Spiritual Healing 101

It's Thursday morning, March 1st. I read on facebook that there was a light dusting of snow this morning. There is no evidence of white in my neighborhood - only the expected rain soaked naked tree limbs of early spring. I am shaky this morning. Not just in the mental sense, but my body is shaky. I feel slightly nauseous and my thoughts want to balloon out to panic. I won't let them. I am pulling hard on the strings, willing myself to stay even - stay present.

It has been a long time since I've written. I can come up with a list of reasons why - but, that doesn't seem important right now. It is clear to me that I need to write. My tongue feels thick, my brain feels unmoored, there is tightness in my chest. My feet and hands are tingling. I feel worried about my health. I have had a bowl of chicken noodle soup and two glasses of electrolyte water. I have taken my adrenal support medication. I have a choice. I can panic or I can write.

Two weeks ago, I was deep in the Belizean jungle in the state of Cayo near San Ignacio. I was there to study with Rosita Arvigo - a well regarded healer and apprentice to Don Elijio Panti - a Mayan he'men (shamen). I was there to learn Mayan spiritual bathing. As a side bar, I figured I'd open myself up to whatever healing I might need to catch up on within myself. I work as a healer, too. Recently, I had worked so much that I had ignored my own body's messages that it needed a break. How could I take a break, I asked myself? I was in the middle of teaching a four month intensive on flower essences and chakras and my private practice was booked several weeks out. It didn't feel possible to just stop. On top of that, I found out that after three years of trying, my partner finally achieved pregnancy. One day later, we were told by our landlord that we needed to move out of our house. I didn't see a possibility for taking a break. I had the Belize trip lined up and there was no way I wanted to miss it. Signs of my health's demise were abundant. I was experiencing weekly near fainting attacks when I opened the channel with my clients, my gut was a mess - my doctor diagnosed me with a gastric ulcer. My body weight was way under - always a sign of stress for me - and my relationship to my partner was in serious trouble. My life resembled a tattered traveling circus under poor management.

When I arrived in Belize City, I felt tired, but calm. I spent a night at a quaint inn on the outskirts of town and slept. In the morning, I took a water taxi to Caye Caulker for a few days of rest before pushing off to the jungle. Those days seemed fine. I wandered around the island by myself, swam in the Caribbean, ate wheat without stomach distress. Although I wasn't sleeping well, there were no signs that I was about to have a full body collapse. In fact, I was feeling so well that I had stopped taking my ulcer herbs. I felt just fine.

Arriving in Cayo, I was a bit taken aback at how jungly the jungle really is. A fellow Rosita student warned about the venomous, aggressive Tommy Goff snake and the flies that will lay eggs underneath your skin. She was just "wanting us to be informed," which I could have appreciated had my anxiety about poisonous, biting things been rational. I slept even less - constantly imagining the little killers crawling into my bed. The classes were informative and being with the group and with Rosita allayed my fears during the daylight hours. On the second day of class, we did our first spiritual bath. We collected medicinal flowers and leaves from the jungle, filled a bucket with water, said a series of prayers and then splashed our aura with goodness. It all seemed light and peaceful....until ten minutes into the ritual I get blasted by my neighboring spiritual bather with a blood curdling scream followed by vicious animal noises. It totally freaked me out. I moved my bucket of good intention far away and said a few more prayers of protection and purification and then made way for a secluded part of the yard while I heard more screams, wails, vomiting, and growls from this woman. From inside Rosita's house, another woman had started to scream and vomit and wail. Later, I was told, these are normal behaviors for negative energy "releases."

I get that. I have witnessed big crying releases in my own practice with clients. But, something about this experience scared me and felt unsafe. Most of the other participants seemed okay with all the "releasing", but I noticed that the ones closest to the screaming lady were rattled. My feelings were conflicted. On one hand, I felt a lot of compassion for this woman and wanted to put my healer hat on and hold sacred space for her while she healed. On the other hand, I was exhausted and did not want to be a healer - I was feeling small and childlike. The next day, we did another spiritual bath and this time I made sure I was far away from the puking one. I was surprised that I had my own "release" and began to cry during the ritual. It wasn't a big, loud cry, but definitely a release of grief. It felt good to cry a bit. I had plenty to cry about. I had been holding so much stress in my body that it felt like crying was a good detox method.

On the Thursday before I left Belize, we went on a three hour canoe ride down the Macal river. Apparently, I did not drink enough water because what ensued later was a total disaster. I started to feel "funny" at lunch while sitting in a stifling hot room at Juana's house - a Mayan grannie healer. I started to feel like my body was rocking on a boat and I couldn't find my ground. My stomach turned and I had to have an urgent bowel movement. I felt like I was going to pass out. Through a bunch of confusion, I ended up in a taxi on my way back up to Rosita's house. Laying on the cool tiles of the floor, my body shook and the dizziness increased until Rosita said it was time to send me to the hospital. This part of my story is a bit of a blur. A bumpy ride in the front seat of a van - Corrine, one of the assistance and the Mayan spiritual healer that I see in Portland, holding my hair out of my face. Grinding my fingers into her knee- willing myself to stay conscious- willing myself to not panic. A one room emergency room - dark and unattended. Two nurses trying to insert an IV into my hand. A doctor looking over me, mumbling something. Corrine praying in spanish into my wrist. I am on a carnival ride - the pirate ship that swings back and forth in wide arcs. I need to eliminate my bowels again. I am barefoot on a tile floor swaying from side to side trying to find the only bathroom which is in the waiting room. Posters depicting venomous snake bites and dengue fever clutter the walls. The lights are dim and flickering. I use the bathroom with the door open. Corrine wets toilet paper so that I can clean myself. The IV pole is swaying back and forth. The floor will not stay still. I do not know where the ground is. I want to throw up, but I don't. Corrine holds me up. I lay back down on the gurney. The nurses have left the room - offended that I have refused the anti-nausea medication. I am afraid of medicines and distrustful of doctors. I am vulnerable and in need and feel threatened all at the same time. The IV fluids feel cold in my heart. I am shaking and Corrine is praying. I want the United States hospital efficiency - but I am a seven hour airplane ride away. No one in the room wants to be there. After the IV, the doctor looks into my ear. I insist there is something wrong. He discovers a raging infection. He gives me ear drops. I ride back to camp and try to sleep through the night, but I am nauseous and sweating. There is nothing else to do. No safety in my body beyond my own trust that this moment will pass and I will survive - or not. I am terrified and trying to hold my shit together.

The next day, we have another spiritual bath. I feel at ease with the spirits and I pray for healing in my body, mind, spirit, and emotions. The bath is refreshing and I feel immediately healed and happy. That lasts exactly eight hours. The next morning I am doubled over in stomach pain and having severe diarrhea. I feel weak and faint, but still show up for class. For the next two days I vacillate from pure happiness and wellness to body devastation and weakness. The arc is wide swinging.

Somehow, I managed to get through. The upswings were euphoric; whereas the downswings were severe. On the way to the airport, my throat started to burn and the fatigue of fever hit hard. I was able to fly standby to Houston out of Belize City, but once there I had a seven hour layover. Splayed out on the cold linoleum floor in the C terminal, my fever blazed. I purchased DayQuil (not my usual), Vitamin C packs, and lozenges from the airport news stand. Severe illness was eminent and nothing was holding it back. I half-heartedly read about Whitney Houston's death in People Magazine while trying to keep my head clear and conscious. When I closed my eyes, I had vivid hallucinations about a snake rising up from deep within my abdomen. I felt the sway of the snake seduce me in to a deep meditative state. In my hallucinations the face of God appeared on a woman's body. She was sexual and raw. I opened my eyes to clear my head - to count the legs of travelers hurrying by, but when I closed my eyes, there she was again. This hallucination did not feel mental and did not feel like a fantasy. I've had daydreams with sexual content before, but this was not that. The world behind my eyelids started to feel more real than when my eyes were wide open. I couldn't avoid her. At the time, it made total sense to me that I was being visited by a spirit of healing and it was just taking the form of a sensual encounter. Nothing about the visions felt shameful or self-conscious. Nevertheless, it was confusing to be experiencing these feelings out of the context of my partnership. But, yet, it wasn't about that - I grasped that much. The hallucinations stayed with me for a full 48 hours while my fever soared to 103 degrees. When the fever finally broke, so did the vision. Although I have a distant memory and body sensation of the hallucinations, it no longer feels present and real in my mind.

Days of coughing and sleeping passed. I injured my ribs from so much coughing. I was terrified about the fragility - the helplessness - of life. I could have died. I could die. That's the truth. Life is unpredictable and as much as I delude myself into thinking that I hold the puppet strings, I do not. At my worst emotional moments, I withdraw into myself and stop communicating. Five days of being in bed while my pregnant partner worked a 40 hours a week job, I had become emotionally mute. The guilt at being sick, weak, and helpless overpowered my will to stay positive. Friday night, my partner had had it and yelled at me and told me to get out of the house. Where could I go? I was too sick to even get to the car. Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed and sobbed. Was this the reverberation of the spiritual baths I took in Belize? Was my prayer of healing playing out as a falling apart of everything that seemed stable around me? I had to cancel all my clients for the week, my relationship was falling apart, my ribs were agonizingly painful, I could hardly breath, and now I was being asked to leave my house because my illness had made me "an unreliable partner." It all seemed too much. I could do nothing more than cry, cry, cry myself to sleep on the futon in the living room of a house I was no longer welcome in. Bottom of the well? Better be.

Five more days of laying in bed - my partner seemingly tolerating my existence - I finally went in to the office and saw two clients. It was hard, but not impossible. I was feeling like maybe I was finally getting better. I accompanied my partner to her pre-natal appointment and then we stopped for a bite to eat. During dinner, she said, "You know, we still haven't talked about that fight we had." I coughed - I felt a pop in my lower right side. My head started to swim. I got up to use the bathroom and then lost consciousness. Before I knew what was happening, I was in an ambulance on my way to the emergency room. Another blur. More needles poking into my veins. Questions. Bright lights. An emergency room filled with homeless people, drug addicted people, people coughing their infections all over the room. My mom was there waiting for me. My pregnant partner seemed impatient and disbelieving that I should be at a hospital. Later she tells me I looked pleased as punch to be getting attention. This couldn't have been further from the truth. I was terrified to once again be in the place that I am most afraid of. Some people are afraid of spiders, robbers, volcanoes. I am afraid of hospitals. Deathly afraid. I leave my body and perhaps the other me that shows up to animate my bag of bones appears calm and pleased. I don't know, because the real me is long gone.

More needles, more IV fluids, more tests. My mom is emotionally struggling with her own life and is struggling to stay awake while mine seems to be going to Hell in a hand basket. I recall Joan Diddion's story of her daughter Quintana Roo. She was so healthy, got a respiratory infection, had a complication with her brain, went into a coma, then died. Could that happen to me?

I left the hospital with EKG stickers stuck to my chest, arms, and legs. Three bruised veins where they had tried to insert the IV needle were bandaged with tape and cotton. It was 1:30 in the morning when my mom dropped me off at my house. My partner was in bed. I slept deeply. There were no dreams. I felt like I would sleep forever. A loud banging on my front door roused me. A panicked face peered in the window. What is happening? Who is that? I open the door and discover it is my friend, Jen. It's 11:30 and I have been unresponsive to phone calls and texts from my partner. She is frantic with worry and has called everyone she knows to see if they could come and check up on me. I'm okay, I think. I burst into tears, overwhelmed. I am breaking apart and it is so messy. It is so vulnerable. My partner cries on the phone and tells me to figure my shit out and hangs up. It is tearing me wide open. I sing the song Rosita sang at the closing ceremony, "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine." I am scared. I don't know what help I need. I don't know how to figure it out. I am weak, I am shaky. My ribs ache. The bruises on my body pulse. When my partner comes home from work, we fight, we cry, we talk for hours. I hold her, she holds me. We both retract, still wounded, still feeling unsafe with each other. We come to a place of small understanding. I will seek therapy. I will work through these mute walls. I don't know what she will do. Continue her therapy - maybe continue to think that I brought this all on my own head. Maybe feel frightened and unsafe with my precarious physical stability. I don't know and I really cannot do anything about it.

I am holding on to these strings of presence with all my might. I keep on reminding myself that this moment might be hard, but it will change. Nothing stays the same. I went to Belize to learn how to heal - I did not expect this was going to be the way I would learn it. My heart is wide open. I am present. I am willing. I surrender to what is. I am.

All questions. No answers.

It has been three months since I started the saunas and mayan spiritual healing. In those three months I have been almost pain free. However, in the last couple of days the old familiar knife up the ass sensation has returned. My mind is spinning. What has changed? What am I doing differently? All of a sudden I am less free and more rules. I am checking my bones...all there? I am checking, inventorying, assessing, and measuring.

Is it the bites of frozen yogurt I had? The nibble of chocolate? I skipped a few days in the sauna.

Is it going to be like this now? Always questioning. Is my freedom a mirage of conditions? If I follow the rules than I will be able to live pain free. Somehow, this irks me. Not knowing what controls the sleeping dragon, the endo, is frustrating.

So, today I will avoid sugar and dairy. I will sit in the sauna. I will take a long walk. I will try to feel roots under my feet. I will try to grow roots. I will try not to try so hard. I will let the soft belly of earth remind me to stay here - in my body - although I imagine it might feel good to be a bird.

The Pain Game, Part 3

          Smith College. Haven House. 1995. I shared a room with Iris, born in Korea, raised in Queens. We were sisters from the start. I was tall, she was short; she possessed deep conviction while I was ideologically awkward.  But we shared Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats over cheese pizzas, roasted nori strips, and vodka. If I labored over a paper, Iris knew how little I slept. If I had a call from the doctor telling me that I needed exploratory surgery, Iris was the one to overhear. My friend and my roommate, she knew more than most. If I was going to let anyone close, it was Iris, though even her I kept on the other side of a deep crevasse of intimacy as a point of personal policy.

            On September 19th, I was scheduled for laparoscopic surgery. Images of my uterus had come back with dark stains. No one knew what would be found, but probably, they promised, nothing too serious. Exploratory surgery is just a look-see; a hide-and-seek game between long steel utensils and soft, slippery organs. At nineteen years old, I had just had my first pelvic exam by the resident college doctor who was, peculiarly, male at an all female college. Although the military schools in which I was raised had educated me ad nauseam about the female reproductive system, I was still so young and tender at my own exploration. How was it, then, that strangers now possessed the power to do all the exploration they wanted while I was defenseless under a veil of drugs?

            The night before the surgery, Iris stayed up until the small hours of morning with me as I traveled the terrain of my grief. She laughed when I imitated flapping vaginas and fell silent when I raged at the injustice of surgery, pain, and fear. And when I cried angry tears and Iris drew closer and put her hand on my leg, I swept it away and growled like a rabid animal, “Don’t touch me!” 

            Iris had asked if she could walk with me to Coley Dickenson Hospital in the morning, but I had told her that there was no need since there would be nothing for her to do except wait around in a boring room with a boring TV broadcast that she probably couldn’t turn up or down. Besides, the hospital was two miles from Haven House and in the mornings, the road would be gridlocked with sucking and wheezing cars huffing it up a hill expelling their heavy exhaust. Although there was a path that snaked between the broken pavement and an overgrown field of Queen Anne’s Lace and plantain plants, it was one that seemed less intended for walking and more for shredded tire scraps and runaway hubcaps. I wanted to protect Iris from this harshness - this sensory assault.

            At 4:00 a.m. I finally got out of bed, still dressed in the clothes from the day before and made my way to the empty shower room. From the time I was young, taking a shower frightened me; I heard things on the other side of the water like doors opening, floorboards creaking, sinister voices whispering. I regularly turned the water off and on to see if I could hear more – but always nothing, just the few drips of water falling off my skin. Although I was tired and bloated from crying, I tried to look my best for surgery. I oiled my skin with Palmer’s coconut oil, imagining that my surgeon would have a flash of regret at having to cut into my perfect, beautiful skin. I put on my best Calvin Klein underwear in the event that anyone noticed.

            Downstairs in the kitchen, Diane and Thelma, the Haven House cooks, had already started washing potatoes and peeling Roxbury Russet apples.

            “Hi Diane,” I mock flirted. She was a stout woman in her late 50’s who was stern in the mouth and feather soft in the eyes. In the two years that I had lived in the house, I had developed a kind of working partnership with the cooks: I complemented them on their hair or their mashed potatoes and they made special poached eggs for me even if it was not on the menu or warmed up left-over pasta for me if I was going to miss dinner.

            “Whatcha doin’ up so early, girl?” This was Thelma, always calling us Smith women girls no matter how many times we lectured her on our politically correct status.

            “I’ve got exploratory surgery at Coley Dick this morning,” I said casually as I reached for a water glass. Thelma smacked my hand away before it could disturb the perfectly constructed glass tower.

            “Girl, don’tcha know that you can’t drink anythin’ before you get the knife? You gonna go and mess up your drugs and then you’ll be real sorry if you wake up before they done. Now, whatcha doin’ getting surgery anyway?”

            “I’ve got tumors or something. I don’t know. Maybe it’s cancer, or maybe it’s nothing. I have to go find out,” I choked out. Thelma and Diane were okay as long as I could joke, but the second either one of them expressed concern for me, the deal was off. I wanted to get out of the kitchen as fast as I could.

            “Who’s goin’ to take you, honey?” Diane asked.

            “I’m walking. I’ve got to go.” Dismissing their questions, I put my head down and headed for the door. Although it was still early, I grabbed my coat and left Haven. The brisk September morning air cooled my cheeks where tears started to run into crooked rivulets. I wanted this alone walk. I wanted this alone pain. I wanted each step along the polluted roadside path to hurt just a little. I wanted to feel the pain of my body before the knife gave it cause.

            This pain, I already knew, could not be discovered by a knife. It had no diagnostic code, no prognosis, no treatment plan. This was a pain that moved like dark smoke through my veins; lurked behind my kidneys, my lungs, my liver – it was lighter than my breath and faster moving than a surgeon’s hand. It was an ancient pain whispered into my infant ear by my drunken father. A pain he called rage. It was a pain that dripped out of my mother’s breast – a woman beaten by the hand of her father, her husband. It was that nameless ghost that was to forever be my playmate.

How, then, do you fix this pain? Is it by naming diseases? Biopsying tissues? Blood tests? Bone tests? Through bottles and bottles of pills? Is it through therapy and cruel diets? Through writing and telling? How could I have looked that surgeon in his eyes and told him that although his cuts might be mastery he would never find the source of all this suffering – all he could do is give me a scar to prove the endless trying.

            Hours later, I was wheeled out of the operation room. My eyes were slick with petroleum. I heard the surgeons at my side explaining that they had removed two blood-filled cysts and discovered stage IV endometriosis. The surgeon had pictures of the offending uterus, but all I saw was a blur of some primordial cave. “Probably this will affect your fertility,” he said keeping pace with the fast moving gurney, “if that was something that you were thinking about.” Was I thinking about my fertility? I don’t know. All I was thinking about was how empty that hallway felt with all the nurses and doctors hovering over me.

Real Life Dressed Down

How did it happen that I exchanged a painful period for writer's block? I was full steam ahead as long as I was thinking I was outrunning endo pain... then, that train never came and I just stopped. I didn't just stop writing, I stopped "intensely" caring about anything having to do with my healing practice, herbs, flower essences, spirit guides - basically everything that I have invested the last decade of my life in.

Is this apathy?
What is this, and where am I?

Last I saw myself, I was wearing a bleeding heart and a ripped sense of self. Have you seen me?

I thought pain-free would mean that the things I love and care about would intensify and I would have all this free time to think about canning peaches and knitting pantsuits. I thought I'd write a book in a week and be invited to be on Oprah. I really thought that pain-free would be an orange smily face in the sky and I would be dancing in the streets with flowers in my hair. Maybe my dreams didn't really believe that I could heal. Maybe I didn't count on healing.

Okay, this is what I did:

1. I started having an infrared sauna everyday.
2. I stopped eating everything except organic meat and organic vegetables (this is not me writing in hyperbole - I'm really serious!)
3. I went to a Mayan spiritual healer three times.
4. I started talking to my uterus (maybe like six times in two months).
5. And, I told my partner that I was feeling really angry that for the past two and a half years we've been focusing on her fertility and sending positive thoughts to her uterus while my own uterus has felt neglected (okay, mostly neglected by me) and I have been secretly aching with the desire to be pregnant.

This seems like a reasonable amount of leverage to catapult me into timbuktu.

A dream revision:

Me without endometriosis is just me. Sometimes I am active, witty, and forward moving and sometimes I am inactive, dull, and stagnant. I am learning to see both sides of this orb - my life. Today, I am cranky and anxious. Can I find my body in all of this? Can I find my brilliance in the dull dull dull sky?

with love,
s

The Pain Game, Part 2

Day 2


No pain for the second day.
My siamese twin has been cut clean.
I look for you in the usual places -
wretched teeth tearing me open,
fist and muscle, tissue and bone.
But, you are nowhere.
You are free.


And, I am here,
in this body house -
haunted by stories and scars
without you.
Who am I
now?

***

I had a summer of lust, cigarettes, whiskey, and bleeding. I was 19 years old and on my way to South Carolina to be a camp counselor. My thin nylon tote bag was packed: a bathing suit, two t-shirts, a pair of cut-off shorts, a toothbrush and 30 bucks, the last of my loan money. Everyone else had gone away - summer homes, camps, European vacations, and prestigious internships. My first year at Smith College had been brutal in many ways, the privilege of my peers not withstanding. I was, quite literally, the last one on campus with nowhere else to go and no one to go with me. For the first two nights, I hid in one of the campus houses and slept on a bare mattress. The routine comfort of school days were now replaced with empty echos of laughter and the fleeting visions of friends running down the empty hallways. It should be noted that Smith has a long tradition of hauntings and ghost sightings. There is nothing more lonely than a house full of friends that are not there anymore.

The third day I hopped on a Greyhound bus bound for Bar Harbor, Maine. My brother lived in nearby Ellsworth and I knew that I could find work in the tourist town. When I finally arrived, I had no quarter to call my brother or nickel to scrape the gum off my shoe. I headed to the YWCA where they gave me a bed in the solarium. I didn't have any food, but there were nuns and cans of waxed beans. I ate, made friends with the weathered, battered, broken women who washed ashore and had been ushered, like me, to the safety of the Y. Stories came easily. Lily, in jeans and a plaid red shirt, walked for five days along a highway to escape her abuser. She was raped twice along the way. “It was hard, but I was fed,” she told me again and again. Suzy, with plenty of rice crackers and peanut butter to share, talked about children she left behind and money to be made off of rich tourists. She was a dreamer. She offered me cigarettes whenever she passed me on the front porch. Although I didn't smoke, I took them anyway knowing that she had to take care of somebody. Later, I would offer them as barter for food or friendship. 

It took me two weeks, but I found work in a deadhead shop during the day and at The Golden Anchor Inn during the night. Back at the solarium, a long haired girl my age moved in next to my bed. She was on summer break from Thomas More College and while her friends who migrated with her stayed in fancy inns and worked as maids and bartenders, she opted to stay at the YWCA and study with the nuns. She was a curious dichotomy of virtue and vice. With pretty blond hair parted delicately to the side, she peered at me with the clearest blue eyes. “Do you party?”

Party? Me? Yes, I was 19, but I also had not yet smoked cigarettes, gotten drunk, taken drugs, or attended a party where Pictionary was not the central focus. Yes, I had grown up in Germany and gone to discotechs (dance clubs) and sipped blau Nacht (blue night - a mixture of Blue Curacao and Amaretto). Yes, I had gone unchaperoned to Italy as a 15 year old to escape military school. I had kissed one boy, Anton, an Italian theater geek who I didn't even like. But, partied? Was I an innocent? Yes.

“Do I party? Sure.”

That night, instead of going to The Golden Anchor, I followed my nun to Bar Harlem, a transient neighborhood hidden by mansions and gourmet shops in the center of town. Streets were dark; buildings were shacks with plywood doors and crumbling cement stairs. Drunk sailors who bellowed, puked, and passed out in the streets were left there like crumpled paper lanterns guiding us to the party house. Once inside, the nun vanished into a room of boys and booze and I found an empty chair and a book of densely illustrated pages - a kind of Where's Waldo for adults. I lost myself in underwater menageries and imagined safe places on college campuses where the biggest threats were ghost children laughing in the halls and hiding term papers in Norton Anthologies.

A boy, whom I will call Diego, fell onto me. He was profusely apologetic and profoundly drunk. He was drunk differently from the other kids. Diego was not joyful. He bit at the tequila bottle every few minutes like it was the only thing he could do to keep the golden liquid from strangling him. His blue eyes were red and something else. Something like falling or being trapped. Although I wasn't asking for his company, he was the only one talking to me, so I let that happen. And later, I let it happen that he walked me back to the YWCA. I let him put his arm around my waist because at the same time I had put mine around his. And because, for the second time in my life, I felt that invisible door open between two people who are about to kiss, I let that happen, too.

It should be said that Diego was a mystery to me. A white boy with a shaved head, blue eyes and a Latin name; he was a self-proclaimed skinhead. Having grown up in Germany where skinheads were a real thing, thugs with weapons and violence in their eyes, Diego's tight black pants, steel-toed boots, suspenders, white crisp oxford and multiple piercings were laughable to me. Although he watched Romper Stomper everyday, a cult classic for the skinhead, apparently, he vehemently denied racism and sexism. His father was a poet who killed himself when Diego was 14. He was a philosophy student at a small liberal arts college and quoted Sartre's La Nausee at length. He painted pictures of me that looked more like Pocahontas knock-offs (he was fascinated that I was Lakota and German). Mostly, Diego was tender and severely injured.

Eventually, I left the Y and moved into a shack in Bar Harlem with a greasy over-weight cook, a sailor, and a New Yorker who worked at a kaleidoscope gallery. My room was a closet with plywood walls and two stained twin mattress beds fitted into an L-shape on the floor. There was just enough room to open the door and fling myself over my New Yorker roommate onto my own filthy bed. Diego and I had no place to go, so we made out in the dark streets along with the other summer lovers and sometimes used a hood of a car for a bed. 

Diego was rarely sober and spending anytime with his mouth was like sipping my way through a bar. Eventually, I found whiskey. Here was an alcohol worth my time. It smelled like an old leather chair and stung my mouth like a bitter slap. It reminded me of someone far away - lost to me and my childhood. It reminded me of my father, a man I had never known. I drank it down desperately and vomited through drunken chaotic tears while Diego held my hair.

The days went by. Nights watching the dark ocean through the window at The Golden Anchor, days folding Grateful Dead tie-dyed t-shirts, and the hours in between drinking whiskey, smoking clove cigarettes, kissing Diego, and crying about dead and absent fathers. Unbeknownst to me, a secret was brewing in my body. The moment I had put my arm around Diego's waist, I had started to bleed in oceanic waves and did not stop. I did not have sex with Diego that entire summer partially because I was terrified of his sexuality, partly because he was terrified of mine, but mostly because I was having the longest period of my life. By mid-July the alchemy was complete:  I was anemic, pale, suffering from chronic tonsillitis and my first yeast infection.

My smoky summer of lust and whiskey was over. I called a friend from Smith and had her meet me half way between Northampton and Bar Harbor. I needed to go home, to that vacant campus that had kicked me out before I had found a place to go. I needed to find a doctor and nestle back into the bosom of books and papers and all-nighters spent in the library. I woke Diego up from a mid-day nap, my nylon tote in hand, and apologized for being one of the many that would leave.

***

But,
I was left, too.
I had no father.
I had no mother.
No home to run to.
No arms waiting for me.


Instead
I ran into blood
and into pain
I merged my breath
with a vacant body
and told myself
HOLD ON.


HOLD ON.

The Pain Game, Part 1

Day 1


I have this recurring dream:
I am in a small cave wrapped in tangerine peels and sandalwood scents. A kettle is gently tittering on the fire. Someone is coming up behind me. I cannot see her. She is rubbing oils on my arms and whispering secrets into my hair. I cannot hear what she is saying.

***

When I was 12 years old I started my period. It arrived as two brown streaks on my underwear during an episode of Magnum PI. My Dad was sprawled out on the couch, one leg hiked up on the back like a very long fat cat and the other curled up like its lame cousin. This was my Dad's nightly ritual: Cocoa Cola, TV, couch, sucking his teeth. That, I could count on. Intermission to declare my passage from maidenhood to womanhood was definitely not an option. Since my mom was working late, I absconded to the bathroom to wedge a toilet paper roll between my legs and study the folded brochure in her tampon box.

The next night it was Falcon Crest and a passed note to my bleary eyed mother who was still in her work uniform. It read: I think I started my P. The news did not exactly bring with it fanfare, streamers, or presents wrapped in red paper with very mature ribbons. Instead she promised, through taut lips, to take me to the store in the morning - which would have been day three of my now full flowing period. (To be fair, I should mention here that we lived in a small farming village in Germany and a trip to the store was an hour and a half away. Also, I should clarify that there was only one English speaking channel called AFN, American Forces Network, in which shows like Magnum PI and Falcon Crest were favorites despite the fact that most people in the United States had seen these episodes seven years prior.) Once again, I found myself in the bathroom with my underwear around my ankles trying to figure out the right angle of tampon insertion - which at the time felt like an awakening to a secret women's torture ritual.

Day three of my period started with a long drive and then my mom pushing me out of the car, forcing me to navigate the sanitary napkin aisle solo. This was mortifying. Here I was in a military PX (post exchange), a 12 year old nubile, trying to read boxes and boxes of menstrual pads while a legion of jarheads lurked about. I grabbed a box and ran out the door. When I got home and unwrapped the old-lady-scented plastic package I realized that these pads were about the size and width of a mark (small German paper bill). I'd need about seven of these stuck on my underwear mosaic style to actually do anything. This time when I took my mom's tampon box into the bathroom, I was determined. I inserted one halfway up and walked around like a seasoned cowboy for three excruciating hours.

Day four and the bleeding slowed down. At school I got a pass to the bathroom every 30 minutes to check that I wasn't leaving a bloody trail. The toilet paper was government issue - did I mention I went to military school - which means dispensed in very small thin folded rectangles. To wipe on an ordinary day, one would have to pull about 75 of these things, one at a time. On extraordinary days, it was a 10 minute exercise in tedious repetition. Consequently, most of the girls in my school either walked around with personal rolls of toilet paper hidden in their book bags or suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome. By evening, the bleeding had reverted back to the brown streaks. This did not seem right. Had I injured myself by jabbing my innards with the tampon or pulling it out before it was ready? At the time, it seemed like it had caused serious internal bleeding. Was I dying?  While my family watched MacGyver, I fiercely consulted the Merck manual (the source of my later developed hypochondriasis) for clues of my imminent death. I found something about kidney disease and frantically wrote a new note to my mother: I have brown streaks. Do I have a kidney disease? Renal failure? To this, my mother and her sliver mouth, flicked the paper aside and resumed her ironing and TV watching. We'll talk about it later. That's all she said.

My biological workings were as accurate as a Swiss made watch - every 28 days I started my period at 9 am. Only during daylight savings did I fail to bleed exactly on the hour. By the third month, I had secretly taken up tampon wearing. My best friend, Mary, finally showed me how easy a tool this was. On a non-period day, she pulled down her pants, swiftly plunged a tampon in, answered about 50 questions ranging from "can you poop with a tampon in," to, "are you sure you don't feel a thing?" and then with as much panache whisked it out and popped it into a used Coca Cola can.  After Mary's demonstration, I stole tampons from my mom's medicine cabinet and only used the tiny stick-ons for back-up. About six months into my tampon use, I confessed to my mom that I had been using them. Her reaction was a merry-go-round of anger, disappointment, nonchalance, and back to anger. I don't exactly remember what she said, but I remember going away from that conversation feeling like the town whore for inserting something up my "body," the word my mother used for vagina.

Nevertheless, I continued my rebellious tampon using and bled happily for the next seven years. I was a non-complainer and never let a bloody day stop me from competitive running, swimming, or playing tennis and soccer (and German soccer is way more brutal than American soccer - even the scrappy soccer I played in Texas did not compare to the broken ribs, smashed fingers, and concussions I suffered at the feet of fussball). I bled like a guy with a bloody nose, no problem.

***

I am sitting on a soft nest of straw and silk hairs. I am having my period and there is no shame in this blood staining. Through a small opening in the cave, I see the even coolness of moonlight. I am laughing and the moon is laughing. I wake up from these dreams with a terror in my chest. I have been crying in my sleep and in the morning my eyes will be swollen. What was it she was telling me? A secret? 

Light as a Feather

It is Sunday and I am on the downhill slope of pain. I am elastic with happy--expanding in the ribs and taking it all in.

Today, I ate two chocolate truffles.

Rebel.

I am happy and tumbling towards green pastures of life with resounding laughter and youth. If only for this moment, let me be blind to all the edges--let the next moment retreat back into the dark woods. Let me just be here, this moment.

Later, I will tell you a story about the beginnings of endometriosis: whiskey, lust, dirt, blood. Later, a story about the beginnings of spirit guides: hospital, pneumonia, vomit, haunted rooms.

For now, a conversation with Seth, my spirit guide:

Me: Why do I have endometriosis? Genetic probability? Karma? Spiritual lesson?

Seth: And what do you believe? And what do you want out of this experience? Where is the portal hole for you? Will you walk into pain? Will you believe that there in infinite sweetness in this place that can feel so cold to you? Can you breathe in a place that promises nothing--that holds no light for your deliverance? What does it mean for you, dear s, to be here in ribs with a heart that's still beating? What do you want?

Me: I don't know what I want? Maybe softness, maybe a hand to hold, maybe someone to tell me that it's going to be okay. I want to collapse in some wise lap and be pet on my hair. I want to lay here in silence and watch the light crescent over the earth. I just want a full breath in peace.

Seth: And, what will you do now to have it? Will you ask someone to touch their hand to your face and tell you, "Sweet love, it will be okay?" Will you sit in a quiet place and let that be enough? Can you stop seeking and see that peace is not so far away. What is endometriosis? Maybe, a fair question is, what is endometriosis for you? Perhaps, a sweet salvation?

Me: Yes. Maybe. But, what do I do? I am so afraid of pain. It terrifies me. I want time to stop on days like today. I just want to be here, frozen, heels in the ground. I want to resist the next moment that might change the way I feel in my body. I don't want to feel pain.

Seth: It is not easy, s. It is not easy to lay the body down for this wind called pain. But, you cannot fight the weather. You cannot demand the sun to shine and the rain to hide. You can warm yourself and be kind to yourself. You can prepare for a storm. This is your relationship to pain right now. You cannot stop a force of nature just because you will it to disappear. It is a wild force of nature, pain. You must be wise, prepare and not fear. How to do this? Ask yourself, what do you need in a storm? The shelter of strong. Find this in human companionship. You need the warmth of fire. Find this in the fire of your heart. Write stories. Read stories. Laugh. Build fires. Sit in blankets. Give to yourself. You see, when you stop wishing pain away, you can use your efforts to prepare. When you are prepared, you can sit. And when you sit, you will listen to the wind. What is the wind pain telling you?

Me: Is the wind telling me to write?

Seth: The wind is telling you a story. Be light in your body and the wind will take you. Let the pain take you to a new place--an unexpected place. No resistance. Lay your head down. The wind will carry you.

Me: I'm scared.

Seth: But, the pain is not. Give your fear to pain and watch it burn into ash.