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Hi.
Not sure how long or far this one will go, but I’m willing.
Let’s start with the end. Which is kind of a beginning, but you’ll hopefully see what I mean soon enough.
I sent this email just now to Veronica Monet.
“Veronica!
My Higher Power nudged me to offer you help tonight. The topic of how female prostitutes are treated has repeated today in ways that can only be explained spiritually. Got any ideas, off the top of your head?
And I hope all is going very well for you!
Much love
Beth”
I’d like to tell you I wasn’t expecting this, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. I know my OneTaste experience didn’t happen pointlessly, or in a vacuum. I know I haven’t gone through shedding the layers of conditioning and shame and silence and pain, just to then do nothing with it. I know I don’t “have” to listen to this call, and I also know from experience the quicker I surrender to it, the better.
I’m breaking my 9:45 computer curfew to write this out because it’s the type of subject I should explore while the iron is hot. The type of thing that might seem “less important” in the morning. That type of less important when I’ve just given the denial the time to cool over the truth and harden it a bit. But then it hardens inside of me and I just have to have it cracked open another time in another way, anyway, so why not just keep it open now.
I had a wickedly dark sex dream last night. Murder and wife swapping and words carved into skin and police corruption and that’s enough for public consumption.
Already the other details of how prostitution and womens’ health challenges showed up today are swimming, like when I have a detailed dream and don’t write it down and it’s washed away by mid-morning.
The most impactful conversation was with NM. I’m not even ready to tell “everyone” what was said there, but it awakened a little spark in me that I wasn’t even sure was alive. See, I’ve been on this precipice of perceiving that I’m just giving up on sex. That I will never be skilled enough to build bridges with men (or even 1 man) enough to have sex involve emotional intimacy and truthful congruency, in addition to a hot sexual connection which seems to be most easily stoked when I don’t tell my truth. That’s a run-on but I’m leaving it because I don’t want to separate the words from one another. It’s a hollow place to be devoid of hope. Hollowness can create space for peace…..or peril. I wish I could take a survey of all the women who have felt hopeless and considered doing sexwork as a way to fix many problems at once, while giving up on what I can now only know through experience as a dream.
I definitely feel the part of me who loves comfort holding its hat in red agitated hands….why am I saying this, just when things are getting back to normal? Why can’t I just take the easy way? How do I even know if this is real? Am I just trying to get attention in a different way, because I can’t stand the partnerlessness? Am I deliberately trying to sabotage my business?
One of my roommates brought home a movie flyer. We’ve been talking about a house movie night, so that’s not surprising. But, seriously, how did it get to me having several conversations about prostitution today, and then she says, “there’s a sex worker film festival coming up”. I’m telling you, so much primed my attention, enough for me to finally say, okay, I surrender my defenses to this topic.
Do you know how easy it is to sell sex to men? Even a brief fingernail’s hint of maybe possible sex? My lord, VERY easy, and the currency definitely doesn’t have to be money. I do not understand you creatures. Yes, sex gets my attention and takes up bandwidth. Yes, I know it’s not ALL men that react that way. Yes, I know there’s pain and anger and hurt involved on mens’ side, too. But you can’t take my experience away with your own theories, so that’s what I’m putting out here.
I realized today what I like about working with numbers. It helps me have tracks for the train. I see the numbers as little helpers. I also see them as advocates….that when I get on the side of the numbers, then they become like a little healthy army and together we move in the right direction.
What does that have to do with this. I don’t know yet. I’m working through a spiritual call in somewhat real time. I do know I felt hesitant to bring this up because I don’t want to bring any further negative exposure to women. Especially the ones in the most vulnerable and unprotected and perilous situations. And what actual things, such as numbers, do I have to be on my side? Well, I was just told it’s not an I it’s a We.
Again, don’t know where this is going. Faith is not having to know and just putting one foot in front of the other.
Also got a nudge to share with you a list of spiritual solutions that I was given to use in my stepwork. Perhaps not directly related to the above, or else I’d share the clever transition, but sharing both of these things was asked, so I’m willing.
Service
Meta
Affirmations
Gratitude list
Pray for_______
Look for signs of God
Ask for help
Pay my own way
Grieve
Exercise
List strengths of _________
Read acceptance passage of Big Book, p 417
Set boundaries
Meditate
Tell the truth
Reconnect or stay in contact with _________
Talk about my feelings
Listen
Step work
Vote
This helps everything One of James Taylor’s best songs IMHO, done by Marc Broussard, who I’m hoping to see in SF in June. Dear Marc, please bring that little guitar player of yours so he can shred live into my ears. Thank you.
Hey, you readers gave me some happy tears when I just peeked at the blog stats. This little blog baby of mine got the most visits ever by double…on my birthday! So while Cadillac, ahem, wasn’t able to acknowledge my birthday at all, the readers did, and I thank you so much. You’re the balm. (HA couldn’t resist)
I realized tonight as I was sitting outside the meditation room that I trust the concrete/tangible/touchable more than I trust the spirit/flow/common goodwill. I’ve chosen the sure thing I can touch over the seemingly maybe unseeable thing. I’ve heard the phrase God With Skin On. That doesn’t work when it’s my ego grasping. I like God, I like skin, great; in theory we should be all set! I’m having a hard time accepting that it’s more elusive than that, and seems to require more patience and less attachment.. And that I can’t just worship 1 person who is “all mine” and have that be my world….bummer. Instead I talk to something I can’t see and sometimes it’s just quite and sometimes it whispers to me and sometimes I see a puppy looking at me on the street and get a message and sometimes I get shivers and tingles and know we’re connected even without words involved. Crazy, huh.
I wrote a list tonight of just why I’m having such a tough time turning my sexual life over to Higher Power. Of saying, “God/Spirit/Divine/Soul of Bob Ross, I’ve tried everything I can try to get this thing to work well and I’ve decided I need your help. Please. Thank you.” Some things I noticed:
*I wonder why would God bother with my dirty little trite sexuality? (Ouch. Habit.)
*I’m afraid if I turn it over, God won’t give me anything back because I’ve already misused it. Everyone knows if you don’t play right with a toy and you hurt the other kids with it, the toy will be taken away. Better to hide under the bed and play with the toy quietly.
*Part of me thinks God doesn’t speak the language of sex. A program fellow said to me, “You can invite your Higher Power to join you in bed any time.” Woah. That was actually quite confronting. Woah again.
*I fear if I turn over my sexuality to Higher Power, then I’ll really just be boring and bored in that area. There IS actually a nun who lives inside me. I’m scared that if I truly go the spiritual route, that she’ll be calling the shots and we’ll never have sexual play again.
*Honestly, my vanity is a large part of what tried to hold on so tightly to Cadillac. The man is gorgeous, and has so many amazing physical traits. I even like the colors he wears. What if I turn over my sexuality to HP and the princess gets a frog in return? I’m worried that spiritual always has to feel like charity.
*I’m worried that there is a lifetime quota of sexuality and I’ve used all mine up. Like it’s doled out on scratch and sniff tickets and there’s not even any smell left to my sex ticket.
*I’m worried that if I choose other people to play with who are spiritually conscious that they won’t be physically good at it. I want a man with a slow hand and the Pointer Sisters did not add, a strong internal guidance and radiance.
*Oh, and the piece de resistance is that if I admit I don’t think I will have children and the Christians are right about sex being for procreation and I turn over my sex to God, then wouldn’t it make sense for God to give me no sex since I will be giving the world no children?
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A couple of my regular tennis partners have dropped off. I forge on. If you know of anyone in San Francisco who wants to hit with a 2.5 player (that’s me), please send them my way!! beth@unconditionalserenity.com
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I hope you have the best Thanksgiving EVER. That goes for everyone. I hope you, if you have struggled with food as I have, remember that “another word for Thanksgiving is ‘Thursday’”. I hope you remember what you do have. I hope you realize how important it is that you are alive. You are carrying the absolutely perfect blueprint for who you are supposed to be, and you’ve always done that right and always will. I’m supposed to be questioning everything. Cadillac is supposed to be in another state perhaps, doing I don’t know what. HG is supposed to be spending Thanksgiving in a beautiful mystical coast location. MLeg (hi baby! good to see you tonight!) is supposed to be thinking that no thoughts can be believed as the truth. And on and on.
I’m grateful that we are connected.
Texas cheerleader suing – didn’t root for attacker
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle November 5, 2010
If you’re a high school cheerleader, you cheer for the whole team. The stars and the scrubs. The nice guys and the jerks.
But what about a player you’ve accused of raping you?
You’ve got to cheer for him too, according to a federal appeals court, because you’re really speaking for the school and not yourself.
The court dismissed a free-speech suit by a Texas teenager who was kicked off the cheerleading squad for sitting silently, with her arms folded, while her assailant shot free throws in a playoff game.
The former cheerleader and her family are appealing the ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which includes an order to pay the school district’s legal fees on the grounds their suit was far-fetched and frivolous.
A case that has gripped a small town in southeast Texas also provides a window into the diminishing state of free speech on campus.
More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech … at the schoolhouse gate,” the former cheerleader’s judicial rebuff reflects a shift in perspective that has the courts showing more deference to school authorities.
“What I want out of the whole thing is for somebody to admit they were wrong,” the 18-year-old woman, identifying herself by her initials H.S., said in an interview last week. After undergoing therapy and graduating from high school, she’s taking a semester off before college, where she plans to study forensic science, partly because of what happened to her.
The basketball player has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, received a suspended sentence, and is making plans for college and “going forward with his life,” his lawyer said. He has denied raping H.S.
Court’s backtracking
The Supreme Court issued what appeared to be a declaration of free-speech rights on campus in 1969, when it allowed high school students to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War and said schools could clamp down only if students disrupted the educational process.
The court started to retrench in 1986 with a ruling allowing a high school to censor a student’s sexually suggestive speech at an assembly. Two years later, the court upheld a high school principal’s authority to prohibit articles on pregnancy and divorce from appearing in a student newspaper.
The Constitution does not require a school “to promote particular student speech,” the court said in a ruling that became a precedent for the H.S. case.
In 2007, the justices allowed a school to suspend a student for carrying a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a school-approved parade near campus, saying the message could be interpreted as promoting drugs.
These days, “student speech is not given the respect it deserves. …There’s a mind-set that school officials are in total control,” said David Hudson, a Vanderbilt University law professor and scholar with the First Amendment Center who has written about the H.S. case.
Incident at party
H.S., then 16, attended a party in her hometown of Silsbee, Texas, in October 2008. She said she was dragged into a room, thrown onto the floor by several youths and raped by Rakheem Bolton, a star on the school’s football and basketball teams.
Bolton and a teammate were arrested two days later, but were allowed to return to school after a county grand jury declined to indict them. They were later indicted on sexual assault charges, but in the interim came the February 2009 incident on the basketball court.
H.S. joined in leading cheers for the Silsbee High team. But when Bolton went to the foul line, and the cheers included his name, she stepped back, folded her arms and sat down.
“I didn’t want to have to say his name, and I didn’t want to cheer for him,” H.S. said. “I didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/05/MNDQ1G1R78.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz14imYxHww
To those who suffer from chronic pain,
I am so sorry.
I am sorry that I ever thought you were making it up or exaggerating.
Like so much in the spiritual realm, just because one can’t see or touch it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I am humbly waiting, white-knuckling, anxiously and hopefully waiting for the 2008-labeled ibuprofen that I found in my bathroom to kick in.
CRAMPS. OWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
With my period this time also come nausea, some dizziness, general weakness.
The silver linings:
*I’ve been overly scheduling again for the last month at least and this gives me no choice but to slow down and take a pause.
(break to visit bathroom again. Either # 6 or 7 today, not sure. Sorry, people, I’m keepin it on the realio today.)
*As previously mentioned, I am swimming in compassion galore for other people who have physical pain.
*I will catch up on some reading when I’m done with you.
*Mom and I had a great woman-to-woman conversation today about what her cycle was like and how it changed over time.
OWWWWWWWWW.
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I saw an old-school One Taster today and I avoided eye contact. Not proud to tell you that, but it’s true. She was at OT when I got there, and left probably a year or so later. She was one of the first people to say she was just done and the system was just done with her. No 1 person necessarily decides when it’s time for someone to leave. It’s a really neat organism that way. I didn’t really believe her at the time, when she said that about just being done. I thought it was an excuse to get her way and then blame it on something external. Then I had my own experience, and it was just like that. My time there was just done. I didn’t pick that to be the path, it just was.
So why didn’t I say hello to her today? She and I are on fine terms. We definitely share a rare experience. It’s not every day I see someone, especially in my ‘hood, who *knows*.
(Hold, please. Bathroom again. This is unreal.)
To revisit section 1. I’ve been ashamed that ever since a little girl I wondered how could a woman ever be President with having to go through pain and serious alteration once a month. Just now I questioned why we have it set up that the whole country rides so much on 1 person’s shoulders. There, I got out the shame. Carry on with section 2.
In retrospect I didn’t say hello to her because, a) sometimes I’m just lazy, and b) I didn’t want to face her opinion. Which, in the absence of a real conversation is just a projection of my own opinion, right. So here’s the conversation I expected to have.
Her: So what’s new with you?
Me: Oh, I’m living in Noe Valley now. (secretly I know why. Last roommate was major mental sickage and I shouldn’t have moved in there so quickly. Yet the previous roommate was also major mental sickage and what a freakin’ failure that feels like to have chosen that twice in a row. What is up with that. I never would have picked Noe Valley because I plan to have neither a baby or a dog.)
Her: And what are you doing for work now that you left OneTaste?
Me: I’m self-employed. It was going really well but now I feel a major pinch since I’m 20 hours with 1 client a week who I LOVE, yet the gig doesn’t sustain me as much as I need financially. I’m ending with another client who I respect and revere and underneath it all feel I wasn’t good enough for her (she got another assistant to be fulltime and onsite and lives an hour away from me). For a while in the beginning, I was doing this home organizing thing and it brought up a bunch of issues for me around my worth and value, my obsessiveness, my sometimes difficulty in following through and finishing things, and my inability to withstand uncertainty and financial insecurity. And before that I blew out on doing massage therapy when it also brought up tons of issues around my sexuality, aging process, ego (needing to do something that felt intelligent), and dealing with peoples’ desire who I found difficult to accept. Oh, and add a raging control fetish into all this.
Her: (probably backing away awkwardly by now) Um, are you seeing anyone?
Me: Yes! There is a man that I adore. Of course it’s tricky because, hey, I came out as bisexual so what am I doing exploring a traditional-seeming relationship with a guy? And I often feel like I’m 1 and 3/4′s feet off the cliff in the relationship….my abandonment issues are alive and kicking, let me tell you! I’m finding it really difficult to do all the things I want to do, and sometimes I can hide behind the relationship, which I know, ironically, is something that could kill it the quickest and killing it is one of the things I *least* want to do. Unless you ask my internal saboteur, who has her bags packed and is ready to change her identity and land in a midwestern state, try to start all over again and do it right this time, and maybe rob a bank on the way there to make things a little easier and more exciting.
Her: Sounds like maybe your time at OneTaste was the peak of your production and value.
Me: I often worry that is exactly right. I do not perceive that I am getting it together post-OT. I really thought I would have done something brilliant by now.
Her: What do you want? (we used to always ask people that at OneTaste, and I used to ask it in the tone like they knew it and weren’t saying it)
Me: That I can’t tell you that feels like the biggest failure of all. I want to be as brilliant and innovative as Seth Godin. I want to be as beautiful and charming as Ashley Judd. I want to be as successful as Steve Jobs. I want to be as diversified and impactful as Oprah. I want to start a noble lineage of my own, yet I don’t necessarily want to procreate. Nothing is good enough.
Her: Wow, have you learned *anything* in all of your courses and programs and whatnot?
Me: Some. I like some parts of myself better than I used to. I can meditate now. I don’t always WANT to, but at least I can tolerate it. I have a pretty good friendship going with my inner child and my Higher Power. I do like where I’m living and who I’m living with. I do genuinely love my close friends, and many people that I keep loosely associated with. I have fairly good boundaries with my family now, whereas that used to be nonexistent. I learned how to do financial counseling since I left OT, and that has been amazing and even though I worry about my money, I have a solid plan around it. I read some of a book today by a Stanford whiz kid (generally the person I’m MOST likely to be envious of these days) about learning how to become rich. There was NOTHING I didn’t already know thanks to the Dave Ramsey work I’ve studied and practiced. So all that is good.
Her: But is that really enough?
Me: Of course it is not! I definitely should be doing more and better! I should be at the highest bar at all times! And I definitely shouldn’t be at home, having killer cramps, wasting time on writing about talking to myself!!!!!
Like that.
