanse I can feel the size of the universe. The infinity that is each moment and memories held within this tree and in me.

Me who has visited the same tree at 5 and 13 and 17 and 19 and nearly every year since save not 30 or 31 so far. I yearn to be like the tree and how it seems so strong how it stands and keeps on trying to grow and silently watches and keeps to itself its job to just be and invite all creatures to eat from it and nest within and how I long for roots beneath my feet to steady me against where I find myself in the world each time I visit. I wonder if it sees me and senses how I feel and if its only my imagination that I feel it feels to and holds wisdom whispered in the wind that blows over me. I am yet another soul beneath it searching seeing seen.

Yet there is something about it, being beneath the tree that pulls me back to visit it this constant in my life but that’s not it either it’s the age of its soul and the aliveness and how it feels to share space, me and the tree, between the earth and sky Both breathing, exhaling into the air what the other needs connecting we are alive inhaling souls connect and the tree stands strong stronger old older soul.

Blue Iris by Mary Oliver

The two posts prior inspired by and inspire me to re-write here the words of Mary Oliver’s Blue Iris.

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“Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?

Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

”What’s that you’re doing?”
the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

“What’s that you’re doing?” whispers the wind, pausing
in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.
It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.”

~ Mary Oliver, “Blue Iris”

Blue Iris – next circle around the sun

An then the arrow of time moves us forward. I loosen my concern for control in favor of going with the flow. I move to a home that is new and dust does not live here. No one sees the few hours a day that are built into making me writing here at the coffee shop without a single wound and the weight of fatigue and pain having largely lifted.

I understand little more but have learned the hard way how to manage my life which beats to the rhythm of those still in power, tiny particles in the ordinary air. I kept trying and every so slowly every so slowly the heavy fatigue got lighter and the wounds fewer and likelier to heal and in my new home it facilitates my health. No longer does my home aid in making me sick

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Fascinating the people who only have met me in the last two years who react to seeing me again as if I am a different person, their words. No, I am only finally able to be me. Who I am in the world is someone motivated to do and create and follow my passions.

Of course I am busy doing what I love. Yoga program Thursday nights and painting class Fridays. Mondays I’m silent. Art gallery volunteering Tuesdays at the Carrack and Wednesdays I work at the front desk of Mercury studios. I dance on the weekends and reemerged as a DJ last weekend renaming myself DJ Wallflower.

I am happy and apparently this is surprising how much so yet never did I cease to tap in the well of joy in the world day something was good. The freedom of this energy to spent most of the day out in the world is unexpected and joyous.

The beauty I see never ceased and, in fact, I needed it more last year but still this year I see and maybe always will a world much more beautiful and kind and filled with awe just by the simplest outing. I am humbled and feel gratitude.

Blue Iris

With the weight of fatigue and of hurting, like ivy slowly cloaking a tree growing up and thru overtaking and overwhelming the tree’s ability to thrive. Passing by said tree everyday one would not notice the steady pace beating the tree in the race towards the sky. But return after the earth revolves around the sun and one is stunned to see the imprisonment. How lives overtakes us.

Last year at this time, you’d hardly recognize me. I was so consumed with fighting a battle against my own body to be that which defines who I am much less what I do in the world.

It seems within me lies the potential for pain. As if the ivy doubled down the hurt with thorns as it wraps itself around and around a tree. Trees resonate with me as, like them, their livelihood is affected by many things or most things outside of their control. Unable to speak or move a branch to swat away the invader bend down and watch the weight fall from the shoulders of the tree.

It stands and takes it. Grows towards the sun. I wonder if it struggles and suffers. If it can, like me, feel exhausted by the effort daily to just keep going – me trying to make something or life and the tree journeying, as it’s purpose is to do, towards the sun.

I carried last February symptoms so heavy so unexpected that I became hidden by the weight and cried silently of desperation.

As I was covered by ivy externally which had beaten me in an eight year battle it was winning the war at the time. So when the ivy turned on the tree and began to exponentially in speed thread it’s fabric of feeling that feeling of being unwell. We all know what it is to be tired but please understand that trees endure drought and competition for sunlight and must, like us working to live and a jockinging with each other for position that is exhausting. Rejuvenation of sleep and of weekend’s or a day’s rest is the critical difference.

Please understand the tired from running the 800 at UNC and the 80 hour PhD workweeks I’ve known which is to say I know what tired really tired feels like. Please understand that fatigue is not a synonym. Fatigue is the ivy. Fatigue never ceases nor abates with rest there is nothing or rejuvenation. The ivy itself is likened to the skin allergies that arose, like ivy, with no warning and how things unfolded exists outside the realm of what I believed was possible. Reacting increasingly to everyday life including the very environments in which I’ve lived for years.

Yet the internal war of my immune system set ablaze to innocuous environmental and indoor particles with which my body for 28 years has peacefully coexisted. Unclear whether a deficit in immune warrior, the wrong immune soldiers sent to combat or simply fighting against myself in the presence of such particles as if the wounds I suffered did anything to hurt the particles. Like anger projected on the wrong target, my body became enraged by dust and dust mites and perhaps some tree pollens.

Without our knowing, trees get viruses and root rots and foreign species kill swiftly. Take the hemlocks and the wooly alegid. A barely noticeable substance causes the tree to be unable to process the breathlike quality of exchanging CO2 and oxygen with us. By the time it becomes visible to us the few years the tree has been staving off in the trees insides as my organs, the damage is destined to play out…though just how my story played out and how a hemlocks might matters less than to say that I was not myself for a long time.

The quality of living was low and I wondered how much lower was possible. My functioning down to being up and out 3-4 hours a day and the pain making even that mean every day was a fight to keep trying.

Chronically inflamed, exponentially more so. One day, suddenly, I broke out from inner turmoil on my skin that evidenced something really wrong.

The wood carving tools for carving ones name into a dead branch, you know those? Imagine one digging out a chunk of your skin again and again and again. The pain of these enclaves left open by an unending nightmare. My immune system, in whatever Grimm’s fairy tale story enacted upon me, the control system in my body decided to not heal well, leaving open to every surface a touch that happened to the 10-70 openings on my body. Vines with thorns lacking the redeeming quality of a rose strangled me in such a way that each thorn positioned just above open wound so that if I placed my arm down or bumped a wall feeling of a thorn going into your skin is awaited me all day every day. A pain in addition to the pain I endure. Never accustomed to the startling stab.

This “once upon a time story” has no ending. There is no more to tell you about why this happened or to what I am allergic. Involved in a mystery of my making but without my consent. I can say my body misperceives as invasive species with the same outcome as invasive species have in the reality to trees. The hemlock’s dying along the mountain range to the seemingly most benign white runny liquid on it’s branches. The wooly adelgid once a point is reached there is no treatment. Doctors have yet identified how to treat me as the allergens causing my skin to engulf or implode is an uncertainty that makes everyone in the story perplexed and asking questions with no answers or telling me stories that counter what I know is true. The separate battle against the very people whose oath is to heal and never harm, health care providers role in this story is for another time.

..See…the truth about me is….

Some truths about me and others with chronic pain / invisible illnesses. (4 articles)

No sugar coating and sorry, I wish it wasn’t the case either but….at least it’s honest.
At least I’m not hiding or pretending.
Take it or leave it, I least of all want to bring anyone down because, despite it all,
I am happy and at peace. (for what it’s worth)

You’ll know me a little better and maybe think about things a little different….or you tell me how you feel after reading.

1 – How to interact or be friend’s / family with someone with chronic pain

2 – Before/after beliefs about illness

Read first (easier)

Yes, I totally believed the “before” statements before 2006 and now so understand the truth of the “after” statements from the perspective of one with chronic illness. Aka, I get why I did and many do think things like these before statements. And it’s hard to bring up and harder to convince someone otherwise…maybe its not until you experience it, unfortunately. But, I offer this — that for everyone you know with an illness, the “after” statements are much more likely.

3- Invisible illnesses have pros and cons

Pros – I can fly under the “normal” radar to those who know me or strangers if I want. My physical appearance is unchanged albeit every cell of my being symptomatic every second. It’s nice to know I look okay or even happy because I am happy.

BUT in weighing them ….CONS > PROS by far ….

Here’s some reasons why:

4 – Consider your life and then place everything you know to be into a place of uncertainty.
With your life in mind, read http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/turning-straw-gold/201309/and-after-snapshot-chronic-pain-and-illness
…and…
….consider the following and then you’ll know the way illness ripples out into life in all directions.

Summer Morning

Sometimes (recording of me reading Mary Oliver)

13days-told-in-4images

Warning, unpleasant yet honest depiction of the last 13 days

Invisible until stigmatized brings forth society’s gaze

Chronic Pain – The war on narcotics / abuse – stigma go hand in hand

See the below article.

Post (1 of 2)

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Which I take pause with in part re: psychologically related in all cases and also take pause as with a comment made in the APA (american pain society) [see next post]

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Because of the futility of explaining chronic pain both due to language and to minds, almost without exception*  I ceased to speak of my chronic pain.

Despite societies adapting – 1000+ words for snow to ennuis or waves/ water to native Hawaiians – so pain should now have grown in the number and specificity of meaning.

Stigma follows ignorance. I suffer daily from sensations which hurt me, move, change, vary in severity. Sometimes I suffer invisibly and sometimes I cannot hide it. Yet discriminated or stigmatized at least once as everyone w chronic pain has suffered. So much suffering and unwillingness, apathy, closed minds, power, and lack of understanding/misunderstanding are walls in the way of equality and freedom and rights to x and y.

Monthly at the pharmacy I leave angry and admittedly ashamed for being a drug user in the eyes of 1+ pharmacy member. Upon seeing this Rx for “that” drug, I immediately feel or see the gaze on me. Some sly but usually a point to be made or said – 50/50 indirectly and directly. Shamed status of drug abuser. As if I or any want pain to get street drugs w a script.

This feel like a hurdle in the way of even an open discussion on pain, as society so melts these two together- pain + abuse + drugs/narcotics.No matter which pharmacy, I am looked at by some pharmacy staff who looks or maybe says and I certainly feel culturally or medically.

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I try to express to those who ask and care. I am also not singular but a pool of people increasingly considered overlapping if not concentric by many (mds included) – 1) chronic pain sufferer & 2) narcotics user and abuser.

I hate nothing save two things and one is this tragedy and what it represents about this culture. It sucks. Really. But, I do believe I would have give up or given in to the pain I so vividly remember. These meds I, too, struggle taking save my QOL and allow me these last 8 years which – while hard, are filled with love and joy and I cannot imagine anything else. I don’t want to.

Stigmatization sucks. Awareness breeds acceptance breeds willingness to be open and learn. I try to do this to keep me in check, if it helps. Thanks for reading

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*Exceptions = doctor appointments and pharmacies. I finally refused or am balking the 0-10 scale. I try to say I refuse to answer which is accepted with a scared gaze at me along with it or kicked back at me as if I simply cannot proceed past the nurse to the doctor until a number is given. So, I say I’m in a good amount of pain and my answer is 0. You pick. I hate that I’m this jaded now.

Why the Stigma of Chronic Pain Remains – Institute for Chronic Pain Blog

Attempts to challenge the stigma of chronic pain often fail. Despite arguments from experts and patients alike, stigma remains a persistent problem. Why?

INSTITUTEFORCHRONICPAIN.ORG

Ridiculous hats & on ridiculously fun times….

How did I pull this off with a straight face. I so remember walking in the store with Vanessa Claire Soleil a few years ago. A CVS or Dollar General or stores like these that, with the right person, transform into great times, memories.

For me, the best memories or good ones (the best I remember both). Best all times memories I can recall the sensory details to words to feelings. Those 5-10 or so. The really good, after years, the facts fade but feelings stay vividly. Those positive vibes that last and last in our minds, the feeling in my belly of laughter hurled from one person back to another. Trying to talk over or get a breath in and struggling (and succeeding) type of laughter.Sometimes I’ll forget one, such as this night, such a memory. And I’m so thankful and regret losing it in the recesses of the mind, too. Thankful because of a new place to tap into when I need to find joy within. This is definitely that type of memory and served as such last week.
(V – let me know if I got this one right. I may be mistaking this hat and night. I know of a couple I could insert of a hat worn and similar memories. One around Halloween for sure.)