Day 45 Miss Communication
Once upon a time, I did a brief stint as a cosmetics commando. You know the company, rhymes with Tammy Faye. I was all a-quiver, anticipating my meteoric rise to make-up fame! Not only would I get pots of money and good skin, I’d learn to speak! In public!
Despite of hours of practice, smiling and gesturing at the mirror, I was a mass of trembling nerves before my first party. My hostess directed me to the coffee table where I set out my things, centred myself, took a deep breath … and choked. Literally. This was no little coughing fit. My wide-eyed hostess whacked me on the back, pushed glasses of water at me and finally led me to the washroom where I spent the first ten minutes of my perfect speech hacking up a lung.
When I eventually emerged, she was waiting for me, white-faced, a straw in one hand and a steak knife in the other, preparing I guess for some sort of desperate meatball surgery. Her friends had fled the scene.
My voice gone, my good skin mottled blue and red, my expensive mascara dripping off my chin, I ended my first party and my cosmetics-sales career by throwing some samples at her and croaking, “Try these, (gasp) they’re great.”
But spit-valve malfunctions aside, one of my biggest life challenges is to use words properly, directly, and clearly.
“Miss Communication!” I declared to my husband one night. “That’s my goal!”
“Congratulations,” he said, not looking up from the sports highlights. “You miscommunicate with the best of them.”
(To be fair, ever since our conversation about a neurotic dream of mine, he hasn’t been terribly motivated to pay attention. “You had an erotic dream?” he answered, perking up his ears. “Was I in it?”
“You sure were!” I responded, bursting into tears.)
Language is important. For instance, some of Bikram’s flowing dialogue is just weird. “Breathing is normal,” the instructor intones. Well, unless you’re a fish, duh. It took me weeks to figure out that what they intend is not a declarative, but a directive: they’re telling us to breathe normally.
There was an older gentleman in Tuesday’s class who was definitely not breathing normally. In fact, he was gasping rather alarmingly. Then I remembered that I’ve seen him before and he keeps returning, alive and well, so I guess that’s his baseline. Maybe for him, gasping is normal.
Bikram’s instructions have other strange content, such as: the mysterious Japanese Ham Sandwich. That’s what I’m supposed to look like when I bend forward and (try to) rest my face against my shins.
And why do we have to put our “exactly foreheads” to our knees? How about “put your forehead exactly on your knees.”
I’m aware that such loosely played language is my particular nails-on-chalkboard. I actually enjoyed grammar in high-school, what can I say? I don’t judge those of you who can’t spell or deconstruct sentences. I may laugh at you in private, but know that I do it with love.
Experts say there are many interpretations for every statement: what I meant to say, what I actually said, what you heard, what you understood … and on and on. Do we ever truly say what we mean? Do we even know what we mean? No wonder communication is the basis for relationships – and conflict. Language is a miracle.
So much lies hidden under the surface of smiles, clothing and mannerisms, waiting for the words that will reveal the person within. Those words may be different for each of us, but emotions are universal. We all feel frightened, joyful, inadequate, loved, lonely, enraged; we all struggle towards expression. Having the courage to be honest builds strength in relationships. Sharing our feelings through words is what makes us human.
So I keep trying. Speak. Explain. Apologize. Try again. Words strung together into sentences, sentences woven into relationships, a blanket to warm the wordless core of each of us.
“I don’t know why it’s so important to me,” I said to my husband later that same day. “I guess it’s just part of my artistic nature.”
His head came up at that, his eyes widened, then softened in compassion.
“Honey,” he said, reaching for my hand. “You’re not autistic.”
Day 44 Breathe… Listen… Be….
On Tuesday, the Vancouver Sun ran a story of two boys charged with sexually assaulting and murdering Kimberly Proctor, and I’ve got to say, stories like this knock me off my pins. Such tragedy, such waste. For the girl, obviously. But also, in a lesser way, for the boys. What on earth happened to turn them into monsters capable of this kind of cold-blooded horror? Was there a point in their young lives when they learned to deny normal emotions, to subvert things like humiliation, loneliness, lust and anger into something so much worse?
Or were they just born sociopaths?
Understand, I’m no expert. I just read, watch people and ask the question “why?” a lot. (I’m an ardent fan of CSI and Criminal Minds, too, but don’t hold that against me. I know a plot device when I see one.) Mostly, I try to listen to my instincts and intuition. Turns out, they’re often pretty reliable.
One of the things we’re told regularly in yoga class is to listen to our bodies. Yoga isn’t supposed to hurt, they say — despite the somewhat confusing instructions to find “that stretching-pain sensation all down the backs of your legs.” (Stretching-pain? Uh, check.) So, if this means I can’t keep my knees straight on forward bends, well, so be it. The important thing is to do it correctly, and trust that my muscles, tendons and ligaments will lengthen over time.
Right. Apparently I didn’t listen in Monday’s class, because within hours, my right hamstring was in a bad way. A grab-my-ass-and-moan-with-every-step kind of way. And just when I thought I was making progress, too! Which is, I suspect, where I went wrong. I felt unusually tight that day, and instead of listening, and accepting, I pushed through. “Oh no you don’t,” I told my hamstrings, through clenched teeth. And now I’m paying the price.
Turns out, my muscles may well have been warning me that not all was well in the kingdom of Roxanne. There’s a virus going through our family. I’ll spare you the gory details, except to say that, between my aching hip, and my gurgling tummy, Monday was another restless night. Instead of listening to my body, I responded with a show of power – and got a revolt.
And I know better.
When my children were small, I worked hard to help them identify, understand and accept their feelings, physical and emotional. For instance, it’s okay to be mad, sad, frightened, etc. It’s not okay to brain your sister with a Playmobil barn. I tried to avoid such phrases as “You can’t be hungry, you just ate.” Or, “Say you’re sorry! And mean it!” Or my favourite: “Smile! Be nice!” Which is, I think, especially meaningful when said in a low, menacing tone.
This kind of cognitive dissonance – “I feel cold but Mom says I can’t be, because I’m wearing a jacket.” “I’m so sad that my hamster was eaten by my sister’s cat but I’m not supposed to be upset because it’s only a hamster.” – sets us up for all kinds of problems. Like, “I’m gonna get that cat. I’m gonna get my sister!!”
It’s normal to feel pain, sorrow, anger, fear, anything. It’s when these powerful sensations are denied that we get into CSI territory, because they don’t go away, any more than my hamstrings can stretch by force of will. Disappointment is ignored in favour of revenge. Loneliness turns into that biting determination to never let anyone get too close. Humiliation becomes rage.
I suspect that those two boys haven’t faced anything with emotional honesty in a long time, if ever. And now? It’s probably too late for them.
It’s certainly too late for Kimberly Proctor.
It’s the simplest task – and a life-long challenge – to pay attention. To actually feel our feelings, experience our own lives.
To breathe, listen, be.
Day 40 Endorphin Junkie
Several years ago, before a trip to Mexico, I decided to have my legs professionally waxed. I have nothing against shaving, but I’ve got a raised pigmented mole on my left shin that I tend to forget about. I’ve cut the top off that thing so many times, it now looks like a little brown target, which you’d think might help me remember, but doesn’t. I figured it would be nice to vacation without a bloody scab.
Well, that was a deeply enlightening spa experience I’m in no hurry to repeat, thank you very much. Lovely result, but that poor esthetician was dodging random kicks to the head and I’m pretty sure I was offering to sign a confession, any confession, by the end. Turns out I need to be in control of the pain myself.
So I do my own waxing. Now that I’ve reached the age when, as Janette Barber’s famous quote goes, “they’re not chin hairs, they’re stray eyebrows,” it’s a top-to-toe deal. “Your face feels so smooth and woman-like,” my husband tells me afterwards, with all sincerity.
And you know what hurts the most? (No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Hello, natural childbirth times three.) It’s the top of the feet. Oh, come on. I’m not the only one with periodic bouts of hobbit-foot. You know what I’m talking about. Or if you don’t you either should, or you will. Somehow the skin over the feet and ankles is so thin, it produces a spectacularly bright sort of pain when the hairs rip free.
But afterwards? It’s not just the smooth, exfoliated skin. It’s an endorphin rush, the body celebrating “I suffered, and I survived!”
I wonder if that’s not part of the draw of Bikram yoga, for me. I’ve never been one to do anything the easy way. Ten years of pregnancy and/or lactation. 14 years of homeschooling. 23 years, coming up, of marriage. In fact, if there’s a hard way, a long way, or a wrong way, I’ve probably taken it. (I chose to be a writer, after all. And not just any writer – for years, I wrote for pet magazines and church magazines. The two lowest-paying segments of the freelance market. Good job.)
But there is satisfaction in doing something really, really difficult. (I once wrote a piece on how to deal with masturbation in cats. It’s true. I’m not saying it was a good story, but it was assigned, I got the information, the interviews, and met my deadline. Thank goodness the editors saw reason and killed it before the issue went to print.)
There’s nothing like the sensation at the end of class, when I’m lying in Savasana – Corpse Pose – drenched with sweat, swimming in endorphins, limp, limber and loose.
I’ve suffered, I’ve pushed through, and I’ve survived. And I’m stronger for it.