The Reverse Side of Diplomacy.

I feel a bit sorry right now for the people who love me.

On December 31, 2009, I was standing in Trump Casino in Atlantic City with Laura Walsh and Katie.  Neon lights and the low white-noise dinging of electronic bells, the splintered salt-wrecked boardwalk under the black sky with fast grey clouds and the ocean rectifying itself over and over right outside. The moment all the drunks and the lushes hurtled out their bellowed cries of HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! this enormous sense of relief washed through me, one like I'd never known.  I was so, so naturally thankful that 2009 was finally over that my spirit reacted with such intrinsic, unanticipated peace.  This year, at Seacrets in Ocean City, my four inch platform heels dug deep in the sand, Katie grabbed my hand at 11:59 and said Let's Pray. And we did, and my prayers were all about giving thanks, and this time at the turn of the year with the sloppy tourists and bemused locals on-looking all around, what happened was a great flexed openness, a widening that felt like a smile inside of enthusiasm.  This time I was so, so very excited not about the end of my year but about the good things to come with the beginning of a new one.  Which is why it was so strange that the rest of my NY Eve was full of this deep feeling of having my heels dug in, a feeling so primal and rooted it felt almost like anger.  It's how I've been feeling, or did, for most of the last month of the year.

I've worked hard, in slow subtle ways over many years, to integrate diplomacy in to my character because as a younger woman it was an area I was greatly lacking.  Self-introspection has helped me to refine this, particularly by learning to practice how to let you just be you.  That has happened by first learning how to lovingly accept me for who and how I am being or behaving right now, by becoming conscious of this and of what's motivating my thoughts, moods and reactions.  Accepting me helps me not expect you to be anyone other than you, with your own set of thoughts and motivators and feelings and reactions.  And indeed finding room to accept you for who you are and how you're behaving right now is liberating because it frees up my focus: your actions aren't all about me. It's very peaceful not having to take things personally.  I truly believe I've made good habit out of meeting you where you are and the the cool bonus feature is that folks tend to dole me the same kindness in return.  Meeting the world where it is from moment to moment can be a tremendously gratifying experience.

Until it's not.

At times you can appear very stubborn and selfish in relationships.  You will give over 100%, but once you reach the halfway mark in giving OR receiving, a herd of elephants could not push you further if you feel the other is not coming up with his or her fair share...  When angered you can be almost warlike, as if you were a general plotting a strategy. 

This excerpt comes from my friend and mentor Gretchen who gave me an 8 page single-spaced print-out of my stars when I turned 30, and it was so eerily spot-on at the time that the experience of reading it was like watching a supernatural movie that totally covers you in chills.  I actually had to put it away and couldn't look at it for several months because it mapped me out so accurately.  That said, it's served over the years as a guidepost for my growth and has provided answers, insights and soul-breath where otherwise none has been.  Which is why the segment above was running through my mind in bed yesterday morning New Years Day, with the following visual images waking me as if I'd awoke mid-dream.

In my head thick steel doors were literally slamming down and vaulting shut.  Each door had a person or experience attached in a feeling-way to it, and with each closure I felt my self literally filling with vitality and a free-flowingness.  Literally, I was laying there suddenly awake, with clarity but in a half-dreamy state.  And doors were vaulting closed, and this feeling of absolutely NO MORE was filling me.  NO MORE being taken for granted or exploited in my going-ons with other people was an awareness from deep within, and it quickly started to settle-up in direct vision for me and my own self-understanding.  Suddenly my perhaps seemingly arrogant or selfish not-budging-even-for-a-herd-of-elephants-behavior of speaking-my-mind-directly-and-with-no-remorse over the past several weeks made sense. To be clear:  since Thanksgiving, when I started my new job, I can site (but will not in detail right here) at least eight different specific work, social, familial, friend and/or romantic/sexual examples of me standing up in a fiery but clear-minded way and speaking my mind about behavior or decisions or treatment that were unacceptable to me.  Examples of me being abruptly vocal or making choices in which I did not budge and did not feel apologetic at all for stating where I stood.  And yesterday it was like the great reckoning occurred: I got the importance of being clear and clean within my boundaries, for myself.

The thing about it is that in the wake of this month or so I feel my actions or the times I've expressed myself could well have come out so blatantly that maybe they seemed brutal, or almost warlike.  In every instance it's happened almost despite myself.  Regardless of the quiet time, meditation, group-activities, being of service or other practices I've employed to try to somewhat yield this behavior. After more than once dropping straight ghetto on New Years Eve and telling it how it was, I finally just surrenedered.  Fuck it, I figured.  I am who the hell I am.  There's really no escaping me.

And then it was New Years Day, and the clarity was with me about all these areas where I need to reassess what for me is ok and what's not.  Because truly, who wants to have to be pushed to the warlike edge?  Like someone once told me, it's okay to be honest but it doesn't mean you get to be an asshole...And I apologize if at all that's how I've come off!!  Here I am, it is a new year, my focus having been re-aligned, reigned back in and me grateful for it, reflecting on these lessons and on what's to come with this new wisdom I've gained. I only hope that the people who love me, especially in the past month, can practice on me what I've really truly tried to lovingly apply over the years with them:  accepting me for who I am and letting me be where I am at.

I guess I've got decisions to make that really aren't at all about any of them.