I took a cool bath this evening and washed myself with Sami’s baby shampoo.  Have you ever taken a cool bath on a hot summer night?  It is a delicious experience, to rest in cool water as crickets chirp through the window.  Now I smell as fresh and clean as a newborn.

 

This day has been full of juicy moments – not so different than any other day, but I felt things so acutely today.  I started off the day going to a credit counselor because my financial situation has gotten totally out of control.  Trying not to cry so many times in his office – when he kindly suggested that I might want to consult a lawyer about bankruptcy, consider moving down into my basement, consider finding a job that earns me more than $40K in the next few weeks, or sell my house ASAP to get out from under the burden.  We talked about a budget and where I might trim down my expenditures and I feel like my whole life is on a diet and this is a good thing.  I’ve always been an over-the-top kind of person: over-eating, over-spending, over-smoking, over-everything I can get away with.  I’ve always admired moderate types and now it seems my excess has driven me to become a moderate person, at least for now. 

 

Miraculously I managed to get some work done before the pest control man got here.  Yes, I came back to a kitchen infested with cockroaches.  It is truly revolting.  I don’t see them during the day, but at night they are there in force.  All different sizes: grown ups, adolescents, toddlers, babies.  I am now afraid to go into the kitchen at night, so I leave the lights on, forcing the roaches into hiding so I won’t have to see them when I stumble downstairs to refill Sami’s sippy cup at 2 am.  I feel ashamed that there are cockroaches in my kitchen.  That it makes me somehow dirty and gross.  I want to defend myself and declare that I am not a dirty person.  Yet I feel that the roach-filled kitchen reflects the scummy way I feel inside right now.  I am doing a very un-Buddhist thing but those bastards have got to die.  I hope the nice pest control man knows what he is doing and that I will win the war of attrition.  I wish I could approach the situation non-violently, but I simply can’t coexist with these guys.

 

As the afternoon went on, I spiraled more and more into panic around the Financial Situation.  I feel so vulnerable and alone, much like I felt two years ago when the ex left.  For a while I felt so strong, so capable, but now I feel like that was an illusion, because I have made a terrible mess of things and here I am tottering on the verge of bankruptcy with a son who is depending on me.  So now I have cycled back to that place of utter helplessness.  My skin feels as if it doesn’t exist and I’m not sure what is keeping everything from spilling out.

 

The anxious energy rose and rose and threatened to overwhelm me.  I started to breathe very shallowly and who can think when no oxygen is going to your head?  I cried hysterically on the phone to a good friend, who suggested that I go take a walk.  First, I went to the library in search of some Byron Katie book another friend recommended.  The library has become my new temple in my broke-ness.  Everything in it is free, and I love the surprising treasures that I find there.  It is a quiet place to connect with my heart.  I couldn’t find the Byron Katie book, but did discover this wonderful artist/writer, Sabrina Ward-Harrison, who is around my age.  Apparently Brave on the Rocks is her second book, and her first is entitled Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself, which I must also read.  I had never read an artist’s journal before and I was broken open and utterly fascinated with every page.  I loved her spiritual hunger, her youth, her enthusiasm, her uneasy acceptance of her shadow.  I’m terrible about talking about art but she had such a compelling way of mixing line, color, photograph, text (in her beautiful scrawl)…in a way that stayed with me, on a visceral level. 

 

Later in the evening, as the sun was setting, I remember eating a bowl of yogurt and fresh peaches and bursting into tears when I read this line from the book:

 

I feel so strong.

When I feel this way, I can handle anything.

I am not afraid of life hurting me.

 

That’s just it!  I am tired of feeling hurt by this life.  I don’t need to be a victim of myself, circumstances, what have you.  I need to claim my power, to step into my third chakra and dust that baby off.  Yes, I have gotten us into a huge fucking mess but I can get us out of it.  One small step at a time and we will make it through this.  Today I allowed myself to be slightly paralyzed, but I am not going to sit in it for longer than is absolutely necessary. 

 

As I took a walk through Sligo Creek Park I tried to do tonglen and I forgot how.  Do you breathe in suffering and breathe out peace?  Or is it the other way around?  It felt better to me to breathe out anxiety and breathe in peace.  I didn’t mean to pollute the air with my anxiety but I figured that the atmosphere could handle it.  So that was my mantra as I walked back and forth along Sligo Creek.  I looked at some apartments along the Creek that might be nice to live in.  Left messages with their rental offices.  My feet plodded steadily along the ground, water to my right, cars zooming by on the road to my right.  I enjoyed the trees rising around me.  A smile briefly flickered on my lips as I remembered Sami enthusiastically hugging a tree the other day when we went on an excursion to Watkins Mill Park. 

 

I took him to the playground today after day care and we ran back and forth, back and forth across a wide open green field, the sky darkening into evening.  I love how he runs so free.  How he looks back and smiles at me, so enchanted with the swiftness of his feet.