Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness
Section 5: Chapter 32—Popped Corn
Dear reader: If you or a loved one struggle(d) with anxiety, this chapter will resonate. The struggle that ensued for me was painful, but it brought me to a point in my life in which I could no longer pretend that I could handle it all anymore. Things in my life were going to have to change.
Enjoy.
Chapter 32: Popped Corn
One evening upon arriving home from yoga class excited to share some new insight, my husband said, challenging me, “I thought yoga was supposed to make you more peaceful.”
The girls were sleeping, and I was talking about philosophical topics while he had been hoping for the kind of connection that didn’t need conversation. I couldn’t deny that peaceful did not describe what I had been experiencing. Rather, I’d been busily reclaiming over half a lifetime of abandoned and dammed-up opinions, beliefs, emotions, ideas, hopes, and dreams. Now they all vied for my attention and weren’t easily pushed aside or exchanged for a sexy negligee. Far from feeling peaceful, I felt like a multilimbed, emotional monster.
“You know your husband doesn’t like this version of you. He wants a little less talk and a lot more . . . you know,” said Shame.
“So these days you’re just spending money, not making any?” clucked Guilt.
“I’m still here for you,” offered Depression.
Confused and overwhelmed, I went to Maryann for answers about why yoga was not uplifting me into a spiritual and peaceful version of myself but was instead unraveling me. Maryann listened and then burst out in joyful laughter. She said, “Keri, yoga is not about becoming peaceful. Yoga is about becoming who you are!”
So I’m an overly sensitive, messy, unpredictable, disorganized, impossible-to-satisfy woman? I thought. What if I don’t like who I am? What if I want to box up my emotions and send them back to wherever they came from? What if I want to return to a state of “ignorance is bliss,” and not knowing, not asking, and not feeling?
Both fearful and awestruck, I wondered if I was like corn once popped, incapable of returning to who I was before.
***
At this point in my life, bookstores were no longer places in which I found no magic but instead places where I discovered a little too much magic. One day my eyes were drawn to a colorful cover. I reached out, felt the vibration of something calling from another dimension, and grabbed the book.
“Evil! Pagan worship, astral travel, and witchcraft? When are you going to stop spiraling further and further away from normal?” Fear admonished.
“But it can’t be evil,” I argued. “It’s just a book!”
“Remember how Eve snuck forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden? Leave alone what is not yours to take,” Guilt advised.
I patted the book back into place.
“Walking away from temptation. That’s how you prove your worthiness to God,” Guilt said, approvingly.
“We may need your Cloak of Empty Calories soon, Depression! Don’t give up!” Fear said.
“I have the patience of Job,” Depression answered.
“Dark magic!” squealed a new emotion.
“Who are you?” I asked this shivering newcomer.
“Anxiety,” he answered in a squeaky voice.
“Anxiety, what do you want?” I demanded.
“To keep you away from dangerous things like witches and evil books and d-d-dark paths!” he stuttered.
“Isn’t that Fear’s job?” I asked.
“Fear can’t stop her now,” said Guilt. “Anxiety might be just what we need to put a stop to all this frenetic searching. We need to get back on God’s good side pronto. Go ahead, Anxiety.”
So Anxiety took up residence in my nervous system and, from there, ran up and down my body all day long. Any confrontation with people outside of family became increasingly difficult. My body shook and trembled, and I was always cold, the kind of cold that couldn’t be relieved with an extra sweater but required a hot bath. Teaching yoga, and ensuring that no one noticed my unsteady body, took an immense amount of control. And while Depression’s patience may have been endless my own patience with my family and myself was wearing thin.
Yet while my emotions worked together to pull me backward to safer, more recognizable paths, Anxiety could not touch Curiosa, who continued to pull me forward on my path to greater knowledge. Paralyzed by conflicting forces, I finally acknowledged that it was time for a showdown with my personal equivalent of the dangerous, scaly swamp creature in my adventure books — God.
***
I slipped into a skirt, sweater, nude nylons, and pumps. I dropped our toddlers off in the church-provided daycare. But just before I stepped inside the sanctuary my body began to shake and sweat. As everyone filed in around me, I felt like a trapped animal, unable to cross the precipice into the sanctuary. I wanted to scream and run away.
“Get a grip,” growled Guilt. “You’re a mother now. This isn’t just about you. You need to give your kids the proper Christian upbringing they deserve, as your parents did for you.”
“Yeah, but that hasn’t actually worked out so . . .” I argued.
“Your issues with religion are silly and overblown! Now put them behind you and get inside before you make a scene,” Guilt instructed.
I forced my feet forward and searched for my suited-up husband, who’d saved me a place in the middle of a pew. Once I sat down, I crossed my legs, folded my hands on my lap, and tried to pretend that I was comfortable in church.
While I stood and sang and repeated words along with the congregation, I fidgeted through the sermon when the pastor spoke of truths I was currently questioning, particularly those that hinted at Christianity being “the only way.” Discordant aspects of my personality clashed with each other.
“Don’t judge!” said the part of me trained by the yoga community.
“Be good!” the anxious Christian in me retorted.
“Why must I continue to remind you to be nice?” the aspect of me raised in Minnesota asked.
At home, too, there were signs of my discordant factions. Dog-eared New Age books by Eckhart Tolle, Anodea Judith, Judith Lasater, and B. K. S Iyengar mingled on my nightstand with books by Christian mystical authors such as St. Teresa of Avila, Thomas Merton, John of the Cross, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and the Bible. I wanted them all to be correct, but they contradicted one another. Was there a hell or wasn’t there? Did reincarnation happen or not? Did God love us unconditionally, or did a jealous God set strict conditions? Where was the Great Truth, the truth that I could cling to for the rest of my life? Not just any truth, but the truest truth, the key that opens all life’s doors, a truth so wise it can end all misunderstandings and crises. If only I could sort through all the books and teachers and wisdom and get to the Great Truth, I thought back then, everything — my life, my relationships, my mind — would settle into their permanently calm and happy place.
But I was at a dead end with books, which did not agree with one another. I was at a stalemate with God, with whom I was not talking. I was roadblocked at yoga class, where I was encouraged to focus only on growing peace and light. I needed my husband to help me break through the tangled mess, but each time I tried to get help from him, I rammed into a wall he magically erected anytime something “spiritual” came out of my mouth. Once I accused him of lacking interest in listening to topics about spirituality because he had no desire to grow or challenge himself.
“What happened to the person I married?” my husband retorted.
With tears flowing down my face, my hands in fists, I whispered, “I will never be her again. If you want another bird with a broken wing, you’ll have to leave me. If you want me, you’ll have to accept me as I am now. I can’t go back.”
No one was more surprised than I was at the quiet but powerful voice with which I spoke, without my usual desire to backtrack or buffer my comments.
“Okay, let’s just calm down,” he said, after gauging my seriousness.
Then we finally talked. He explained it wasn’t that he didn’t care to grow or listen to my concerns but that he was “full up” on religious talk. He said that it took him back to narcissistic preachers in a high school chapel with their threats of paddle swats and altar antics, all memories he didn’t want to dredge up.
It finally dawned on me that though our upbringing was very different the result had been the same: neither of us had had the opportunity to question, explore, and investigate spirituality, God, or the meaning of life on our own terms.
I accepted his explanation but still expected his help. “I don’t know which way to turn. I need help. My problems matter. I can’t just make them disappear,” I explained.
“I guess I like to fix things, and I don’t know how to fix this,” he admitted.
“I don’t want you to fix me. I just need you to listen,” I answered.
We ended our argument with an agreement: he promised to stay engaged in philosophical conversations as long as he could. When he felt overloaded, he would say, “I’m full.” I, in turn, promised to bookmark my thoughts at that point, as well as make more of an attempt to connect with him in ways that didn’t require conversation. Having this agreement was likely a mature decision, given our disparate personal needs and our mutual wish to stay married, but the agreement heavily favored my husband. He never had to step into discomfort, and I never got to step out of it. Going forward, all he had to do was say “I’m full,” and I fell dutifully back in line, which thinned and watered down our marriage like from whole milk to skim. Now he wasn’t the only one asking, “What happened to the person I married?”
Recognizing the shortcomings of the man behind the calm facade I’d known for seven years was a letdown worse than my first underwhelming yoga training. Judging from the risk he took by showing me his vulnerable side, and my disappointed reaction, it’s easier to understand why people hide their vulnerability. Because while I wanted to see him vulnerable, and told him so, it also frightened me to see him that way. That day I lost my belief that my husband could always be the strong, confident one who didn’t struggle or doubt. Early in our marriage I had called Todd a brick wall because nothing seemed to hurt him. But after the months we lived with colicky babies, my physical and mental health issues, and my complaints about lack of communication and diverging lives, I’d seen him be emotional and doubting, so it was time to take the label off of him.
Indeed, now I was fully popped corn and I couldn’t put myself back into a bag as kernels — nor did I want to. If my husband had left me, I would have accepted that it had to happen that way. I’m not suggesting I wanted to become a divorcée and a single mother absent visible means of entry back to the corporate world and livable income of my own. I just knew a truth: if I didn’t set myself free to search and ponder, apart from Fear and Guilt, I would slowly die inside. There was only one way to the freedom I sought — to move forward, not backward.
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