What Am I Missing?

First, the not so good

Oh man, it almost never gives me a break anymore, not for a day, not for more than a precious few hours (sometimes).  I laugh when I hear people talking about how they “can’t” meditate for twenty minutes (at all, let alone daily) because they can’t “clear their heads”.   Clearing your head is not, and never was, the goal.  The goal is to be aware of your breath, to watch it as you inhale and exhale (I exhale a couple of counts longer than I inhale; that’s good for stress).  But for me, if I am not in that state all the time, the pain is intolerable.  And let’s face it.  All. The. Time. isn’t gonna happen.  I’m no monk.  I’m just a grown woman in agony from tumors that grow and grow and hurt and hurt and never seem to want to LET. ME. GO.   And that’s what I pray to G-d every single night.  LET. ME. GO.  Moses asked G-d to “Let his people go” but that was different.  Moses wasn’t asking for death.  He was asking to be free.  And in a similar way, that’s what I’m asking, Dear G-d.  To be free from this agony.  And once dead, will I be?  Or will it be worse (if I take my own life)?

I try and imagine what it is I’m missing.  What “t” didn’t I cross, what “I” didn’t I dot.  Okay, okay.  I never got married.  Never had kids.  Never had a career.  But it’s a little late in the game, if that’s what I’m supposed to have done.  So what?  Now I have to wait this out for who knows how long, because I missed those things?  Naw, that’s not it.  No way is that it. I’m being facetious.    I’m missing something bigger.  And as this goes one, I think I’m moving further, rather than closer, to that knowledge.  I’m too tired.  I can’t think, because of the pain.

Getting Better 

I had an appointment today with my healer/acupuncturist.   She has saved my life in many ways, with her energy work, her oils and her instructions to me while she works on me.  Today was a very powerful day.  I was in tremendous pain, and she asked me to give back the pain  (to whatever power I wanted to call it; G-d, Mother, Father….) and I had this huge opening.  I was doing what she instructed when I suddenly whispered “I give back all my pain (in whatever form, as instructed by her) with the same love in which it was given to me.  Wow.  That stopped me in my tracks.  I realized in that instant that (as everyone has been telling me) although this FEELS like punishment, it is not.  It is love.  It’s all love.a

If thinking about death scares me as it sometimes does, I try to remember that every single person you know, everyone you don’t know, everyone you’ve ever met or will meet will die, it somehow comforts me.  The unknown of it still freaks me a little, but it can’t be worse than living.  At least not
for me.  Perhaps I shouldn’t tempt….whatever.  I am currently watching and listening to a debate on YouTube between a couple rabbis and Christopher Hitchens, the (nowdeceased) famous atheist, on the afterlife.  It is interesting, listening to whether or not an afterlife exists.  There are several of these on YouTube and they all fascinate me.

I was just reading about this nine year old girl with some horrible blood cancer who has to spend the next nine MONTHS in the hospital to attack the cancer aggressively.  It was in the news because she is a Taylor Swift fan and was disappointed because her hospital stay means she’ll miss her concert.  Taylor Swift saw (her dad put a video of her on Instagram, hoping Ms. Swift might give her a shout.  She did see it, and gave $50,000 toward her medical expenses).  I read that article and felt ashamed to be bitching about my life.  She’s NINE YEARS OLD.  I don’t understand G-d; I don’t understand humanity (if that’s what you can call us).  I watch all these documentaries on nature and think about how we have decimated this planet and how we kill anything that looks at us cross eyed and I wonder.  That’s it.  I just wonder.

A good YouTube to watch is Eban Alexander talking about his book “Proof of Heaven”.  There are several, but the one that’s a little over an hour is the most complete.  He had an incredible near death experience while in a coma.   He’s a neuroscientist/doctor so he was coming from a very different POV prior to the experience, which should have killed him. Very interesting and helps (for me) calm the nerves.  He speaks of not being afraid, of being loved.  Sounds hokey; you have to hear (or read the book) the whole thing.  I plan to read his follow up book (I read the first but don’t own it) called “A Map to Heaven”.  Wonder if you can use Google maps or GPS?  LOL.

Heat and Pain

Seattle is in the midst of a heatwave.  I know for many parts of the country and the rest of the planet, high eighties and mid-nineties seem like a cool breeze, but we are acclimated to mid-sixties and seventies in the summer.  Mostly, we are acclimated to rain, with a few eighties now and then.  This is torture.  Few of us have air conditioning and fans cannot be found in stores anywhere.  My brother, bless his heart, convinced a guy at Home Depot (bless them) to let him pre-pay with his credit card for one that was on order for them.  Seattle hasn’t seen this ever.   Not for this long.  A year and a half of warm weather.   I want the dreariness back, even though that is painful for me as well (physically).

It’s a free standing one that you vent out the window and it has saved me from further torture.  Took my brother and his wife two hours to get it in!   I am so blessed to have a family that cares about me.  Between the pain and the heat, I have been going insane.  Mostly with worry over the planet and climate change.  Anyone who thinks it isn’t real needs to get an education.  And I’m not talking about the increase in the temperature.  That isn’t climate change, but part of the fall-out from it.   Watching documentaries on nature and knowing what we have done to this planet is sickening to me.  That’s my rant.

The heat has made the pain worse, because everything swells up.  I don’t know, truth be told, and should stop trying to figure it out.  It is what it is.  And it hurts.  I just read another article on Huffington Post about assisted suicide and the lack most states allowing it.  I wrote to one of the contributors of the article about how, even with states that allow it, it leaves out a huge population of people who don’t have a terminal illness which will kill them fast, but rather, a chronic condition that will kill them eventually, usually slowly and painfully.

The former is better for the patient, though they may not agree at the time. The latter may be better for loved ones in terms of having you around, but then, watching you suffer is no joy.   And it’s really no joy for the patient.