The Surfing Metaphor

....has served me well now on two fronts.

First, with childbirth: I discovered while preparing for natural childbirth (with Noah in 2000) that I knew me well enough to know that I would not be able to escape far enough away from the pain and intensity of labor to have escapism work well enough to keep me off drugs :) So I knew the only other option was to find ways to embrace the pain (etc). I taught myself ways to dive headlong into the contractions, discovered ways of thinking about the energy involved that would remind me not to be afraid and to totally get into the pain itself. One of those that was quite useful was the metaphor of surfing: images of riding on top of the contractions, of bracing myself to soar to the tops of them, of anticipating and even hoping for more waves, bigger waves. It worked out well.

Lately I've been carrying around and XL-sized bag of self pity. ANYthing would trigger it, plunging me into overwhelming despair, trapped beneath a huge weight of self pity and it's friends, self loathing, anger, hopelessness...and more!

At my wits end, and feeling frankly unable to perform some of the tasks required to lift mood (say, exercising), I was able to admit something to myself that I've admitted a few times on this very blog--but in a different context this time: I like pain.

So, I reasoned, if I like pain so much, why am I wasting all this energy trying to rid myself of pain, trying to escape from it? If I like it so much, if I adore misery as much as I really seem to do, then why deny it? Why not EMBRACE it?

And so, the surfing metaphor once again proved so very helpful! It was a shortcut that reminded me to embrace the misery, rush into it, think on it, roll around in it--stop trying to hide it and suppress it and really enjoy it.

Know what?

It passed on. It moved away from me. I am not pitiful no moar! In fact, I'm fairly happy again. Whew! (which, just like with Oscar the Grouch, provides yet another irreconcilable, but entirely live-withable paradox)