Side effects

Remember Fiona, the little pine tree I rescued from CVS? This is her - she's growing well in her larger pot. She has her own pond and a crystal to focus positive energy into her space.

All it takes is time and the right environment for a positive change to occur.

Hopefully that's true with my Zen experiment too.

I'm starting to experience some side effects, though, of shutting down the endless conversations in my head. One of them being the urge to scream on occasion.

I was used to hashing things out. When I couldn't say what I wanted to say in real life, I could walk away and lash out at someone in my head - tell them exactly what I thought without fear of repercussion and get it off my chest. Now, I just walk away and shut the conversation down, which means all those feelings get bottled up, and I'm not sure that's good. I try, as the song says, to 'let it go' - but that's hard, especially when dealing with someone whose default setting is criticism and nitpicking.

Yesterday I received compliments from several people on a new sweater. This person's first sentence to me - 'oh there's a pull in it.' Not, nice sweater - like everyone else had said. Not, hello, how are you. No, the default - here's something I immediately found wrong with your appearance. I'm wearing a sagging old jacket and haven't brushed my hair, but the FIRST thing I see about you is the one flaw in your new outfit. Nice.

I understand this is where this person is coming from. Jealously - rumination - self-pity. It's easier to pick on someone else than to acknowledge feelings of inferiority. But - SIGH - it's hard to take year after year, day after day, walking in and instead of at least hello, how are you, I get 'Oh, I immediately noticed something isn't perfect.'

That kind of behavior disgusts me, and I used to just quietly go and have it out - yell, scream, swear, in my head and let this person have it both barrels all the things I can't say. But now I don't. I hope it doesn't kill me. There's a difference between really letting things go and just shunting them aside until they blow up in your face, and I hope I can maintain the difference or all this Zen is going to end up in my going utterly postal on someone.