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Excerpted Inspirations #236

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • 2 days ago
  • 0 min read
The same old things are still bothering me. Those conflicting messages are so strong. I’m no good and I’d better be the best. When I was in school – 6th, 7th grades – I felt worthless inside, but I got 100’s on my papers. It didn’t make sense, but that’s how it felt. There was no way to earn enough good grades to take away the worthless feeling. I still feel that way sometimes – except that now it’s about good deeds instead of good grades. I don’t know what to do about it, but I’m working at it. I feel all dug up. There’s no solid ground. I have an image of the Norristown interchange of the turnpike where the Blue Route is getting connected. It’s all dug up – work is being done – sometimes it holds up the traffic – there are piles of dirt all over the place. That’s what I feel like. The hole feels raw inside. I’ve been digging out those impossible beliefs from my childhood. The comfortable ideas I used to depend on are scattered, and my mind is in chaos. False assumptions and misunderstandings as well as a lot of good information are piled up outside the gaping hole in my head. Which ideas shall I put back? If I just fill in the hole and put everything back that was there before, I won’t be leaving out the unhealthy ideas I grew up with. I need to live with the hole, allow for empty places where I am uncertain, not knowing how it will work out. What do I have to do before I can fill the hole? What do I have to learn? […] One of my beliefs is “Life wouldn’t go so well if I didn’t feel guilty.” It’s as if I’m holding up the sky with my guilt. I’ll be all right as long as I’m willing to take blame, to be ashamed. [...] The use of physical images is helpful to me. They work because insight comes through a lived experience on the level of the body. So – I’m dug up. I’m in the middle of big changes. Is there an image that can help me? Yes! Our septic system was redone a couple of years ago. The backhoe dug an enormous hole. Out of the hole came rocks. Big ones, little ones, beautiful ones, ugly ones, flat ones, lumpy ones, brick-shaped ones. After the drain field was in place, the backhoe operator told me his plan for smoothing everything over. He would make a gentle slope out to the woods and cover up all the rocks so we could plant grass and forget about the whole thing. I was horrified. This was an opportunity! I love rocks. I told him to leave the rocks on the surface, and I would decide what to do with them. When spring came I began to sort rocks. Some of them I couldn’t move at all. One particularly ugly thing was an old concrete doorstep perched on the edge of a slope. When I got up in the morning I would look out on the chaos from above and imagine – what would it be like if I put a path over there and some steps down between two trees … or should I put the steps on the other side? And where could I dump the rocks that were too small or uninteresting to suit my plans? Gradually some things took shape. I learned how to take advantage of the things that were already there that I couldn’t change (or decided I wouldn’t change because the effort required wouldn’t be worth it). An immovable rock was joined by some smaller ones and a garden bed was planted in front of it. The old doorstep was covered up and azaleas planted around it. Piles of brick-shaped rocks became planters on the terrace, and piles of flat rocks were transformed into paths. As I planted gardens, more rocks came to the surface. This is a perfect metaphor for what’s happening to me right now. The more I think about it the more truth I find in it. I’m glad I didn’t let the backhoe operator smooth things over so I could go unconscious and plant grass. I need to be dug up in my psyche for a while. I need to be willing to wait without knowing where to put things or how to arrange them. I love ideas. How do they fit? Where do they go? How are they related? How do I use them? I want to comprehend everything perfectly and then choose just the right idea for my purpose. Dealing with rocks forced me to be more practical. I would have liked to be able to sort all of them, and then begin to place them, choosing the perfect rock for each location. You’ve got to be kidding! If I sorted them all, the piles would be so high I couldn’t even see half the rocks – how could I choose? There had to be another way to do this. There’s a place that needs a rock. That one might be a good shape. Try it. Better yet, there’s one that looks just as good and it’s much closer. There! It’s perfect! (Well, maybe not perfect!) But it’s good there. On to the next … There’s no perfect rock. There are an unlimited number of good ways to build a wall or a path. I just need to do it. I don’t need to haul every rock around several times to decide where it goes. Once I have a plan in mind I can build directly from what is close by. Think of the energy saved! I don’t have to wait until I am sure of what I am doing. Instead, I work on whatever needs my attention now, in this place, in the present. What I need to work with is probably nearby if I look around. I can notice what works and what doesn’t, and when something is not working, I just take out a few rocks and build again – I can try out a different idea instead. I can make my decisions as I go. I don’t have to try to get everything done at once. As I go along, I dig up more rocks – find more ideas – and decide where they go in my scheme of things. At the beginning of my therapy, I thought, “It’s endless – will I ever get through this?” Now it’s OK not to get finished. The process is satisfying. It’s endless, yes, and that’s all right. I can feel my way into it. Everything has a good place. That’s a different orientation from “Something is wrong and has to be fixed.” No single way is the best. “Dug up” is a good way to be. I don’t want to just stuff anything in the hole – it will evolve. I’m beginning to trust that. It amuses me that one of my chief joys in life is picking rocks out of the yard. I feel really good about this – it’s OK to be dug up. Beryl Simonetti, Images (2000), unpublished, pp. 53-54, 56, 57-60

 
 
 

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