A Yoga Practice For Living

When I think back to Shani’s murder 16 months ago, far enough removed from it to now see it from the perspective of an observer, I wonder how in the hell it is that I’m here. How did I not kill myself? How did I not drink myself into oblivion and completely self-destruct? How have I not completely lost my mind?

I read. I run. I ride. I write. I lift weights. I swim. I meditate and pray. I surround myself with loved ones and do my best to keep toxic energy out of my life. I see a therapist. I talk to Shani. I ask her for guidance. I eat healthy as much as possible. I cry. I laugh. I love. I live.

I also practice yoga.

Living

What to write…what to write. I’ve been in a great space for about a week now. I don’t have any stories to share off the top of my head, and frankly I’ve been too focused on my current day and potential of the future to spend much time dwelling on the past.

I’ve been living.

Freedom

I feel an amazing sense of freedom today. To start, it’s an absolutely beautiful day outside. The colors are just starting to turn, and it’s 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky. I knocked out a long run and was cheered on by a few homeless guys in the park downtown as I looped around a couple of times. That was cool. They raised their arms and smiled. I clapped my hands and yelled, “Just keep going, brothers! Keep going!” It was exhilarating.

The Trial (Part 2)

I’m not going to the trial.

The Trial

I don’t even know what to write. I’ve been wandering aimlessly throughout my days since Thursday, literally putting one foot in front of the other with no real direction outside of trying to get in a workout, studying when I can keep some sort of focus, and trying to write. I’ve not been very successful in any area really. I’ve ignored phone calls and text messages and disconnected from most of my friends and family.

I spoke to the District Attorney, whose office is handling Zeke’s case, on Thursday.

My Element

“…Mike is totally in his element here (NYC).”

-Shani Fecht (excerpt from journal 7/25/03)

I’m headed to New York tomorrow morning for a week of couch crashing with old friends, connections with new ones and a bit of exploration and self discovery.  I’ve always been drawn to that city in some strange, cosmic way. I was the only Yankees fan I knew growing up in Sterling, IL, except for my uncle who turned me onto them as a 6-year-old. A couple of years ago, I asked him why he was a Yankees fan, having been raised in the same small town.

Apathy

I’ve been angry, apathetic and raw. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder the size of Texas, and the best I can give anyone involves little more than a shrug of my shoulders and a look of, “Well, what do you expect?” People see what I write, see me looking and acting differently I guess, and say, “You seem to be doing so much better.” What else are they supposed to say, right? If you call getting more comfortable in dealing with nightmares and putting a good face out there getting better, then yeah, I am. People see Facebook stuff and think they know you or know exactly where you are. There’s a reason it’s called “Face”book and not “Soul”book. This is no linear growth process, and right now, I am in a funk to end all funks. People read a post that’s positive and go, “Must be doing great today!” I struggle every day to try and stay positive. And sometimes that vibe I am putting out there is nothing more than an effort to fake it until I make it. I’m just trying not to do something that will lead to a deeper and darker hole.

Sitting With It...For Now

Post it. Don’t post it. Yes. No. Ok. Nope.

I haven’t posted much recently. It’s not that I haven’t been writing or that I am struggling to come up with a topic or anything like that. In fact, I’ve probably written more in the last week than I have in a while; I just haven’t put it out there for public consumption. I have one lengthy blog completely prepared.  It’s about an experience I had last week and the feelings that experience stirred up inside of me, but I’m just not ready to share it. I believe that doing so will be quite cathartic, but I’ve come to the conclusion I need to think it through a bit more. It’s really not all that uncommon for me to write something and then sit with it until I feel confident exposing my innermost thoughts. So often I find myself sharing exactly what it is that I am feeling in a particular moment or in response to a particular occurrence in this crazy journey I’m on.  However, this blog post that I’ve written is about a cosmic coincidence of sorts that has forced me to reexamine my feelings about people I personally held, and probably still hold, partially responsible for the circumstances that led us here.  It’s about Zeke’s father and step-mother.

Taking A Swing At Life

As I wrote in my Father’s Day post a couple of months ago, baseball has long been a deep connection that my father and I share. He was my coach all the way through high school, and I can’t even begin count the number of games we have attended together—from Spring Training through the last game of the World Series and everything in-between, including the College and Little League World Series. If it’s associated with baseball, my dad and I are tuned in. The baseball people out there know exactly how I feel. Dad and I decided in late May to finally take the father/son pilgrimage we had talked about forever to the real Field of Dreams located in Dyersville, Iowa, the actual site where the movie was filmed. We made the trip last week. Everything is still there—the house, the field, the bleachers and the corn, all of it. And 20 years later it looks just as it did on the big screen.

What Does That Mean

I was up all night last night. I couldn’t sleep. It’s nothing new. My body simply refuses to shut down.

I fell in and out of consciousness between 7 and 10 in the morning and finally just decided to get up and face the day, what was to be my last day here in TX. My anxiety was high with the lack of sleep and the fact that I am heading back to TN tomorrow. It has been typical for me to experience my greatest breakthroughs and growth during these times of struggle, and today was no different. As I shared on my Facebook status months ago, “The greatest miracles in life happen in that place where ‘hanging on’ and ‘letting go’ collide.”

Godzilla

I’m currently in Chicago for the weekend, and I’m staying with my cousin, David, his wife, Sarah, and their son 17-month-old son, Tyler, at their home in Aurora, which is about 45 minutes from downtown. It was almost a year ago to the week that I was here on my first trip outside of Atlanta after Shani’s death. I stayed with them for a few days, doing everything I could to just get away and possibly enjoy myself, attempting to escape the horror movie that my life had become only 2 months before. While here, it just so happened that the New York Yankees were in town, so David and I drove into the city to catch one of the four games that weekend.

Healing Energy

Our bodies serve as the spirit’s connection to the material world. Most people believe there is some sort of afterlife and that our souls move on to another place, like heaven, or another dimension, when the body dies. Many people also believe that we possess the ability to connect or communicate with God directly through prayer and meditation and that these actions allow the spirit to move beyond the physical casing of the body. One might say that we possess the ability to quiet our minds and connect directly to the energy that we cannot visibly see.

I have written about how I feel more connected to Shani now in her death than I did when she was here. Being completely stripped of the human emotions that bog us down, the worry and anxiety of daily life, I believe that Shani is in a truly magical state, something far beyond human comprehension, something we can only begin to understand once we die.

The Spiritual Path

This week has been quite an introspective time for me. Sean has been out of town on vacation, so we haven’t been meeting to write, and I’ve had a lot going on personally. Things seemed to be all over the place. Whenever I find myself emotionally spun like this, I will inevitably find myself standing there, looking up at the sky, asking, “What do you want me to do with this?”

It was the same back on the night of June 2, 2009. While just trying to make it through the night before catching my flight from Fort Lauderdale back to Atlanta, that was the exact question I posed to God.

“What do you me to do with this?”

Our Brain, The Crazy Computer

The following is a graphic description of my personal experience with PTSD.

In my previous post about PTSD, I referenced a number of symptoms associated with the disorder. Before going any further, I want to make it very clear that these symptoms and this experience are completely out of the conscious control of the individual suffering from them. All too often, people look at mental or emotional issues and think people should just “snap out of it” or “move on” with their lives. Trust me, I have a few of those people in my life that have judged me in the same way. They have no clue.

Just imagine, as difficult as this may be for you to do, the picture of your closest loved one being shot to death. Imagine the sounds of the gun firing, the image of the bullets flying, the blood, the guts, the screaming, anything and everything. Now picture your loved one’s body being struck. Imagine where the bullets penetrate—their chest, arms, legs, stomach, head, whatever your brain concocts. Imagine it.

Emotional Traumas (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

This entry will be the first in a series focusing on mental and emotional issues associated with sudden life changes.

Any sudden life changing event can trigger negative emotional responses. The death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce or personal physical trauma can create an overwhelming amount of stress on the brain, resulting in a physical manifestation of responses directly attributed to the event. Rarely can an individual go through life without experiencing some kind of deep emotional loss or physical injury, and at the very least, everyone knows or is connected to someone who has experienced a tragic situation of some sort in their lives.

Anger Management

Yesterday, I woke up in a funk. Actually, I couldn’t tell you the last time I woke up with a totally positive outlook.  I suppose it was June 2, 2009, the morning Shani was killed.

She and I had been arguing the night before about where we were going to live when we moved to South Florida. I wanted to get a place on the water, and she wanted to be a bit further inland. I ended up being the one to bend, finding a condo only about 5 minutes from the beach.  When I awoke the morning after, I sent her a quick text apologizing for the night before.   She responded, “It’s ok babe. I get you.”  She did, too.  She always “got” me.  After that exchange of texts, I went about my day, excited about my new job, the move, and our future in Florida.  Little did I know that she would be dead later on that day.