Drama at my door...

Just when I’ve declared that I want less drama in my life and am just about ready to cut all ties with drama queens and drama-making aspects of my life – drama comes for another visit and lowers a one-tow punch that leaves me stunned. I won’t go into the details, but involves my sister-in-law, formerly referred to as DQ, my husband’s family dynamics, his mother with Alzheimer’s, and family money. That should give you a good clue, any time there’s money involved (and a bunch of unconscious people) there’s drama. And what DQ was able to do was to get her mother to sign my husband out of his mother’s Trust. And DQ just happened to deliver the news on – Mother’s Day at 7:30pm in a very emotional phone conversation that lasted two hours with lots of drama...

For the life of me I don’t understand how this family functions – or dysfunctions. I don’t understand the need to be so crisis and drama oriented. It is soooo bloody disruptive. But it seems the world functions on crisis and drama – have you noticed? :)

I create enough drama of my own that I often get stuck in it, forgetting to consciously check it at the door. It usually gets stuck to my shoe or my leg – like toilet paper. I hardly know it’s there until I embarrass myself. Drama is very sticky stuff. For some reason we love it. It can be addicting, giving that adrenaline rush, feeding the ego’s sense of self-importance. I have been noticing these things lately in my involvement with my sister and her issues, and how drama is soooo easy to do. It’s the path of least resistance actually. I’ve been watching and noticing how I create my own drama, and how I give in so easily to other people’s dramas. I certainly didn’t want to let this new visitor in – but she somehow slipped through the door. My husband was essentially blindsided and so is stunned himself. And in just a few short hours we have gone through the shock and awe of what happens when people are only interested in the bottom line – not the well-being of others – to anger, to numbness, to peace, then back to shock, anger and... in cycles of emotion and the resurrection of buried feelings and family baggage.

So – how to stay conscious when you’ve been lobbed a bomb over the back fence with a great deal of planning and forethought evidently on their part… It was intentional. Like the surgeon with a surgeon’s knife. In one fell swoop of a pen of a confused woman, the heart of her son has been cut out. Assisted no doubt by the master surgeon DQ herself. And I wonder what lawyer in his right mind would allow a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s to make that kind of a decision, unless of course he was bamboozled by a certain DQ who is known in the family as a troublemaker, stirring up chaos with her drama – oops, am I lobbing a grenade here :)

So how *does* one stay conscious, awake, open and not retaliate with another bomb… With a great deal of precision it seems to me, skillfully. But the mind wants to run with the drama! To be impulsive. Those thought juices are just flowing like crazy in a feeding frenzy of fight or flight neurons – mostly fight - and warrior synapses that want to defend “the territory” and prevent the “enemy” from pillaging and plundering in the name of the “estate.” But what about his mother! What about the fact that she is being manipulated in the name of protecting her money in a flurry of false accusations against her son, in an attempt by DQ to get back at him for past transgressions… You see how sticky this is…

It seems to me this situation requires a rational response: calling the Trust lawyer to see if he can be trusted :) and how this could have happened and why he allowed it; seeking legal counsel here for some advice on what to do about it, if anything. Or are we just up shitz creek…

For me it is about not perpetuating the drama by constantly talking about it, or allowing it to dominate my mind and getting worked up about it, spewing out my own venom, venting to soothe my offended ego that wants to let my family know how bad his family is, or giving my husband unwanted advice on how to handle the situation in an attempt to control. It requires some serious change in my behavior patterns in order to deal with this with equanimity, with an inner resolve to act with integrity and authenticity. And maybe even fierce presence in the face of those who would malign and wish harm. And certainly some serious cushion time is in order as well, sitting with The Buddha within, asking: what *is* this? And what is needed here? What do I need to see here?

It also means remembering that staying conscious and awake is through awareness. And not just awareness of the situation, the dynamics involved, the thoughts, or the feelings in the body, or my emotional responses, but aware of Awareness itSelf – the Buddha Nature – of what is underlying all this. To constantly bring my awareness back to this essential Awareness – to sit with The Buddha – Being – Presence (however one calls it) and *abiding* there – allowing - not fighting and resisting, as in Aikido where one goes with the movement of the aggressor, not against them. Allowing the aggressor to aggress and seeing where they go, moving with their movement, essentially disarming the aggressor without a fight. Skillfully.

So that’s where I am tonight at 4:45 am – listening to the birds chirping in the pre-dawn darkness - feeling a little punchy - needing sleep... Yesterday’s drama is already today’s present moment…