Zero Spending, Days 26-28...

Days 26-28:  Getting to Angry

Let's address the subject at hand.  How is Danielle doing with the "no spending?"  Is she really actually succeeding?

At this point, I am definitely spending a little, but I've mostly really enjoyed my lifestyle shift!

Here is where I've strayed:
I've given myself permission to eat out a handful of times during high-crunch periods, for example, during my recital weekend.   I took myself to the movies last night upon realizing that my social life is back at zero, now that I'm not going to bars (I'd say that was below zero, so still winning.)  I purchased a few items off the contract when shopping for my detox- i.e. supplements and nuts.  I bought a book which has been supportive to my journey.  And, let's not forget that I started off continuing to indulge in my vices by allowing other people to buy them for me, or by consuming them at home.

That said, I have the overall sense of living life more on purpose. The crap is gone, or near gone.  My "no spending" trial has now morphed into a retreat.  Where my poor habits raged, I now hold a single flower, a commitment to myself.

The key for me was getting okay with staying at home a lot more, being alone on an unlimited basis, and being boring.  I've made friends with those skills and they have led to a new relationship with myself.  I've picked up reading and writing, playing more piano, and having fun in the kitchen.

I will need to now work on a social life that is based around things besides alcohol.  I'm looking forward to that next new challenge.  It will mean mustering up some courage to leave San Rafael.  It probably means tapping into "conscious community" of meditators, yoga people, artists, and the like.

I'm not there yet.  I'm at home learning to sit with myself more deeply.  In the letting go,  there is a period of discharging all this pain and fear.  Today I am revisiting and releasing a long-held sadness, a feeling sorry for myself for being neglected.  While I may sound dramatic on both of those accounts, I have come to realize those types of feelings are very real forces to be faced.

The unpacking happens through all these tools: mindfulness, breath, feeling, moving.  Most important of all these is willingness.

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Thursday

My retreat started with cayenne lemon water first thing in the morning.  I was weak, emotional and tired.  No coffee, no nothin'-- I was now consuming 100% healthy things-- talk about pulling the plug.

I didn't miss any of it.   "I know we're supposed to meet, but I'm so tired," I texted to Yotam.  He repeated his mantra:  Be present. Do exactly what you feel.  Remember to be peaceful in everything you do.  I did yoga, consumed a very green smoothie, and immediately went back to sleep until 11:30.  I awoke full of new physical energy.

I helped the sub get the students on track, did some house cleaning, and made a lunch of red lentils with butternut squash, a lot of kale, and avocado spelt toast. I had some serious work to do on the insides of my business, but I wasn't ready.  I packed a few things and went to my favorite local hill to pray.

The sun was out.  I clambered to the top, contemplating all the times I had come up here when the pain was too great.  Today, as the numbness started to melt, I told the Universe I was willing and ready to heal.  Please help me take the world off my shoulders.  Please help me help myself first, help me love myself and be strong for myself.  Even up here, my phone buzzed with new parents wanting piano lessons.  Please God, I'm so tired.  Please help.

When I felt a hug of light returned to me, I went back down the hill and home, where I faced an uncomfortable and angering work situation.  I'm the boss.  It's up to me to make my business right.

Yotam came and shared a similar challenge.  We supported each other, talking things through, and I realized how much I loved my new friend.  I took his hand and looked at him.

"You are really special to me.  If we're going to do all this work together, I need to know we are just friends.  I need to be able to love you safely and really trust we are on the same page.  I need my girlfriend to be able to trust me completely."

His face smiled, relieved with a wow.  "I am so glad you bring this up.  If you didn't, I would have.  I felt very strong from the beginning this is not sexual.  Everything is not sex.  We have important work to do together."  He looked me straight in the eye and firmed my hand.  "You can trust me, Danielle.  I will never cross the line.  We are just friends."
Our eyes beamed light, and grateful, we hugged.  I have never felt so much synergy and trust with a work partner.  There is remarked lack of doubt, a diminishing shadow.  Good people exist.

I recalled a prayer I continually send out: to have a team of people who inspire and amaze me.  I only want to work with people who give as much as they take, who contribute to the greater ecology of the community we are creating at the arts center.  Yotam is a symbol of my hope, my knowing that we can create a better humanity through consciousness put into practice.

We sorted through the evening's challenges, and he left me to video chat with Carol, where we saw each other "live" for the first time in a few years.  She gives me smiles up and down my insides.

For the first evening in ages, I slept through the night.

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Friday

I love my new diet.  It's fun, and makes me feel great.  I had a beautiful morning of yoga, meditation, and deepening my relationship with a healthy delicious kitchen.  I made pickled onions and cucumbers, improved my rice/ lentil recipe, and lovingly prepared the day's food.

Finally, it's time to do work.  I scribbled out my list of everything I need to take care of.  One by one, I peacefully addressed the items on the list with a present mind.

I had two readings to give in the afternoon.  I love giving readings, because  in them I see all my own answers.  Both women left glowing, feeling seen, validated and loved.

A beautiful 60-something woman brought me a picture of a guy she was dating.  She didn't have much money, and didn't want to burden me.  I nixed the whole thing and looked at her, holding her hands.  We cleared her past lives of being punished for her beauty and her happiness.  We cleared the protection being she channeled to avoid future hurts, driving away any possibility of real love.  And we re-programmed her belief that she doesn't deserve the full deal.

Crying and laughing together, we burned his picture in a metal garbage can in the parking lot.

I went to a student's mom's house.  I had texted her last week, knowing she is an acupuncturist.  She gave me an amazing treatment, filled with intuitive support.  I will be trading for childcare and readings.

In our session, she helped me realize I am filled with rage.

I contemplated this, leaving to realize I had the night open, and no friends.  I went to a movie, and the theater was empty.  I sat alone and watched, processing the acupuncturist's words.  It felt symbolic, somehow.

I don't mean to be ungrateful.  I have people who love me and show up for me.  I have many great things.

But when it comes to love, to having a home, to having any kind of foundation in this life, I have been so very alone.

My parents lied about my father's identity.  It ruined my life-- everything leading up to it, and everything after it.  The pain is staggering.  I have been drinking for the past decade to suppress the rage, lest I totally lose it.

I don't hate them.  I work hard to make the lemonade.  But, the feelings cannot be repressed.

I have to stop apologizing for being angry.  I have to go ahead and get angry.

For all the years I didn't know who I was.  For being depressed since I was five, crying on the playground, spacing out in class.

For the years I spent alone at home out in the country, isolated, helpless, not allowed to have friends, watch TV, or listen to music.  It was just....housework.

For all the housework I did, hoping for a scrap of love and usually not getting it.

For the complete mind-fuck that was my mid 20's.  Finding out why I was so messed up and depressed all these years:  my mom's guilt, hijacking my chance at having any redemption.

The lies that split my world open, that destroyed my ability to trust in myself, in life itself, let alone any other human being.  Life was one. huge. lie.

For the lack of love, care and consideration that was shown for me, a child, who did not ask to be an object of taboo.

For all the years I've wanted a partner, just a family I could do better with, only to be met with psychological confusion when I try to get close.

For having to "be strong," "pull up by my bootstraps," and run all over the West Coast alone, while trying to make sense of my identity and my biological father's Parkinson's with not so much as a shred of support.

For the fact that I am living alone in the back of a warehouse, at age 36 1/2.

Fuck. You.

Yes, yes-- this is the listener's cue to put things in the positive, to remind me that these are my lessons, etc. etc.

Please don't.  Don't uncomfortably change the subject and tell me about being positive, or that I'm responsible for my happiness now that those things are in the past.  I have built my life and career, completely alone, on being positive and responsible.  I know about it.  I'm doing it.

My dad was my dad.  And then, just like that, another man was my dad.  All these people who were supposed to give me some semblance of a foundation in life, gave me lies.  Fear and selfishness.  Greed.

I have come to realize that sometimes you've just got to get angry.  So the anger can go away.  So it can stop living in your bones, creating hell.

Life can be unjust.  And we have to cry, feel and grieve.  We have to feel the depths of it so we are moved to do better,

To Make Change.