the bitch of bliss

Here are some raw deets. It doesn't start off so pretty, but it gets nicer later, promise.

Last December I spent a few sticky weeks in hometown Chicago, my longest stretch in years, to be supportive for my closest someone whom I thought was in an intense depression. She happened to be high on crystal meth the entire time. It was morose; I had no idea why.

This year breast cancer showed up for my mother. The first surgery didn’t take care of it. They had to go in again, and then of course, months of radiation.

A few months ago, the drug addiction my father had been battling and we’d been waltzing with for years came to a head, when he was beaten up and checked into a hospital. He was there for nine days and wouldn’t leave—too terrified to go home, too proud to admit what was going on or ask for help; he remained there as we scrambled remotely with police dealings and how to get his BMW out of the impound. My sister had to pull to the side of the road to manage panic attacks. My mother walled up.

The first relationship in years where I came close to someone I thought I could love for a while abruptly exited my life. I had no say in it.

…and for the first time in years, I went into debt to get by.

Anything that I thought I could hold onto, that could support me, was taken away.
Those are the facts.

Here’s the story.

The last two days I have felt my most intense connection with the world to date. I’ve had glimpses of this in the past, and I’m pretty sure it’s not here to stay, but I see the divine joke in it all. My hand in the matrix. I was walking up 6th Avenue the other morning, looked at a hotdog cart and understood that it came from me. Not intellectually. I made the cart. I was the cart. To have this kind of obsequious understanding about something so, not only ordinary, but dirty, seemingly incongruous with your life, is quite simply, everything. I try not to use the word ‘oneness’ because I don’t want any vocabulary so present in my life that I think it encompasses the answer, but really, there is no better word for it.

A person cannot know what this is until we experience it. I know I’m starting to sound like an MP3 stuck on repeat, but it’s true. And it’s a tricky little bastard. We start this journey, we get pushed or pulled or thrown in, for a little respite from our suffering. Yoga makes us feel better. Deeksha lifts our spirits. Perhaps we glow a little bit, in turn start to take better care of ourselves. But then… then, once you have an experience of the supreme understanding, you are pretty much f*%@ed. Because then, there is an involuntary evolutionary pull toward that day when you are That, and you know it, and every cell of yours vibrates with that truth.

And the ride sucks. It’s hard. There are many times that you want to throw your hands up in the air and you wish you could rewind. “Stop the World, I Want to Get off” is not just a droll name for a 1960’s musical, you feel it and you want to go back… to that bliss of ignorance. But you can’t. You’re on the road to the Ultimate Bliss. And you certainly can’t explain it to anyone who’s not there yet—your family, that guy you wanted to be your boyfriend, your boss when the work you’ve been doing up to now just isn’t cutting it anymore. “I’m sorry I’ve been out of sorts lately, I’ve just been consumed with learning who I am on the road to Ultimate Bliss.” I’m on that path and even just rereading that sentence makes me want to punch that person in the face.

Here’s why it’s all consuming. Because the love is so ridiculously vast. Once you have a glimpse of it, and you see that’s what there is, everything else is just so very unimportant.

And the paradoxical beauty is the side effects are miraculous. Relationships develop MORE meaning, not less. You saw my laundry list of less than stellar happenings above? They just happened. Emotions rose, and they dissipated. There was deep feeling, but there was absolutely no drama. Not coming from me anyway. And when it came at me? I did not participate in propelling the dramatics forward. To have that kind of equanimity when literally the sky is falling around you is an incomparable feeling.

I tell you this not to stir up any kind of empathy from you, I have no interest in that, and it doesn’t serve me; quite frankly, it would only be wasted if you had it. I say this to show you (and I purposefully laid it all out here, no vague veiled poetic metaphors about my circumstances, cleverly disguised for blogland) this work can and does have a direct correlation with our levels of suffering.

I experienced it; I was solid throughout. The family dramas?—I was like a little Buddha in the middle of it all, amazed at my innate tranquility. The guy? Well, that was the tough one for me. I really really really really wanted to play the blame game on that one. But I watched as all the emotions rose and fell, watched what the process of life brought up for me to see, watched how and why I created it for myself and it went by.

Here’s what else. I speak more to my mother every week than I do anyone else. I grew up angry at her, and since our relationship has blossomed, for the first time I have magnificent women in my life. A whole entourage, of the most gorgeous, giving, level-headed fabulous women in Manhattan. I dare anyone to find a sparklier group. This new level with my mother was not cultivated—it just happened.

My neighbor told me the other day every time he sees me ride around my bike it looks like I am in a little bubble of positivity. He said it really looks like that. And that’s what I feel. I am happy. Happy for no reason. Certainly not happy because the circumstances of my life are the best they have ever been, and yet I am beyond grateful. So grateful with all the beauty that surrounds me…. Because the beauty is in the dirt. When the angry or the sad day comes up, I pull out the dark lipstick, repeat Edith Piaf on my iPod, hope that it’s raining to support my mood and then I live in that aspect. It’s the sad scene of the movie. I’m the star, and it’s so much fun.

I’m well aware that I probably lost half of you with this post. If you haven’t yet started the ride, or are unaware you’ve started it, you will dismiss me, you will say I am not living in reality. And it’s quite literally the opposite. Reality is all we have. This is it. Now. All of this, all of this wading through suffering and stretching uncomfortably toward understanding is so that we can experience it, fully, without fear, with incredible amounts of compassion and love.

We don’t need to have catastrophic events to feel the suffering. I like to live large, so apparently my dealings prefer to be marvelously dramatic. Suffering of an “ordinary” level is just as painful—being trapped in the mind is just as constraining whether we are faced with drug additions or boy problems. Breaking free is just as remarkable, whatever and however mundane the circumstances appear to be.

The people around me are leading spectacular lives. Because they are real. We are all going to be there sooner than we know. You don’t have to take my word for it. You won’t, until you see it yourself. But I will say it anyway, it’s so so so much better when it’s authentic. And being authentic brings the bliss.