Because I don't live here anymore
I went to a yoga class this week. I actually went to two because I signed up for a month-long trial at the studio five minutes from my house. Because I thought, I’ll see what all the fuss is about 10 years after my original discovery of the fuss. Tom is a member and he comes back from classes with his mat over his shoulder and colour in his face and I thought, I miss that feeling. The smell of incense and burning Peruvian wood also takes me back viscerally to what I used to feel. Rolling out a mat and lying down to stare at the ceiling whilst spiritual music echoes, waiting for the teacher to start the class takes me back too. But then we are midway through the class, we are at the end of the class, and I just don’t feel it. It must be what it’s like to be in a relationship having fallen out of love. I feel like Carrie yelling at Big in the penultimate episode of SATC. You can drive down this street all you want, because I don’t live here anymore.
The teacher came to assist me in savasana at the end of one of the classes, she had cream that smelt nice on her hands and she pressed my shoulders, lifted my head and rubbed my temples. I’d spent the whole class giving off a please don’t touch me vibe, but I knew she was going to come to me at the end to win me over. And the thing is, it feels nice enough. Neither startling or deeply relaxing. I noticed myself performing the slightly deeper breathing to show my appreciation and make her feel good for it, and when she moved to the man on my right, I heard him do that same thing. When I walked home I thought about the heads I spent years touching at the end of my yoga classes.
For at least a year - but actually three really, I’ve been holding onto the remaining threads of belief I have left. A reduced list of what I can stand behind and keep my sanity and integrity. A few items on the list: lying on the ground, moving your spine, mobilising your joints, strengthening your glutes, taking time for yourself, relaxing your jaw, giving your nervous system space to come down. There are others too, and these things on the list are not nothing, in fact in many ways they are everything. But this list, it doesn’t fit anywhere anymore and to keep up with this list I still need to insist upon being sweet before I am anything else.
It is a strange thing to realise that you just don’t care anymore. And I have no doubts that the lack of caring is a product of being burnt out, or having all your resources diminished. I always come back to the requirement of giving. Giving and giving and giving. Away, away and away.
I have relational patterns of giving too much. In no particular order and because I’m enjoying lists here are some examples and their contexts. The Le Creuset casserole dish to the man who’d told me he wasn’t looking for a relationship record breakingly close to our first night together. The fish pies, oh the fish pies and their recipients who knew little of the meaning of that much butter. More smoked salmon for the fridge of the man who’d left me leaving me homeless and him with salmon in the fridge. A line of friendships that haven’t stood the test of time because I spent them feeling guilty and still they asked for more.
Giving too much, and I believe too much is only when it is not reciprocated, because if it is we can give endlessly. But giving too much keeps everyone in prison. It’s the same as always apologising. The dynamics that don’t feel nice because there is always something to play for. I felt it when she assisted me in Savasana this week. She didn’t need to do that. She so deeply didn’t need to do that. I choose to opt out of the parts of the class I couldn’t be bothered to do because that’s my god given right. I’ve had my years doing all the parts plus the add-ons. And I had no problem with her, my eyes only rolled a couple of times which is actually good going because now my tolerance for platitudes and sentences that actually don’t make sense is low. I actually don’t want to put my hands in prayer, I just don’t, and being told to clear my mind is ineffective and irritating. And I’m not even writing this down to be an asshole. I’m just saying, she was fine, and I was fine to go, make the best of it and had no expectation for anything life or even mood altering. So, when she came to me at the end, with lavender hands, I thought; this is what’s a shame.
You still feel like you need to win me over and you don’t. You still care if I liked it or didn’t. And I empathised too much - that’s why I got the ick. I know the feeling so well, it’s the one person in the room who goes slightly off-piste who haunts us all the way home. It’s the not knowing, did they like me or did they think I was a piece of shit? And I walked home wondering if it’s like this for everyone who teaches anything, or if it’s like this for yoga teachers because that is where the hierarchical popularity based rot took hold.
I stood in that room that once meant so much to me and realised, this doesn’t touch me anymore. I don’t connect with this anymore. It must happen to everyone, and it could hurt only it doesn’t because all the heat has left the building now. There’s just this flat resonance that remains. I used to be this shape. I used to be so strongly this shape and now mostly, this shape annoys me.