When the Subconscious Bosses You (Me) Around and Birth/First Mother’s Thoughts

I have been here on the farm for six months, and I have that feeling it’s time to go. It’s a gentle but persistent pulling at my heart and ribs as if there is a great magnet somewhere in the distance and a distraction in my head as if my brain is searching for a thought or twelve thoughts to land on but can’t find a single one.

Martha Beck said that it takes a year for your system to get used to a new place. It made me think about how when I buy a potted plant at the nursery and take it out of its container, loosen up its knotted roots, and plant it in the garden. Often there are a few rough days where the plant looks, well, depressed. Even half dead. Sometimes it doesn’t take root, but mostly it does because I tend to it, water it, give it extra nutrients. The thing is, I’m addicted to the shock of a new move. I love starting over. I love not knowing where I am. Unlike the plant, I suffer from staying, not from being transplanted. I start getting the depression and the half dead feeling when roots start to take hold.

One time when I had Move Fever, my friend tried to talk me down: Stay…stay…stay, as if he could hypnotize me into not going to UHaul to buy boxes. Why on earth would I stay, is what my body and mind asked. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge before…before…before I didn’t know what, but the feeling of having worn out the welcome was clear, and so it was time to go before…before…before the bad feelings came, I guess. It was time to go because my system had made that decision. You try arguing with your body and mind. You get sick. You get depressed, and then you can’t do shit. I had to move while I still could, I guess.

I was listening to Dr. Bruce Lipton on a recent episode of the podcast Breakdown. He was saying that on average we operate 95% of the time from our subconscious and 5% from our conscious mind, the pre-frontal cortex. Think of driving from your house to the grocery store. Chances are good you’re thinking about other things other than driving to Stop & Shop since your subconscious has been programmed from years of repeated actions to do the tasks (brake, gas, blinker). In other words, your mind is in Hawaii, maybe, while your car in on High Street and because of your amazing brain, you can do two things at once (think about waves and turn on your blinker and take a right).

He talked about how we are in a state of super learning in the first seven years of our lives where we are basically being programmed by our surroundings. I mean, think of all the things babies learn just by watching and listening!

This programming also happens in vitro. Which brings me to what I want to say: growing in the belly of a woman who either doesn’t want you or can’t keep you is a soup of I don’t know what: ambivelence maybe. Hatred. Heartbreak. Denial. An eagerness to have the thing out. A terror of having the baby being born and taken away.

It’s not unreasonable to think that at the six month mark, I lived in an envirorment that felt like Get out. Go away. You are not wanted here. You are not safe. It may have felt like Die already. Just leave me alone.

I have lived in more than sixty places. I don’t know how many jobs or boyfriends I have had. I have lost track of how many cars I have owned. When things start feeling familiar, I get uneasy. The irony is that after I leave, I often get intensely nostalgic and dream of going back. I often do. I go back just to leave again.

It’s helpful for me to think that maybe my subconscious mind reads staying as danger because then I can work at dog life: stay, stay, stay. It’s what I’m going now. Even though I feel I could easily go on automatic pilot, pack up, and find somewhere new, I’m living with the discomfort and buying new plants to put into the garden. Today I got a hook to hang my towel and a cloth for the interior metal walls of the Airstream. I’m getting to like the discomfort. It’s just information, after all. It’s my body talking to me. At least I can be a nice body mom and listen, right?

They know me at ACE Hardware. They know me at the coffee shop. They know me at Andy’s Market. By know me I mean the employees say hi with recognition, and they know my dog’s name. I love this, and I miss it when I move. I have to start over, build relationships, say hi hi hi good morning how are you again and again until the spark of recognition is lit.

But also. There is an ache that comes with this after a while. I start to feel too known, too not special enough, I guess. Like, it’s not okay to be just me. I need to be new me. It’s like why you turn a page when you're reading. You're done with that page, you need to turn it to see what happens next. Only I’m the page, and I need to turn myself before people…what? Get bored of me? Hate me? Wish I were someone else? Wish I would stop being so me?

Oy.

I have the feeling my subconscious has the belief that there is a limited welcome window, that I’m like a stink bomb that can only stay in one place before both me and those around me need me to evacuate the building. I start feeling rotten and bad if I stay past the desire to go. It happens with myself, with spaces, and with people. The clock goes tick tick tick and then I’ve hit the limit. I was in this room for two hours. Gotta go. I was with this person for thirty minutes. I was in this house for six months. I was in this town for a year.

Gotta go gotta go gotta go. I can’t be myself here. Gotta go.

Bruce Lipton said if you want to know your programming, look at your life. You may have positive programming for things that come easily to you (maybe you have a wonderful marriage—maybe you had parents who also had a wonderful marriage). You may have negative programming for things you struggle with (maybe you have been divorced a bunch of times—maybe the relationships molded for you when you were young put you on this path).

(Thank god for neuroplasticity. And meditation. And psychedelics.)

One cool thing about getting older is I don’t have the same kind of energy I used to have. This means I’m more willing to lie on the couch and feel the feelings instead of running to UHaul. I am grateful for this opportunity to feel what I’ve been running from for so long. It feels like…life. Like a series of sensations I can experience as I watch the breeze move the leaves on the Mayberry tree. Just because my body and mind tell me it’s time to pack up doesn’t mean I have to, is what I am learning. Just because my system thinks the world is on fire doesn’t mean it is (well, it is, so that was a shaky example, but I’m going to keep it. The world’s on fire, but not right here, right now. Knock on wood.)

I feel done for now. I gotta go watch the leaves.

See you later.

Oh, one last thing. Bruce Lipton said that our prefrontal cortex is wired to go after our wants and desires. It’s like giving a pilot a map: head in that direction. So, for the love of all that is joyful about having a life that feels good to you—go crazy getting clear on what you want. Make it an art!