Hiding

I spent a couple days last week pretty much sleeping all the time; I would wake up for an hour or less and then go back to sleep. I knew I didn't need more sleep and yet, I just lay in bed, unwilling to get up, not finding any reason to get up, and all it took was focusing on my heart for a couple minutes and I was able to fall asleep again. It felt like a drug, almost, to be able to sleep so much and make myself tired when my body probably didn't need it. Nowadays I really can't distinguish between physical and emotional/spiritual illness; I don't know what this was, if it was just a stage of hopelessness about life that I had to go through. Part of it was that I had a couple -- just a couple of small, insignificant things -- to take care of with my business. But I was so disorganized with it, and maybe that disorganization reminded me of how disorganized my life is in general, and somehow I resisted doing any work at all. Sleep was my way of resisting.

In order to really wake up and feel myself present in the world, I need more than usual. I go to Ichiban and order a bowl of wonton soup and an Alaska roll, sometimes. Or I will go to see something at the Amherst Cinema. I love that place. So far I've seen Amour, Quartet, The Pirogue, Castle in the Sky, Like Someone in Love, and My Neighbor Totoro. I saw each of those films alone. I enjoyed them all. I love having a cinema where, no matter what I chose to see, I know I'm going to get something out of it. Sometimes going to the Amherst Cinema is what gets me interested enough to engage a little bit with life. And though I really wish I wasn't alone in everything I do, I kind of enjoy going to the cinema alone. It's something I can give myself. Still, it's hard, not knowing anybody. It's hard, not knowing if I will end up knowing anybody in a way that feels sufficient, or even if I'll be in the area for long.

I'm wondering what is even possible as far as feeling fulfilled? I think I feel hopeless at times because I don't even know what I can expect: from friendships, from future relationships; so I don't know how to gauge if I'm settling. And I want to run away a lot. I've avoided Natalie and George. We had a talk last night. They told me they were feeling really uncomfortable; they don't know how to approach me. They want me to take up space so I'm not taking up energetic space -- I think? -- and that's hard to wrap my mind around. I'm not used to living with people who are sensitive to energy. So if I'm feeling something, like this avoidance, and not putting it out there, not naming it, it may make others uncomfortable too. We talked about all this, though; I cried, which was an unexpected surprise; and I feel better about this now. I feel less lonely here simply because we've named what was happening. This is the safest place in the world to experiment, to try things out, George says... and I'm trying to listen to that. Well into my second month of living here, I'm finally starting to be able to see things for what they are -- see Natalie and George for who they are -- without all the projections I put on them. I project to protect myself and I don't see this unique situation or these unique people.

After an amazing retreat with Rebecca, there was the gender outlaws retreat two weeks later, and... well, I'd opened up so much on the first retreat, I was actually contracting during the second retreat rather than opening up. And I just kind of isolated myself a lot. It went from so much love that I didn't know how to handle it, to "I need a bit of a break from this love stuff," to "where did the love go? I'm lonely," to "nobody likes me anyway." I'm still trying to figure out how this works: how I can feel an abundance of connection and then feel like there's never enough. What is the reality of it?

I stumbled upon a poetry reading a couple weeks ago at Amherst Books. I met an Irish poet and his American wife, and they invited me to a poetry open mic the next evening in Northampton. So, I went there, I had a burger and fries, drank a couple of beers, and I read my poem. I had no friends there with me but somehow I got up there and, my first time reading publicly, I read one that was way too erotic for my own comfort. The other, safer poem that I wanted to read was too long.

I'm starting to get tired, which is good, because I woke up after only a couple hours of sleep and certainly need more (I got over my sleep-all-the-time thing yesterday). I'm not quite sure what to say. Spring is here, it's getting warmer, and I'm going to ride my bicycle soon? I've been working on my memoir, going deep into the Vermont experience. I found Sara on Facebook. I hope she ads me back. I have grieved losing touch with that beautiful group of friends and I wonder if any of that is salvageable after all these years. I didn't lose touch because I stopped caring; life, and more life, and more life just got in the way...