Then it hit me: It was going to take a while to get my body back, and it was going to take a while to get my mind back. I had to undo all the damage I had sustained over close to seven years. As the days rolled by I knew I couldn’t push myself; I had done that for too many years, and it had backfired. As soon as I put pressure on myself to make better food choices and limit my intake, all I wanted to do was eat as much sugar and fat as possible. I had to let myself eat as much as I wanted, whatever I wanted. Otherwise, I would simply deprive myself for a few days, obsessing the entire time about what I really wanted to eat, and then I would give in and gorge myself on it a few days later. It made more sense to just eat what I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it. I trusted that, as I slowly got my mojo back, I would make better food choices. I had always known what foods my body needed and exactly how much. No matter what was in front of me, I ate until I was full and then I stopped. Some days, I wanted salads; other days, I wanted a burger and dessert, but my body always told me what to eat and I never overate. Now, I had no idea how much food was enough food. I had no shut-off gauge. It terrified me. And I wanted only thick, gooey, filling foods, because they comforted me in a way nothing else at the time could.
As a thin, fit model and dancer, I was used to getting a lot of male attention. Now, no men noticed me. And I noticed them not noticing me. I had never before felt that my self-worth was tied to what I looked like, but suddenly I realized it was. I felt ugly and old and fat and worthless. I became even more insecure, more introverted. I spent most of my days on the sofa, watching people walk by my window. I rented a lot of movies. I cried a lot. I spoke to my therapist once a week.
To make everything worse, my apartment was a 1970s man cave. It was a studio near the beach, decorated in grey Formica and animal-print furniture. I called it the man-ther den. It had a raised platform bed and switches on the nightstands so the owner could control all the lighting from the bed. Worst of all, it was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mirrors—for the fattest time in my life! Every single direction I turned, I saw my fat belly and my fat ass and my fat thighs and my dimples, dimples, dimples. I could not escape them.
One day, I finally laughed and stopped looking. I reminded myself that I didn’t have to care what my body looked like. My insecurity was based on my perception of what other people were thinking of me. I told myself that we love people who are kind and who make us feel good; we don’t care if they are pretty or ugly, old or young, fat or thin. I had to find a way to be kind again.
But that epiphany did not last long. I was still terrified I would run into someone I used to know. How on earth could I explain that I had shoved her out of my life, abandoned him, in order to become Enlightened? I looked terrible. And I had turned my life into a shit show. What was I going to say if I ran into somebody I used to know? “I joined a cult and now I’m all fucked up and fat?” I did not want any of my old friends, or anyone I recognized, to see me this way. I walked into stores with a hat on and my head down. On the really bad days, I stayed in bed and cried. I watched movies and I screamed into my pillow and I wrote in my journal.
But on good days, the positive self-talk continued. I told myself that once my mind got strong again, my body would follow. And I chanted my new mantra: “This will turn out better than I can possibly imagine. I don’t know how, but I know it will.” My process was three steps forward, two steps back, four steps forward, one step back. It was definitely not the “full steam ahead to healing” that I had pictured when I imagined going to California to jump back into my old life. In fact, “jumping back into my old life” did not seem to be working at all. I was terrified of running into my old life. My old life simply did not fit me any longer.
I started going to yoga and surfing almost daily. I didn’t push myself. I surfed where there were no people and basically no waves. I took it easy. And if I wasn’t in the mood, I wouldn’t go. No more forcing myself to do anything.
It dawned on me I had to learn to be kind to myself. And I had to be patient. I had been so hard on myself for so long. I had been so mean to myself. I had pushed and pushed and pushed myself for so long. Pushed myself until I broke. In college I danced until my feet bled through my pointe shoes and I broke bones in my legs and then I danced some more. I took so many classes and forced myself to do so well in them that I got diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I never allowed myself to feel I was good enough or strong enough or smart enough or pretty enough. It had to stop. This behavior had to stop.
So, for the first time in my life, the only movement I wanted to do was nurturing movement: yoga—gentle, flowing, dancing yoga—and surfing. I refused to beat myself up on a spin bike. I refused to jar my body running. I refused to bang my joints apart in a karate class. I had thought I would move back to California and surf and dance and get my old body back quickly, but my spirit wanted something different. It wanted me to stay slowed down.
So my ass was getting bigger. And my thighs had cellulite. And my belly was a muffin top. But I was not going to starve myself. And I was not going to force myself to exercise. I was not, in any aspect of my life, going to deprive myself any longer, and I was not, in any aspect of my life, going to beat myself up any longer. So if nurturing myself meant having a fatter ass and fatter thighs, then so be it. But deep down I knew it didn’t. Deep down I knew I was giving birth—to a new me, to my life’s work. And if I were pregnant with a child, I would listen to my body. I would eat what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it. I would rest as much as I needed to rest. I would expect my body to change as the new life grew inside of me. It is a price I would be more than willing to pay. And I knew it was up to me to trust, and to know, that my body would balance out eventually.
Holding onto that “thin” version of my young self was bringing me unbearable pain. Yearning to be her, wanting to get the same male attention she got, judging myself based on my physical looks and the reactions I got from strangers was so incredibly painful I just could not do that to myself any longer. It did not matter. It could not matter. My sense of self-worth could not be based on my looks any longer. It’s a shame that it was in my twenties and thirties, but as a woman entering my forties, to hold onto physical appearance as my sense of power, as my sense of self-worth, was so damaging in the most extreme way. I vowed to let it go. I vowed to do whatever it took to let it go.
As I went through this time in my healing, I experienced waves of pain and anguish followed by waves of bliss and serenity that coincided perfectly with when I clung to my past version of self and when I embraced my emerging new self.
One side of me said, I want to be thin, tiny, ripped, surfing my old surfboards, getting noticed in the water, turning heads, sexy. This side of me screamed in agony. She hated the world. She noticed the flaws with everyone and everything. In fact, she didn’t really even want to be here anymore.
The other side of me, the fuller, rounder, introverted middle-aged woman, loved being alive. She loved the feel of a cool breeze on her skin, of walking with a long skirt tickling her legs. She loved the sparkling blue of the ocean and the bright pinks and fuchsias of the flowers. She loved watching the birds and the dogs and the babies. She loved seeing people just be people.
One day, I finally understood what was happening to me: The old version of me, the young sexy surfer, was dying—had died—and this was not a sad thing, did not need to be a sad thing. It was her time to go. I had spent the past three months so angry about her dying, so angry that they had killed her. So angry that “those terrible experiences with those terrible people” had killed her. But the truth was, it was her time to go. And, oh my God, it made perfect sense why she—why I, when I was seeing through her eyes and in her state of mind—did not even want to be here. Her time was done. I had to let her go. She wanted to go.
I realized I had been eating away this sexy young version of myself: the sex kitten. She had been fun, but she had caused me a lot of pain. Without realizing it, I had been eating to m
ake myself less attractive, less desirable. The weight was forming around my second chakra, my thighs and my stomach, as a way to protect myself. I was eating to make myself invisible. I needed to. In order to heal, I had to go within. I had to change—a metamorphosis, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. My mother had been so envious of and so threatened by my beauty and my sexuality. Lakshmi had told me to hide it and screamed at me for using it to pull Vishnu away from her. Vishnu had accused me of using it to make my male sangha mates fall in love with me. Hiroto had noticed it immediately and entered my life because of it. Subconsciously, I wanted it to go away. As a child, I had been shy and introverted. As a preteen, I had been nerdy and prude. But when my father died, I discovered that the bad girl side of me was powerful. I had learned that side of me got a lot of attention. That side of me was popular and desirable and hot. Men loved me. I was used to walking into a bar and walking out with any man I wanted. It felt good. But it was soul-crushing. It was a façade. It was not real. Some part of me knew this and was over it. The wiser part of me that wanted to heal, that needed to heal, was ready for change. The sex kitten had to go. The woman had to emerge.
Chapter 33 Surprise
I was changing; I was changed. I should have been so excited. My God, it had been my goal for the past seven years! I had been so sure I needed to change completely in order to become Enlightened. But instead, I was devastated. Now that it had happened, the reality of it was killing me. I was willing to accept the fact that the new me was fat, but I was struggling to accept that the new me was so timid and so shy and so alone and so incredibly afraid of the world. I had to find a way to accept it; I had to find a way to embrace who I had become.
For starters, embracing her meant not caring what the world thought when they asked what I was doing with myself and I said, “healing.” Embracing her meant refusing to disem-power her by yearning for a man to fill the void and, instead, trusting that the right one would appear when the time was right, when she’d had enough solitude to build the new foundation she needed to build for herself. Embracing her meant listening to her when she said she wanted to be alone, away from the world, and sit in silence for an entire day. Embracing her meant letting go of the past, forgiving those that “killed” her old self, and accepting the fact that all that happened to her was life moving her toward her wholeness. No one really killed anyone. Her old self’s time was up and those people and those experiences just helped shatter the mold so that oftentimes self-absorbed, spoiled, immature Renee could be set free and that compassionate, kind, patient, womanly Renee could unfold in her place. Slowly I began to love this new Renee. I began to love how still and patient and kind she was. I began to notice how she no longer needed to be the center of attention, how happy she was to sit back and allow others to shine. I was well on my way to recovery.
And then I found out I had herpes. It was time for my yearly checkup and I asked to have a full exam, including blood work. My doctor told me she would call if I had abnormal results, and that a nurse would call with my STD results as they came in. A nurse called me a few days later and said my blood tested negative for HIV. She said it would take a few more days for the rest of my results to come in. A few days later, she called and told me I tested negative for most of the STDs, but I still had to wait for the herpes results. The next day, I got a call from my doctor. Immediately, I knew what that meant. I had tested positive. And then, before she even spoke, I remembered a night with Vishnu . . .
We were in his bedroom. He was going through his closet, looking for a shirt.
“I used to have herpes,” he said, his back to me, his left arm reaching for the shirt.
I was speechless. This man had made me get every single blood test possible and fax him the results. He had made me get a pap smear. He had made me circumambulate a sacred site three times to clean my energy field. He had even told me to take an Epsom salt bath and put my fingers inside my vagina to “clean out energetic lines left by other men.” He had insisted I be as clean as possible in every possible way before he screwed me. And he had insisted I get on The Pill so he did not have to use condoms and could ejaculate inside me. And now, after sleeping with me for over a year, after having unprotected sex with me for over a year, he casually mentions he used to have herpes. That son of a bitch.
I came back to the present. My doctor was talking.
“You tested positive for herpes,” she was saying. “Would you like me to prescribe medication? Would you like to come in and talk with me?”
I sat down and started to cry. I was just healing. I was just forgiving. I was just starting to move on with my life and now this? How could it be? I had been so promiscuous my entire life and now, at age thirty-nine, after becoming ordained as a monk, I end up with herpes? I was shattered again.
I decided not to get on medication. If my body wanted to purge a virus through my skin, I wanted it to be able to. I started getting outbreaks. They were tiny. The first few times I thought a spider had bitten me. Then I realized it was herpes. I had no idea why it took so long to appear. Maybe just knowing I had it in my blood caused me to manifest the symptoms. I was furious. My hatred for Vishnu flared. My anger burned. Now I was even more damaged, even more broken, even more undesirable in the eyes of men. There was no way I was ever going to tell a guy I had herpes, so I just gave up the idea of dating. Every time I thought about it, I got angry and depressed and filled with hate.
I returned to Colorado, the months rolled by, and I struggled to let go of my anger. Waves of it would wash over me, still. I had been so sure I’d be on my way to the new me and my new life, but I wasn’t. I was still in therapy. I was still mad. I was still introverted. I was still broken.
Part 5 Into the Light
“Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself. Stop looking in the other way of looking. You already have the precious mixture that will make you well. Use it.”
—Rumi
Chapter 34 Tango Lesson
When I was learning tango in the United States, I was mostly taught crap. I had no idea it was crap, but it was crap—an American version of an Argentine social dance. I loved it and I danced it terribly. Then, one day, a young Argentine couple from Chicago came to teach a workshop at the dance studio where I worked. They amazed me. He was so handsome, dressed in baggy, hip, multi-pocketed pants, with a chain hanging down the side, and big thick chunky silver rings covering his hands. She was gorgeous—tiny, with similar baggy pants, rolled up to her knees and sexy strappy little high heels. Her short hair was dyed a purple red, and she wore dark nail polish and red lipstick. And they danced the most beautiful tango I had ever seen: slow, sensual, rhythmic, yet with dynamic flashes of leg when you least expected it. He held her so close and with so much love. There was no “flash and trash” here. No sloppy, open embrace. No jabbing of his legs in between hers and knocking her off balance. No struggle. No fight. No tight sequined slit dress. Just love and rhythm and impeccable technique. When the song was over, they simply stopped in an embrace—no dip, no flip, no garish split. I had never seen anything like it. I had to learn.
I took as many lessons as I could while they visited. And then I tried to practice, but I couldn’t. No one else danced that way. I went down to Argentina to practice, and no one danced that way there either.
At our next lesson, I asked the young man, “How can I practice this if no one else dances this way?”
He said, “You practice on your own.”
“Why would I spend so much time learning this way if I can’t ever dance it with anyone?”
He looked at me with his warm golden brown eyes and said, “Renee, now that you know tango can be danced like this, how could you dance it any other way?”
I was stunned. He was right. And so I practiced. On my own. I practiced and practiced and practiced. For years. And I went back to Argentina and danced there and kept practicing with all the old men, all the men with panzas (bellies), all the men who were more than happy
to hold a young girl close and let her practice this slow different dancing with them while they wrestled with her and tried to jab their legs in between her feet and knock her off balance.
And then one day, years later, something miraculous happened. I was at my favorite milonga in Buenos Aires, after almost nine months of being away, and I danced my first set of tangos with a man who held me close and moved slowly—so slowly, in fact, that I could effectively dance as I had been practicing. It was the best set of tangos I had ever danced with someone besides that male instructor.
In Argentina, a man asks a woman to dance by making eye contact with her from across the room. If she wishes to dance, she holds his eye contact, and they meet on the dance floor. They do not talk; they simply dance. Once the first dance is over, they talk until the next dance begins. (Back in the day, this was the only time young chaperoned couples had to converse without being overheard.) However, if the woman does not wish to dance, she looks away when a man looks at her from across the room. In this way, the man’s delicate ego can be protected; he can say to himself, “She just didn’t see me.”
After the beautiful set of tangos with the new amazing dancer, I sat down and noticed a young, hot guy was looking at me. I looked back. We met on the dance floor. He held me close and danced exactly the way my young instructor had. I was in heaven.
When the song ended, he said in Spanish, “Wow, you are a beautiful dancer! Are you Argentine?”
“No,” I replied, “Norteamericana.”
He told me it was extremely rare for a young North American dancer to dance as I did. We danced three more tangos (the usual set), and he walked me to my table and thanked me.
The Burn Zone Page 24