Happy Place

I frequently have a stiff neck… I am sure I could find some karmic explanation.  I do have a pernicious tendency toward inflexibility in my outlook… a rigidity in my stubborn attachment to certain rules or routines.  I should not be surprised that I am becoming more and more calcified physically as I petrify mentally.

When I turn my neck it sounds like there is sand grating in the joints… and it only wants to go so far… I get the pains that shoot down my shoulders… especially my left one… a dull burny achy sensation.

So off I go to my magic hands lady… Sharon at Rose City Acupuncture and she is working on my neck… and she says I have some really bad stuff there.  I laugh and say I put all my stress there.  And then she asked me what it is that I am storing up, that I don’t want to talk about… and that made me pause… what do I NOT talk about??? I thought I pretty much spewed out anything and everything.  So as I lay there… literally all pins and needles… supposedly it is a relaxing thing… all those fancy needles stuck in all the magic places… other people talk about falling asleep but I am practically vibrating with tension.  I cannot relax.  Over and over I realize that I am rigid, my muscles slowly tightening until I am lying there like a board and I force myself to soften, to breathe… I force myself to relax and it is even more exhausting than the tension. 

When I talk to her about this… the sensation of energy rocketing back and forth inside me… she says this thing… “Do you have a happy place?”

And I mutter… “I hate that kind of crap.”

“Because I do not have “a” happy place.”

I have hundreds of places I like to go… places that make me happy.  I love my “place” on the couch with my ‘puter in my lap.  I love riding in the car when Master is driving and looking over at his profile and having his hand on my leg.  I love, love, love being in his bed, all curled up in a ball, warm and safe under the covers.  I love kneeling at his feet; my head resting safe in his lap.  I love walking on the beach, my attention completely focused on the rocks around my feet.  I love to walk beside Master, my hand tucked inside his pocket… over his lap… bent over in the shower… on my back with him over me… fucking my face… so many places where I find happiness… when I am there. 

…but as I lay there and tried to think myself there, think myself into any one of those places… that path kept leading to sinks full of dishes… work tasks piled up upon desks… crowded turnpikes and freeways and plans of circumventing the worst of the delays… bills and menus… crazy kids and intervention plans… mean coworkers and nice ones… I cannot ever turn off the brain… it is like a windup toy or perhaps an unchecked windmill, spinning out of control in the wind of that is my life.  The more I seek peace… the more I find chaos.  There is no place safe from the encroachment of all the things that pile up… and it pushes at me… and make my neck hurt.