#1. What are you doing?
Reuben the Puerto Rican guy who kept benevolently interrupting me on Saturday afternoon

I’m trying to meditate.

#2. Sorry, you’re like a magnet, I keep coming back. How do you meditate?
Reuben again

Well, first off, I’m not a very good meditator. My mind wanders and I start to make lists, obsess, or daydream. But right now I am trying to breathe with my stomach, like a baby, in order to deeply draw more oxygen into my lungs. I am keeping my palms open to the sky. I’m watching the river, or the clouds, and letting the natural rhythms relax me. I am paying attention to the sensations in my core.

If I can sense that something has upset my *conscious (a.k.a. my inner child), I’ll put my hand on my belly in order to calm her down and keep her relaxed and happy. The most important thing during this process is to ensure my inner child’s understanding that she is safe.

#3. Let’s say you had a traumatic childhood. Is there a way to get over that?

Reuben, the very fact that you’re asking that fills me with optimism that you’ll make smarter choices for your children than your parents did.

Answering your inquiry is outside the scope of this particular exercise, but it is all intricately entertwined.

#4. Why are you wasting your time on these guys when they aren’t worth it?
Friend A

The cord-cutting process is not about the guys. It’s about my inner child. My rational conscious self has closure and is happily moving about the earth unencumbered, while my emotional inner child is confused and hasn’t processed everything properly. She is burdened by these unfiltered feelings.

Through meditation, I can enter a place where my inner child can be addressed (sans LSD, no less!) and she can gently unravel those heretofore unresolved feelings. It’s important that my conscious self note her feelings and reactions, so that if something is upsetting her, rational ANP can remind the inner child that she is in a safe place.

As a water sign, I like doing this work by a river. I like the idea of the energy that my inner child is expending (holding on to these unresolved emotions) being released back into the water.

Here’s what I have noticed: as my inner child releases her anxious emotionally vampiric hold onto the past, there is a tightening in my abdomen. The cord I can actually visualize (in my head; I know it’s not actually there) and feel; the more intense the dynamic between myself and the guy on the other end of the cord, the thicker and stronger the cord actually feels.

When I imagine releasing it, when I tell her to let go, it actually feels like a bit of a burst whose power directly relates to the intensity of the released dynamic. Sometimes my head actually moves back as in whiplash. I actually teared up a bit when a particularly strong cord was cut. It’s important during these moments that I ground myself, and move the hand to the tummy.

#5. Don’t you think that burning everything is overkill? Can’t you just put the stuff in a shoebox somewhere? Geez.
Friend B

Ah yes, the old shoebox trick. Yes, I have a shoebox (or two) filled with ephemera. And it wiped me out emotionally to go through it. Even thinking about the shoebox before I started this exercise filled me with anxiety.

I do not need this evidence in order to prove that I exist. I do not want to shuffle around on this earth burdened by these moments frozen in time. They do not define me.

I don’t need the shoebox. I went through my shoeboxes the other night — painfully, slowly, with plenty of hand-on-belly-to-calm-the-inner-child-action — and there was nothing in them that, once removed from this earth, will make me exist any less.

I will soon burn all of this so-called evidence.

#6. What’s up with the use of fire? I thought you said you were a water sign.

(A) This is my story.
(B) According to an article on chi that I read in Marie Claire today while getting my hair done, my birth date is connected to fire. So there.

#7. Well, why not keep a few photos for when you are old and wrinkly?
Friend C

Imagine whatever progeny I might bake in the future stumbling upon a photograph of me and an ex-lover in a rapturous embrace. How upsetting this would be for her! How would she process an image of her mother appearing very much in love with a man that was not her father?

Setting aside the pictures involving ex-lovers, all of which will be released into fire, the pictures of me taken by ex-lovers I’ve decided to entrust to a third party who will squirrel them away on my behalf. The point is simply that I need to get them out of the realm of my inner child, so that she knows understands to release her kung fu grip on the past.

#8. What about gifts & other relationship artifacts?

It’s all about addressing the feelings of my inner child. I can tell which objects affect her and which do not. I can look at some gifts and artifacts and feel completely at ease. These items don’t need to be purged.

Other items I feel a jarring negative anxious energy when my eyes gaze upon them, and them shits need to go.

#9. What about the guys you are still friends with? Are you gonna cut them out of your life?

Remember, this exercise is for my inner child, not my rational conscious self. My inner child needs to understand that it is inappropriate to seek from these men any kind of emotional sustenance approximating the “Are you mommy or daddy?” dynamic. This outmoded interaction model must be abandoned, and if my inner child is still *consciously regarding these guys in that manner, this needs to be re-set. (This enables a better foundation for a real friendship, to boot, rather than a hunger-based dynamic.)

It’s not about forgetting these people; it’s about cutting that outmoded dynamic. My inner child must learn that it’s inappropriate to feed off other people to feed her emotional hunger. My inner child must learn that she is now in a safe place and she will be taken care of; she need not continually look to externals to feed her. Similarly, she need not obsessively look to the past (be it in the form of re-reading old letters, looking through old photos, or fixating on the movies in my head) for a “fix” or “hit” of externally-sourced validation (read: love).

Thus, yes, the cord must be cut for every guy on the aforementioned list, but the cord is the one held by the inner child, not the rational adult ANP. Cord-cutting does not preclude friendship with an ex-lover.

#10. Okay, but the vow of celibacy? What?!
Friend D

Well, I need a carrot to get a move on and do this housecleaning, otherwise I’ll procrastinate.

Besides, you don’t clean a pool with all the waterjets streaming. You want the water to be as calm and still as possible.

#11. You do realize you’re kind of weird, right?

The accoutrements of class make sheep out of those who conform and freaks out of those who rebel. Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.
- Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery

Yeah, yeah; I own my weirdness. I am a being unto death in dogged pursuit of authenticity and meaning Authenticity and Meaning.

–

After Saturday’s cord-cutting ceremony (the entire process remains in progress), I felt lighter; free. I bought some art on my way home. It made me happy.

I got home, cranked the music, poured some white wine, made tons of salsa and guacamole, and danced with myself, limbs flailing.

Life is beautiful.

I’m taking care of you, girl. I love you. It’s okay to let go. You’ll still exist.