Duḥkha (दुःख) Hardship



I haven't written in a long time. That is because my life the last 14 months has been boiled down to its absolute essentials. What do I need to do right now in order to survive? 

I find myself asking questions like: Is there anything causing me stress that can be eliminated from my life in order to bring a modicum of peace?

 In the last 14 months, I have experienced the following: 
* being reported to the Trump administration's Department of Education
* being reported to Congressman Bob Onder
* listening to radio broadcasts in which I am accused of "pushing porn" on unwitting students
* being doxxed from behind an anonymous account
* being pursued by reporters 
* helping to overturn a school board election
* hyperventilating in the office in between classes
* sitting at home on FMLA once I became too non-functional to teach
* visiting the courthouse to ask for a restraining order
* interviewing and meeting with attorneys
* switching jobs and careers in an attempt to stay "hidden" from unhinged lunatics 
* speaking to the school board about district policies to protect teachers
* meeting with a pastor, who prayed over me and told me if the bullying his church members were engaging in became so extreme I was about to kill myself, to give him a call
* being linked to actual pedophiles online

When I was younger and experiencing something horrific, I would get these blackouts. I couldn't articulate what happened even seconds after it happened. And there were moments when I felt my body get super-hot, overheated, like I would explode if I couldn't get the words out of me... and yet I couldn't get them out. I couldn't express what I was experiencing. I physically felt all the words trapped right at the top of my chest, like a bottle-neck, choking me.

Sometimes, it feels like that now.



If you've been following my story for long, you know Life took a left turn 14 months ago when the parent of a then-student decided I was trying to indoctrinate children into "the gay agenda." It's a stupid story with many ironies, not the least of which is that I am not gay and in fact spent the majority of my life at the very church where this woman receives her messaging. I probably know the messaging better than she does.

As a then-English teacher, I was proud of my knowledge of books. I read a LOT, was certified in Library Science, and spent years staying abreast of trends in Young Adult literature. For this reason, I amassed a pretty significant classroom library, full of award-winning books. And yes, some of those books had queer characters. I taught at a public school full of many types of people. In an effort to serve everyone, I stocked some of everything.

I asked parents to remain involved in their students' book choices. In my syllabus, I urged parents to contact me if they didn't like a book, and said that I would immediately replace it with a different one.

That's it. That's the "secret gay library" that's been referenced by a "concerned parent" all over the internet, 4 different radio stations, Mid Rivers Magazine, the Post. I never received so much as a verbal reprimand from my principal, the superintendent, or the school board because I didn't actually do anything wrong. I had books on my shelves. That's it.

I hoped that moving to a different subject area and a different part of the district would insulate me. But when I returned from Europe, it was to discover that the woman chasing me had preemptively posted the contact information for my new supervisor, so her followers could email him in outrage before I'd even met him.

The hits seemed to just kept coming.


I started therapy at the Crime Victim Center. I went on a pilgrimage to Spain. I took a class on neurographica with my sister Dragonfly, and we attempted to rewire our brains through artistic shapes. 



It turns out that rewiring your brain is a lot harder than drawing lines, making shapes, and using colored pencils while thinking positive thoughts about your archetypes. What a disappointment.

So, as always, I return to yoga, which has given me a framework for understanding life. This month's yoga pose for me is astavrakasana. It's a twist and an arm balance; it requires core strength and hip opening. It's like the inventor of this pose said, "How can I fkkk with people the MOST on a Sunday morning?"

And this is not even the hardest variation.

This pose is hard for me. I feel too heavy in my own body. I feel frustrated and annoyed and uncertain about why it's so effortless for other yoga instructors and so difficult for me. I feel the temptation to be angry at my body that is growing older, and my core that is not strong enough, and my wrists that are not sturdier. 

The Sanskrit word for hardship is Duḥkha (दुःख). It means "that which causes pain, unease, suffering." Many times, when doing these hard poses, practitioners forget to breathe because of their unease. We are so focused on squeezing and balancing and locking and tightening and focusing and gripping... that we forget the one thing that is most essential, that makes all the other things possible -- the breath. 

The breath is the one, most essential thing. I find myself asking these days, what is the one, most essential thing? If everything else is stripped away, what is the one thing I cannot live without? For me, I think it's doing something that matters, that has meaning.

There have been moments in the last 14 months where I felt nothing but despair, or nothing but rage, or nothing but abject terror. But like it or not, this woman has taken what I do and given it a focus. How can I teach my students to be curious instead of judgmental? How can I teach them to be open-hearted and kind? How can I create space for them to think and to feel and to question?



Life is heavy with hardship right now. It has BEEN heavy with hardship. Most days, I wonder if I will ever escape it or if it will ever come to an end. 

That's all the words I have to write.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sankalpa - Intention

Image
I can measure the eras of my life by the book genres I've loved: In my 20's, romance -- girl meets boy; they fall in love; happily ever after. In my 30's, suspense -- the husband is actually a serial killer & has been gaslighting her for the last decade!!!!!! In my 40's, psychology -- how to be so healthy a serial killer would never be interested in you. My latest read is The Mountain Is You : It was the only audiobook available at the library that I had not already read.  My initial idea was to yoga nidra  myself: I determined to listen to it as I fell asleep each night, & then re-listen to it in the morning to cement in all the knowledge I inevitably acquired whilst sleeping. I warned friends & family that I was about to become extremely wise and self-actualized overnight. They took it in stride. However, I found that come morning, I was too distracted by the New York Times crossword puzzle & my Duolingo streak to want to start up an audiobook about un...
Read more

Tamas - Spiritual Inertia

Image
When I first met my former therapist (Therapy Elsa), I eyeballed her with a great deal of distrust. I had finally been in therapy enough years to understand that the client, too, gets a say in whether or not the fit is right. "Are you one of those therapists who talk about sin a lot and how it's wrong to be gay?" I asked. Therapy Elsa smiled. "That's an interesting question. Why do you ask?" I assumed she was mentally writing down some kind of note like, "Prospective client probably gay." "Because you have diplomas hanging on your wall and one of them is from a seminary," I said. "Also, I know many Christians, and they care a LOT about whether people are gay." "Ah, I see," she said. "Well, to answer your concerns, the seminary I went to was quite open-minded." She went on to tell me how they used gender-neutral references for God, which basically made my head explode. Then I worried maybe she was too liberal ...
Read more

Tadsana - Mountain

Image
Here's a picture of me celebrating in front of a big-ass, famous mountain in Indonesia. Unfortunately, it is foggy and you cannot see the mountain. It's probably judgment for lying about menstruating when grilled by the holy man guarding the temple. I've been fortunate in the instructors I've had the opportunity to study under, particularly in Bali. One was Marylene Henry, who studied with the students of Orit Sanj Gupta , who is part of the lineage of Krishnamacharya himself. A bit of yoga history... Around 1,000 A.D. many yogis began moving toward the mountains and caves of the Himalayas, withdrawing from the world. They were devotees of Shiva and their leader was Matsyendra Nath, or the Fish Lord (from whom we get matsyendrasana , or Lord of the Fishes pose).  Under Nath's leadership, it is said that the yogis developed siddhis , or supernatural talents. Periodically, they would come down from the mountains to perform miracles for the common people, in order to d...
Read more

Namaste - Godhead, Part I

Image
C.S. Lewis once said something to the effect of, “I don’t write to express what I think; I write to find out what I think.”  That sentiment has always resonated with me. I, too, try to work things out in my head by writing them down, moving them around, saying them differently, and just praying that at some point, I have a lightbulb moment where I can be like, “Oh! THAT must be what's going on inside me!” Sometimes it works, and sometimes even weeks after pressing “Publish,” I’m still trying to work things out in my head.  I say all that to warn you that this is that type of post.  Several days ago, I posted this to whatever it is we’re calling the Instagram/Facebook conglomerate these days: I didn’t come up with the original, but it really resonated with me, so I shared it to my stories. A woman I’ve met only a handful of times in my life (from church, of course) & haven’t spoken to in years, instigated the following exchange, via direct message: I am not good at co...
Read more

Choice

Image
When I used to teach The Giver, I asked students to create their own utopias. What would it look like? How would order be maintained? What would you eradicate that is present in our current world, and what would you add? How would you do it? It was an interesting exercise. It kind of made me wonder what a utopia would look like for me. I think it would be a world without decisions. I fkking hate decisions. I guess that's pretty ironic, given that the lack of choices in The Giver is what makes it a dystopia and what the protagonist works to overcome. It's weird how one man's dystopia is another man's utopia. I guess it's like John Milton said: "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." Today, I had a 2nd interview for a position teaching high school English in my SEVENTH district. Instead of preparing, I did the following things: * scrolled through friends' Goodreads updates * shopped for eye shadow, then dec...
Read more

Hope

Image
I think if I still lived in South Carolina, I would be described as tender-hearted. And it would not be a compliment. It would be like when you say, "Bless her heart," while watching someone from New Hampshire try to figure out grits. Tender-hearted is too easily given to feelings. I think my feelings are bigger than the rest of me put together. If I could get rid of some of my feelings, I think the first one I would get rid of wouldn't be anger or sadness or jealousy. It would be hope. I hate hope. Hope is the thing that kills you. I know that's an expression commonly used in soccer-football but since it's the Superbowl here in America, it feels appropriate. I had a date tonight. My friend Abbie gave me this beautiful necklace a few days ago that she said helps manifest love. For the first time in a long time, I actually felt hopeful... I mean, not that I was going to fall in love on a first date, but like -- hopeful that I could even still feel positive about a ...
Read more