What I mean when I say I miss you

I am trying to write this post about how I think I am addicted to the internet.

And I think the server for my blog just crashed which is hilarious, and appropriate.

That was basically the internet coming up to me and saying, "Give me your keys, you're in no state to drive."

Well, then I will write this in a text-editor.

So, I don't know. This month has been a real interesting ride. I am not sure what's going on exactly, but it feels like seasonally fall is when I do my crazy life-altering psychic pattern shifts and I guess another one has been creeping up on me and I didn't realize and now I am deep in it.

Here is what's going on, without organization, and without structure, just like it's happening inside me.

I've started meditating. I used to just read about it. This year I finally put pedal, quietly, to the metal. It's only been a week, so I'll feel more justified in claiming that I meditate in a month. But I like to announce things as a way of disciplining myself to continue. I am meditating because apparently that is the only way to stay conscious of my mind and a habit of worried/frightened thinking. I always picture it as 'chewing over' of my fears and worries, until they taste terrible and I feel ill, physically, spiritually, mentally etc.. I start taking it out on people, this needless worry, expecting others to calm my fears when the fears spring from some eternal source of unease. I do real damage to myself. Also I am not proud of myself when I feel this fear/worry thing coming back. That shame propels more fear and worry, and this cycle starts. It hurts people around me too because like I said, I start taking things out on them.

So I am meditating. It's part of a larger healing process I think, but let's just call it meditating for now.

The reason for a lot of the fear/worry resurgence is because I am trying to be more open to genuine intimacy. This is a real hard one (see worried fear above). A few years ago I wrote a post outlining what I thought were my struggles then.

Many of them are more or less the same, but some have gotten much less pervasive and troubling. Which is great. But I think one way I learned to deal with a habit of comparing myself too much, and became more independent basically required that I shut down the part of me that was capable of sharing. I had to get good at being alone. Which I did. But now I have to get comfortable not being alone. Or worse yet, comfortable with the fact that when I am with someone, I sometimes feel super fucking lonely, and it has nothing to do with them, and it is not their job to make it better, because I know deep down the loneliness is so much bigger then them, and it started so long ago it's like a dirty string that leads to something scary that I am never able to drop.

Now I am trying to have intimacy with someone, but without a safety net. I am trying to stay aware of the fact that unlike the deeply possessive relationships I used to crave, this new intimacy is not going to follow those co-dependent / flighty rules I used to set to keep from feeling afraid for my safety when I got close enough to someone that they could hurt me real bad. I am trying super hard not to use this relationship as a foil, so I can pretend I haven't got a 'loneliness issue'. When I do, and I will, maybe forever. No matter how close I get to someone, I'll always hold this dirty fucking string that goes back to who knows where and harbors danger at it's end.

Editors note: [ironic the editor is me!] I use the words loneliness and fear pretty much interchangeably here. It's confusing but I think the reason is that, as I am realizing, they are more or less one thing for me. I am both afraid of being alone, and lonely, a lot of the time. So I kind of lump the two terms together. Lonely/fear same thing. Also even more perplexing is that I usually like being alone, unless I am having a lonely/alone moment than it all turns into fear/lonely badness.

So the meditation is part of the need to deal with all the scary shit above. Times past I would have been afraid to the max and just poured it all out on the person I was seeing. Unfortunately I can't do that any more. I don't want to, so with a few exceptions in the recent past I hope I've avoided doing that so far.

So instead I have to just stay here. Holding onto it, trying to breath it in and out, trying to 'touch it and let it go', as Pema Chodron suggests.

Where the fuck did this string metaphor come from. I guess it works, I used to describe being in love with someone as having a 'gut-string'. You were tied together with an invisible cord at the stomach. When they hurt you hurt, when they were happy you were happy, when they were angry as shit and taking it out on you. You fucking took it and vice versa. I realize now, my romantic 'gut -string' was actually co-dependence and manipulation. But hey, it felt super romantic.

The real string I am holding is called attachment disorder and it goes back to a lot of shit, but at least it's mine.

I guess you could imagine meditation is like taking the time, and building the will to really look at the string. Give it a tug now and then, see what comes up. Learn to love the scary attachments I have to all these fears, longings, memories, and beliefs. But then also let go of the fucking STRING for Christ's sake, at least for a while.

Realizing that caring about someone doesn't mean they can control you, or you them, is staggeringly difficult when that's been a lot of your experience in the past. Realizing the only thing you've been holding onto for real has been the fears that made you want to control them in the first place is also pretty annoying, not gonna lie.

Almost 5 years ago I wrote this:

'Being courageous in affection, not reckless, not jealous, not trying to get what I want from people by being tender."

By tender I obviously meant pushover. So that sentence deserves an explanation it won't get.

I still find it difficult to be courageous. I find it even harder to trust. I want to. But most of the time i am worried about how I am going to get hurt. When will it happen, how can I prevent it. Who will I turn to when it happens. That's the string. All those little worries tie me to my past. Super lonely. That is what it is. Super super loneliness. That hasn't let up in years.

This evening I was sitting meditation, and I guess the deal is you are supposed to let what's in you rise up, identify it and then go back to breath. Sounds easy, really hard to do.

So I was sitting staring softly out the window into the dark, trying to just feel this kind of present pain that's been in my chest for a few weeks now. Feeling that it was a really hard loneliness, hard like solid, like it had been sitting there a while, kind of ignored and malevolent. It made me think about my on again off again fear of cancer, I kind wanted to say hey loneliness, maybe it's you, not cancer that's freaking me out. You feel like a goddamn tumor in my heart from here. It felt, when I noticed it, like it had been waiting for me forever.

So I got in there, I gave it some attention. It sent me back to Eglinton subway station when I was in grade 6. That year I was getting bullied at day school and then again, when I would go to bat-mitzvah school. I'd leave home at 8:00am, and be bullied until about 6:30 or 7:00pm. In between I'd learn some stuff, but mostly I remember just being mercilessly teased, for my clothes, my hair, my little pre-boobs, my lack of an IQ score (we were Jews, don't forget), the fact that I went to public school, my tomboyish behaviour etc.. I remember a lot of it actually, and it's pretty shitty now that I think of it.

But this hard malevolent feeling wasn't about the teasing. I actually got over that. It was of that half hour commute between school and school. When I would stand in the rush hour crush of Eglinton subway station and feel deeply alone and scared. And want quite badly to leave. To get on a train and go somewhere. I hated my life so much, and felt so indescribably trapped, and alone.

Every time that lump gets kicked I guess, in some way I am back on the platform thinking. I'm alone. I should just go. But I can't, because I am scared and honestly, I didn't at that time want to be alone. I was freaking 10 I wanted someone to keep me company at the very least during the pitstop between bullying sessions. Now when that loneliness, that fear that there is nobody in the world who cares about me in the way I hope to be cared about. I just want to go. To go away from my need, my unfulfilled longing. Me and the string on the road. A broken package. Attachment disorder.

Pema Chodron talks about having your fear and holding it in the lap of your loving kindness, doubtlessness, and joy.

I did that, I tried anyways, to wrap knowing my own fear and loneliness, constantly in there, sad as a 10 year old girl with no friends. In mindfulness of my own strength and self-care. In joy of having come through it, and the knowledge that I am not alone, that I was not alone then either, but understandably, felt so. But that certainly now. I am loved, by myself, in the main, and I love that small girl too.

The weird thing was that I had been having breathing trouble all week, and at the end of that, my chest opened. I felt it like a space. The fear lump, (who I genuinely now see as a little dark knot, like a hairy gollum, binding up my chest, making me less able to have space for my real self), I felt it open up a little. I felt some stretching of the fibres.

I know it won't leave, because I guess the other part of mindfulness is that I have to accept that the fear lump is me, even if I don't enjoy him/her/it. I'll just hang out, feeling my fear lump, holding it in my arms, and trusting that my own compassion can soften it for a while.

The final thing I realized in the last 24 hours is that I am addicted to the internet. For real, mostly Twitter, also Facebook. It's a funny thing we all joke about but the fact is I am hooked. I realized this when reading funny man Andy Borowitz interviewed as part of the happiness project.

He was asked what gets in the way of happiness, and replied it was our constant connection to devices. He said "you didn't used to have to talk on the phone while you crossed the street, why do you have to do it now?" I am paraphrasing now, like i said I don't even have the internet open now. It took my keys away.

It's not really the internet I am addicted to though, obviously, it is the minuscule feeling of self-affirmation I get when I put a little thing out into the universe. A song, a statement, my feeling in the moment.

If there was ever evidence for the fact that my "Fear Lump" acts on me every minute of every day, it's the amount of time I spend reminding the universe of my social connections. "I'm still here I exist, don't leave me at Eglinton station again, don't leave me ever. I can't stand it."

Attachment disorder can apparently manifest itself anywhere and maybe I took some of the demands I used to place on a lover, and put them on the world wide web? Maybe now the web and I have some terrible gut string relationship. I need to cry when it cries. It needs to know when I am crying etc.. Blech.

The irony is of course that I want to be a therapist that helps people deal with their problematic relationships with media and communication devices.

So in the one sense I am overjoyed. I have an addiction to a mode of communication. I am going to have to quit. It's going to suck, I'll hate every minute of the day I don't distract myself by tweeting. I may backslide. IT'S THE WORST.

Then I feel ashamed. It's shameful to be addicted to something that is so ubiquitous, that has no chemical component, that other people seem able to do with no weird hang-ups, no weird compulsive behaviors (email every 2 minutes? Inbox Zero was never a problem for me, because I love checking my email so goddamn much.)

I pretend to hate email, I pretend to hate texts I pretend hating all forms of communication but what I hate is the feeling that if nobody has sent me anything in the last 10 minutes I may not exist.

So that's shameful.

But the thing is all addictions are shameful, and all addicts have the pleasure of watching other people negotiate their fetish object without trouble.

So I'll have to live with the shame of having grown up developing a love for the internet, for the communication and creative opportunities it afforded.

This love has turned into a creepy crutch.

On february 21st I wrote a post called "Sorry I have dear johned the blog".

The text of the post began with the words.

I am totally addicted to Facebook. It's not even funny anymore.

It's genuinely not even funny anymore, and what's even less funny is a post about an ex-lover from 3 days prior February 18th, 2007:

Call!?! What are you, nuts!?!

I operate behind the thin and deadly veil of "the internet", so as to keep my identity and motives hidden.

So that's it folks, where do we go from here. When you know that most of the people you connect with, do so from behind that (albeit tongue in cheek) veil, including yours truly. When it feels sometimes that all the emotional risks we take are asynchronous, mediated, or worse yet archival. When we roll out of bed in the morning rubbing our eyes and brewing some coffee, it's not just done to the pleasant memory of the cute person we met the night before. We take the coffee go into the next room for a quick search on MySpace. Or better yet, if you're a late riser, maybe it's to find a friend request or two. Suddenly the next step isn't further reflection or a phone call, or a walk in the park, it's an erudite but not too intellectual comment...

That was me worrying, 5 years ago. This is me now, realizing that I have taken that 'veil' and made a fine and sturdy raiment.

Ald and to bring this back around to meditation. The idea of meditation as a practice is not just that you do it during your set 'meditation' time. If I intend to do this, I need to try and bring presence and mindfulness to each moment of the day.

Devices and distractions are the exact opposite of that right? I mean, if I want some woman at the corner of Portland and Queen street with a bright slash lipstick circling her cracked and parched lips. Screaming about how she's going to be a cheerleader, if I watch that without presence then I will be composing a tweet in my head. If I check-in to what the world is doing instead of focusing on my life, my tasks and the community of people I work with I am distancing myself from the real obligations I have and not being mindful of my current state and surroundings.

So I will make appointments to tweet, or try and do it with presence. But the other stuff, the Face-booking comment-leaving, checking-in behaviour is going to have to stop for a while until I find my equilibrium with the medium again.

So no more rolling out of bed wondering what happened to the world while I fitfully slept, no more brewing coffee with my iPhone nestled in my bath-robe pocket.

It may be too much trying to meditate, be more present and stop tweeting, it probably is. So I am not going to set any hard and fast rules, especially not regarding email. (Email me PLEASE, I love IT). but I am going to disable Facebook for a while. And if I can hack it set not during business hours, rules around my twitter usage. I will also remove the twitter/facebook apps from my phone. So it's mostly just a phone.

We'll see if that improves my focus, reduces my stress level, and maybe just maybe changes my relationship to my poor lonely little fear lump.

Oh yeah, I am still allowed to blog, because I think this practice is actually benign. It helps me think. Anyone who can get through 1000s of words of text ( 1 of you i hope, maybe 2) is making a real connection to what I feel and think, and is not just feeding the fear lump, and it's part of reflection for me to try and write the strange business that goes on inside me, usually without words.

Phewf that was big. Time to read some Middlemarch.