1077 NO! NO! NOT AGAIN! REVISITED 20

15B

Once again, I muse aloud: 

 “Mom, think of all the photo albums and home movies that show me smiling, dancing, skipping, skating, swimming—bandaged from shoulder to wrist.  Smiling, dancing, skipping, skating, swimming, and mugging for the camera showcases an inner spirit honestly glowing with delight—my eyes sparkled just like Dad’s…  Even so, once LIFE offered me reason to dive deep enough into my memory to collect and connect puzzle pieces inside the dark side of my mind, it came clear that scratching till I'd bled suggested this fact:  My spirit had reason to feel as bummed as it had felt bright—depending upon which conflict FATE offered up to me next.  Remember how frantic the night scratching got after we’d moved from the apartment into the house?”

“Of course, I remember.  I lay next to you in your bed, night after night, soothing your discomfort by rubbing tar preparations, ointments, and salves into the unbearable nature of your itch.  Annie, I'm confused.  I thought you were excited about moving into the house.”

"I was.  It wasn't our move that exacerbated the itch but rather what happened after the move.  Since it had been my habit to keep troubles to myself, no one knew about those bus rides from hell.  And I never told anyone what happened in the alley with Joseph. As a child, I'd not developed the objectivity to consider how he must have felt until insight jarred my mind to experience an OMG moment while pounding that story into my keyboard.  By then, I was over fifty!

"I wish you'd talked to me, Annie."

"Me, too, Mom—do you remember how my condition intensified, again, right after I’d entered high school?  I’d tossed and turned through so many sleepless nights that we had all of my classes switched to afternoons.  As the salty nature of sweat burned painfully into my skin, scratched raw, I was placed in modified gym."

"So what happened in high school that caused your eczema to flare intensely, again?"

"I'm not sure.  Perhaps after my experience with Joseph, I feared dating.  Or maybe I'd had to work harder to maintain good grades … actually, it was probably a combination of both.  The last time the itch flared to that degree was during my first semester of college when sexual intimacy raised its head between Will and me (pun intended).  You know that expression:  Wear your heart on your sleeve?  Well, I did that, Mom and still do, but my sadness, confusion, and deep seated fear must have been hidden inside my sleeve, because lots of people have eczema, but mine spiraled out of control whenever I'd felt unprepared to confront whatever unpredictable conflict LIFE tossed across my path, next.  With every stage of life, we each face an unending series of unexpected changes, which challenge our logical thought processors to seek solutions that, over time, transform anxiety, resultant of conflict, into peace of mind.  As confusion, conflict and unpredictability accompany change, and as I've spent my life striving to achieve enticing new goals, I must have been on edge much more often than I'd known.

*As that insight stimulates introspective thought, I swing quietly next to Mom, musing privately, again:  It seems that once we leave childhood behind and the persona has developed into an unconscious habit, we have no clue as to when our defensive masks slip into place.  At those times when the persona is covering the depths of our anxiety, we can't make good use of our whole brain to problem-solve objectively—respectfully—effectively.  Each time we dismiss or ignore an existential need that our spirits crave to thrive, we make decisions that don't offer us peace of mind for very long.  Actually, inner conflict re-emerges for this reason:  Our sixth sense 'knows' that any decision driven by anxiety is not as well-balanced or logical as we think.  I've come to recognize. That fear based decisions make my spirit sag, and thus when anxiety calms down, I brain storm until, eventually, an intelligent revision comes to mind.  At times, when my sense of inner conflict is great, an intelligent revision may percolate inside my mind for quite a while before intuition releases an insightful solution that flows out of my depths so harmonically that whatever weighed heavy on my spirit lifts, naturally, spontaneously, as in 'I can't believe this solution didn't occur to me before!' Just as healthy habits shape up over time, the same is true of defensive habits (mindsets) which we unknowingly adopt during childhood.  Then we grow up and give birth to little monkey faces, who mimic giant monkeys, and, unknowingly, we pass mental habits, which prove hard to break, forward from one generation to the next.  After pondering for a moment upon habits (some effective, some detrimental to the good health of my spirit), which I'd absorbed from my mom, my dad, and my Grandma Ella, I engage openly, again, with Mom, while reminiscing aloud:

"While raising my kids, I was drawn to absorb one self help book after another when every one else was asleep.  I'd thought myself compelled to read countless books, because I didn't want to yell at my kids.  It didn't occur to me that no one wants to yell at their kids.  Night after night, my mind, thirsty for insight, soaked in theories concerning positive focus, cooperative problem-solving skills, which enhance each child's self esteem by speaking and listening in such mutually respectful ways as to encourage children to open up and freely ask for guidance, while you, taking on the role of knowledgable coach, encourage them to believe in themselves.  A few years after I'd been invited to teach at the college, the director of our program asked me to speak at professional conferences.  Soon after that, a publisher of a parenting magazine, attending one of my workshops, approached the podium to ask if I could write the way I spoke, and I remember standing in my kitchen with magazine in hand, looking at my by-line, while expressing amazement at having been asked to pen an on-going column concerning siblings, self esteem and positive parenting techniques.  While expressing my disbelief, openly, Barry piped up with this astute insight:  ‘You know what, Mom?  I think everything you’ve read to strengthen our self-esteem has been rubbing off onto you, too.’  While reflecting over observation, popping out of the mouth of babes, I remember laughing at the truth …

And that makes me raise this question about our need to tolerate anxiety while old comfort zones are actively undergoing expansion:
How often do each of us transition toward change without so much as a clue of the fact that LIFE, holding hands with intuition, offers an open mind reason to grow so wise as to wholly embrace delightful gifts, which speak sincerely of deeper truth while offering us experiences that breathe youth into our spirits though our bodies can't help but age ...  And thus, when I make a decision that longs to reverse, I pay attention to what intuition has in mind for me next ... Because:  my first thought is not always my best thought ... It's just the thought I go with until a more deserving thought develops inside my mind, over time ...