For some reason, hearing from my lawyer triggers the fuck out of me.
As soon as I see the first letter of her first name in my email inbox, I shrink back, recoil like a worm in the vicinity of touch. (I’m counting on her not one of the 5.82 people reading this blog--yikes.)
She is perfectly reasonable, and she’s reaching out for a reasonable reason: parenting plan paperwork for Arden’s dad and me. I don’t interact enough with my lawyer to really know her, but from all I can tell, she’s a kind person. I do know she’s trying to help me.
The paperwork itself: it’s not terribly complicated.
It’s been dragging on for going on two years.
I imagine my lawyer sighs mightily whenever she has to reach out. “This bitch,” she probably grumbles as she hits SEND, not with a lot of vitriol. Just normal-level irritation.
At times I've taken weeks to reply to her. You also have to account for the weeks it can take for me to first read her communications. None of which are long or mean-spirited or even passive aggressive.
She reached out this past Monday. I haven’t yet replied. I did jump my eyes over the email, the way one might jump one’s feet over hot coals.
***
I started this missive, though, with three very important words: for some reason.
I do have a good reason, a very good reason, an excellent reason, for my triflingness.
A reason that, if you saw it completely, you’d nod slowly and in perfect understanding. My action, or inaction, would make complete sense to you.
And to me. In this right now, I don’t know the reason. I have to do some IM so I can see it.
(Usually, you have to do the work, the practice, of seeing, to understand. What’s unconscious will remain so until you sit with it and see.)
I have IM’d this legal resistance of mine before. It helped. It helped a lot. I just need to do it again. And then I’ll see more. And I’ll be able to answer my lawyer with ease, or at least with a great deal more ease.
Because I know this, and because this knowing is a felt-knowing, a bodily knowing based on having practiced already some on this topic: I have the breathing room I need until I again practice, the felt self-compassion I need, to pat my own shoulder and say with real affection, “I know you’re doing your best, honey. And it’s okay that your best right now is to shrink back like a little bitch. You’re my little bitch, and goddammit, I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
And I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t trade my little bitchness for all the gold in the world.
***
This felt inner self-affection keeps me soft.
It keeps me soft through the stirrings of the inner civil war whose sounding whoop is “You should be able to/What’s wrong with you/Do you know how you look/You’re blah-blah years old and you can’t even blah-blah/etc, etc, on and on and on.
And because I am soft, I can hold these stirrings and be with them and, in being with them, see them more accurately as a child self doing her best.
And then all there is is kindness. At the very least, there is a great deal more of it.
***
Triggers put us in exact integrity with the body.
There is no more precise indication of where the body, where a person, needs compassion, than her triggers.
The body cares not for right or wrong. The body cares only for integrity, thank God.
To be kind to our triggers is to be in exact integrity with, in perfection harmony, with our bodies-God-Life Herself.
To be kind to ourselves when we are triggered is to be in exact integrity with, in perfection harmony, with our bodies-God-Life Herself.
If we will welcome and be kind to our triggers: then they will bless us and direct us far better than we could ever direct ourselves.
At the very least, they will unlock for us the self-kindness we need during the spaces between wanting so very much to take an action...and actually taking it.
We will remember that these spaces are necessary. They really are absolutely fucking necessary.
We’ll be more forgiving of others, too. Of the world with all it unfairness and bad drivers.
We’ll be more understanding. Not as irritated.
***
In my shrinking back, I am in integrity with my body.
Knowing this gives me the softness, the strength—because true softness is what true strength is—to put down a blanket for my non-answering-the-email, and kneel beside her, and brush her forehead the way I do Arden’s when she isn't feeling well--doing this, that is, instead of berating her that she should be able to go out and run a marathon in the rain even though she has a fever.
It grants me the knowing that I will act in perfect timing.
That I am not out of perfect timing. That I can't be not in perfect timing.
That my non-answeringness, my shrinking, is a part, a vital part, of my perfect timing.
***
What I know, too, is that this paperwork has taken the time it’s taken on purpose.
Here’s the thing about bodily integrity. It won’t let you be finished with a thing before you’ve seen what needs to be seen.
Gently, and quietly, and persistently: the parenting plan paperwork will drag on until what is to be seen, is seen.
Not because I am bad.
The paperwork, with so very much great kindness and love and gentleness, drags on for me, on my behalf, because I am so dearly loved by my body-God-Life Herself, who will wait until I am exactly ready to see what wants to be seen.
They will keep it so that all will be well, or well enough. It will be okay. It is okay.
Fort they understand that I’ll drag my heels. They understand that of course I'll drag my heels. The heel-dragging, the avoiding: it’s a vital, blessed part of the eventual doing.
***
Same thing with you.
The relationship you haven’t pulled yourself out of, the job you haven’t left, the confrontation from which you cower, the apology you owe that you haven’t yet spoken. You know, your “you should be able to/what’s wrong with you/do you know how you look” thing.
You have an excellent reason for this thing. This I know.
And if you are nice to it, even just a little bit…you’re drawing closer to its resolution.
But that’s not the point. The resolution of the thing isn’t the point.
Being sweet to the child self that is coming up through the thing: being sweet with, being nice to that child, this the point.
The thing resolves as a by-product of your softness. Of your softening. It'll just happen.
***
The parenting plan paperwork will get turned in, will be resolved, in perfect accord with my capacity for seeing what wants to be seen.
And I, in all my glorious little bitch glory, will see what wants to be seen. Of course I will.
Of course you will, Leslie.
This sweet utterance arises courtesy of my inner girl.
She's here because I gave her a blanket instead of forcing her outside to run a marathon and answer an email she isn't ready to answer. She has colorful barrettes on the ends of her braided hair. She wears a Catholic school plaid uniform jumper. Her face is little-black-girl-Vaseline-shiny. Very sweet. She takes my hand. Looks up at me with all the faith in the world.
In her, in me, in myself: I have all the faith in the world.
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