Psychic said when I scan your body, I can feel that your first chakra is lit up, blazing like a star. You are pouring everything you have into trying to survive. I can see that there are cords of attachment connected to your third and fourth chakras, in your sex and stomach, where desire and will live. You must gently remove these and send them firmly but warmly back to their sources. Please take these back now. I do not need them anymore. Then fill them back up quietly, by breathing into those empty spaces. Psychic says sometimes it is useful to find a universal mother to love–I feel a particular affinity for the Virgin of Guadalupe, who says “I will listen to, love and protect you for all of your days.” Psychic says your heart chakra is clamped shut. I mean it isn’t all the way closed, because if it was you’d be dead. But it’s more closed down than any I’ve seen. She suggests breathing, meditation by walking. She suggests daily communion with some infinite force through an oracle such as the I Ching. She tells me to hug people as frequently as possible. Rabbit says your instinct will be to pull to the left. because when you hug left your liver is aligned with the person you are hugging, it’s less intimate. but when you hug right, your hearts are aligned. if you hug for longer than three breaths, your hearts will begin to synchronize their beating. It is raining and I am a little afraid to call on anyone. J&J are leaving tomorrow. I have been writing all morning, the force of that propulsion; all the while my chest aches. I still don’t know how to cry. I wish I could be somewhere where it is safe to open. I wish I could be that safe place to open.

c said, already i am beginning feel my feelings again. for so long when people would ask me what i was feeling, i would have thoughts.

(via Rabbit)

Modesty means that while we hold to our values and principles, we remain receptive to our inner voice and open to the chance elements which provide the opportunity to say or do the right thing. Such opportunities always occur at surprising moments, particularly when we have an open, alert and unstructured attitude…the ingredients are already on hand for dealing with the problems that arise; we need add nothing or taking anything away; we need only be alert to recognize these elements and utilize them when they show themselves.

Just remembered about the emotionally-taxing consultation with psychic and EMDR morning followed by my period followed by Jeopardy followed by entertaining family until midnight yesterday–with no decompression in between, no time to process each draining activity–and felt a little less guilty about all the sleeping I’ve done today. I hate lost days like this. Couldn’t even scrape myself off the bed to take the dog for a walk. Didn’t eat. Didn’t hear a human voice. FINALLY JUST showered. It’s okay to be exhausted and disappear for a minute.

Did you know that when my goldfish nap, they curl up together at the back of the tank? Adorable. And barf. What I really want right now is for someone to feed me ice cream–literally feed it to me and then cover me with a quilt when it makes me all shivery and then put on some western or hong kong horror film or some other movie I would never go out of my way to watch and sit beside me and let me fall asleep with my head on their shoulder. Goldfish love. What I am going to get to have right now is a heating pad and a cup of tea on the couch, the cat probably trying to nose under the quilt that I will carry out of the bedroom and spread over myself, and after I get stoned I will surf around the watch instant options on netflix dispiritedly, until I finally settle on something that will inevitably bore me after twenty minutes, at which point I’ll either go back to reading this Virginia Woolf biography or just get back in bed and put Downton Abbey on at its lowest volume and pray for less pain and more sleep.

My dog needs a bath.

It is so weird that I am almost thirty and I don’t know basic stuff about when to eat, to rest, to budget my time, to protect myself. It is so hard to be a human being sometimes.

The little bud fists are albino – are pink veins of hope

The fragility of these things is easy to forget
at the height of summer when everything screams

But it’s all so small – tiny even – quiet – at the beginning

(MJ Wilson’s Waiting)

Spent the day in bed, sick as a dog. I should have guessed by the spectacular migraine I had a few weeks ago that my period this month was going to be arduous and unmerciful, but of course I didn’t put it together until I staggered to the toilet at 5am, threw up and passed out. Cramps all day–mindnumbing, throbbing–holding the heating pad over my abdomen and then moving it to my back, fanning the hot delicate skin in the artificial cool and dark of my bedroom. Meanwhile, I’ve been reading and napping when I can. I feel so victorian, having taken to my bed with lady complaints! I should be reading something written by a Bronte. The dog has been in the bed with me, curled up into the crook of my legs or back to back with me or head resting across the tops of my feet, all day. I was hoping to go see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is up until Saturday, tonight, but I am still weak and in tumultuous pain if I even sit up, so tomorrow it will have to be. Meanwhile, it’s getting dark WAY too early. Which often means rain.

Psychic said a lot of enormously astute things this morning but I think one of the most resonant and important was it doesn’t really seem to me that you had any adult figure in your life guiding you through childhood, affirming what you did right and what was not excusable and setting boundaries and protecting you. And so when I look at your mind at work, I am seeing your anima rushing in and wanting to be the perfect girlfriend and the perfect student and the perfect boss and the perfect friend–and the animus, the forward, guarding, external energy that should be regulating that intuitive impulse is just…well, he’s out to lunch, Farren! So I want you to think about yourself as a very small child. And I want you to think about how if you had a very small child who wanted to go into a candy store and buy a whole lot of saltwater taffy, you might say, YES! today we all get treats. Or you might look in that candy store window and say ABSOLUTELY NOT, that is going to make you sick as a dog. I want you to think about very small you and I want you to think about parenting that person instead of just BEING that person. Every day it should be, “What are we doing with Farren today?” and some days, you go to the dentist and Small Farren will kick and scream and throw a fit, but you’ll take her, because you love her and she belongs to YOU and no one else. And some days it will be like, “Let’s go to the park! It’s a beautiful day and you should go play.”

After we got off the phone, I went to the back of my closet and dug out all of the photos I have of myself as a child, mostly pilfered from my parents’ albums years ago.

I don’t even know what this costume was supposed to be, but I am absolutely certain I put it together MY GODDAMN SELF and would not hear any creative input.

Weirdly, some of the sweetest memories I have are of crazy Grandpa Kent.

Feeding the birds at a buddhist temple on Oahu, aged 6.

(OKAY. HOW AWESOME IS THIS OUTFIT.)

Beautiful girl, love the dress/ where she is now, I can only guess

Consultation with a psychic and then EMDR today. Oh! And then I started my period! I wish I could lie around and dab at my face with tissues and write a very long entry about all of it in its soul-destroying complexity, but my Aunt and Uncle are passing through town and I have to take them to dinner. Maybe later tonight? Maybe tomorrow.

First peach of the season last night.

Played dominos at The Place Where Old Friends Gather and New Ones Meet while a section of us watched a basketball game. Just kept singing “Many Rivers to Cross” and driving everyone nuts. Very much looking forward Milk Day tomorrow, which is essentially a fast. Came home and applied after sun aloe lotion to every square inch of my person. A sweet end to a sweet day.