Acceptance

(Written in May 2008)
Started yesterday with a headache. I met Pat as I left Neskaya and she said she had a headache too and thought it was pollen. O yes pollen, that makes sense. That allowed me to accept the headache and it began to fade. I find this very frustrating. How often I create my own misery or make it worse by trying to get rid of something. And I’m not even aware that I’m doing it. Yesterday I was trying too hard to relax (to make the headache go away.) I was recently reading, from the early 80s, how I made a depression go away by accepting it. Knowing it’s not my fault, knowing it’s caused by something outside me, knowing it’s limited in time, these things allow me to accept: headache, depression, tiredness. Without clear evidence to the contrary, my default position is I’m doing something wrong, it’s my fault, and my best efforts to change it don’t work. I can see how this belief began in infancy, how it sabotaged my efforts to have relationships with men, and to be sexual with my husband. I feel very sad and angry at the waste of my life’s energy, of my passion, my commitment, my vision.