Tag: Awakening

Celery Skin (Refeeding Day 3)

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Uncategorized, Water Fast2 Comments

I got up early to go get blood tests.  I barely slept.  I tossed and turned all night.  The “No one likes me” crap in my head is here.  The past couple of days when I’m sitting outside having my juice, no one chooses to sit with me.  They pull chairs and tables together and sit somewhere else.  When I do pull up a chair and sit with the group, I get talked over, interrupted or ignored.  Not sure why this still bothers me or how to stop it once it starts bothering me.  I’m not even sure I want to talk sometimes – the constant sharing of stories is exhausting and most of the time it isn’t real connecting.  But still, society tells me this is the way we are supposed to connect and I’m doing it wrong.  I’ve worked on it so much, but it still shows up.  I know that I’m the source of the problem and that half of it I’m just making up in my head.  I want to go home.  I want to withdraw.  It’s coming up for a reason and now that I’m no longer water fasting, my nervous system is ready to work on these type of issues.  So, I’ll work on it some more – bring it on – that’s part of why I’m here.

The blood test place opened up late and it took over an hour and a half to get blood drawn.  They had the air conditioning on arctic so my fingers were blue and I was shivering when it was my turn.  The lady drawing blood had to try three times to get a vein.  Did my veins get smaller on the fast or was my blood turning to slushie?  When I got back I had my morning juice in my room with the heat on.

I swear my skin smells like celery.  I washed my underarms 3 times today and I still smell like celery.  It’s better than BO, but just so weird.  My eczema is gone and the skin on my face actually looks pretty good and healthy.  I gained some weight although I’m still two belt sizes down.

I worked a little, read a little, napped a little, netflixed a little and drank my juices.  Not the most exciting day.  The last juice of the day didn’t go down too well.  I went up stairs to lay down and just felt flu-ish.  My stomach is gurgling a lot too.  No pretty pictures today – just my poor beat up arm from the blood draw and a new hole on my belt.

(c) All Rights Reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

Body Identification (Day 9)

On By rrainefioreIn Uncategorized, Water FastLeave a comment

It’s Day 9, my new halfway point.  I woke up sad today.  I have no idea what I was sad about.  I was more light headed too.  The weekend lodge guests are noisy.  They bang around and slam doors so I didn’t sleep as late as I would have liked.

My stomach was gurgley in the morning and I was hungry.  At least that didn’t last long.  A little water fixed that up.  My face is starting to get blotchy and it looks like eczema or a rash is coming up.  I’m starting to have trouble putting all the words in the right order to talk.  Some words are missing altogether.  Some words just are wrong and make no sense.  It’s difficult to type for the same reason.  In the evening I felt miserable like I had the flu.  This is common so I wasn’t worried, but it sure was unpleasant.

I got to go on a “field trip” today.  Brooke, George and Miriam are hear doing the Gerson therapy so they get to eat.  They have way more energy than me.  They decided to take quick 1 hour tours to go see some of Sedona.  The doctor said I could go if I didn’t do any hiking or 4 wheeling, neither of which sounded good to me anyway.  We went to see the Chapel of the Holy Cross.  I didn’t go up to the chapel because the walkway looked ridiculous to me, but it was a nice overlook so I sat and overlooked.  Then we went to Bell Rock, but the parking lot was completely full so we said “hey look at Bell Rock” and went back to the lodge.  That felt like enough touring for me so I didn’t go out with them later.

I contacted all the mothers (3) for Mother’s Day.  I sat in the sun.  I sat in the shade.  Sun. Shade.  Doing the reptile thing.  The gong healing guy didn’t come.  I walked the 20 miles (not really) to the yurt for this.  The Innkeeper came down and told us he could do a drum healing for us instead if we liked.  He used the bottom of a plastic bin that was in the yurt.  It was amazing.  We were all blissed out in minutes.  Later I skyped with Peggy – so wonderful to see a familiar loving face.  I really enjoyed it.  During the flu hours, I watched netflix.

The shocking thing of the day was when I got dressed and saw my body in the mirror.  My tight skinny jeans are just….jeans.  I see the body I had 20 years ago.  It looks and feels so familiar.  It feels normal, natural.  It feels like me.  This is the me in my head.  This is the body and the me I am still identified with.  This is the body I had when I was in my best athletic shape, when I moved to and fell in love with Colorado, when every weekend was full of camping, climbing, kayaking or skiing, when I met my husband, when I was excited about being a professional engineer with big career goals, when I felt beautiful, when I was invincible.  I realize I’m identified with my body and that’s not who I am.  I am not my body.  But I didn’t realize I was identified with a body I haven’t owned in 15 years.

(c) All Rights Reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

Hope

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Mid-January, I went to Wisconsin to visit my Mom.  The thing on the plane that just was so obvious to me is how loud everyone is.  Why do people have to talk so loud?  I’m on a plane where the engine noise is already loud, but I can still hear individual conversations.  The person you are talking to is right next to you, why do you have to include me in your conversation?  They weren’t even interesting conversations.  It was a whole plane of “look how cool I am”.  Exhausting.  The rest of the world is right, Americans are loud and talk too much.

It was good to see Mom.  Her new place is nice and the people that work there are nice.  She was playing Bingo when I got there.  They have three meals a day and activities.  She has a small kitchen in her apartment so she could still cook if she wanted to.  I’m very glad she was able to move out of her condo into assisted living.

I helped Mom with some shopping.  I took her to Target with me.  I wondered if it would be too much.  It was.  It is a big store and even though we only walked part of it, it was too much.  But she wanted to go to three different stores so I think that would have been worse.  We went out to lunch a couple times and also went to church.  It was great to spend time with her and see her new place.

At church, the preacher was starting a new program with the congregation.  It had steps and things to do.  It sounded like a program that would go on for a month or two and involved extra study or practice outside of Sunday church.  I remember feeling a sense of hope come over the congregation as he talked about the upcoming program and how it was going help make everyone’s year great.  I remember doing workshops, study groups, and programs like this at church when I was in high school.  I remember the sense of hope at the beginning – This is going to change my life – This is the answer to everything – This is going to fix everything – This is going to get me on the right path.  In some of the programs I grew and gained new knowledge.  I can’t say any of them changed my life.  Some sent me on a new path.  I never found the answer to everything.  I can’t say any of them were ever bad, but I noticed something as I sat there in this old familiar feeling (I really like this familiar feeling).  The level of hope at the beginning is so strong and is a feeling far stronger than the outcome ever was.  I realized that it wasn’t just hope, but a feeling of control.  Oh great, this person has all the answers and if I just do all the steps in this program, follow all the learning, I too will have all the answers.  Then I will finally have control of my life, my emotions, my finances, my spirituality, my love live, etc.  In the past, as the programs went on, I learned, but I never became in control of anything.  I never got the carrot I was chasing.  As it turns out, I cannot control life.  This is also a good example of living in the future.  I felt so wonderful at the beginning of one of these programs because of the promise of a better future.  Hope and planning and learning can be tricky.  Hope feels so wonderful and is a huge motivator so we label it as a good thing, but then don’t acknowledge that we are rejecting the present moment and living in the future.  We assume that if we don’t have hope then we must have the opposite, despair, a bad attitude, disbelief or pessimism.  What if life doesn’t have to be an either / or situation.  What if we can be present and plan when the time is right for planning, learn when the learning comes, and know that the future will be great just because it will and not because we are using hope to avoid being present now.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Mom and some of her neighbors
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Mom taking a selfie
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Some of my old needlework I found at Mom’s
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More needlework

Do/Be

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Here’s an interesting experience.  I had heard people complaining about big brother always watching.  The new theory I heard was that even when we aren’t talking on the phone, if our cell phone is nearby, it is recording us so that big brother knows what we are talking about.  Then adds for things you talked about show up on facebook or other websites later.  My first thought is, who cares?  If someone wants to listen to everything I say, how are they going to use it against me?  They are just going to be rather bored, I think.  Then after a conversation about IKEA, it shows up as an add on facebook.  I’ve never searched for IKEA or furniture on line.  As a test my roommates and I picked an obscure subject and talked about it incessantly one evening – Craw fish boil.  Nothing ever showed up for any of us about Louisiana, craw fish, cooking or anything related.  I kind of hoped it would.

I’m back at my old job.  It’s nice because it’s familiar.  It’s overwhelming because it’s a lot of work and I’m having trouble switching into face paced work mode.

I’ve been meeting up with some friends which is nice.  I’ve been watching a bunch of movies.  I’m still having trouble sleeping.  I wake up somewhere in the middle of the night, not awake enough to get up and do something, but not asleep either.  Then I sleep too late in the morning.  I’m trying to just be patient and kind to myself.  I’m sure some of it is my body adjusting to the altitude, food and lifestyle changes.  I assume some of it is reverse culture shock as I just don’t feel at home.  I feel lost.  I don’t feel like I belong here.  I don’t feel welcome in my own city.  I feel like I should do something, but I don’t know what to do.  Then even if I know what to do, I don’t want to do anything.  I feel the need to do, but I don’t want to do.  My old life, and most people’s lives are centered around doing.  I want to be, but I still don’t know how to be.  “Knowing” how to be is actually “doing” being.  That doesn’t work.  So, some days I get up and do.  Others I get up and exist (be) without the need to do.  A lot of mornings I get up, decide that the do/be dilemma is too much to handle and I go back to bed.  The nice thing about all this is that I don’t judge myself and even though I wouldn’t call this Joy or Happiness, I don’t need it to be some “good” feeling.  There is nothing wrong with it just being slightly uncomfortable.  There is nothing wrong with it being anything other than a do/be battle that sometimes goes the way of do, sometimes be and sometimes sleep.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Totally unrelated photos:

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My new hair color
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Latest coloring book creation

Mitigating Drama

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

There are 3 people from Singapore on our trip.  The husband barely talks to anyone and is so completely controlled by his wife.  The wife has a judgmental opinion about everything.  The 16 year old daughter is quiet too.  I watch the mother make everything into a drama.  Then she can mitigate the drama and be the family hero and control the family.  Then she creates a drama, mitigates it, controls.  It’s fascinating to watch.  So, then I ask myself, where do I create dramas so that I may “be in control”?  I think, more often I create dramas to keep the  “poor me” going.  Thanks mirror.  What other ways am I resisting True Nature?  What am I resisting?  How and why are you creating drama?

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Allergies

On By rrainefioreIn Australia, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve had horrible allergies most of my life.  I had to take allergy medicine every day of my life from 2nd grade until about 4 years ago.  I was allergic to all grasses, pine trees, dust, anything that blooms, citrus, tomatoes, all green vegetables, all melon, cats and dogs.  With all the investigation I’ve done and the awakening work, I discovered that I had a belief that life is not safe.  I was adopted.  I have a deep fear from this, from whatever I experienced in my first days, weeks, months of life.  Because this is long before the cognitive part of my brain existed, it is stuck in my nervous system, my blood system and in the deep parts of the brain.  Because this belief is so deeply rooted, I cannot talk, reason or think it away.  Because it’s so basic to who I am, I actually created a world that is not safe by being allergic to everything.  I created a world to match this belief.  After much work on this through movement and letting the fear and loss be expressed, my allergies disappeared.  The past 4 years I’ve been able to live with only taking allergy medicine once a month or less.  Since I’ve been on this tour, I’ve been sick with a sinus infection and now that is better, my allergies are horrible.  My nose and eyes are so itchy that I think I may go insane.  I’m sneezing a lot.  Ah ha – this is completely connected to the “not enough for me” I was feeling earlier in the trip.  This is just a different manifestation of the same issue.  Then I also have an issue where I get so tired of people not listening to me.  I get interrupted.  I have to say things 2 or 3 times because the person wasn’t listening.  Or I just get ignored.  I try to be understanding, but it just makes me not want to talk, not want to connect with people.  (My magic tattoo isn’t working).  I had a minor meltdown yesterday because of this.  This is the same issue too.  Add on that I’m scared about going home.  I’m scared of reverse culture shock.  I’m scared of finding how I fit when I’ve changed so much.  Life is not safe = Not enough for me = I’m small, insignificant, unimportant, unloved, unwanted = back hurts = feet hurt = allergies = fear.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Some Random Thoughts

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Here are some of the random thoughts running around in my head lately.  They may or may not be related to each other.

A feeling that is coming up a lot for me is the feeling that there is not enough for me.  It has been coming up every day especially around the time to eat and when we get to a new accommodation.  What if I’m the last one in line, there won’t be any food left.  Oh my god, I have to make sure that doesn’t happen.  What if there aren’t enough beds for me?  What if I have to sleep in a room with 10 people?  Oh My God.  I have no idea where this is coming from.  It’s somehow connected to the unwanted thing I’ve been feeling too.  So, more on this later as it makes itself clear.

It seems that everywhere I go, there is a cute guy.  I kind of hoped I would meet someone special on vacation or while in Thailand, but I always find myself attracted to one person on the tour or boat that I’m on.  Then I start wondering what they think, who are they, are they interested, etc.  Why can’t I just enjoy people’s company without there always having to be a potential of my future boyfriend.  It’s very frustrating.  Is this just human nature or am I still resisting alone and oneness?  Has anything really changed on this journey?  My feet have been hurting a lot lately and I think I am noticing that they hurt more when I’m thinking about a guy.  Then again, if I’m thinking of guys, my head is in the future.  So, is the foot hurting more global about living in the future instead of being present.  I feel like 80% to 90% of me is present most of the time, but the rest is living in thoughts about the future.   Then I am aware that I am in the future.  Then I’m in the future and present at the same time.  Future = Foot hurts.

Here are some good AH Almass quotes from the book I am reading.  They better explain what I was writing about a while ago.  Even if what we are experiencing isn’t “happy”, “peace”, “joy” or some other perceived good thing, we can still be present with it and see what we learn.  It doesn’t have to be seen as bad or suffering.  Instead, be curious and experience it fully.  “Even if we can stay present with an emotion or manifestation, it doesn’t immediately transform into its True Nature.  An emotion is not just a simple reaction to whatever is happening in the present situation. Usually the emotion has an entire history”.  He’s talking about being aware, being an observer on the outside.  I am very good at this and it’s happening almost 100% of my day.  But he is also talking about a different level of being present.  This, is what I tried to explain in past blogs:  “Normal awareness is observing experience from a distance, with the detachment of a subject viewing an object.  Not only noticing it, but you are also in contact with it, you are touching it, feeling it, sensing it’s texture and quality.  You are not only looking at it from the outside, you are aware of it from the inside as well and from all directions, from everywhere.  So presence brings in the quality of immediacy of awareness, which means having no distance between the awareness and what we are aware of”.

I think Americans are the loud kid on the playground – Hey look at me!

I would consider doing odd jobs and “lesser” jobs to live abroad, but not at home.  Why?

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Forgive

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Uncategorized1 Comment

Warning: Spiritual big concept stuff in this blog.  If you aren’t into that and you just want to see pretty pictures of China or hear funny tales of adventure, tune in later this week.

Yep, my sketchy flight from Phuket to Bangkok ended up being legit.  Go Thailand!  I got into my hotel in Bangkok and was hungry and sore so I headed out for dinner and a massage even though I needed to be going to bed to get up early for my flight to China.  There was a food market nearby.  I didn’t see anything I wanted so I had coconut ice cream for dinner.  After massage I had a crepe with mystery green goo (pandan?), sprinkles and jelly balls.  This did not make for a healthy dinner, but it was quite delicious.

During massage the word “forgive” kept coming to me.  Ok, got it, forgiveness.  I tried to figure out who or what I need to forgive.  During massage, it felt like the list is so long that it is comical.  It doesn’t feel like any big injustices, just a lifetime of tiny judgements and petty gripes.  This isn’t a 12 step process and I don’t think listing them all out makes sense or is useful.  The big one, the original one is the one that all the others are actually built on.  For any person or event that I haven’t forgiven, it’s not actually about that person or event, it’s still the original.  Years ago I discovered that I had a belief that life itself is unsafe and that I was angry with life/myself/god/the greater power/the universe or whatever you want to believe is the greater power or knowledge out there.  I was angry, scared and mistrusting.  As I’ve worked on this over the years, my allergies have been disappearing, my non working thyroid started working again as well many other healthy changes in my body.  As much as I have worked and as much as I have let go, I think there’s more.  I don’t think forgive at this level I’m working on is “I forgive you for being mean” or  “I understand you didn’t know better, so it’s ok”.  There’s ego in that.  There’s a sense of blaming “you were wrong” and a sense of ego “I am the bigger person and I forgive you”.   The forgive that is coming up is not that.  It doesn’t have to do with a person, a situation or an event.  It is a letting go and surrender, again not of a situation or event.  It is to let go of everything – every event, good or bad, every person, every interaction, every judgement, every belief, the world as I know it, everything I think I am, everything I ever wanted to be.  I have been working on this little bit by little bit for years.  Investigate this feeling, that belief, this relationship, looking into every nook and crany of my brain.  I have changed and made it quite far in this process.  But, it’s still me, my idealized self image, a series of thoughts in the brain that is making all this “progress”.  In an earlier post I talked about how I wanted to live abroad not to find myself, but to lose myself.  The forgive that is coming up is to let go to the point that I lose myself.

When I speak of myself, I don’t mean I won’t remember who my friends and family are or that I will simply cease to exist, or I’ll become a monk and sit on a mountain top meditating for the rest of my life.  I’m referring to the self image, who I think I am which is just a series of synapses in the brain routed and created from my experiences and interpretations of those experiences.  I am not the synapses and memories in my brain.  I am something else completely (so are you).

I got to the airport in the morning for my flight to China.  I found most everyone to be annoying.  I found myself to be very judgmental about the way one person acted or another was dressed.  People were in my personal space.  The airplane music threatened to send me in a downward spiral.  Why is airplane music so bad?  Why do we have to have music on the airplane anyway?  Is it really soothing anyone that is scared?  It’s just there to piss me off.  What’s wrong with no music?  Although most of the day went smoothly, I found everything to be either stressful or annoying.  Apparently, I was not letting go and forgiving yesterday.

Today was the first day of my China tour and it was wonderful.  I’ll cover the details of that in another blog.  But as I sit here tonight trying to put “forgive” into words that will make sense, I can feel it happening.  I feel a lightness in my body kind of like being light headed, but over the whole body.  It feels like the cells on the outside of my body are slowly breaking apart and floating away.  They are shiny and glass like, but have no weight.  It feels like disintegration.  So, now I’m heading off to sleep or disintegrate or both.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

 

Tie it up

On By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Tuesday one of my M4 girls came in to class tied to two M1 boys.  One tied to each of her wrists.  The boy on her right had to write in the answers to the exam she was taking.  The other one just sat there.  No one batted an eye as if this was a normal thing.  True, I have seen two students tied together before, but it doesn’t seem normal to me yet.  I wondered who was being punished – her, the boys or all three of them?  What action warrants being tied together?  Does it work?  None of them seemed shamed, upset or in any way punished.  What classes were the boys missing?  If this works, I like it better than hitting students.  That happened again.  After two of my classes this week, I was asked to wait outside.  You can ask me to wait outside if you think I disapprove, but I can still hear the crack of the stick.  Or maybe having me wait outside was to spare me being uncomfortable, but now it was uncomfortable and awkward.

I have to mail some boxes home because I have too much stuff.  Noi helped me by finding boxes for me.  Then she showed me where to buy the brown paper and string.  Then she showed me how to wrap the boxes in brown paper since I don’t know how to wrap a box in paper.  It involved a lot of glue and tape so that paper should be good.  Then she wrapped string around the box and had me tape the string to the box.  I thought the string was to make a handle, but she said it made the paper stronger.  I told her we were not allowed to use string in America, but she didn’t care.  It has to be done this way.  I hope the packages make it ok to America.  They were ridiculously expensive to mail.

I went over to Tip’s.  I thought it was for dinner, but she wasn’t eating.  I ran quickly to the market and got a salad for dinner.  Ging came over and we played crosswords (generic scrabble).  It was fun.  Ging won!  Tip’s son, Dam asked me to come over again so he can play crosswords with me.

Pat was real nice on Wednesday.  I asked her to help me buy a bus ticket.  She sent the school driver to get it.  I got my change from the ticket, but no ticket.  I texted her to see if she could check on where the ticket went.  She replied where to pick it up.  I was confused why I still had to pick it up.  How did he buy a ticket for me without getting a ticket?  I was confused when to pick it up and how they would know I was the one that paid for it.  I also have no idea when the bus arrives.  One of her answers was Saturday 1.  Saturday the 1st of October, or Saturday at 1:00?  If it’s Saturday at 1:00 is that the time I need to be there or the time the bus will arrive?  She wouldn’t be clear and then today when I tried to talk to her in person she said “I told you, but you don’t want to understand”.  I give up. I don’t know what to do.  Anything I do or say is wrong.  I try to take a deep breath and not be frustrated, but I’m frustrated.  I wonder where my patience and compassion have run off to.  I can’t seem to find them.

I gave tests to 6 different classes.  Almost every student failed.  Why am I here?

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Air Con

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Every morning when I get to school, I go up to my office and put my things down.  Then I go to the main office to sign in and then to school assembly.  This morning, same as usual.  My office is a tiny classroom that I share with Robin.  We teach the advanced students in there since their classes are small.  The classroom is one of a few air conditioned classrooms at the school.  Yesterday morning I was standing at assembly and Pat came up to me.  The past 3 months or so, if Pat comes up to me, it’s usually not a pleasant experience and it’s not just to say hi and see how I’m doing.  But this morning was a new experience for sure.  She asked if I had left the air conditioning on over night in the class room.  I said that I had not.  (I just came from there.  If the air conditioning had been on, it would have been on when I dropped my stuff off).  She just laid into me about how I need to be careful.  That I was careless, thoughtless and wasting energy and she was going to get in trouble, not me.  She went on to tell me that she even took a student over to verify with her that the air conditioning was running this morning.  She kept going and going and getting angrier and angrier until she was yelling at me.  I ended up apologizing for something I didn’t do and she stormed off saying “I’m sorry is all you should say”.  She was chastising me like a 6 year old.  I have no idea what is really bothering her that she is now making up reasons to be mad at me.  I am way too old for this game, what ever it is.  On my way back to the classroom, I asked her who turned off the air conditioning since it was off when I got to school.  She had no answer to that, but sent Q up to feel the room (which was hot, not cool).  Noi is the only other person with a key to the room and she wasn’t even at school yet.  I’m 46 years old basically being told to shut up and apologize for something I didn’t do.  Where’s the door?  I can’t wait to leave this school.  Noi asked the janitor if he turned off the air conditioner and he said he doesn’t have a key to the room so he hadn’t been in there.

By now I am so annoyed I can barely teach class.  Not to mention, I’m a bit scared.  I have no agent.  I don’t trust the company that placed me here as they have already showed that they will sell me out to make their agents happy.  And the person who is the head of the department I work in, has now gone from kind of unpleasant to scary.  All the people that are supposed to have my back, don’t.  I feel stranded, alone and unsafe.  Then I remember that I have Noi, Tip and Ging.  I honestly thought of calling Tip and asking her if she could help me get out of here as I don’t feel very safe right now .  But, I calmed down after Noi took me to lunch and told me quite a few times that I take teaching too seriously.

So, two points of inquiry come up from this.  One is that I hear all the time about how Thai people are the nicest people in the world.  But often, it is said by people that have left some other country to come live here and they say it in a way to imply that the rest of the world if full of horrible people.  So, I wonder what their lives and experiences were like where they came from.  My experience is that there are a lot of nice people in America.  I have a delightful, kind, and loving family.  I’m the crankiest person in my family.  I have some wonderful friends that would bend over backwards to take care of those they love.  And I have met so many kind and wonderful strangers along the way that were just kind because that’s who they are, not because they were my friend or family.  What if Thai people aren’t any different than American people or European people or any other people?  What if the entire planet has a fairly evenly distributed amount of nice and not so nice people?  What if one day you are one of the nice people and the next you are not?  What if this is just part of being human and not part of being Thai or Chinese or French……?

The other point of inquiry is that over the years I’ve worked on this issue where I feel the need for revenge.  I want those that have wronged me to see that they wronged me and to feel horrible about it deep in their bones for the rest of their lives.  I know where this comes from and I also know that life will never happen that way.  Even if it did, it wouldn’t solve anything.  The horrible injustice will never be undone with revenge or regret.  It will never be undone – period.  I cannot undo my past.  Being here in a high school has brought this up often.  I haven’t written about it yet because it comes up and I notice it and say, “hmmm, there it is again”, but nothing shifts.  Nothing new has been learned yet that I could share.  As all this drama is happening with Pat and I feel fear for my safety, this revenge thing comes up.  It’s a reaction to not feeling safe.  At some point, I realize I actually have the power to take revenge.  This woman has set me up to fail many times.  She is a huge part of why I’m not loving it here.  She might very well be a huge part of why no Western teacher will stay here for long.  I have the opportunity to point that out.  I actually have the opportunity for revenge that would get the desired result.  I  would never do this because I do understand that she’s not setting me up to fail on purpose – she’s just in over her head and managing two Western teachers, a whole department and teaching is stressful.  And, most people would struggle in her position.  But, if I think back, I’ve never taken a revenge opportunity either because I understood it would do no good in the long run or because I don’t want to be the bad person or because my mother taught me to be nice.  What if the reaction of wanting revenge whenever I feel unsafe doesn’t go away because I’ve never taken revenge?  Sure, I’ve said mean things in anger and I’ve done a half-assed job of creating drama that kinda of looks like revenge.  But, I’ve never committed fully to the point of irreparable damage.  If I did, would I then be free of feeling the craving for revenge?  What happens if I take this current opportunity handed to me?  What happens if I don’t?  The answer is that neither choice will change anything.  Really committing and going all in on the revenge might cure me of ever wanting revenge again or it might not.  We won’t find out because I can’t do it.  Suck it up and pretend nothing ever bothers me doesn’t work either.  I’ve been doing that my whole life.  So, there’s a third answer.  I can’t quite tell you what the third answer is.  I can kind of see it.  It’s just over there in a mist, a mist that keeps me from seeing it fully.  But since things are shifting and dissolving in my life, I’m sure that mist will lift in the near future and I can share that third answer with you then.