Invincible

Part I

I think that there are a few moments in every life where you're shown of what you are and are not made. This is my accounting of one that I had last week.

Growing up a Long/Dees it's very easy to feel, well, a bit super human. School and anything cerebral comes fairly easy. On the Long side, we're rarely sick, and if we ever are we usually just power through it. Sports come fairly easy, anything physical actually. When I was playing water polo and regularly lifting weights I put muscle on so fast I couldn't keep up with how strong I was becoming and Lennyed more than one hole in a wall and broken door frame. For the most part, people believe what you say, laugh at your jokes, seek your advice and value your company. As much, you grow up not really being affraid of anything. You can either think around, charm, or power through whatever situation you find yourself. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty damn awesome, most of the time.

As such, I begin to think that nothing can really hurt me until I realize that because I see things differently, I feel things differently and typically more extensively and I realize EVERYTHING can hurt me and regularly does, but typically I'm strong enough to bear the blows. I remind myself that it's imperative to feel feelings, but to let them pass through. They do not control me and that I'm strong enough to take it.

That all being said, last week while shopping for drain-o at an all but empty Lowe's after a church activity as I'm wandering the overwhelming isles of wrenches, drill bits, lawn chairs, carpet rolls, and weed killer I start wishing there was a 3D Google contraption that could let me just find the bloody drain-o. This particular task does not high-cogniative levels of problem solving so my mind starts wandering into girly places, inventorying the recent pairings and/or interests of my friends and the local boy club and realize that, for about the umpteenth time, I'm sans partner/interest/pursuer.

Everyone (in my Looney Toons mind) is about to gallivant paired into the sunset and I, again, am left at home, broom in hand, by myself.

This idea starts to upset me and instead of the familiar sting of tears at my eyes the focus is lower, in my chest. It starts to tighten like an asthma attack and I can only manage short shallow breaths. My heart starts pumping like a captured field mouse but I don't get light headed, I don't feel compelled to sit down, I don't want to cry, I just can't breathe and I don't know why and my heart feels like it's being dribbled against my sternum.

Being the Long I am, having assigned myself to a task, I take the physical discomfort, shove it aside, and continue on my drain-o search. I try to keep a steady breath, yoga breathing fixes everything right? Oxygen, the fastest way to detox the body. I finally find the drain-o, properly compare potentices with price and container size, get through the self check out (yoga breath, yoga breath, yoga breath), and make it to my car.

Tasks being completed, I turn my cartoony brain to the most pressing matter at hand, my insane body. I don't really have time to play Dr to myself but my body was demanding attention and if I know one thing its don't poo-poo anything that has to do with the chest/heart/ lung region.

So I sit there in my car, I inventory my racing heart, mentally cross referenceing it with other accounts from remembered NPR articles and friends' stories and my slew of Medical School friends running medical dialog. I rewind and review conversations, picking out pieces of information that seem to apply, come to a conclusion that I don't like at all but one whose evidence I can't refute. I sit there for a few minutes longer, rerunning my experience, the evidence, my existing knowledge of possible explanations and I realize I need more data to be sure. I reluctantly text my friend who has mentioned similar experiences before:


What does a panic attack feel like?

























Replies come confirming all this weirdness. I realize the trigger, feel helpless and silly but that I cannot dismiss these feelings. They're demanding time and attention. But I have no idea how to explore them. Talking about them with anyone of my afore-mentioned friends and/or family would just trigger the route "Don't be sillys" and "You know you're wonderful" and "He'll come around some day" that never seem to make me feel better. Ever. If anything, they spray gas on the fire. I think they never comfort because that's never been the issue. My raw and unaddressed fear isn't a life without love, it's a life alone. I know I'm loved. That has never been an issue, but being left behind, being left out - that's what closes the shutters on my rationale.

Flashes of being on the tree-line Provo street of my child hood and having my big brother purposefully get his friends together in front of me and then ride off on their bikes while yelling behind him that I can't come along, that I'm weird and a pest, that I'm not invited and I'll get beat up if I try to follow. Family reunions where my cousins flitted off to the mall without even considering me. Those come crashing in and for a tic I feel a shudder go through out my consciousness, destabilizing things for a moment and I'm not sure if its a layer of delusion being stripped away or a layer of foundation being ripped out.

I look over at the drain-o on my passenger seat, remember the pressing task of a clogged bath tub at home, wipe the tears away to see straight, take a few more yoga breaths, decide I need to air this out later, start my car, shove aside my weaknesses and just keep going. That is the only thing I know how to do.

I'm not sure what to make of this new info but it'll keep for another day when I'm feeling stronger and a little bit less alone or maybe when I've got my red boots and bullet proof bracelets back on. Nothing can harm me then.

Slip Pupils in Dark Corners

"Any decision, even if it looks and feels like the right one, made out of fear will never lead to happiness" - T. N., pg 25, 7/20/2006

I never thought one of the token pretty things I picked up at the bookstore at The Huntington would ever be more than a conversation piece when I was 17. But evolution is its own miracle, even in the form of a tiny notebook.

It's become my catch-all for funny things I hear, profound images I come across and plan to use in a book someday, and thoughts that come to me that I don't want to loose. It's a confidant that I call a thought notebook. Crazy creative huh? I've tried to think of a name or title for it but all wit on the matter has alluded me. It's let me quote myself, reflect back on moments of clarity, and let me feel (just for a second) like the deep person I hope to be someday.
It also lets me add to conversations I've had with myself or fully digest, in retrospect, things I didn't understand before.

There was one quiet moment in church when someone was talking about something related to some brave acts that people in scripture have performed and that got me wandering in my brain about what makes someone brave. I've heard the solder's and Generals quotes saying "courage is not the absence of fear but doing what you have to in spite of it" and like sentiments from people how have had to face real fear and exhibited real bravery and have achieved great things because of it. Fear is then implied to be this constant that you simply have to learn to maneuver around. I didn't like that idea very much, it seemed so Defeatist to me. So I went to a happy place and started thinking about Forrest Gump.

Here's a man that achieved great things and never really understood half of what he did. I felt some connections coming on so I picked up my notebook -

"There is a difference between courage and simplistic fortitude. To have or demonstrate courage one must have a working knowledge of the consequences of failure. Oblivion to the stakes of the situation takes the concept of courage totally out of the equation." T.N., pg 15, 5/12/2004

But Forrest was afraid. He was afraid of a lot of things, like loosing Jennie or his friends, not getting shot in Vietnam or loosing face. His mind was always in higher plains because of his simplicity and that is what enabled him to do such great things, not being brave. He really is an amazing character.

I've taken out the concept of fear more than once since, looked at it, got a few chills, and decided to Scarlet O'Hara it for a day that I felt stronger.

Then I started watching Quarterlife about two weeks ago.
I know, I know.
"Liz - are you really watching that webisode thing?!"
Yes. Yes I am, and I'll tell you why. It's excellent.
(excellent = the writing is honest, the acting is great. It's not pretentious and I think about it after.)

What I've noticed what stays with me is that the way the show talks about fear and is so honest about it. Like I wish I could be brave enough and self aware enough to understand that the reason I may be catty to the person I love is because I'm afraid of them and the sway they have over me, or the real reason I resent my job is because I don't have the ovaries to get up and do what I really want to.

"Fear, pain, and discomfort are almost never the problem. It's the lack control related to each that starts fires" T.N., pg 30, 8/14/2006

The reason I make a lot of every day decisions is because I'm afraid of not being good enough, or not being loyal enough to my generation or the planet or my art, not making bills, not having anything to say for myself at cocktail parties, not being interesting enough even to flirt, of people leaving. It's all there and all scattered through the pages of my thought notebook guised as political insights or bad puns.

I haven't reached any sweeping or new conclusions. I know fear is irrational and based on unrealistic self imposed expectations derived from sensational media, fairy tales, our perceptions of "perfect people" and Oprah. I know that if I don't and am not everything I think I should be a big black hole will not open up in the street and suck me down to the Bog of Eternal Stench. And even if it did I would still probably be OK. My head knows all of this, but I think it's still traveling southward and hasn't landed yet.

I'm still scribbling in my notebook on the matter, but a little distance from it in the mirror of my computer monitor has made me pull out the concept a little more often lately and I've been feeling strong enough to actually look those darly lit slit pupiled eyes head on and I'm realizing they're the same blue as mine.

Mental Fleece Blankets

My mom and I have very interesting conversations. They're usually sparked by something that doesn't have much to do with anything but a few weeks ago we had a fairly serious conversation after we finished watching Bowling for Columbine*.

In it Michael Moore asks a lot of questions about our violence toting culture and at one point contrasted it with Canada. Canada has 40 million people, the US has 400 million. Canada has 10 million households with about 7 million guns. The US has about 40 million households with about 28 million guns. So the gun to person ratio in both countries is about the same. In 2001 over 15,000 people were killed in the US by violent assault with a weapon, Canada had 7. Seven. Nation wide - Seven. That happens in a day in LA.

So Mr. Moore begged the question why? Why does no one shoot each other in Canada when we have 1st graders shooting other 1st graders here? Why does no one lock their doors in Canada even? Like people who had previously been broken into still didn't lock their doors and that mystified him. When he was in the local bar he formed a theory as to why that I agree with. He was watching the news and it was all positive. No "Murder in the Mall" or "Hostage Alerts!" The people weren't being pumped full of fear every night about their neighbors.

That stupefied me. They weren't being taught how to fear each other at all, but more how to relate to one another. Mr. Moore goes on to talk about the culture of fear we have churning here in the US and that got me thinking and I'm drafting a post specifically on that as we speak so I'll get to that later but today I wanted to talk about something else.

This little quip of Mr. Moore's helped me make a resolve. I wasn't going to be taught to fear anymore and I was going to start unlearning all of this by surrounding myself with positive news. So I was watching 60 minutes and this story came on and it filled me with joy. THIS is what things should be about. Can you imagine if there were more Gustavos in the world?

And what a story!! From the middle of impoverished Venezuela comes this musical genius that used music, simple music, as a refuge from fear. There was no fear in music, just therapy and a way to assert yourself and contribute constructively. And what a GENIUS that set up El Sestema. Whoever they are, the world owes them a massive "Thank You!". When Gustavo said that he has plans to implement similar programs here in LA I almost started crying with happiness. If I'm not in rural Peru working with the Peace Corps next year I am buying Phil Harmonic season tickets just to be in the same room with that kind of person of passion and excellence. What a gift. What a reason to hope instead of fear, and what a marvelous soundtrack to go with that kind of change. I get warm and fuzzy inside every time I think about it.

*disclaimer- I think Michael Moore is a slightly more talented and ballsy version of Jerry Springer. He makes relevant movies composed of a majority of valid points and they get people talking, which I'm grateful for. But on the whole I find his sensationalistic approaches insensitive, disturbing, and just a hair shy of invasive. I suppose that's what the majority of people need to actually feel something about something now-a-days but as the sensitive type, when I finish watching any of his films I feel like I went out to run through the sprinklers and come back red, bruised, and traumatized because they were all really fire hydrants.