Slay the demon
So in order to fix a problem, you first have to name it, correct? Well, yeah, but for some gals you have to repeat it ad infinitum until you are just poisoning yourself. I’m like a soy candle, I burn so slow and so low and it takes a really long time for me to feel the burn – so it was that in discovering a saboteur on Tuesday with the life coach, today another one popped up so clear as day.
The LaLa saboteur – this is the one that says, Rachel, you don’t deserve the LaLa.
Now, mind you, when I first brought this up during the renovation to E, E said, “Your house isn’t all that, Rachel.” Which made me belly laugh.
And I do wonder about myself – why it is when I am living in the back, about how I feel so comfortable in my cocoon, because it goes hand in hand with this LaLa saboteur’s notion that I don’t deserve my own house.
Interestingly enough, walking by the house the other day for the Breast Cancer walk with my Zumba pals, I felt a little twinge of that guilt – like when I pointed out my house, I wanted to feel proud but instead a little gremlin was sitting on my shoulder saying who do you think you are owning a house on Moss Street, huh?
Yes, I have it – guilt. I feel it, I claim it, I own it.
But the reality is I don’t want it.
Guilt (emotion) is an emotion that occurs when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard. ~ Wikipedia.
So what moral standard have I violated, I asked myself as I walked the dogs in the dark this morning having risen at 4 am. And for the life of me, I thought, I worked hard and I was able to afford to buy this house. I was married to a talented architect who designed it. I have some talents myself – inherent and acquired – and so my modest size house situated on a fabulous site on Bayou St. John is something I deserve. Right?
In order to assuage my guilt I generally focus on how much it costs to maintain the house because that way when someone compliments the house I can throw up all the bad on them so that they don’t walk away from me thinking that I’m all that with my fancy pants house. But E’s right – what’s so fancy pants about my house? I mean it’s not that big for godsakes, and it does have some nice touches but the dang thing is 100 years old and acts like it a lot of times.
LaLa guilt sucks – it really does – and my goal is to slay this saboteur once and for all, or at least make it a blind deaf mute, so that I can waltz through my house, appropriately proud of my domain.
October 25th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Um. Rachel? Your house is all that. And you deerve it.
October 25th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
you know what i meant
October 25th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
October 26th, 2012 at 6:37 am
David – you’re funny! I mean that and the Erdrich convocation speech, I just posted – beautiful just like the woman. I remember the first book I read of hers – Love Medicine and the tradition of always placing one bad bead into the string of beads to let out the demons. It helped me work on accepting imperfection as life. Thanks and I enjoyed your video.
November 5th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
I recently reread Tracks and was probably finishing the last of it when I posted the first time. Thank you for watching my video and I appreciate the feedback. RE: dealing or sorting out imperfections. I spent time with a woman for nearly two years. In all of my life (42 winters) I’ve never ever enjoyed conversation so much as I did with her. During one of these conversations we both arrived almost simultaneously in mind then heart with aa shared belief about perfection.
“I believe very much in perfection” I said, and when she replied the same I heard the the truth in her voice and the smile across her face so obvious which was to me, a puncuated manifestation of a million possibilities. I smiled too in the knowing and feeling that our minds had met and then she asked me a question.
“Where does your possibility of perfection come from?”
I did not hesitate in answering her as I had done the first time we met when she asked if I thought of myself as a body housing a spirit or a spirit inhabiting a body. I have to say that this woman is cheeky and fly as a bag of monkeys as my late father, a Glaswegian from Scotland used to say. She knows how to listen and conversation with her is more like playing darts than playing tennis. So normally when we conversed we each allowed the other’s words to land and mark their meaning or request before speaking a response which is the best way I can describe this. But when she asked me where my idea of perfection exists I knew my answer as a feeling of truth that I owned and wanted to keep.
“I believe I can be the perfect me” I answered. “I am imperfect when I move away, supplant or avoid in fear myself.”
We both laughed aloud and I felt so much lighter such that my presence with or among any other person or group of people at this time would certainly resonate love. I believe I know what a fine line exists between such a feeling and Doppleganger Dave, but knowing this is sometimes enough.
“Nobody’s perfect” I teased when our laughter was gone and the sounds of the sidewalk traffic passing beside us and across the quiet street again filled the space between us.
“Bullshit” she replied. “I was perfect just the other day damnit, and I’m poking it in the ribs right now,” and again we both laughed.
Several days later when I was out for a long walk with my dogs I saw in my mind so many shadows of real life situations when I was told or saw and heard another being told that nobody was perfect and the perfection was impossible for anyone except Jesus, Mary and John Irving’s The World According To Garp (hee hee).
November 6th, 2012 at 9:23 am
“I am imperfect when I move away, supplant or avoid fear in myself.” Exactly David.