PTSD

 

This has been a long nightmare year. 

Although I don't personally know anyone who has died from Covid, I have known people who had it and may have even had it myself in a very mild form, but coming out is not turning out to be a piece of cake either.

I realize I have faced what are really pretty inconsequential difficulties, but the residue left over from these things is more difficult to deal with than I would ever have imagined.

Although the toilet paper fiasco was caused by people's ignorance, their hoarding caused the rest of us a lot of undue concern. I still find myself feeling anxious when I use toilet paper. I feel the need to have one opened container and two stored ones or my anxiety grows great enough that I begin to worry that when I shop there won't be any again. And when I shop, which I didn't do myself for over a year, I have to restrain myself from buying more toilet paper than I need. 

It is the same way every time I leave my house, or enter a store. I feel so much anxiety that I am panting through my face mask by the time I check out. I know it's safe. I've had both shots. Most people I know have too, but entering stores by one door, using one way aisles, and exiting through another door feels like I have moved into some dystopian future.

I have dreams of crowds and danger, of shortages and feeling vulnerable. I actually moved all my living room and bedroom things into one room and only go out to use the bathroom and the kitchen, because it feels safer. I feel like It gives me the illusion of more control.

Between the virus and our last president I feel like I have been living in some kind of Mad Max world I never dreamed was possible in the United States. And now that things should be settling down my world is rattled again by the pending cancerous deaths of those I care deeply for.  And my own health is not the best either, although I'll probably live to be a hundred.

The world may return to normal, but I am beginning to wonder if I will.

Integration

 

I had my groceries delivered by Shipt throughout the quarantine. I didn't feel safe and more importantly, I didn't feel good. It's possible I had Covid early in April and it was mild enough I didn't even need to go to a doctor, although I did call one.

Now I am fully vaccinated and trying to get back into the swing of living, but it is hard.

My favorite grocery store uses one set of doors as an entrance and the other as an exit. That means walking at least two blocks just going in or out. Up until today they have had one way aisles and that meant lots of extra walking too.

I realize the walking is good exercise, but it is hard for me. I bought a better mask, so I can breathe a little easier, but by the time I am back in my car going home, I am exhausted!

Yesterday I went to an Old Time Baseball game and had to worry about whether or not I could get from my car to the field and back. I did fine, but even though we were freezing when it started, I came home with a terrible sunburn on my face and the back of my hands.

I feel dumb for not realizing that could happen, but I just never gave it a thought.

It seems the re-integrating back into the world is not going to be a piece of cake for me.

Not less than

 

I often find myself annoyed at some of the women in my past and today I think I realized why. My daughter put a blurb on social media saying not to be afraid to be yourself: silly, crazy, funny, etc.

The problem is that many women are not silly, crazy, funny, etc.!

They only act that way when they are trying to impress someone with their craziness, silliness, humor, etc. and it comes across forced, sad, and ridiculous.

There is nothing wrong with being yourself, but not when you define yourself with false standards.

When I was a girl and a young woman, women were supposed to be dainty, dumb and prone to be excruciatingly ridiculous. It implied that they needed to be taken care of and supposedly loved more because of their ineptness.  They were mostly seen in pairs, or more, practically joined at the hip, because being alone was dangerous. I remember throwing chess games in junior high and doing dumb things on purpose. It always made me feel embarrassed in the long run because I knew it was a ruse. And not a very good one.

If you really are that way then I suppose we should accept you for who you are. Perhaps feel a little sorry for you, or try to help you out in some way, but NOT emulate you, or imply that you are the real norm.

I belong to a local women's club and one of the things I really love about these women is their lack of artifice. They are wonderful women who are mostly independent, capable and truly themselves. They are not all alike, they sometimes make mistakes, but they do not define themselves as less than in any way.

They are simply good women being themselves.

Feelings

 

It is hard to imagine that something as insubstantial as feelings could have as much power as they do. 

My feelings are like a powder cask just waiting to be blown wide open. Ready to overwhelm me, or seemingly so. Although the long standing truth is that I have never had that happen, or maybe that I have never experienced wild uncontrolled feelings.

Once I had a very serious, extraordinarily quiet interlude where my feelings suggested I over imbibe a prescription and take a book out into the country to read until it worked. That failed. Mostly because I also have a very serious belief in fulfilling my responsibilities (or at least some of them) and I under estimated how long I would have before the prescription took effect.

That was over twenty odd years ago and I went through tons of counseling dealing with it, as well as making major life changes.

I no longer feel any need to shorten my life in any way.

I do feel like this year has performed some kind of black magical curse that has made me leap from an older woman to an old woman without any warning. Suddenly I am cold all the time, worn out after just a few minutes of unsupported standing, and think I could be content going from my bed to my recliner most of the time. Writing, painting, reading, eating - there isn't much more I really need anymore.

It could be medical. I have had and will have more doctor appointments with my primary care physician and a nephrologist, but I don't have any desire to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve this life which feels basically complete.

My best friend is facing the demise of a much beloved dog and having to make hard decisions as he goes along. He is willing to do almost anything to keep her alive as long as she doesn't suffer. Her impending death leaves me unbearably sad. I feel a connection to her that I have felt with nothing else. It seems that she embodies my feelings before this year, but I am ahead of her now even though I do not have any known diseases. 

I no longer have the stamina to go shopping, or hiking, or even grocery shopping without great exertion. I keep looking for improvement, but wondering if I am only imagining it.

Feelings! Which ones are real and which ones are simply the curse of an over active imagination?

Power

 

Power is a force that generally attracts, or repels people.

Go-getters are highly esteemed in junior high and high school. They are perceived as the ones most likely to succeed and that is probably true.

At that age.

As people mature the go-getters tend to split off according to the way they learn and adapt. They either round out their energy to accommodate the needs of the world around them, or they manifest as power hungry monsters drawing more and more into themselves.

Power mongers can be very successful, mostly because they are ruthless, but at their source they are insecure, dangerous people. Instead of perceiving possibilities and places for growth they tend to see the world as a series of threats to their own small world. What they perceive as growth is mostly within their own ego. Like an iceberg, what you see is only the top of something that goes to deep and dark places.

Great leaders are powerful because they see the bigger picture. They realize that greatness relies on even the weakest link being understood and utilized to its fullest capacity. People are attracted to great leaders. Compassionate power is seductive, because it allows everyone to feel great in their own sphere.

M is for the many things she gave me

She brings me comfort, joy, food, protection. She is love, the only way I know it. She gave me life!

No one can make me feel better than she can. If  I am sick, I want her near me. Always. If I am afraid, I run to her. When I need help I turn to her. Her words become the mottos of my life.

Yet, her words destroy my self confidence, build barriers between me and the rest of the world. She teaches me that I am better than others by birth, but never better than she is. She is god.

She molds me into her opinion of me and hammers that into place so firmly I do not see any other version. Not in the mirror, nor anyone else's eyes.

Of course she can't really do all these things. Deep inside I am still who I was born to be, but the only way that could ever emerge is through years of separation, miles of meditation, eons of work.

Decisions

 

Life is filled with decisions, most of them so trivial we never really give them a second thought.

Vanilla or chocolate? Red or blue? Hot or cold?  We just pick our favorites and fly right on by, but a few of them are not so easy and most of those involve people we love.

Should Johnny go to camp for two weeks or six? Does Sally really need a two thousand dollar bike?

Should Granny have a hired nurse, or go into some kind of care facility?

Is chemo worth the agony for the life it may prolong?

In the best of all worlds the hard decisions will have some obvious quality of life ramifications, but life isn't always in the best of all worlds.

Then we may be forced into making heart breaking decisions that are not so clear cut.

And knowing they are done with more love than anything else is all we've got. 

That has to be enough.

Disabilities

 

I think having a child with disabilities is difficult in so many ways.

The first is realizing and acknowledging that there is, or are, disabilities. Pretending they are not there, or that they can be subjugated by being pretty enough, or smart enough, or whatever, will not work.

Chances are pretty good that child will have some form of this disability for life and a parent's job is to teach them the best way to negotiate the world with it.

It is hard for the child, but it is also hard for the parents and any siblings. A lot of attention gets diverted to the one with the obvious problems and it's not always easy for siblings to respond in grown up, or even appropriate ways. They get asked to do and give up a lot in order to help their disabled sibling no matter how hard parents try to shoulder the bigger load.

The whole family learns to center around the one who has difficulties. In our home, homework took hours every night. There was endless repetition and experimentation trying to find what worked and what didn't. Even extracurricular activities had to be figured out.  Soccer was a gross motor sport that worked. Tennis was an eye hand coordination sport that did not.  Piano, taught one on one, helped with that coordination.

It never got easier. There was always a new challenge. Learning to drive, or should she even drive? Getting a job, how much could she handle and so forth and so on. There was school and there were tutors, but above all it took hours every day for everyone in the family to make it work -- even while they were working and going to school themselves.

Then the day comes when you have to step back and see if it worked and the horrible truth is that even this will take years of very difficult decisions before, or even if, that child can make it on his or her own.

For us it all jelled about forty.  Our daughter had a job she could handle and keep, an apartment she could afford and take care of and even met a man who was the perfect match for her. She has everything a person without disabilities might strive for. She just has to work twice as hard to keep it.

I am so proud of her. I am also proud of her siblings. They are truly empathetic, caring people, who learned a lot from this sister of theirs.  It wasn't easy. We all had to learn to give and take, to say no when we wanted to say yes and hang on to dreams that were never promised.

Seek and ye shall find

There is a Biblical phrase that concludes, seek and ye shall find. It is alluding to the kingdom of God, but I think it applies to most things in life.

If I am looking for the truth of something and I honestly look, it is likely I will eventually find it.

That doesn't mean I can willy-nilly make something up and prove it true. It must actually be true, but more things are true than it might appear if people are persistent.

People I know have an idea, or feeling, or wish, and then abandon it, because to get to the truth is often an almost unconscionable amount of work.  It requires a dedication of purpose, time and then blood, sweat and tears, to reach it. 

Not all things are worth that.

Some things definitely are and even though they may appear out of reach, they are only out of reach for those who do not have the required amount of persistence and perseverance.  

One example is child rearing: it is not all sugar and spice and everything nice. If there is a strong willed child, or child with disabilities of one sort or another, it takes an amazing amount of self control to give them what they need and withhold what must be withheld. Discipline is not a bad word, but it can feel bad when all you want to do is love someone. Rearing a reasonably happy, successful human being can be too hard for some people. They want to give and give and give when sometimes it is necessary for a child to learn how to struggle to survive and thrive.

I think this is why some people find things the rest of us believe are impossible. They are not willing to give up and yield to the easier answer.