Mother said be good,/ Father said be nice,/ That was always their advice./ So be nice, Cinderella,/ Good, Cinderella,/ Nice good good nice-/ What's the good of being good/If everyone is blind/ Always leaving you behind?/ Never mind, Cinderella,/ Kind Cinderella-/ Nice good nice kind good nice-
Everything Zen (I Don't Think So)
When I was creating my Red Tent/ Mary M ritual, I wanted to chose the words that could be selected for each sister's root of power very carefully. Somehow, the idea of selecting words to describe magic that was already there was more frightening than selection words to describe what was to come. I wanted the words to be powerful and rich, not just throw away positive-affirmation-cakes. I wanted each word to potentially describe the root of my power in a way that would be meaningful as well as the rest of the sisters. Still, I felt compelled to carefully type the word compassion on my list. I kept making a face and deleting it and then putting it back. Compassion. What a bullshit place for your power to come from. But I thought of my sisters and figured someone would benefit from it.When I spent my time in the Red Tent, I was the first to select an egg. I unwound the tiny scroll tied to the egg, took a deep breath and stared into the mirror. I looked down at my word. Compassion.
What? No. No, no, no. I knew this was my ritual I designed but the root of my power is compassion? That couldn't be right. I stared at the word uncomprehendingly. Compassion is for nice girls, Buddhist exboyfriends and other weenies that I no longer have in my life. When I think about compassion, I think about That Person who is doing things that society thinks of as kind for positive approval from other people and/or God. Compassion is for people who constantly allow themselves to get run over by other people, compassion is for people who can't say no and mean it, compassion is for people who spend their lives trying to live up to other people's images of them, compassion is for people who put others before themselves to the point that they never achieve any of their own dreams.
Gross.
I slunk back to my seat and waited for my sisters to finish. Oh, sure they all got perfect words to describe the roots of their power. They were all pleased for me when they saw mine, waiting for me to be excited too. "It's such a weenie word," I muttered. "I don't even think of myself as all that compassionate." There was a flurry of cries of disbelief. Finally, one of my sisters said, "To show compassion is to show mercy. You need to be in a position of power to show the other person mercy, right?"
I've been sitting with that thought for several weeks now and trying to untangle all my resistance, the worst Zen cohn of my own making. Jow and I go around and around about it but never really get anywhere with it.
It wasn't until I was looking for covers of songs that I liked that I accidentally stumbled upon a cover of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)".
The Life and Death of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Now he's gone, I don't know why/ And 'till this day, sometimes I cry/ He didn't even say goodbye/ He didn't take the time to lie/ Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground/ Bang bang, that awful sound/ Bang bang, my baby shot me down. . .
For those of you who don't know, the song featured prominently in Kill Bill. When I was with my exhusband, I was obsessed with The Bride. What a bad ass, right? It was also the type of movie he liked and that I got into by being with him. When we divorced, I completely let go of her. By that point, I was worn down and exhausted. Everything about my marriage seemed like a lie, including who I was when I was in it. The Bride seemed like just one more aspect of that - she was a character written by a man, to appeal to men's fantasies who was fucked up and broken. I knew the feeling.
It wasn't until I heard the song out of nowhere a week or two ago that I started rethinking The Bride. For one, Uma did help create her, so there's that on the back end. She was also really well organized, made a plan, survived her ex trying to kill her, killed his whole posse, killed him and got her baby back. If that's not a survivor, I don't know what is. She may have started out as his creature but she became her own in the end.
And so did I.
What does that have to do with compassion? I'm sure everyone would love to hear that it was a revelation that made me forgive my ex and find compassion in my heart for him. It didn't. It made me think of how hard I let myself get to survive life after him. My barn had burned down but it took me a v. long time for me to see the moon. Everything I felt sure of in this life was gone and I wasn't even sure who I was anymore. I didn't get to go on some kind of Eat, Pray, Love/ H is for Hawk upper middle class white girl retreat to find myself. I had to figure out my finances, where I would live, how I would eat, how I would retire, how I would get medication, how I would get out of credit card debt, how to make enough money to support myself. The list was tedious and it went on and on and on and doesn't even get into the emotional damage I had to assess. I had to start over completely. I swore to myself that no one would ever have that much control over me ever again. No one would ever get to break me the way that he did. I would be self sufficient. I would see that my dreams were achieved on my own. No one was ever going to get the drop on me like that again. Ever.
It wasn't until I was engaged to Jow and we were taking precana classes that I really started to deeply consider what it would mean to make someone's needs ranked as important as mine at all times. I wasn't even sure I could do it, to be honest. But the longer we've been together, the easier it's become.
I've recently realized it's time for me to reclaim the parts of myself that I loved that I discarded in the interest of survival.
I used to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I wanted to heal other people's hearts up with the power of my whimsy, my quirkiness, my zest for life and my open heart. I got very jaded to the whole concept because, well, it does get like this after a while: https://twitter.com/QuirkyMPDG