Friday night adrenaline rush

Remember when my car was totaled by my landlady while being parked in front of my house in 2003? Something similar happened on Friday night. I was at a friend’s birthday party in West Oakland at a warehouse called Candy Mountain aka the Magnolia warehouse. I had been there a few times before. It’s in a seedy neighborhood, which is why I parked in a lit area right in front of the warehouse and put my steering wheel lock on.

The warehouse doesn’t have a door bell but there was a sign next to the front door asking people to knock on the roll-up door next to it. Around 11pm we all heard a loud bang which shook the roll-up door. I thought ‘Wow, somebody is anxious to get in.’ A few minutes later my friend Talia came up to me and said “Vera, I think your car is really fucked up.” I said “What?” She said “It’s in the middle of the street.”

She took me outside and there were about five cop cars. A bronze Lexus had been smashed into the side of the building near where I had parked my car. Apparently it had been running from the police. My car had been turned almost 90 degrees and was in the middle of the street with rear body and window damage and what appeared to be a broken rear axle. The cops immediately shooed us back inside and said that when they were ready to talk to me, they would knock on the door.

In the meantime, they had more pressing business to attend to: A man was trapped underneath the Lexus. A friend took me to a room inside the warehouse which was missing a wall from the impact–yes, the very same accident had torn a hole into the warehouse. Through this hole in the wall I was able to watch the paramedics put the trapped man on a stretcher and take him away. I found out later that the man had originally been inside the getaway car and that he died on the way to the hospital. One other man was taken away by the police, and a third man had gotten away.

The police finally talked to me around 1am. I was given a police report number. The nice cop also gathered all my belongings from my car (I still wasn’t allowed to go near it because the area was still taped off) and brought them to me, including my inline skates, my steering wheel lock, and all my CD’s. Eventually an accident investigation specialist showed up and she allowed me to go near my car and take photos.

Around 2am a tow truck showed up to take the Lexus away. Then another tow truck showed up for my car. Jeremy and I went with the tow truck all the way to my Volkswagen specialist in San Francisco. If my car was totaled, I would rather hear it from a friendly voice–plus, I figured they would be able to use some of the parts. Unfortunately they are only open Tuesday through Friday so my car has been sitting there unattended. But I have been going to check on it once a day.

I talked to my insurance company on Saturday and was told that in the case of a stolen car, the insurance of that car would most likely refuse to cover it. But since I have uninsured motorist coverage, my insurance would cover it in that case, and since the accident was not my fault, it would not result in a premium increase. So this is relatively good news, though I still hope that somehow the other car’s insurance will cover the damages.

For now I wait–to hear the insurance verdict and whether my car will live or not.

The February Blues revisited

I have been talking about the February Blues for years. I noticed over the last few years that they don’t really get me when something new and exciting and different is happening in my life. For example, three years ago I didn’t get them because Kean and I went on that big train trip. I didn’t get them last year because I was all wrapped up in my new relationship with Jeremy.

In a book I read recentlya priest said that “spring could be the most depressing time of year if you weren’t experiencing renewal along with everyone and everything else.” Based on my own experience this makes a lot of sense.

I have been having periods of depression, on and off, for most of my life. Historically, I have been going through a more significant one once every few years, the last one having been four years ago. Maybe each period of depression is just my soul craving change, crying out for renewal. It’s natural to go through cycles of change. And it’s probably even natural for this process to be painful and uncomfortable.

Years ago my friend Robin said wisely to me, “Maybe you should figure out why you get depressed,” the emphasis being on why. I think I finally figured it out. I think it’s a desire for change combined with lack of self-love and compassion for my current circumstances.

I know it’s so obvious that you should love yourself, and when asked “Do you love yourself?” most people would probably respond “Of course!” I know I always did even though I often acted as if I didn’t love myself, such as investing energy into a relationship that didn’t nurture me, or doing things I didn’t want to do because I felt that it was expected of me, or not asserting myself when somebody had hurt or wronged me.

I have been working on loving myself more, in my thoughts, feelings and actions, for over six years now, and I have been making steady progress. I think it’s not a coincidence that this year self-love was my only new year’s resolution. I honestly think that in past years I simply didn’t love myself enough to make such a commitment. My love for myself was still more conditional and dependent on external things, such as having a fulfilling career or maintaining a great relationship.

This year I have definitely been feeling the February blues. I am experiencing growing pains and I can taste the need for change. I want to relate to people differently, and I want to redistribute some of my working hours. This is what it always seems to be about for me, where I am experiencing the most desire for change and also the most pain: career and relationships. They are and continue to be indicators of not only how I want to change but also of what I don’t love enough about myself.

And this year, even though I am going through the transformation and am feeling the pain, I seem to love myself enough to not sink into a depression.

Something about trust

Last weekend Jeremy and I went to a big underground Valentine’s party called Monsters of Love. I spent a good amount of time there dancing with a friend–let’s call her Kira. Kean and I had met her at our first Burning Man together. He had always had a crush on her. While Kira and I were dancing at this party she said to me, “I want to spend more time with you!” She had been saying this for years. I thought for a second and then I said to her, “You know what’s been standing in the way of a close friendship between you and I? I was with Kean, and I didn’t trust him.”

After a while Kira asked me, “Is it okay if I dance with Jeremy?” I said, “Yes. Him I trust.”

Good to know and also kind of sad for all involved.

My motivation for grad school

Next week I have an admissions interview at CIIS where I have applied for a psychology master’s program. When I told a good friend about this, he said “I’m glad that you are doing this. I know that you are worried about getting in debt but I think that ultimately you are bettering yourself.” And suddenly I started crying. At first I thought it was about the debt, but at the end of my yoga class this evening I realized what the tears were really about: Over ten years after I was originally going to go to grad school, I feel like I’m finally going for the right reasons. All throughout high school and college I had assumed that I was going to grad school. It was about prestige and earning power for me and about pleasing my parents who had never had the chance to go to college. Plus, to me grad school was something smart people do, and I know I am that. But luckily, thanks to a few ecstasy trips during college I decided NOT to get a master’s in economics. And now, eleven years after graduating from college, I am going to grad school after all. This time my objective is to become a better person. It feels right.

Below is the autobiographical statement I wrote as part of my application.

My interest in psychology, particularly the mind-body kind, started tragically early: At the age of 10 I spent a couple of months in a psychosomatic ward in Germany. I didn’t go there to study psychosomatic therapy per se, but what is true is that I had developed an obsessive depressive disorder because my mind and body had become disconnected. Having been raised in Germany where a lot of emphasis is placed on cognitive thinking, I had lost trust in my body. I couldn’t stop obsessing over fears regarding my body, such as weight gain, disease, death, or shame from bodily functions. Since I frequently talked about suicide—I suppose what I really wanted was harmony and peace between mind, body and soul, like in the death pose in yoga—my parents were afraid for my safety and sought professional help.
I remember admiring the social workers and psychologists at the psychosomatic mental hospital. I thought it was interesting that they thought they could use their logical brains to help me.
Two years later I finally experienced an energetic shift within myself that I didn’t think had anything to do with the treatment or medication I had received. That’s when I started feeling like a “normal” 12-year-old again, who was interested in working on creative projects and making friends.
I didn’t think to further explore the nature of that energetic shift. Instead, I was just glad that the depressive episode was over and continued trying to figure life out with my head. I was a very good student, especially at math and foreign languages. When I was 17 I came to California as an exchange student for one year. I loved California and felt that its diversity and openness made it easier for me to be myself than it had been in Germany. I decided to try to come back after finishing school in Germany, and life stepped in to make that happen for me: I won a green card in the annual U.S. green card lottery. My father gave his blessing and agreed to help financially support me during college, and at the age of 20 I immigrated to the United States on my own.
My major in college was Economics. It suited me in that it was math-heavy, and it didn’t suit me in that I was much too eccentric to wear business suits, literally and figuratively. I think I was just trying to study something pragmatic that I knew I would be good at. A friend of mine recently asked me what I intended on doing with that degree, what my dreams were during college. I replied that I was hoping to become a market research analyst. I wanted to research consumer market trends and find out what kinds of new or improved products people were asking for. My friend commented that things were coming together for her: Knowing that I am interested in counseling now, she remarked that even then I was interested in people’s desires. I was going at it from an unsatisfying angle though: Shortly after graduating—I was already working at a major corporation as a demand forecast coordinator—a feeling of dread started coming on that I was heading in the wrong direction. Luckily my boyfriend at the time asked me to move to Virginia with him, and I accepted and was able to quit the joyless job.
In Virginia I fell into a completely different profession. I started as an operations assistant at an e-learning company and quickly gained programming skills thanks to my enthusiasm. When the company laid me off, I was able to find a job as a programmer at the University of Virginia. Though similarly mathematical and problem-solving in nature, I found the world of programming infinitely more exciting and inspiring than that of business forecasting.
After having spent two years in Virginia, I moved to San Francisco in 2002 where I have lived ever since. For a while I telecommuted for the University of Virginia until I decided I wanted to be around people again and accepted a job on the engineering team of a major software company. The company was surrounded by a worldwide community of developers and fans, with whom I enjoyed interacting.
About a year later the company had major layoffs. I was spared but started becoming disillusioned with the software industry. A failed relationship later, I was downright depressed. My medical doctor prescribed me some antidepressants but they didn’t affect me noticeably. A few months into the depression in a flash of spiritual insight I decided that I wanted to explore my intuition and connection to myself in order to help myself in times of depression and emotional difficulty. Shortly after making this decision I ran into a friend of mine who called herself a medium and who was about to teach a series of spiritual workshops designed to train one’s intuition. I eagerly started attending these classes as well as exploring meditation and yoga. Soon I started coming out of my depression, which coincided with the realization that I needed to leave my corporate software job and pursue a different path. I wanted to interact with people instead of computers; I wanted to help and heal people like myself; I wanted to make a positive contribution to human evolution.
I decided that I wanted to work as a counselor but that I didn’t want to go back to a traditional university. I felt that traditional education was too left-brained and logical, and I preferred orienting to my heart, my newfound intuition and connection to spirit. I started marketing myself as an intuitive counselor and enrolled in a year-long counseling program called Interchange – A Training in Radical Counseling. It was designed for people like me who wanted to be counselors without necessarily becoming licensed therapists. I enjoyed the program immensely, especially the personal transformation I experienced as a result.
I pursued other spiritually based trainings, such as certification as a theta healer and past life regression counselor, as well as self-development programs such as the Landmark Forum and a yoga retreat. I slowly deconstructed and healed the deep-rooted feeling that there was something wrong with me, which had possibly been with me since my parents had committed me to the mental hospital at age 10. I started giving myself more self-love and acceptance than I had ever known.
For a few years I continued growing my counseling business and practice while also making a living as a taxi driver, translator and freelance programmer. I enjoyed working on my own time and having an irregular schedule. But I continued lamenting the fact that I was still spending more time on the computer than changing people’s lives.
During the course of the year 2010 I strengthened my level of commitment and responsibility for the path of the healer. I decided that I wanted to take serious steps towards spending more time counseling and less time working on the computer. I also started re-appreciating the intelligence of my head and decided that I finally wanted to put it to use in obtaining a graduate degree. I had been noticing for a while that my sessions with clients had shifted focus from being purely spiritual to more of a spiritual-psychological nature. It makes sense for me to study psychology because that’s where I have been lacking training. I want to gain knowledge and skills in that area to have more to offer as a healer.
CIIS is the only school I am applying to because of its spiritual approach to psychology. The Integral Psychology Counseling programs seems like a great way for me to balance the two halves of my brain and enable me to make an intelligent and wholehearted contribution as a change-maker. I especially appreciate the prospect of continued self-development and self-reflection. Aspiring to become a licensed therapist is not just a career choice for me; it’s a lifestyle choice. I envision my future to be therapeutic and healing for the people I come in contact with as well as for myself.

I think the construction is done

On my intersection there has been loud and constant construction going on since just before Kean and I broke up in October. I have no idea what they have been working on. All I know that is there they have been “No parking” signs up and down my street, ripped-open asphalt, boarded-up holes, and constant unbearable noise, for months. Sometime in early January, when I kept waking up too early with panicked thoughts about Kean and then couldn’t go back to sleep due to the hammering on the street, it occurred to me that perhaps the construction site on Dolores Street was a reflection of my internal construction in the aftermath of the break-up.

My ego has been hammering at me, for sure. My heart has been punching me from the inside. I had felt full of hope and optimism at first. I felt a sense of relief. I felt proud of myself for saying no to something I had outgrown. I loved Kean dearly and was sure that we would remain close friends, if not lovers, perhaps for a long time since we are both polyamorous. I felt that neither of us had been wronged or hurt badly, which is why I expected us to move on in love and peace.

And then Kean started a new relationship two weeks after we broke up. It started out casual, then it became a thing, then he said he was in love. And slowly, I started feeling wronged and hurt badly. And I started making him wrong, I started making his new relationship wrong. I felt the opposite of love and the opposite of peace. I didn’t want him back but I also didn’t want him to be with someone else. I wanted him to feel what I was feeling: pain, grief, regret, sadness. I wanted him to take some time for himself and to honor our connection instead of running away from it as far and as fast as he could.

I felt such complete resistance and intolerance for his new relationship that I myself didn’t quite understand. For most of December and January I had trouble sleeping and felt completely tortured. What did I need?

All the while the construction workers on my street were hammering away, distracting me from myself, reminding me that I was going through something. When I thought about Kean, I felt angry, resentful, bitter. What was I working on? What could I not let go of?

This is humbling to admit: The entire time we were together I felt that he meant more to me than I did to him. Sometimes we were able to create the illusion that that wasn’t the case. But I still felt it. I never wanted it to be true.

And now that we are broken up, I still don’t want it to be true. That’s where I am resisting: I want to mean as much to him as he does to me, now and then. But that’s just not the case, and I need to stop fighting for it. I need to give up. He meant the world to me. And I have to accept that I meant a lot to him, but not the world.

Last night I decided to give up. When I left my house shortly thereafter to meet a friend, I noticed that there was fresh asphalt on the entire intersection, and even the yellow crosswalk lines had been painted on.

When I woke up this morning, it was quiet.

A small miracle

I was out at a club last night, and people were doing karaoke to songs from the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s. Just as I was leaving somebody was singing 60′s folk song that reminded me of Bob Dylan. He was screaming and getting really into it, and I was in awe. I felt like I hadn’t heard anything so raw and visceral and classical in a while. I stood motionless for a while and took it in. I recognized the song but didn’t know what it was called or who it was by. I decided to focus on one lyric and look it up the next day but that didn’t work out. I couldn’t find it.

Then, just now I was listening to the “thoughtful” playlist on Stereomood. And guess what? My song came on.