I have not written in a month. Not here anyway. I have written in my head and written in places I don’t know and written in places others know but not in the one place I know. right here. With me. I address my anxiety specifically here. It’s not always a welcome visitor. Not even with me. Especially with me. Lately it has taken over. Lately I have been….to say the least, anxious.
To start, when my dad died I felt a loss. Of him of course. I miss and missed him but the feeling of someone who “got me” is gone. My connection to someone other than me is no longer there. Now I have to plunge real far into my imagination to pretend my dad is here. Dead, but here. To feel him as I take every breath or step. To know he is guiding me. To know he is listening. Is he? It’s the core of my anxiety. The big questions. The Who and what is in control. Oh right, that’s me. Of me.
I crave control of me. It’s the one single thing I can do in a world so chaotic that I feel I’m spinning right into another universe. Which I hope there are. And I’m wearing something fancy, listening to the New World symphony, mask free in a little cocktail dress with my head rested on his shoulders. You know who I mean. Yes, him. Except he isn’t there. No one is. I’m rested on air. My head lays slightly left to rest on the sounds. I’m turning my ear to hear. So I can see. I’m listening with my eyes. So I can hear. That it’s me there. On my shoulder.
I once found comfort from someone who was broken. It was no wonder we connected. I was lost. He was lost. We were two losts in a woods of founds. We wandered woods all over the country looking for ways out. I found mine. He hasn’t yet. His path went further into the woods and mine took me right back to that shoulder to lean on. Mine.
In a world full of chaos it is hard to manage our own chaos. The one that is quiet. The one that spins us all quietly. The one that maybe makes the whole pot stirred chaotic. We are all fighting chaos within and without. In this universe anyway. Not the one with symphony music to see.
So I write again openly here to my anxious mind which is the Aspen in me. The roots that run rampant across the land and form some of our largest living organisms. All connected. Roots ready to grow again when destroyed by anything. Little baby forests ready to emerge.
I’ve been writing about my loss which isn’t a loss but has been a gain. I have gained from losing. How? By losing my father? No one wants to talk about the hard things like death. Yet next to life it’s the one thing we all will accomplish. We have a common bond. We will all die. No one will beat it no one will win no one will defy the odds. At best we drag out the painful process of living. Life is hard. Death comes so easy and so peacefully.
I held my breath for my dad as he took his last. I will never forget this moment. Except he stopped and I had to breath, or I would die. Can we hold our breath until we die? I wasn’t planning to except it felt like I shouldn’t breath until he couldn’t anymore. Maybe he made me? Maybe he breathed life back into me as he took his last? Maybe that’s right where I am now? Alive? I have been holding my breath still since he died. I forgot how to breath?
Greenhouse scents?
“It smells so wonderful!”
Does it? It did and now it doesn’t?
It still does. We love to hear this. As we work in the bottled up Frazier fir our sense of smell gets fatigued, olfactory fatigue, it’s called. Nose-blind. We get used to the smell. Not tired of it. We like to be reminded how wonderful the smell of fresh Frazier is. How wonderful it makes you feel. Reminded to breath.
Breath in, slowly, with your belly, not your whole body, relax your shoulders, breath out, repeat. And keep repeating. It’s science that big deep slow belly breaths can relax you. Maybe not science,but it’s known.
Breathing techniques-It’s how we calm down, it’s what we are taught to have babies, it’s how we regulate when we run, hike, work out, it’s how we live. By breathing.
If we have learned anything about this time in our lives, it’s how to never have a routine again. We wake daily to new ways to adjust to life. Then wake the next day and it’s different. The unknown is making you anxious. We want to see family. We want to eat turkey. We want normal. Not new normal.
Slowly we forget to breath. Should we forget to breath? We do. How many times a day do you think about how you inhale? When you do do you think, what if it’s the last one? Is a really great inhale as calming if you think it could be the last? Maybe those are the really good ones?
How many times can we breath in the greenhouse scents before fatigue sets in? Once we walk away and come back the nose blindness is gone. The nose remembers. We remember to breath in deep and enjoy the scent before we get used to it again. We just need reminded.
Unless I am under water holding my breath I am unlikely to die holding my breath. Unless I’m being strangled, I suppose but that’s against my will and out of the norm. Yet so would being under water unless I drove off a bridge on an icy road and my car is filling and full of pressure and I’m kicking myself for not getting that tool that breaks windows? Where are my pruners? Why would my car fill up with water? It will just run out of air right? Or both eventually? Why did I drive on an icy bridge? I don’t like to go over bridges on a good day? What kind of car was it?I feel I have been holding my breath. Waiting for what? To see what would happen? I haven’t actually been holding my breath. It just feels like it. I have been breathing wrong. Too much, not enough. Too fast. Too slow. Too painful.
I haven’t been able to put into words the way I handled my dad dying. My grief took me all over the place and still is. I cried today with a customer who’s child died 6 weeks ago and needs a little child sized grave blanket but can’t find one. She cried. Hard. The hardest I’ve heard someone cry. She was doing it right? I was not? she went on to tell me all about her grief and loss. I listened through my own tears. Maybe I can hear better of my eyes are flooding? I was aware at some point I was no longer crying for her but for me. I felt bad and told her. She cried less and I cried more. She stopped and sniffled. Wiped snot likely on her mask like we all do right now. And we both did that nervous giggle of how silly we were but we aren’t silly. She lost a child. I lost my father. We are far from silly. And not far from each other. Connected over the phone in my office over my tacos. She was in a closet. Her child’s. The universe without the cocktail dress in the symphony but the one with me and all my grief brought her to me, me to her. To get us through today. She apologized and I said it was due. I hand yet cried today and hadn’t cried like that at all.
So I wondered around with someone I care deeply for but can’t care deeply for. He needs to first care deeply for himself. I can’t be his reason to be alive. It’s too much pressure for a person. I like the simple control of me. The bed being made. The dishes done. The bills all paid and debt free ready for the next day.
I am an anxious girl. Not just because it’s an anxious time, it could be a calm clear controlled beautiful moment in time and I am still anxious. The more calm it is the more I wander, why so calm? One thing I struggle with is staying in the moment. Being anxious I tend to time travel during the day. I kind of wander off back and forth. Looking for today. The right now.
Today I have gone from thoughts on eyelashes, to King tut, to remote learning, to the birth of my babies in the time it takes most people to blink a few times. And that’s just a few blinks of time….just not the time in front of me. I also still have an eyelash stuck in my eye and blink more than usual…still today.
When we take a picture we are capturing life. We want to remember it. We want to be able to pull it back out someday and revisit it. We also want to share it. If we take a picture with the intent to share, do we lose the moment for ourselves?
In that minute, did you think? I have to share this? With who? Or did you think? Look at this? I want to remember this forever? Can you? Do we miss sunset if we capture it or do we capture it so we don’t miss it?
Then I think, it’s just a flower.
It’s just an anemone, blooming right now, November 28th not the 14th when I last wrote how to breath again, 2020 in the greenhouse.
It’s one of my sisters favorite flowers.
I can see the light shining through and the shadows of its anemone self through the velvet pink petals.
I can feel the sun through the south window more, winter is coming.
I can hear the roof closing, the fan squeaking.
I can smell the greenhouse, it’s smells like life.
I can taste, nothing. But wish I was tasting the cherry dipped ice cream cones from DQ. Ice cream is easier to eat when I don’t have to eat it fast from the scorching summer sun.
For a moment, I am grounded. Right there with the flower. I snapped it’s picture. I want to remember this moment forever. I want to share it later when I wrap my anxious thoughts around it.
Except I am the anxious flower.
Aspenleaf 