Memorial Day is sometimes a hard one (for me). The days leading up to it this year were particularly difficult, though I don’t really have a reason why. I’ve lost a few folks over the years. That will never not be true in my life; once we lose the first one, it’s all “more” from there. Spent some time over the weekend reflecting on those losses, and those people. I spent the time with my Traveling Partner, and it was a very healing time we managed to share. I’m grateful.
Losses are hard. We feel our own pain most (and worst, generally). Running from it doesn’t change it – the way out is through. The challenge is not getting stalled in the momentary misery of grief.
The weekend was summery, and fairly mild. We got out among the trees. I got out into the garden. We drove beautiful miles and shared deep conversations. I needed that. We both did, I guess, and we’re better for it.
I’m sipping my morning coffee a bit surprised at how poorly I slept last night after a couple days of extraordinarily good sleep, deep and restful… last night my anxiety flared up with the recollection that today is a work day. Silly, but real. I woke numerous times to double-check that my “sunrise alarm” was actually set. It was. Every time I checked. lol It remains true that a few days of healing and emotionally gentle and nourishing time don’t “fix” anxiety. It comes and goes. My results vary. This morning I got up and managed to start the day without taking it personally or escalating it beyond the obvious; it’s disordered, and there is no reason to feed it and give it more energy.
I smile when I think about the weekend, and my Traveling Partner. Good times.
How am I still so fragile? After all this time? Tears come and go. At this point, after days of it, I’m not even sure why. Post-menopause, it “shouldn’t be” hormones… but… I keep fucking about trying to “fix shit” with my body as I age, so… I don’t know. Anything I take to remedy some ailment or condition has potential to fuck with my body’s systems and my emotional balance, so… yeah. I just know the world is too much for me. Just… all of it.
…I keep finding myself weeping and in real emotional pain… but why, for fucks’ sake, why??
…I mean… I guess it’s enough that the world is this messy strange violent circus of nightmares, with an ever-increasing body count. That, by itself, is worth weeping over. I just can’t sustain doing all the fucking crying, by myself. It would make more sense to stop the killing, wouldn’t it? I drink more of this bottle of water sitting next to me. Tears = drink more water. A lot more.
…I have the strange slightly hilarious thought that maybe the water drinking itself is causing the tears somehow. That’s ridiculous, it’s just a passing notion.
My sleep is chronically disturbed and restless, this isn’t new, it’s just… yeah… chronic.
Ping…ping…ping…ping… work pings on my consciousness. My Traveling Partner pings me eager to iron out details for this or that, or share something cool. Ping. Scam calls. Ping. Another email. Ping. An announcement in a Slack thread at work. Ping. A walk-up co-work colleague with a question. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Everyone, everything, seems to want a piece of my attention, or a moment of my time. I feel overwhelmed, but it’s all quite ordinary. There’s nothing to see here.
A long time ago, in another life, a 14 year old me, feeling something similar, packed a small bag, and lacking any notable experience of the world, just sort of … walked away from her home, her family, and her life, headed… nowhere. Away. I didn’t have a plan exactly… I was “going to Florida”. Why? A rock star I was crushing on lived there, and… I don’t know. I thought I needed a destination? I was fortunate; I survived the adventure to return home to commonplace misery. I survived to see adulthood, to go on to survive domestic violence, military service, warfare, trauma… you know, life. I’m almost 60 now. Still holding on.
…Shit… is this about that? I don’t feel any obvious angst over turning 60, specifically, it’s more… the issues hang on right along with me. How much further does this journey go? How many more verbs are there? G’damn it – when can I relax and just fucking be?? I’m so tired…
I’m sipping my coffee, early, in the co-work space. It’s hours before the work day will begin. I am reflecting on emotional reactions and what sorts of things I react to. My inclination is to think that my reactions are reliably to the real-world events going on around me. You, too? Something happens, and I react to that, right? Only… I have to point out that it’s quite clear that human primates don’t really seem to “work that way” – we react to a lot of things, don’t we? We react to events. We react to things we hear other people say. We react to things we read. We react to the reactions of other human primates. We react to our ownemotions. We react to our assumptions.
…Wait… Do we really react to things that lack any substantial reality at all? That seems likely to go very wrong, very easily… But we sure do. News stories (whether fact-checked or not). Books (both fiction and non-fiction). Conversations about future potential events that have not yet come to pass (and maybe never will). Opinions of people we have never met (even if they have no direct influence on our own experience). Our own assumptions even trip us up; we react to things we assume are going on, without a reality check of any kind. How fucking dumb are we? This is an instant short-cut to full-on drama. The map is not the world. Our assumptions are not reality. I don’t really know what to say about that… don’t do that? Maybe check yourself (and your assumptions) and slow down before you lash out at someone over something that isn’t real, isn’t true, or didn’t happen the way you assume that it did.
This isn’t unusual stuff; humans make assumptions. Humans have emotions. Humans react to their assumptions with emotions. Funny that our big brains don’t really help us out with this one. I sit here with my coffee thinking about it. Asking myself “how can I best ensure that I’m not reacting to fictions of various sorts and inflicting my reaction on people who don’t share my assumptions?” It’s a worthwhile question. Another worthwhile question is “how can I make a point of avoiding making assumptions in the first place?”
I stare into my half-finished half-cold cup of coffee. Maybe you assume I could just go make another, if I am discontent with this one? Could I, though? Is there even coffee here in this place? Water to make it with? A cup to use? Some kind of coffee machine? Any actual need or desire to do so? The unknown details begin to pile up… undermining the assumption that I could just go make a fresh cup to address a need that may or may not exist in the first place. Some of our most common assumptions day-to-day are resting on very little actual information. I often find that when I begin checking the details about an assumption I’ve made, I’m quite wrong about it – regardless how commonplace it may be, or how firm my convictions are about what is fundamentally just my imagination going to work, until/unless confirmed through questions and observation.
Assumption making is one of the most common thinking errors. It’s so prevalent and problematic, it’s got it’s own place of honor in The Four Agreements. Untested assumptions cause all kinds of chaos and miscommunication.
My morning began early, this morning. It began with a reaction to an untested assumption (that was likely completely and entirely incorrect). There is a lot of potential to derail a (potentially lovely) new day over that kind of bullshit, so I chose instead to let it go, to just drop it entirely, and move on from that moment. I let go of my assumption(s) (that’s not always easy or effortless, but do-able). I made the choice to begin the day differently and hope for a good outcome.
Here I am. New day. New beginning. New opportunities to be the woman I most want to be.
I’m admittedly still a bit cross. Another cup of coffee might be nice, though. (Yes, there’s coffee here, and a coffee machine, and potable water from a tap, and a clean mug if I don’t want to re-use the one I’ve got at my desk.) It’s time to begin (again).
Here we are. Another opportunity to live life with intention. Sounds pretty cool, a little trendy. Modern buzzwords amuse me. I sip my (iced) coffee, and make room for a moment of gratitude; I didn’t sleep well, and my Traveling Partner also missed out on good sleep last night – we still shared a few pleasant minutes over morning coffee together. That’s precious time – it’s not a given that we’ll always be here together. Change is. Misfortunes and tragedies do occur. Life does throw some curveballs. We face our circumstances, and make our choices – our results are going to vary. Maybe a lot. Maybe not in good ways.
…How well we deal with misfortune, adversity, and change, are a large part of our success (or failure) at living well (and just maybe finding happiness). It’s not about the successes and joys so much as it is “how do I deal with this terrible shit??”
So this morning, I’m taking my time really waking up and starting the day. Sipping my coffee happy that I have coffee to sip, and pausing to wonder if I’m making the best choice of coffee beans – can I make choices that are less likely to support a corrupt or exploitative system in which profiteering prevents farmers and workers from living their best lives? Small choices can make big differences. Our choices matter. Even the small ones.
I breathe, exhale, and find myself – instead of relaxing – fighting the pain of my arthritis on a sunny morning. I repeat the exercise: breathe, exhale, relax. I do it again. I keep at it until my first thought/sensation following that exhalation is anything at all other than pain. Small successes matter. I’m still in pain, but now I’m actually breathing comfortably instead of taking shallow breaths stiffened against the pain I’m in. That’s something.
…60 is approaching quickly. I keep finding myself thinking about family, friends and comrades-at-arms with whom I won’t be celebrating – because they’re gone. Just, like, for real gone. Dead. The permanent kind of gone. More than a few missing faces. Gloomy. I don’t know why my mind keeps wandering this path. Feeling my years, maybe? It’s been an interesting life thus far… I’ve seen some things. Done some things. Experienced some things. Some of it good. A lot of it. More good than not.
Iced coffee (black) and a fizzy water (plain, cold) and a day of work ahead of me. I’m not even bitching, it’s simply where the day is, at the moment.
I slept rather badly. Couldn’t fall asleep, but wasn’t stressed about it. Minutes of meditation and daydreaming became hours, and when I finally had to get up to pee, I looked at the time. It was late. I’d be getting a nap at best, and that is what came to pass. I returned to bed and crashed hard, waking abruptly around 04:15, though I don’t know what woke me. I got up, dressed, and headed to the city for the work day. With the changing season, I caught the sunrise on the commute – it was lovely. Shades of peach and pastel pinks and oranges created an exciting backdrop for the blue of the shadow-side of the mountains out on the horizon. It was almost distracting, and I almost pulled over to watch the sunrise with my whole attention.
I’m doing my best to stay engaged. The work day is just beginning. I’m tired though, and my mind wanders, and I keep coming back to some communications challenges that persist for me (brain trauma is a hard one to beat for lasting challenges). I also keeping thinking about my garden.
I clearly planted something here, but I don’t recall when or what.
I’m thinking about a sunny spot in the front flower beds where two clean rows of… something… have now sprouted. I don’t recall what I planted there. I forgot to jot down a note in my notebook, too, apparently. It’s obvious I did plant something; those rows are too orderly to be happenstance. So… what did I plant? I sip my coffee and wonder, and then find myself wading into a metaphor…
…When I look at life as a garden, and consider the care, the cultivation, the practices, it all fits so well, and then… there are these seedlings that have sprouted, which I clearly planted… and eventually they’ll become something, but I don’t know what, and it’s hard to be at all invested in whatever they are. If I water them… well, they might be weeds, do I want to water and care for them? What if they turn out to be something noxious or undesirable? If I don’t water them… well… maybe they’re something unusual, fancy, expensive, or carefully selected with my garden’s lasting beauty in mind? What then? Will I have squandered precious resources?
I find myself still struggling with some things as a human being. Communication is one of those things. Specifically, I have a problem with interrupting. I work on it pretty aggressively, but still (often) come up short of the desired outcome – which is listening deeply and not interrupting people (any people; everyone wants to be heard). The “seeds” of this challenge were planted a long long time ago. The nurturing or care those “seeds” were given most likely either did nothing to reduce the likelihood I’d interrupt people as a chronic issue, or potentially made it worse, by whatever success as a coping mechanism it may have once had. This thing isn’t a fucking “seed” any more; it’s g’damned tree. It’s massive, and it’s branches shade so much of my experience interacting with others that it affects the entire garden, now. What the hell? When I did even plant this thing? How have I not been more successful at least pruning the fucking thing back to some sort of manageable size??
I sip my coffee thinking about what we “plant” in our lives that grow to vex us later. It’s not always a walk in a manicured rose garden, this thing called life. I’ve definitely got to be more diligent about “ripping out the weeds”… and also garden with more care, taking better notes, and making a clear point of being present in the experience.
…If nothing else, I most definitely need to begin again.
Evening Light 