Rains but pours

And yet another opportunity to examine my boundaries – someone I know, one of the first people I met here in fact, has just gone through a long and painful breakup, and has been away for several months working, and is now back in town for a few weeks and wants to camp out in our back field for "one or two weeks." There are a number of reasons why I don't want this person staying here, but really all I want to record here is that it took me several days to return his call, because I was so nervous about telling him how I felt. Finally today I realized that the very fact I was feeling that nervous was proof that I was doing the right thing by saying "no." So I called and told him, and it was actually fine.

I also realized that the primary reason I was feeling so anxious about talking to him was not because I necessarily thought he would argue with me and insist on staying even though I don't want him to, but more because refusing "shelter" (the word he used in his voicemail) to someone who thinks of me as a friend clashes with my view of myself as a generous, compassionate friend. Which in turn forced me to acknowledge to myself that I don't really think of this person as a close friend, and in fact many of his actions over the years have made me want to avoid getting any closer.

That kind of thing isn't pleasant for me to admit. If I'm really a good person, shouldn't I like everyone the same? And shouldn't I be willing to help everyone I can, whether I really like them a lot, or not?

Hogwash, of course. But these are the channels my mind finds its way back to when it's under stress. And receiving messages day after day and feeling too guilty and conflicted to return them has been very stressful!

Several other cool things happened this weekend. It rained again and everything is still very lush and green – beautiful. Yesterday we drove a couple of hours north to look at a vintage handbuilt mountain bike Mr. A found on Craig's List or somewhere. He knows quite a lot about these things and thought it sounded like a pretty rare find, and as it turns out it was built by somebody who later became famous for his handbuilt frames, though of course I have no idea what his name is.

Last night I made a lot of progress on my current freelance project, which is turning out kind of better than I had been picturing it. I've worked most of the last two weekends on it and I'm happy. There are still a couple of technical things to figure out but so far no major glitches.

And today we went to a mall down in Marin and I found the pants that are going to be the cornerstone of my spring uniform! Totally unexpected to find them there – I was actually looking for jeans to replace my fat jeans that don't fit anymore – but I happened to notice a sale rack next to the door and there they were, and they are the most perfect fitting pants I've had in many, many years. They're a variation on my habitual green canvas cargo pants, if you must know, but these have a lighter, slightly stretchy fabric and a skinny cut and lots of zippers. Perfect color, perfect fabric, perfect pockets, perfect rise. I would've bought several pairs if they'd had them.

Finally, when we got back to town I dropped off Mr. A at home and went shopping for dinner, and by the time I got home he'd made a new rustic wood top for the new little outdoor breakfast table I picked up at a yard sale a few weeks ago. It came with a round glass top, which is sitting on its side, wrapped in a towel, in the space between the back of the washing machine and the garage wall, for fear I'll manage to crack it in half before it's warm enough outside to eat breakfast on it. Which I plan to do first thing in the morning, if I can drag myself away from the computer long enough to get a little sleep.

I love these women!

Have you seen this? I just found out about this woman, Sally Pugh, who’s teaching a yoga classes in the Bay Area called Yoga for Large Women (and here’s an article about the class – go read it!). I hope she won’t mind my swiping this photo from her website ... I just found it so incredibly beautiful and inspiring, I had to share! It makes me feel happy all over to see “non-traditional” yoginis moving and stretching and feeling good in their bodies without having to worry about what other people might be thinking about them.

Someday I hope to be comfortable enough with my own body image to be able to post a photo like the one above without adding the disclaimer that I am not nearly as large as the women in the picture. I mean, so what if I was, right? Would that make me a bad person? Would you stop loving me then? What if I was even LARGER than those women?

Well, I’m not. But I do have issues about being in, and being seen in, this body. Issues that I am learning to enjoy working with, and even having a sense of humor about.

The other day in the Shambhala Sun I read this story (urgh – there’s only an excerpt, not the whole article) about the Dalai Llama’s recent work in education – he is helping to create programs for “education of the heart,” teaching school children about emotional values like caring, compassion, peacefulness and tolerance. Somehow this yoga class seems to me to be about a similar kind of education – helping women learn how to extend themselves the same compassion, tolerance and loving care they already know how to give to the people they love.

I was hoping to be able to go to that yoga class on MLKJr. Day, but she wasn’t teaching that day because of the holiday. Then it occurred to me, maybe I’m not fat enough to go to that class – maybe my presence there would make the other women feel self-conscious. Then having that thought made me feel self-conscious, like maybe I would feel out of place in that class too, just like I now feel out of place in my local classes full of skinny rubber-band-bendy kinds of people (even though many of them are my friends, including a couple of teachers, even).

It keeps bringing me back to the idea of generosity, though I’m not sure I understand exactly what it is that’s causing my mind to link the two ideas. Maybe I’m just not being very generous with myself – or with my friends. A more generous person would extend those people the benefit of the doubt that they really aren’t secretly looking at me and thinking, “What a pig!”

It also has to do with ego. Isn’t clinging to a certain image of myself (which I know is not accurate, anyway) kind of non-generous? Wouldn’t it be more natural and relaxed and generous (I can feel myself becoming obsessed with this concept) to stop thinking so much about what I think other people might be thinking of me, and just live my life? Do yoga, if I want to – wear a unitard – eat a whole serving of pasta at the employee appreciation luncheon, because I didn’t have breakfast and I’m really, really hungry and going to be working late too, rather than just have a couple of bites in hopes nobody will think Aha, so that’s why she never wears her shirts tucked in!

In other news, I realized on my way to work this morning that this weekend marks the 10-year anniversary of my leaving my ex-husband. A friend of mine wrote yesterday about some milestones in her life and it got me thinking ...Ten years ago I packed up my cat, clothes, books, CDs, some kitchen stuff, a red lamp, one table, one chair, and one oak armoire – all I could fit in one trip in my old Accord hatchback – and took back my own life. It was so important to me to get out that I left everything else behind; I didn’t even take anything to sleep on – I bought a crib-sized mattress at the thrift store and slept curled up on it on the floor for five months before I finally bought a real bed again.

Maybe I’ll write some more about this milestone. Or maybe not. One thing I can say is that I’m grateful to my 31-year-old self for having the guts to do that, even though I had no idea at the time how I was going to pull it off. It was the beginning of the stripping away of who I thought I was, and the discovery of who I really am – which is to say, nobody. Meaning, everybody – everything! When everything you thought you knew about yourself falls out from under you, not just once but time after time after time, and every time you keep on finding yourself still standing ... It’s pretty powerful just to realize: I’m still here!


Listening to: Gladys Knight & the Pips: You're the Best Thing That's Ever Happened To Me