Murky choppy water mind

How strange it is to write at night. I’m out of routine and can’t get to my old one and can’t make a new one. There are no routines any more. From a global pandemic I’ve learned to never have a routine again. And how to breath.

As I swam I thought I should ask them when swim lessons for kids will start again? One, because I want to know and two, to make small talk again. What do we talk about if not to ask questions of looking forward? There is so much to talk about but right now on everyone’s mind is what’s to come? Everyone’s mind? Is everyone thinking of this? Do some not think of anything? No one knows when swim lessons will start again I didn’t ask. I know the answer. I sort of wanted to ask about 12 different people to see what 12 different people will say. But I asked no one. Just swam and thought under murky water for awhile.

I was told my mind never stops. Do others? Are there people out there who have stopped minds? What do they think of? How do they resolve things and find answers? how do they sleep at night? How do they keep busy? What motivates someone with nothing on their mind? How do they keep things clean? Maybe they are not telling the truth? How would I know one way or another? Why do I care? I don’t really. Except today I do. I want to stop and think of nothing. All by myself. With no help.

As I swam I pretended I was in really dark murky water full of fish and things that are alive. The water was choppy. I don’t know what it’s like to swim in water like this except in my mind. It’s exactly like it sounds. Me swimming in my head in murky lake water. I kept taking in water on my left side when I turned to breath. Just the left. The right had it figured out for the day. The left I turned and the choppy wave crashed into me. I couldn’t swim straight at all. Could I swim across a lake? How do you stay straight with nothing to follow?I veered to the right. Consistently to the right almost into the lane lines twice. In the lake to the right would take me where? Likely to a cove or bay. Which is still across the lake, just not straight across. It’s veered to the right across. I’m sure the lifeguard was on guard today. Watching me swim all over the place in my choppy murky water mind.

I swim for basic control of something I can control when nothing is in my controls, same reason I clean. It’s simple control when the world is spinning out of control. Not just the world. My world. So I’m spinning and so is the world. I just need simple control. Of something.

I clean when I’m anxious. I know some one who has someone clean for him. I wondered what he did when he was anxious if he has someone anxious clean for him. It’s why she cleans. She may need the job or love it but cleaning calms the anxious. We are nesters by nature. Once every speck of dust is dusted, every crumb swept and grease fur from over the stove is clean. Then when everything is sorted of clutter and corners are tucked and things are placed properly away then we think we can rest. Except we don’t. There is no perfect order to a mind that needs and craves control. Unless. That simple control is turned within. To every simple breath taken. Even in choppy murky mind water. Choppy.

With every stroke I count and breath. And count and breath. Then I change the pattern of breathing and counting. Why? I don’t know. To exercise my lungs is what I’m telling myself. To inflate them for longer and then to not. Then to do short quick ones. I don’t know what I’m exercising them for or preparing my lungs for but they will be ready when it comes. Will I? My mind tells my body to breath but my body can’t say it back? They didn’t seem to be able to work together today. I turn one way and my body does one thing and my mind another. If I don’t breath right when I am in water I will drown. Or I will swallow water. Maybe just aspirate and take on fluid in the lungs and get pneumonia that makes them assume I have coronavirus since no one can look past coronavirus. I will die alone since no one can be with people dying of coronavirus. Then who will raise my kids? Is this what I’m preparing my lungs for? To live right? To breath? Only to die? Of course, I will have to die, so I need to live until I do. That’s what my lungs are preparing for. For my swim in murky water.

I wrote a letter to someone who I need to give space to. He is in the beginning steps of grief. Maybe was already there. I imagine he will not receive it or he will see it as junk. Toss my thoughts aside. I wish I could do this. Just toss them aside. As if unimportant. Maybe he will open it and read it, then say, dodged a bullet on this one? Or open it and not read it at all. People aren’t used to mail to read that is written. It’s strange and unorthodox. It’s sad. Maybe he doesn’t check his mail, it will sit and collect dust until his anxious cleaning lady runs out of things to clean and cleans the inside of his mailbox but she is afraid of surprises and can’t get herself to open the box in fear of a spider. So it will sit and entertain no one until a snow plow takes it out and knocks it off. Then he will say. I never really needed a mailbox anyway. My letter will go to where then? Can we decide not to have mailboxes? Maybe he will read it and still just go about his busy life and say nothing then years down the road we will cross paths on our sailboats in murky choppy water and say, hey, I remember you. I read your letter, my cleaning lady found it when the snow plow knocked over the mailbox, then he will laugh and say she screamed like a girl at a spider inside.

I don’t know what it was about this man but it was something not nothing. He is way out of my league. Wealthy, smart, attractive, put together, had a clean shirt, smelled nice. That’s not who looks at me. That’s not who talks to me. That’s not who listens to me. He is off his path and wondered into mine. Not I’m off mine and somehow on his. I wouldn’t recognize one full of life like that. So clean. And organized. I recognize the one I am on. The one I worked so hard to find and keep maintained. No one gets to come meandering out of the woods all lost and wreck my trail full of precious things I don’t want trampled. Only I know where and how to step and am not sure I want to show anyone how and where to step.

He would have said by now he wasn’t even remotely interested. He is suffering a significant loss and is very busy. I get that. But being me, my empathy is running over with empathy. Grief. It’s likely why we are sharing this path for a moment. You attract where you are, I am grieving and must radiate grief and am attracting others in the steps of grief. But aren’t we all in them in some way? Why him? Why now? And why for just a week with such intense curiosity? I’ve learned nothing yet. He hasn’t left my trail. He is still kind of on it and on pause. Like I kept going and he had to stop and pee. No one likes to pee in the woods with someone watching. It feels barbaric. Of course no one likes to pee and be watched anywhere. It feels private. In the woods it’s a primal instinct to just find a place not near water and off trail and pee but not in the woods it’s somewhere to go that everyone goes. It’s not so much instinct as convenient. I’m here, I should pee. There is a bathroom I should go. In the woods you just feel it and stop and wonder off and go. I’ve never had anyone really with me to know what happens. Do you wait or keep walking? Walking. They will catch up.

Why is he so clean? His fleece looked used but so new it was so clean. His nails looked chewed off to the point he almost got his fingers. Does he have scars? What brought him here? How did he first fall in love? Why? What is his favorite color? How can you pick just one? What was your first animal? What do you believe in? Do you ever think of just nothing? How?

I have shown significant restraint. I harbor thousands of questions for people. Especially ones with eyes like that and who radiate a sense of calm. Even if they aren’t they seem to have it down. I want others to come around me and feel calm not anxious. I leak anxious. Maybe those who are calm absorb what I leak and we balance out? That I’m not too much because they have space to take on my extra leaky murky choppy mind.

Once I was told someone knew I wasn’t interested in him anymore because I quit cleaning for him. He had his own messy murky water he couldn’t breath in and I kept trying to make so he could breath only to find out I couldn’t breath worried about his breathing. I got his Tupperware cabinet and his dishes all separated properly the way they should only to come to find them all in havoc again. He could not see past his messes to his messes. I quit cleaning up his messes. I started to see I had my own I wasn’t cleaning up while I was busy cleaning his up. I have to have time to clean my own grease with fur. I don’t have time for others grease with fur. Just my own.

As I swam and thought of all the questions of the future, which also looks murky, I found my water was clear. Not brown and murky like I imagined, it was choppy from the lady two lanes over swimming like a whale. I could not breath to my left because she was apparently trying a new way of swimming that made some waves. I wasn’t drowning. I was breathing. I could see the blue and white tile fine. The shadows of my arms pulling and moving water. The simple feel of the water moving across my face like I’m a dolphin. Now I’m a dolphin in my mind and I’m not even in the pool. Just clear headed breathing in the air.

What’s next? No idea. But I want a nice table and chairs and buffet for my kitchen so I can dress it up fancy for dinners no one wants to actually sit for. I want to tie bows around the chairs and dangle wreaths of eucalyptus from the backs. I want to have plates on top of plates with napkins and little bells or something on them to move before we eat. I want to run garland and candles no one will knock over and burn the whole house down. I want a chandelier dressed so fancy no one can see it’s a light. I want rosy cheeks from the glow of the warmth of a fireplace. I want to serve sloppy pie that bubbled over but tastes like hard work and a destroyed kitchen to make. I want to hear clinking glasses toasting to something. To what? To life.

I don’t know what has brought on this table setting. I’ve never had it? I see it or saw it once? Imagined it in my own life? But kept seeing my life on its place. Which isn’t any of the said above. Still good just not what I want. I want more. I want just the image of it.

I couldn’t do thanksgiving dinner this year on the day the calendar said to. My dad and brother in law are gone resting peacefully with other people gone and resting peacefully. Are they? Is it peaceful where they are? Is it even a place? Why can’t I just know? I didn’t want to look at my knife and see my dad, look at any pies and see him, hear my brother in law laugh but it wasn’t really there. I didn’t want to see the table set with out them. Not that we set it before but I didn’t want to even not see a table set without them. I didn’t want to hear anyone other than my dad say grace. Who would say it anyway? I didn’t want to carve a turkey. I didn’t want to wash any dishes that said it was thanksgiving without you. I didn’t want to see a single person. Hear a single person. Not even me.

So I did it on a day that wasn’t when the calendar says so. We do so much the calendar says all year long and look how far that’s gotten us. To today. What’s today? Same as the one before and the same as the one to come? Only with less people daily. Only with a bunch also being born. We aren’t getting less people. We are getting less of some people and gaining a bunch more to lose to gaining some more again. It’s the vicious cycle of life and death. We die and new people are born. Not the same ones born again. My dad isn’t coming back in any babies. He is within us if we listen. Which I can’t.

I am thankful for so much. But I am every day, not just the day I’m told to be. I talked to my dad instead of saying grace. So some day I can say grace with words my dad would have said. But I don’t know all the words yet. I cried when I cut anything. I cried when my blueberry pie insides were not thick enough. He wasn’t there to say. Hey you need this. Or next time try this. He is saying it but not for real. I can’t hear it because I refuse to listen to my inner voice in the version of my dad. I didn’t when he was here when I was mad and I won’t when he is not, because I’m mad. Not at him. At all the unanswered questions I have. All the things that go unanswered making me need to swim like I’m swimming in murky lake water somewhere in my head instead of swimming gracefully like a dolphin and now choppy like a whale like my lap swimming partner who splashed like she was saving herself. Wasn’t that what I was doing there? Aren’t we all trying to?