Saturday is a Special Day

...it used to be the day I got ready for Sunday so that I didn't do anything too strenuous or "non-church" related. Now Saturday AND Sunday have become the weekend for me. They are both special days with which I spend my time catching up on everything that I couldn't do during the week, spending time time with my family and explicitly focusing on my connection to Source.

This morning, however, I feel a dread about Saturday and Sunday. That is a rare occurence for me. I generally embrace the weekend now and relish the thoughts of being really alive without any constraints of work and such. This weekend is our weekend-long ALC seminar. I have been feeling guarded and reluctant to join in the "festivities" at ALC for about six weeks now. I feel myself pulling inward and retracting from the space. I feel shy and as though each time I turn around it is going to be the wrong move, the wrong words, the wrong feelings.

Now, ALC is not about enforcing "wrong" thoughts. It is about behaving differently, creating more healthy thought patterns and strengthening the beliefs that support me. It is a loving space and it is a space of exponential growth.

At the beginning of this year, I went in with the "this is for me" attitude and it worked. It worked marvelously! Last year I went in all skeewompas, with some sort of twisted thought that I was "paying" my way into a community and creating a network of people that were going to support me, a community. That didn't happen. In fact, the opposite happened.

I discovered that was about me. In my longing to connect, I reach out in a convoluted way that is difficult for others to understand. It ends up pushing them away, rather than gathering them to me. It is most bizarre. It is as if I am laced with millions of thorns which I cannot see, but others can feel if they touch me. They reach my reaching and then recoil in pain, all the while leaving me to wonder what the hell is wrong with me.

It is that "what is wrong with me" line of thinking that does me in every time. It is that vein of thought that is my destruction. There is nothing wrong with me. I am perfect in this moment and this moment and this moment. My feeling of "I am having the wrong experience and things have got to be better somewhere else," leads me to running and running, then wondering why I am alone.

We have been extensively focusing on persona play in ALC over the past couple months. Last time we met, I discovered an old/new persona of mine, Ineeda, who is yearning to be loved. She is the one who reaches out, only to be met with thin air. As I played with her, I went through an intersesting rollercoaster of experiences. First and foremost, I realized she is heavily in the victim role (oh surprise) and for her to live she requires villains and heroes to show up. Mostly heroes. I discovered that she is actually uncomfortable with people seeing her, even though she wants to be seen. When she melts down, she goes heavily into victim, landing on the cross and becoming so invisible that people immediately begin socializing through her. I learned that when things get too tough - when heroes are really showing up to rescue her - she starts to freak out and turns her back to those who are there to "help."

As the heroes and villains fell away, eventually leaving Ineeda alone, I felt nauseated and my feet started to itch. I wanted to run far away and as fast as I could.

"Then run, Ang," Megan said. "I ask that you stay in the building and I invite you to run until that need to run is gone."

I actually loathe running. So having been given the permission to do so didn't really help me. I was needing that space of wanting to do something that I don't really want to do and then denying myself that want. So twisted.

At any rate, she continued to invite me to run until my shoulders sagged and I began to slowly walk to the door. Several of my peers reminded me that I was "supposed to be running." The reminder weighted my feet and I slowed even further.

I am very familiar with the building in which we meet. I know the nooks and crannies. I know the exits and the pathways. The path I chose was the only path that led to nowhere, which gave me nowhere to run. I sauntered out the door, down the five-foot hallway, around the corner and slam! Dead end. I had a choice in that moment, I could open the door and leave. It was my choice. However, I realized that I was performing this experiment, this exercise, just as I do my life.

I melted into fetal position upon the floor in the darkest corner of the hallway and sobbed with an ache so big that I thought I would surely die. I became aware of every inch of my body, the darkness, the fact that life had gone on in the room I had just left. I began to think that my leaving had not impacted a single person (found out later that was so not true) and that I was... oh look at this! ALONE! Again.

I had a detached conversation with myself... "Angie, what do you want to do right now? Do you want to stay here alone?"

No. I don't want to be alone.

"So what do you want to do?"

I want someone to come get me.

"That ain't gonna happen. This isn't about them coming to get you. This is about you choosing in or choosing out. What are you going to do?"

I slid up the wall unsteadily and walked toward the corner feeling shaky and almost five years old. I resisted the urge to swipe my arm under my nose and smear snot along my sleeve. I would have at five. At 39, though, it wasn't appropriate. I caught that thought and stopped, wondering about all the spaces in my life where I judge myself and my thoughts and my actions. I felt sad.

I eased down the hall, back against the wall to hold me up. I sidled up to the doorway and looked around the frame. No one noticed me, except Annabeth. She turned her head slightly and motioned with her eyes to come in. I stood stalk still, afraid to move, a deer in headlights. She smiled and I felt her love envelope me. More emphatically, she motioned with her eyes for me to join them. Specifically, join her.

An odd thing happened when I walked in that space, coming back to the ones who loved me. I went so invisible that I couldn't even feel myself move. I didn't want to be seen, at all. One moment I was standing in the doorway, the next I was sitting between Annabeth's legs and she was caressing my shoulders. One moment I was scared. The next, I was safe.

Megan pointed out that, eventually, when I chose in and chose to accept it, I found what I was longing for. Connection.

So, today, I am scared. We have a whole weekend together, the 30 of us. A whole weekend of persona play and discussion. I am scared for what I will experience. And while I know that is futurizing, I wanted to out that I am futurizing.

And, interestingly enough... I feel scared and safe. Vulnerable and strong. Excited and curious.