Well, it’s definitely autumn in the Pacific Northwest. It’s raining steadily. I’m sitting at the trailhead, in the car, wondering if the rain will let up long enough to get a walk in this morning? It is beginning to seem unlikely. I sigh out loud and sit quietly, waiting.
…Later, I travel…
This morning, I deal with my anxiety, and I deal with a concerned email from my Traveling Partner. His own anxieties were keeping him awake during the night, and he tackled them directly, expressing his concerns with care and asking me for assurances and charges in behavior. His approach reflects our years together as partners. I read it over, a couple times, before I reply. Of all the things causing me stress right now, this email isn’t one of them. I value his candor.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I find myself vacillating between already missing my Traveling Partner (I’m not even gone yet), and hoping this trip away for work somehow also meets my need to get some real solitude, beyond a trail walk in the morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve managed to get a couple of days away to myself (and being home alone seems completely out of reach pretty chronically).
I have a peculiar sudden stabbing bit of anxiety, weirdly out of place in my experience – I find myself anxious over “what if I returned home and he was gone though?!” I have literally no reason to consider this fear a legitimate concern. No idea where it comes from. No doubt it is some remnant of old baggage or past trauma; I let it go. It isn’t real, and I definitely have enough real shit vexing me and stoking my anxiety.
The rain slows to a sprinkle. I’m looking forward to walking in the rain freshened air before spending hours on a plane. I pull on my poncho and grab my cane. It’s time to begin again.
I slept through the night, waking to the artificial sunrise of my silent alarm. I dressed and left the house in the usual way. I arrived at the trailhead before daybreak, put on my boots, grabbed my cane, and began the trek down the trail.
I walk and breathe, my mind a mostly barren place, nothing really amounting to actually thought going on. I just walked.
… Strange morning…
My Traveling Partner pings me. No “good morning” greeting or inquiry about my state of being. Instead I get a hurt reminder that I had said I would pick up a package waiting in the mailbox. I’d forgotten, distracted by a moment of discord shortly after I got home yesterday. Shit. For the time being (and it is a recent change) we’ve only got one key to the mailbox, and picking up the mail now requires a return home to grab the key, or the foresight to take it on the way out the door. A suprisingly complicated change, once brain damage is accounted for. I sigh to myself. I do my best to do everything that needs to be done… Seems always just out of reach.
I’m now at my halfway point feeling aggravated, disappointed with myself, and fairly disinterested in interacting with “the world”… And it’s a fucking work day. Great. I ignore the slow tears dripping down my face. For the moment I have no patience with this very human experience. My Traveling Partner is having a difficult morning, himself. I do what I can to be supportive, compassionate, and kind. Maybe one of us will turn our morning around and have a good day?
I breathe, exhale, and… Well, I try to relax. I persist with trying to meditate, trying to let go of my irritability, trying to simply breathe and be… Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. How fucking hard does this shit have to be?!
Daybreak comes. I look down the trail and get to my feet. It isn’t all lovely mornings, big smiles, and beautiful sunrises. This is a very human experience, and sometimes there’s real work involved, and however “successful” the outcomes seem to be, the moment may still be quite unsatisfying or unpleasant. It is what it is. Another reason to begin again… and it’s time. I’ll do my best.
Cloudy morning. The deep dark green of the oaks dressed in Spring foliage dominate the view as I set off down the trail this morning. My head is full of vaguely grim musings, like “how many more sunrises?” And whether or not human life is sustainable on this planet at all, or how many idiots it takes to destroy democracy as astonished others watch it fall? My head aches. I woke with the headache and my tinnitus loud in my ears. I walk anyway.
Oaks along a well-maintained local trail, on s gray Spring morning.
It’s a workday. For some reason I feel cross and moody every time I think about my upcoming birthday. I don’t know what to do about my moody bullshit, but I guess I know more or less where it comes from. Change. I feel childish and stupidly emotional over it. Change is, and there are much more serious things going on in the world to be moody about than the details vexing me now. I’m just still dealing with it, I guess.
In spite of making tremendous progress recovering from his injury and the surgery that followed, my Traveling Partner, my beloved, is still healing, adapting, and working to recover skills and mobility that were lost or impaired. (We made dinner together last night and it was wonderful to see him back in the kitchen, cooking!) I’m incredibly impressed and proud of him for the sheer will and commitment he’s shown. I know how hard it is; I’ve been there (though I was in my 20’s when I broke my back, and that’s a very different age to deal with such a thing). So I want to be clear about my angsty nonsense; it’s not about him, or in fact about the current circumstances. Not really.
Love matters most.
I catch myself thinking about my 60th birthday. We’d just gotten the Ridgeline, and we were happily purposeful and excited, and eagerly exploring the local wilds together. The physical intimacy in our relationship was connected, deep, and joyful, and we “had the house to ourselves”. Him getting hurt wasn’t even on our radar. A year later, my birthday was mostly caregiving and preparing for his surgery with him, and doing the needful to help the Anxious Adventurer relocate to move in and give us a hand with all that, whatever he could while also building a life here for himself and working. Then another 6 months or so of crazy intense caregiving that exhausted me and pushed me to limits I didn’t know I have, before my beloved really started to “be himself” again. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that these are the circumstances and changes that brought me to this weird and moody place, facing a birthday I mostly wouldn’t care much about under other circumstances. 62? Not even a milestone (and I don’t “feel old”, generally speaking, in spite of chronic pain). I just have feelings. Very human. I don’t know what to do with or about this particular birthday. I simultaneously ache with poignant feelings of loss and strange regrets, and also don’t give a fuck and want to put it behind me.
I have planned taking the week after my birthday off work, but I have no actual plans. It’s just all really weird and the emotions have piled on, and I’m having trouble sorting myself out. It’s annoying.
“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012
I breathe, exhale, and relax. There’s so much to appreciate and to be grateful for. I focus on that as I sit at my halfway point, writing and reflecting. Things could be much worse. Change is, and this too will pass. I can count on that. lol I will find small joys to help me past blue moments. The clock will tick on, regardless. A week off spent sleeping in, painting, and puttering in my garden, reading books, and walking local trails, is time well-spent and needs no elaborate planning at all. It’s even enough, truly. Ah, but I do have these feelings, and the way out is reliably through – so I give myself room to experience and process my emotions, without taking them personally. Just feeling the feelings and reflecting on those. They’ll pass. They’re only emotions after all, not truths, not requirements, just their own sort of experience. I give myself a break and let them come and go like gray clouds on a Spring morning; yes, they appear to cover the entire sky, but they will move on, and there is blue sky beyond.
… Clouds make a nice metaphor for emotions…
I smile to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”, and this is a good life. I am indeed fortunate. Emotions are so very human. I sigh and chuckle to myself as I get to my feet and stretch. This path won’t walk itself. There are practices to practice and the clock ticks on. It’s time to begin again.
I’m sipping my coffee on a rainy winter morning, feeling cross and irritated and in considerable pain. It’s the pain making me so cranky, but it’s “only” my osteoarthritis (and my perpetual headache), and there’s not much to do about it, really. I live with this. A lot of people live with pain, that’s a real thing. I sigh to myself, as I pull my posture more upright. It helps a tiny bit, though barely noticeable in the moment. The moments add up. I’m grateful to have gotten a good night’s sleep. I’m grateful to have what limited Rx pain relief available to me that I do (and am willing to use).
My reflection stares back at me from the window; it’s not yet daybreak, and I see a middle-aged woman with slightly tousled carelessly-kept long hair, glasses, wrapped in a warm (if a bit frumpy) sweater, looking back at me. She looks pleasant and approachable, relaxed, with a soft smile hinting at a life well-lived, and maybe some interesting stories to tell. She looks just a bit… amused. I don’t see the pain, just the smile, which reaches her eyes. At the corners of her eyes and her smile, laugh lines, no frown lines. She looks… capable. She looks ready for the day and unbothered. I find myself liking what I see reflected there in the window. I sigh again and think “you’ll do”, and take another sip of my coffee. I’m not at all sure how I got “here” – it’s been a difficult journey in spots, and I’ve often wandered off my path – but I’m okay with where I am, and that feels like a win.
I sip my coffee thinking about friends. Thinking about love. Thinking about errands I need to run. I think about hearth and home and all the things that add up to this life I live. It’s not perfect; there’s the pain, obviously. That’s its own difficult experience. I try not to take it personally. Things could be so much worse. Instead of living with this pain, I could have rejected having the surgery to repair my shattered spine, and taken a chance on things “just healing up” more or less, and most likely ended up in a wheel-chair, unable to walk at all. It can be hard to trust the opinion of an expert; we live in cynical times. I’m glad I did – I walk every day, and often see the sunrise from some favorite trail. The pain seems like a price worth paying for that privilege, most of the time. My irritation slips away. I chose this with my eyes open. I may not have understood the full measure of the price I’d be paying when I lay there sedated in the ICU so many years ago, but I knew there’d be a price. TANSTAAFL.
One cold winter night 40 years ago, I ran from a knife wielding man to save my own life. I took the only route available to me, that I could see in the moment, which led me to dangling from a balcony rail, dangerously high above a beautiful tiled patio, slick with ice. That man was my then-husband, who rushed to the balcony to plead with me not to let go. I looked back at him in a moment of unexpected clarity and calm, aware of my agency in a new way. The choice was mine. “I have to,” I said, and I did. The explosion of light in my head and the sudden pain that shot through me and my breath knocked out of my body overcame me only for seconds before adrenaline and terror drove me to my feet to seek help. It was a moment of profound change. One choice. One moment.
I sit with my thoughts a while. “I had no other choice” is reliably a lie. We have choices (many) – I know I’ve made a lot of them. Probably the worst choice(s) I’ve ever made? Telling myself I’ve no other choice, and and following the path that took me down. The menu in The Strange Diner is immense. We choose, on our own, to keep it folded, and to narrow our options willfully. Refusing to consider all the options is also a choice.
We’re born “a blank page”, and although we have little to say about our introduction to life, we have so many choices as we grow, and more once we are adult and free to do as we will. What will you do with it? The menu in The Strange Diner is impressively vast. What will you choose? Will you make your world (and your life) a better place in which to thrive? Will you walk a path that leads you somewhere beautiful? Will you take the steps that carry you to becoming the person you most want to be? Who is that? What will your legacy be? You have choices. Choose wisely. Pay the price. Don’t take the pain personally.
Not gonna lie, when the email hit my inbox it kind of took my breath away, and I had a moment of panic and stress and doubt. My anxiety flared up, shouting in my head for attention. I wanted to “run away”.
We are contacting you to communicate an adjustment in the monthly rental rate…
Funny how such things are so rarely about a decrease in the rent, eh?
We do not take adjusting your rental rate lightly and understand cost increases impact you…
Yeah, I’ll bet you do. I took a deep breath and pulled out my calculator, and my calendar.
Two increases in less than six months since new management took over the storage company we lease a unit from. I took another breath, and patiently adulted through the panic. I did the math, did some comparisons, and determined quickly that we could easily do better. Instead of freaking out, I sent my Traveling Partner an email, sharing the unexpected increase in the rent on our storage unit, and providing the alternatives I’d identified. We came to a solution, made a plan, and got to work on making a needed change. Yes, it’s a lot of work to be done, but sooner on this is better than later.
…I immediately felt less stressed out…
I’ve grown. It wasn’t so long ago that something like this would have me mentally “running for cover”, terrified to face circumstances or take action. The key detail, the first step on the path, being to face circumstances, with open eyes and an open mind. We can’t make informed choices or wise changes to circumstances we try to hide from. Elementary adulting; don’t lie to yourself.
Am I happy to have to move a bunch of stuff from one storage unit to another? Not really. On the other hand, what we actually have are two storage units, and we’ll move into one much larger one for the same price, and be able to re-organize efficiently as we do so. This turns the whole annoying thing into a really choice opportunity and an improvement in convenience, and I am happy about that. Altogether a positive change, with some verbs involved. Had I let this mess go for weeks or months trying to avoid thinking about it or dealing with it, or trying to wish it away, I could have found myself lacking good options, or faced with even greater expense and massive inconvenience. I smile and sip my coffee – there’s certainly no stress over it this morning.
There’s a lesson here. Look the stressful circumstances in the face. Get out your calculator, takes some notes, do some math, think things over with consideration. Seek clarity. Be realistic and frank with yourself. Make a plan, and make a plan B. Do the needful. Adulting is hard sometimes, but avoiding the required work doesn’t make it easier at all. You’ve got this – whatever it is.
Evening Light 