I wasn’t sure if I could write not just in the middle of the day but mid morning when I should be working but have a luxury of time off in the winter. A lighter schedule to account for the 60 plus hours a week I will work in spring. I often struggle to know what and where to be and how to be when I am not moving. At rest I am bored. I am anxious and restless and need to feel necessary. I swim and walk when I can’t hike and hike.
Today I packed up ready for a swim then planned to walk. My swim was just a regular swim. I was able to count my strokes and breaths and really swim. Really, an angry swim. Everyone around me in the pool was moving with grace and ease. The water lay calm except in lane 5. I was thrashing like a fish out of water. Or a whale emerging. Not sure but I could see the bubbles of my splash on the floor. I didn’t want to think about a single thing. Not my dad dying, my brother in law dying, anyone dying, viruses, global warming and politics. I have had enough. I was angry at this God Of the Universe for it all. For testing me. For making me have to trust me. For making me wait. For making me do anything I didn’t want to do. I have been angry for weeks. I came back from a nice restful time at the ocean after coming to terms that I couldn’t do or go any further. The ocean was a barrier now. It stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to look back at my loss. Then my gains. Then the gain from the loss. How dare it tell me to grow when I have lost. Why can’t I not grow? Why can’t I do the opposite of grow? Die? Sit? Because it’s not time? I don’t get to chose. Or I do. I chose to sit for now.
I chose to live so I have to grow to. I don’t have thoughts of dying that are anymore different than really thoughts of living. How do I live now? How do I turn around from the edge of the planet and put my feet on the ground and make them walk back? How do I? There is no trail back. It’s just turn around and go back. From any direction you want. You chose.
I have had to really soak in the thoughts of seeing the ocean. Marinate the idea of getting to a place that dared me to sit down and try to shut up. I went to clean out my pack of all the shells collected. It is very full of shells! I collect rocks with holes on my anxious hikes and can’t wait to empty them into the bowl that holds my prized anxious holy rocks. These calm cool and collected shells sat untouched for a month. I don’t need that pack right now so why not let them cook a little in the bag until I can find a place to keep my not anxious prized shells. They don’t fit in yet. This idea of less anxious trips don’t have a bowl to belong in. They almost all have holes in them and most are rough and tumbled from being tossed about in the waves. I couldn’t find very many complete calm shells. It became my mission to find whole ones. The opposite of finding not hole rocks. I needed intact shells to show my wholeness. Lack of a hole. The bigness of getting to a less anxious place. Yet they all had holes. My wholy mess of holy shells is still marinating in my bag. Waiting until this not anxious feeling resolves.
It will. I’m formulating plans to take this barrier out of the equation. This big ocean can’t stop me. It did for now. But I sat and watched it and all it’s big unknowns tumble up over my feet and my daughter as she darted around like a dolphin talking to the ocean about not being afraid of it. I can just go below. Or on top and across. Nice try ocean. You’ve stopped me for a minute but you don’t know me yet. I stop and I go and nothing in between.
I’ve had to stop and think. I’ve been angry for so long. Quiet and dismissing my kids attention they seek from me. Quietly tucking them into bed early after TV dinners and popcorn. They are fed, clean and safe. I need space. From my own people. When what I really need is my own people. I’m angry my dad is the one I need to get me through my dad dying. He couldn’t have prepared someone? Hey, I could die and I have a little girl who will worry if you don’t make her stop. She can’t listen to herself until you tell her to. Tell her to listen. Tell her trust herself. Tell her to quiet the thoughts enough to listen to me again. She will. With your help.
Who would he have told? Placed an ad in some paper or online? Wanted: a male to help make my daughter feel less anxious. Meet me at the coffee house to discuss the few details I will give. This message will self destruct in 9 minutes. Like a speed dating app for dads who have anxious kids. Which is ridiculous. Also borderline creepy. No all the lines creepy.
I was going to walk, and packed up to walk and started to walk. In the rain. I normally love the rain. Today it is cold pellets plus rain. I don’t normally love anything about this. I had a mission in my head to get to a specific group of evergreens to chat about seasonal needle drop. I would have been soaked and miserable. For what? To educate people who won’t even go outside to look for themselves. They scroll all day looking for answers to a natural phenomenon of trees. How can we fix it? What can I do? Should we remove them? No, no and no. Let nature takes its natural course. What on earth are we learning from this pandemic? Anything? Patience? How to self sooth? How to apparently feel alone together by sharing we are alone. So the others alone feel less alone but they really are alone. What if we all said on our own together. If we changed one word and relied on ourselves. Can’t we just imagine we are not doing this all on our own but really we are. Do we all need cheerleaders?
I want a sense of normal too. But really what I want is a sense of routine. And my dad back to life. If I’m being honest. My new routine includes no routine and without my father. I’m angry about this plan. This angry non routine plan thé universe has not clearly laid out for me. I can’t see a single trail in my head. I see a big ocean. A border. A boundary. A stop sign. I can’t move forward because o am too afraid to turn around. I can’t stop looking forward at the big everything that I can’t do. So I sit. And pout and be angry in my pool lane 5.
My calm cool collected shells are still marinating in their calmness they brought that I don’t recognize. I’ve taken at least two baths a day when I don’t need to. My body is all done energizer bunny-ing through this mess of grief trail. I made it out and now I know I will have to make it back. I need to re-charge that bunny I suppose. I never knew I was someone who was re-chargeable. I thought I didn’t run out of juice. But I do and I did. And I sat with it for awhile and don’t want to get up. Because back is the way I came from and guess what that was. A squiggle mess of a woods to here. Here feels ok. To be here in my head feels ok. Not real welcoming since I am storming around angry in pools and nourishing my kids with boxed meals and early bedtimes.
I am in misery with tooth pain. I have committed my year to tooth care. Dental hygiene across the board. My youngest went first. She was destroying her teeth from her fear of life and drinking chocolate milk from a zippy cup for years. We had a little ceremony where we wrapped the cup up in tissue and boxed her up. Then wrapped her up and wrote her a note and thanked her for helping us through a hard time but we have to let go. Now the box lays at rest under my bed where she sometimes sleeps. She has 6 cavities. One tooth had to be pulled. We won’t be making these kinds of fear based choices anymore. She is a very brave little turtle. She even told the ocean.
My oldest daughter needs hers done under anesthesia and also requires a cardiac anesthesiologist to administer. She is a difficult turtle. Her special needs make her not want to even brush. She can’t grasp it. Not yet.
In the mean time my tooth cracked before we left for the ocean. It was supposed to be fixed last year but the virus made us all afraid and my dentist closed in fear too. Funny because I am actually afraid of a man afraid. We all are afraid. I wanted to be brave and take care of my teeth right when the rest of the world wanted me to be so scared of myself. I do this to myself, no one makes me afraid of me but me. But I also make me afraid of dental offices. My teeth are filled to the brim with silver fillings from my child hood fear of dental work. Also money not being available to address. These fillings are deep and close to nerves. They also are over 30 years old and done filling my teeth so now they crack them. When I talk they crack. My jaw is aligned wrong and my teeth grind just by being my teeth. I was born to crack my own teeth or not talk, ever. These cracks and crevices creat places I can’t clean. So the cracks and crevices creat cavities.
So I am now a grown up brave turtle ready to address cracked teeth and silver fillings. Except my dentist is making me be patient and monitor the tooth. When I want to rip it out. I dream of ripping my own teeth out. This is likely a nightmare. In the form of chaos where I fight wars in my sleep of internal turmoil in my life. I am battling the Vietnam war, super Mario brothers, I am always battling something when my brain try’s to rest at night. When my Brian rests it is just actually active. I recall less of my dreams when I actually sleep. So I recall almost all of my dreams. They are all war and teeth extractions. Real life mixed with my turmoil of navigating life without my father. Turning around.
The dentist knows I’m afraid of him as a profession he saw me karate kick him when he attempted to approach me with sharp numbing needles. Then jump from my chair, hold my breath, close my mouth, then finally cry. I cried though the entire thing. He talked softly to the tech about instruments he needed and pretended i wasn’t there. Then patted my head and said we wait little brave one. Brave? He called me brave. Little brave one. He saw I was afraid. Saw my tears and did his job so I may never have to see him see me afraid again.
He needs a new clock. It looked like it kept falling off the wall and cracked. Like my tooth. It hung all wrong like it was trying to find its true north. Like me. The picture frames all had at least one missing piece to the plastic frame of water soaked and dried flower prints. He had metal folding chairs. He was a cheap dentist? How can dental work be competitive in cost? Aren’t they all the same tools and procedures? He just doesn’t get into decor like the others, looking in thrift stores and garage sales, maybe his basement to furnish his rented space that was once some other place. I picked him out of random. I was leaving the grocery store in pain one day from my other fear of teeth times and saw his office while leaving. I didn’t research people. He is nice and a small man maybe from Greece. If he said more we would no doubt struggle with a language barrier but he says just basic things like little brave one and names his instruments. I don’t know my places people are from just where they are at. Everyone is from somewhere, does it matter? Does it in a hole matter who he is when he is fixing my life with me. I like him for his simplistic approach to his profession.
Little does he know or probably does that I am there for two reasons. My visits are two fold. I am conquering fears and addressing old one. Which are the same. Everything I am afraid of just weighs less when I know I can do it afraid. The baggage that comes with fear is heavy. It’s the heaviest of all the emotions to me. Sad is heavy and weight-y but it’s is more draggy. More blah blah. Kind of sad. You can’t use the word sad to describe sad. But it is a stop sign to me. Sad for me is stop. Stop and be sad. Because we both know. Both? Sad for me is angry. I am angry sad now that I am less anxious. The anxiousness of grief has settled down deep heavy as sad and sit. I can’t go until it isn’t so weight-y.
But I will go. I will be able to turn around and walk back the path of the grief unknown I came from. Once I’m done looking and formulating how to get below the barrier of the edge of the universe that stopped me in my tracks. Trying to say be afraid I dare you. Triple dog dare you. I pick truth and trust for now ocean. In my daughters words. I’m not afraid of you or me. I’m just afraid to turn around.
Aspenleaf 