A block in my throat

Did you miss me? I took a break for a few days.

I was surprised this past Sunday at church when a friend said, "You didn't post last night? Or did you and I missed it? Was Friday night the last time you posted?" I said, "I got home really late last night, and I decided to sleep for once. I wrote more than 31 days in a row though...." She said, "I like it even when you just say 'I don't have anything to say.'" And then she went on to tell me some of the stories she'd like to read. Her dad was a pilot during the Viet Nam war and she was in the Navy, so the military stories are familiar.

That's one block removed.

I was really flattered. I'm always flattered when people tell me they read here, and I'm often surprised. So if I don't say it often enough, thank you for reading, even if I do write about vaginas too often.
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I went to a house-blessing Saturday night. I don't mean to beat the military thing to death, but it was pretty amazing to attend a party for a lesbian friend and her partner who is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. No big deal, right? Wrong. Big fucking deal!

Can this really be our new normal? Don't ask because it doesn't matter? I'm sure most of the guests there didn't even give a thought to that aspect, but I had a secret smile in my heart the entire night. When they get married, I hope they ask me to officiate and sign the license. Surely we will get our shit together here in Ohio one of these days.
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One thing that happened at the blessing was that a Pagan woman blessed the house and some of the guests by smudging them with white sage. I'm a veteran of many smudges, although usually I'm the one blowing smoke.

So I stood on the porch while she wafted smoke over me. It's soothing and kind of smells like pot. She'd smudged several other people before me and hadn't said anything to them as she did it. But she stopped as she wafted smoke down the front of my body and said, "What aren't you saying?"

I said, "Nothing. I'm fine. I've done this a lot." I had no idea what she was talking about.

She said, "No, your throat is blocked. You're going to have to get rid of whatever that is. You can't live with whatever that is stuck in your throat." Well, that sounded serious! I stayed calm though, feeling a metaphysical metaphor in the smoky air.

I said, "I guess I'm not surprised, but I can't do anything about that right now. Could you just finish smudging?" I could think of at least three situations in my life that might cause ..... something ..... words? feelings? my truth? ..... to be "stuck in my throat."

But it seemed kind of unbelievable that she could tell that by wafting sage smoke over me. I mean, really? What does that mean?

She went on with the smudging -- the fronts of my legs, bottoms of my feet, all up and down the back of me. And then she moved back in front of me and said, "You really can't go on with that block in your throat."

I said, "Well, smudge it some more and see if that helps." I didn't really think that would do anything, but I wasn't sure how to respond.

She smudged my neck, and then she moved closer and said, "OK, what do you need to say?"

Not me. Stolen from the internets.

I said, "I can't imagine how anything I could say right here, now, that would be helpful. If you're perceiving a block, it doesn't have anything to do with what's happening here tonight. But thank you."

She smiled and moved on to the next smudgee. She had done her best to help, but I wasn't sure what I could do about that perceived blockage. I got a glass of wine, which seemed like just the thing to wash down something stuck in my throat.

The next day, I ran into church 10 minutes late. I was leading the service and I'd said I'd be there an hour early. As I walked into the sanctuary, a friend who was sitting there said, "You need to breathe."

I said, "I am breathing. I'm just running late."

"I don't mean that," she said. "You're not breathing in enough air. You need to breathe." I laughed and got to work on the service. After the service she found me and said it again, that I wasn't breathing. Of course I was breathing or I'd be dead, but there it was again. Somebody telling me my throat was blocked. (Too bad we don't do communion at my church. I could have sipped some communion wine.) Anyway ....

I'm not sure what else I have to say about that. It's a little hard for me to believe two people saw something blocking my throat -- something metaphysical. Yes, I've been bottling a few things up, but don't we all do that?

Surely we all run into situations in which we have to just shut the fuck up because saying something, responding, entering into the conversation or conflict will just make things uncomfortable or worse. Right?

And we all sometimes find ourselves unwilling or unable to tell people how we feel about a situation or about something they did. It doesn't matter why.

My reasons are that too often when I've been honest -- the most honest -- people have walked away and stayed away. I don't mean I was necessarily angry or a raving lunatic. I mean when I've been honest about what I can accept or what I'd like to change in a relationship. It doesn't feel safe most of the time to complain. It doesn't seem worth the conflict or the explaining or the return anger (more on that in an upcoming post).

Don't we all pick and choose the swords we will fall on? The times we will say something and the times we'll just .... I don't know ... swallow hard?

If I'm holding something back it's usually because I think I'm taking ownership of my feelings. Is that a really 80's concept? Like using my "I" phrases?

Most of the time, I don't think it's up to me to try to change other people or to tell them how to act, even when I feel hurt or betrayed. I tend to believe I can't change anybody else's behavior, just my own. So I don't go there. The more pain I feel, the less likely I am to say anything at all.

There's another reason why: It rarely works out for the better when I do. So I just call it "owning my own shit," and I eventually swallow it and move on in whatever way seems most comfortable or causes less conflict. Or sometimes I just find a way to leave the situation or the relationship, be that temporarily or permanently.

At my age, you'd think I'd be better at this. Maybe it's partly those voices from childhood: "Little girls should be seen and not heard." "If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about." "Just deal with it. Nobody else cares." Programming.

So I haven't written in almost a week. I have a block in my throat, but I shouldn't let that affect my fingers. I rarely sing any more, but surely that block isn't made of songs. It's probably just allergies.

I'm not even sure what that means exactly, to have a block in my throat. Is it liked a plugged toilet? Do I need a metaphysical plunger to force the ..... ummmm ..... toilet paper and shit down and out? Do I need to run a snake through it? Or do I need some kind of emotional Drano to break it up and move it along? Is there danger of it overflowing and making a mess? That's never good.

I'm just not sure. I'll probably just keep writing. I have a lot of big changes in the works that I'd rather focus on right now, and I just accepted a part in a play. Maybe time will erode that blockage until there's nothing left. 

Have you ever had a blocked throat? What did you do? Advice is always welcome, even if I don't like it or take it.