Darby Di Natale

Traumatic

2010-06-03T23:42:31Z

This post is going to be about something disturbing and traumatic that I saw today, so if you are easily upset about the condition of the world, please don't read on.

]]> This morning, Jason and I were biking along the beautiful beach path from the Pacific Palisades, through Santa Monica and down towards Venice Beach. We were having a particularly good time together, and I felt a sense of safety and well-being, which is not a common thing for me.

I looked out over the rolling waves of the ocean, and I felt a certain goodness and thankfulness in my being. There has been so much trauma and stress this year, and it is still inside my physical body: without warning my muscles engage and lock into tight knots, a wash of debilitating poison flows through my veins, and I brace for the onslaught of emotional and psychological terror. It usually results in a migraine or the inability to sleep and ensuing exhaustion. My body has reacted this way since I was a small child.

To combat this instinct, now that much of the trauma seems to come in aftershocks and we seem to be out of the epicenter of crisis, I've had to deliberately focus on good things, being mindful of my thoughts and essentially running them through a sieve. So this morning, while I was biking by the sea, I was breathing in deeply on purpose; intentionally filling my lungs with the goodness and beauty that was surrounding me in order to chase away some of the vast lingering darkness and anxiety.

We wound our way around the sandy, serpentine path and talked, and I felt a sense of simply being. I was actually present in the moment and not in my usual state of fighting being worried about what horrific thing may be right around the corner.

As I was riding along, I looked around and to my right I saw the sand, the gentle waves of the beautiful Pacific Ocean. To my left, green and towering mountains. The Santa Monica pier in the distance and white gulls flying overhead. The wind was at my back, and my defenses were down. I mean, if there's anywhere to let my guard down, it's on that beach path. The beauty of my surroundings was enough to fill my mind if I let it, and I wanted to let it. To push away the trauma that I've carried inside myself for so long. The chaos-stained world that is my internal reality much of the time faded into the background, and I was content to leave it there. What would I possibly encounter on a quiet Thursday morning, riding a bike by the sea, during time I had set aside to deliberately put aside my worries?

As we rounded into the beach town of Venice, we saw a yellow-taped-off square of space at the entry of a store front. A small crowd of people stood and looked on, as if there was a show about to start. Jason asked me if they were shooting a movie. I glanced over. Then I saw it.

The dead body of a young man, a white death-cloth haphazzardly thrown over him and blood pouring from his temple, lay eerily still on the sidewalk.

The thing that I cannot erase from my mind is the techno-music blaring from the beach store that was the backdrop for the crime. An obvious tourist was snapping pictures with his digital camera. People were shopping in the adjacent shops. There were two police cars near-by, but no officers. No one was scurrying around, there was no sense of immediacy or crisis. A young man with new-looking black canvas One-Stars had been shot in the head and lay lifeless on the sidewalk, and no one seemed to be doing anything.

Why didn't someone turn off the music? Where was the respect for his life? All I could think was, this is someone's little boy. Somewhere there is a mother who has no idea that her son lays dead on the sidewalk on a quiet Thursday morning in front of a shop on the beach.

I felt like I was going to pass out and throw up. We instinctively turned our bikes around and started riding back towards our starting point. I tried to maintain strength to move myself away from the scene and not black out from the shock of it, and to do so I had to force myself to think of other things. The wind blowing into my face, and sand crunching and crackling under my bike tires.

Innocent, happy people biked toward Venice, toward the dead body, and as I rode, I had an overwhelming compulsion to warn them to turn around. But I was unable. I envisioned myself slamming my bike in front of the oncoming traffic and screaming, "A boy has been shot up ahead and they don't have the human decency to turn off the fucking throbbing techno music! Turn back-- please don't go any further!"

But I didn't. I couldn't. All I could do was pedal ahead, shocked, ashamed, powerless to save anyone from anything. I've never been more aware of that in my life than I am now. Every day, I will continue to see those who are sprawled out, alone and bleeding on the sidewalk, and those who are obliviously headed toward the trauma that is this existence. And there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it.

The Boy Who Questions Everything

2010-03-30T03:48:51Z

It has been eighteen years since I was a girl of seventeen, a senior in high school, and I was cast in a play.

]]> (Incidentally, the play was called The Wall, and it was completely inappropriate for a high school to do-- it was intensely depressing and sad and all about Jews in the Warsaw ghetto being slowly taken to concentration camps.)

But there was a boy in the play-- the lead in the play, as a matter of fact. And we became good friends through being in that most depressing play. After school and before play practice we would walk to Hanna's Market and each get a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, and eat all of it (times have changed, slightly.) Then we would find a rock that we could kick back and forth all the long walk back to the school. We would talk about all kinds of things, and one thing was for sure. This kid was different.

At seventeen, I had no idea who I was, but you wouldn't have been able to get me to believe that then. At that point, I was pretty much a product and sum total of everything I had been taught in Christian school.. and that included being too scared of evil and deception to question anything. So when I met this particular boy-- who questioned just about everything-- I felt like someone handed me secret papers with a cryptic note: It doesn't have to be this way. Have you considered that reality may be very different from what everyone is saying?

I went out to dinner with this very same boy last night. He still happens to question everything. Over the years, he has been judged harshly by those who just want everyone to go with the flow. It's easier that way. Just give into the strong current of someone else's thought, and float with the others down stream. There have been times when I myself have been frustrated by him. Why can't he just go with it sometimes?

After eighteen years of being this boy's best friend, I have come to count on the always-available reminder of the secret papers of long ago. When I find myself hopeless, I realize I've just gotten tired of fighting the current. But it really doesn't have to be this way, and reality actually is very different from what everyone is saying. And after all these years, that's what has kept me alive. I realize once again I can close the curtain on the depressing play I find myself in, and I can step outside and become a part of a different perspective on life. It's always my choice, and it's just a reminder away.

Here's to the boy who questions everything.

A Sense Of Well Being

2010-01-11T03:54:45Z

It's been so long since I've written on here, and so much has changed. But let me start by saying I have recently begun to experience something that I have never known before. A sense of well being.

]]> Sometimes it just comes over me. Randomly. I'll be going about my life, doing nothing of consequence, when all of a sudden an awareness comes over me: In this moment I am ok. There is no torment inside. There is no war to hold myself back from temptation. There is just a miraculous quiet. A stillness inside that is unfamiliar to me, but I am in love with it.

This is probably something that is a given for many people. For one reason or another, it has not been a given for me. If this is what it's like for most people to be human, no wonder people don't mind existing so much.

waking up crying

2009-05-08T01:50:00Z

For the second time in the past week, I woke up crying today.

]]> It is so strange to wake up crying, because you're feeling something so strongly before you really have time to process it.

In both dreams, I dreamt that I was with my grandfather again. He was happy and he put his arm around me and hugged me. I was happy, but then I started crying, because I knew it wouldn't last. I knew he would soon be gone. I wanted to hold onto him. But I knew I couldn't.

In my dreams, I love being with him again. But it hurts so much, because it's not for real, and I realize that in my dream and even more upon waking. He is gone. Sometimes the grief overtakes me, and I can't breathe from all the crying.

I always knew I would miss my grandfather when he died. Sometimes, because I live so far away from home, I go about my life and forget for a moment that he is gone. But then it hits me all over again, and it's as painful as the day I saw him for the very last time.

My sister Lindsay said that losing him feels like "a brilliant star just went out." That is exactly how it feels. For some reason when he died, something strong and good and safe that I had always counted on was extinguished.

And I wonder if I will continue every now and then to wake up crying throughout the rest of my life...

Regressing

2008-11-03T21:27:41Z

I'm writing to keep myself from eating. That's embarrassing to admit, but there you go. I'm not hungry. I just want to eat, because I feel sad.

]]> There are things I automatically do when I feel bad. It used to be -for years--that I would do things (like overeat) and not know why in the world I was doing them. I know I've written about this before, but there was a time when I would go to the store, buy a ton of candy, sit in the parking lot and eat it all. That sounds so pathetic. Well, it was.

There was also a time when I had a Costco size bottle of vodka hidden under a bunch of sweaters in my closet. That sounds even MORE pathetic. It was.

I didn't even know why I felt like I needed these things. All I knew was that the pain inside was too overwhelming. I was desperate for this one feeling. It's the moment somewhere between having the taste and texture of chocolate in my mouth and swallowing it...when it gets into the bloodstream and hits the brain. You take a deep breath and exhale, and....a big sigh. Everything in me relaxes, everything is ok. For three seconds.

Or it's the moment when you swallow your liquor and it burns all the way down, and you know everything is going to be ok in just five, four, three, two, one...a few more gulps and (sigh) the world is not as terrifying as it was just a minute before.

Do you know the feeling I'm talking about? I found these momentary and fleeting alleviations, but I couldn't find real comfort anywhere at all. I should make an important clarification and say that I couldn't receive the comfort that was available to me. So I tried to shut up the screaming and crying inside with food ......and with Costco liquor. I wasn't far enough along on my journey to know what exactly all the crying and screaming inside was about-- and that was part of the problem--I just knew it was there.

Having pain and not knowing where it is coming from is maybe the hardest place to be (for me.) I can't work through it, so I try to silence it, and it comes out sideways... overeating, overdrinking, anything I do in excess to quiet the pain. It's much easier when I know what the pain is about. If I can identify it, I have learned that it's much better to embrace it, feel it, grieve it, and then it is released. Even if that process takes a long time.

Right now, I know that my pain is coming from feeling grief and loss. My grandfather, whom I loved very dearly, died in early October. I will never again in my lifetime hear his familiar deep voice burst into an old song when an overheard phrase reminds him of a song he loves. Or hear his laugh, or see his kind face that always reminds me of happy times from my childhood.

Also, my parents were visiting and they just left this morning. It made me really sad to say goodbye to them, to live so far away from them. I know I am supposed to be all grown up, but I want my Mom and Dad. So, like a moth to a flame, I eat and eat and eat and eat until I feel sick. (Fortunately, I don't want to drink like that anymore, and I"m really thankful for that.)

Over the past five years I have been working on learning how to cope with the deep pain inside by doing other things that are good for me. Things that aren't self-destructive. I can tell I am getting better because some of the more harmful things I used to do don't even sound like a good idea to me. They seem more and more foreign, like something I wouldn't do, something that would cause more stress than comfort.

I have wished and hoped for a long time to desire what is good for me, and not what is harmful. It's been a long struggle, and I'm still in it somewhat. So I am sitting here all alone, but I am not drinking away my sorrow, and I am not (at the moment) eating it away either. And while yes, I can think about how comforting a large order of sweet potato fries may be, and although I can hear the severely reduced Halloween candy calling to me from the store around the corner, I have chosen to write. And I will keep trying to embrace the difficult feelings that come my way and face them, and not try to silence them with apple fritters when I'm already full or smother them with sickening amounts of frosting.

So wish me luck.

A Little Strange

2008-09-28T07:25:57Z

It's 11:30 pm, and there is crazy rave music blaring outside our house.

]]> Women in short dresses and high boots are hoola-hooping like I never knew was possible. People are clustered together, drinks in hand, laughing, talking. There is a 12 foot yellow and orange simulated fire somehow projected on the side of our house, the flames moving with the music. Tiki torches are burning all over the place. A random man just came into our living room looking for the bathroom. This is not how our evening usually goes. But our neighbors are having a block party.

We live in a four-unit condo building. It is built down a hill, with one unit in front of the other. This block party starts at the top and goes all the way down, running the entire length of our building. We were going to get a hotel room for the night, but the kids fell asleep in our back room, thanks to two loud box fans.

Its a little strange to step outside your front door and into a party.

It was fun for a bit.... but now I am ready to go to sleep, and I don't know if that is going to be possible before about 4 am. There is an extension cord running from the portable photo booth outside through our front door and into the outlet in our living room. This was ok at 4 in the afternoon, but now we want to shut our front door. Apparently when Juan gets here, he will move the photo booth to a different level of the party yard, and we will finally be able to shut our front door.

Which leads me to the question... who the heck is Juan?

Is this even really MY life?

A Hermit

2008-07-27T02:00:13Z

I don't know how many people know this about me, but I would be happy to live in the middle of nowhere and be completely isolated. This is no reflection whatsoever on the people I love. I have come to terms with the fact that I mostly just want to be alone.

]]> I have a problem that keeps happening over and over again. I am an introvert who really loves people. Because of my love for people, I think I give off the impression that I am an extrovert or someone who likes to get together a lot. But to be honest, it is exhausting for me.

I have many people in my life whom I love so much and really care about. If you are reading this, you are probably one of them. Perhaps you have noticed that I am very difficult to get ahold of much of the time. Perhaps you even feel like I don't care about you because of that. You are not alone. I am afraid that most of the people I really love think that I don't care. It plagues me day and night.

Almost everyone in my life has asked me at some point, "Have I done something to hurt you? Because I feel like you have pulled away." Even more people say to me, "You never answer my phone calls, you never call me back..." I would just like to make a grand apology. If someone is looking for a friend who will be in touch on a regular basis, I am going to let you down. I'm sure I already have at one point or another. I don't like to talk on the phone... it is just something I have come to terms with.

I am actually a hermit.

I say this right now because I feel like I am being pulled in a million directions here at home. It's not even so much things people say to me as it is a general feeling of knowing that I am letting people down. I am pretty much just trying to keep my head above the water most days. Trying to take care of my children. Trying to survive.

It takes a lot of energy to make my voice sound like I am doing ok. It takes a lot of energy to make my face look like I am not completely falling apart. This is part of the reason i just really don't like to be around people, no matter how much I love them. Ask Jason. He will probably tell you that I am always trying to escape to be alone, mostly driving by myself, but now because that is completely environmentally irresponsible, I head off to the woods.

Jason once made a joke about me which is really true. There is a book about people with a personality disorder whose biggest fear is abandonment. The book is called, "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me." He said that my book should be called, "I Love You, Please Leave Me Alone."

I think I have given the wrong impression to people throughout my life, and I don't know how to change it. My dream would be for people to know that I really truly love them very deeply, and that they wouldn't feel hurt if I rarely see them or even talk to them. That I would be the kind of friend who is just somewhere out there in the universe, caring about you, and that some day our paths will cross and we will most likely have a heart to heart as if no time had passed.

Anyway... I am a hermit. I am admitting this to myself and now to you. Please forgive me. I am a hermit.

I Don't Know What To Say

2008-07-24T02:23:18Z

I am home for the summer. I don't know what to say. I haven't written in a while.

]]> I guess I feel pretty protective of myself right now. I feel pulled into a million directions, and split into a million pieces. It's not anything anyone else is doing... it's all my own internal mess pressing in on me. My precariously-built house of cards falling down...

I was running today. I have gotten out of the habit. It is so hard to get started again. The air outside is so heavy and hot, it clings to me, it sticks to me, it weighs me down. One foot in front of the other, again and again and again and again until I find a rhythm.

Finding a rhythm is kind of like falling asleep. I usually don't really remember when it happens, but all of a sudden I'm not thinking about running anymore, I'm thinking about other things and moving effortlessly. Today it felt like I was trying to run through oatmeal. It was laborious, grueling, exhausting. I had to think about it the entire time. One foot in front of the other, breathe...keep going...breathe...keep going.

Sometimes life feels that way, too...

Going Home

2008-06-10T05:44:31Z

I am going home at the end of the week, and I feel crazy.

]]> I am so full of thoughts and feelings and worries and I just can't believe our first year here is over. I am excited to see the people at home who I love so much. I am completely terrified to feel all of the things I will feel when I go home.

I wish I could just live in the moment, but without consciously trying to do so, I visit these little visions in the future. In my mind I am driving up 273 from Newark and passing my house. I feel a physical pain in my heart and throat. The air is suffocating... so humid... and it is closing in all around me. My piano is in there. The porch swing. The stone fireplace. I ache for my home. There it is, but I cannot go in. Even if I could, it would hurt too much.

Out here in the Pacific Palisades, it is 68 degrees and the air is clear... and I run three miles, much of it uphill. The sun beats down on the top of my head, but I don't mind. It is dry here, but not too dry. Sweat drips into my eyes and my lips are salty. I keep running. I have always hated to run. But now I am able to breathe in deeply and slowly enough as I go. I am not gasping for my next breath. That makes all the difference. I can't believe that I, the one who hates to run, am actually running. I am doing it.

When I reach the top of my route, I turn and see the ocean. There is a part of me that doesn't want to leave here. I have carved out a place for myself, finally. I am so afraid to lose it. I am finally not miserable and lonely. I am afraid to lose the security I have started to feel out here.

I'm different now than I was when I left home. I'm afraid to lose that, too. I'm afraid to lose myself entirely, as I often do. I have started to develop some kind of a consistent self out here, and I fear to go back ... that I will unravel and leave the new pieces of this girl in dead brown grass and sweltering summer heat.

I Want To Want What Is Good For Me

2008-05-21T19:54:56Z

I love chocolate. I love candy. I love decadent pastries, filled donuts and coffee that is white with Sweet Italian Creme Creamer. I love cake with lots and lots and lots of frosting. I love chewy brownies with chocolate chips in them.

]]> I love huge bowls of pasta. I love pancakes and french toast and waffles all drenched in syrup. I love eating and eating and eating and eating until I nearly feel sick. I love beer. I love rum. I love being so drunk that everything is finally ok. I love escaping... anything that makes me feel momentarily ok... I love.

While it's happening.

Afterwards, not so much.

I don't love the weight I've gained. I don't love hangovers. I don't love the crash after eating a bag of swedish fish. I don't love feeling so full that it hurts to breathe.

I want to want what is good for me. I want to want to do what is right for me. I wonder if it will always be such a battle. I wonder if it's possible for me to get to the point where I actually WANT to do what will be better for me in the long run. I've actually met people like that. They enjoy being healthy. Sincerely, literally enjoy it. They have said that you go through the struggle for a while, but then eventually you know how much better you feel when you take care of your body, and the good outweighs the bad....

I just want to feel better.

Still Going to Boot Camp

2008-05-08T02:45:51Z

It's been a week and a half of boot camp, and I'm still feeling it.

]]> I think the hardest part has been waking up so early. It makes me anxious in the middle of the night because I'm afraid that I have to wake up soon. Waking up at 4:45 feels like waking up in the middle of the night to me.

I definitely feel better mentally when I go. Over the weekend-- when I didn't go-- I felt pretty bad again. There was a definite difference. Exercising that hard for an hour every day seems like it helps. I don't think I can continue to wake up that early after boot camp is over... especially because it means I have to go to bed at 9, which is just about 1/2 hour after my kids finally fall asleep. Maybe I could wake up at 5:30 instead.

I will write the lyrics of the songs I have written soon, and hopefully post the songs themselves, even though they are not good recordings.

Booty Camp

2008-05-01T03:55:51Z

Well... yesterday a blanket was covering my alarm clock, and I didn't hear my alarm. I woke up at 6 am and was completely frustrated because it was too late to go to boot camp.

]]> I had all of these defeatist thoughts... such as, "See, this will never work..." blah blah blah. But this morning I set TWO alarms and woke up at 4:45 and got my butt to boot camp.

It feels like the middle of the night at that time of the morning...I guess because it's right on the threshold of being the middle of the night vs. the morning. The moon is bright, the stars are still out, and I'm running up Temescal Canyon Blvd (a complete incline) with eight other people in formation. Who's life is this?

It's all said and done by 6:30-- when I normally would just be waking up.

It hurts like hell. But it feels good.

Day 1

2008-04-29T01:49:12Z

I woke up this morning at 5 to go to my first day of boot camp.

]]> It totally kicked my butt. Hopefully my butt will get smaller as it gets kicked every morning. I am spending the next three weeks going to bed at 9 pm so that I can wake up at 5 without feeling panicked. For the next three weeks, my goal is to take the best care of my physical body as I possibly can. We'll see if I feel mentally better. I'm sure I will.

This morning they worked us really hard, but I can do just about anything for an hour. By 6:30 it was all over. Usually I'd just be waking up at that point. I feel like I'm beating the system.

I came home, and after the morning get-ready-for-school routine, I came back and wrote a song. Maybe this is what I've needed all along. To just sweat so hard that a song comes out.

Let's Try This

2008-04-28T02:01:22Z

I have decided to give myself a little kick in the arse.

]]> Beginning tomorrow at 5:30 AM, I will be doing a boot camp every morning for the next three weeks. I know exercise won't solve everything, but it will make me feel a lot better. Problem is, I hate to exercise. Hate it. I don't know why... I just do. I want to love it. But I don't. Some people turn to compulsive cleaning or exercise to relieve stress, and I turn to baked goods and candy and pasta. WTF? Why can't I be a compulsively in-shape and immaculate housekeeper?

Up until this point, I have just eaten to comfort myself and wished that I liked to exercise. But I realized that if I waited until exercise sounded like fun to begin doing it, I'd find myself 65 and still waiting. I was too hopeless to actually motivate myself enough to join a gym, but a friend of mine is in this boot camp and emailed the trainer for me. It all sort of just happened, and I found myself signed up to begin tomorrow.

This is going to take a lot of self discipline.... to wake up before 5 am and to do whatever Boot Camp entails. (The fact that it's called Boot Camp gives me an idea of what it entails.) I am doing this to feel better physically, but especially mentally.

It begins in less than 12 hours.... yikes.

A good moment

2008-04-01T23:05:27Z

I do not take this for granted...

]]> My children are quietly drawing at the table, and there is a small cool breeze coming in through the window. The sun is out, the house is bright, and it's a good moment.