Balance of Power

Post 13

It’s a sweet, breezy, beautiful, sunny day here in East Tennessee with a perfect temp of 75 degrees. Honestly there couldn’t be a more perfect day. Not too hot in the shade, perfect in the sun but none of it motivates me to enter the world. I sit here with all the pups and watch the birds while sipping coffee and some zen water with vitamins hoping it will somehow produce the magic the marketers promise. I am still waiting on it. I almost always get up with good intentions for the day. Some days not. But I do try each day to begin with an easy heart and soft attitude. I greet all the puppies with good mornings and they each greet me back with puppy smiles and warm, not so gentle nudges. Akirra is “our” 🙂 smallest and next to youngest little pittie/dane mix. She is always the happiest in the morning. She is generally the happiest all the time. She wears this perpetual smile and once she trusts you, she is so eager to become your best friend by trying to get into the chair with you several times a day. I guess she thinks maybe “this time she’ll figure it out and let me up”. I admire her happy attitude. It’s as if she is always trying to share love even if it is while Lexie is growling at her from underneath my chair that she has had enough “love” for today. Wonder why can’t I be like that? Wonder why can’t all people be like that? Why would I rather do things that have little to no meaning rather than the tasks that lay before me? Why is it so much easier to find a distraction like sewing or looking online or simply retreating to my safe space… my feather bed, than pull on my boots and kick a day in the ass? I always feel better when I do. And there are days that I do. I promise. But all in all… a quiet place with 8 paws is where I prefer. I have many offers weekly to encounter other human beings, I am fortunate to say. I am also very thankful for it. This is a complex part of grief that I thought I could outrun this time. I thought that maybe “this time” it wouldn’t be a requirement. Apparently you cannot skip steps in the process even if you would like. I guess some people can otherwise the world would be full of sames. We don’t want that do we. Should I have had a primary focus other than my marriage and that life before this, maybe things would be different. I was in nursing school ‘last time’ and a 13 year old daughter to guide. There were summers, however, when school was not a demand and time was all there was to face. I did mindless activities to kill the time. I painted crosses. Lots and lots of crosses. Quietly and alone. My friends understood and were readily available should there ever be a day I would come out of that quiet spot. And again… occasionally, I did but usually for a cause. Not much has changed as it appears to be the case. It is how I heal. I have enjoyed some really special days for instance my mother and I spent an afternoon together working on a project I began and we laughed for hours. It was so wonderful. I needed her and she was ready to jump in with me. And I am looking forward to it again so soon. I am looking forward to working more on our project together too. This weight in the center of my body gets too heavy to carry far so I sit with it instead. Yes, of course it makes more sense to go do something but honestly, it FEELS like it requires so much more energy than I can gather today.

Why? Why is that? If you have or are going through something similar, does it just feel like it takes soooo much? I think because I know HOW MUCH it does actually take. After a day of being in my safe space, I had what I had thought to be enough so I showered, picked out a cute shirt, did my hair and makeup- because I actually enjoy makeup- put on perfume and off I went to accomplish something. As soon as I drove out of the driveway, I could feel that pit grow heavier and heavier. Somehow it begins to pull the corners of my mouth downward. I feel a loneliness creep over my forehead and sit directly on my eyebrows. I’m not making this up! It sits up there like that Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland with a little smirk on it’s face. But I’m not quitting so I put on more lipstick because every southern girl had a grandmother that told them that was the be all beginning of their day. My grandmother was always put together as I remember her. Painted nails, hair done, ROUGE, earrings and that… was it Youthdew by Estee Lauder that all the ladies wore back then? Or maybe today it was some Jean Nate’ – either way I can still smell it! I did 3 tasks that afternoon… all three were to do something for my mom! So I was going to put my focus on someone else for the day! Yay! Why wasn’t the cat leaving my brow? Why was that pit growing? Why was my face falling down on both sides? Have you ever tried Smile Therapy? If you remember the show Allie McBeal, there was a guy- Fisher? – that would do Smile Therapy throughout the day in effort to improve his mood. I haven’t ever forgotten it and so I initiated the Smile Therapy. Smile Therapy is when you force the muscles in your face to smile. Uplifting your eyebrows and forcing the biggest cheesy smile you can and holding it. If people passed me driving saw me, I am sure they thought something was wrong with me! It wasn’t working. After getting to my moms I immediately began to cook because I wanted homemade chicken salad. But that cat just kept sitting there. I think it actually had gone to sleep and gotten heavier. My brother joined us for a spell and as I continued to cook, finally I noticed the cat was gone. The pit was easier. By 9 pm, we had laughed away most of the day and I was a good tired. You know the kind. When you have not laid down and not rested and just probably did “what normal people” do everyday. I was ready to go back to my quiet place with 8 paws. But the pit never really leaves. It has become a permanent part of me for now. Sometimes I can outwork it and I forget about it. Those are the days that take so much of the energy that usually I can count on the next day being a feather bed, four legged friend day. Why? It’s like the scales of things become so imbalanced. A Balance of Power… Your power. You have energy stores on the one side and productivity on the other. The energy stores are like eating vegetables. You need them and they are GOOD for you but they are not always the easiest to choose and they are the first thing burned off your calorie chart. Productivity is french fries and comfort food. You want them but you know its gonna weigh you down and it’s going to take so much more to burn that off. Reading that sounds backward in my mind. But really it’s not. I WANT the productivity. I WANT the “normal people” tired. I WANT the french fries. I WANT the pizza. But if I indulge in too much of it, the energy side is emptied out first and now the scale has tipped over too far. Emotions become stripped and raw. Feelings become too much to tame. Anxiety, sadness, depression. It sometimes feels easier if you just maintain that balance rather than upset it and have to reach really deep to recharge. I have to replenish the energy to continue “like normal people”. And that’s a lot of quiet time. Its like when you get the stomach bug and you have thrown your guts up so much that you will never, ever eat the last thing you ingested just before the onslaught of intestinal terrorism hit you. So 24 hours later you are so careful about what you put into your body because of the fear the attack will come back and send you back into projectile fits. Expending all of your reserve feels like that. It is so violent sometimes that you feel fragile, scared to expose even one emotion for fear of the reality jumping up and down on you until you finally break. I don’t really understand that but it is true. I guess the part about choosing is backward in my mind. But if I pick it apart, it really isn’t either. I would rather choose — gees. I don’t know. I just wish choosing wasn’t a thought. I liked life before when it was choosing what restaurant to meet our friends for dinner. Choosing where we were going this weekend. Choosing to do ANYTHING because it was all FUN. It was all JUST LIFE. It was simply living a life I loved. ❤ It wasn’t a choice between carrying a stone or carrying a rock. You just cannot skip this step. I would CHOOSE to and have tried. It alllllll comes back to the same place. The only difference is sometimes you sail in like a duck landing on a pond and sometimes you crash in like a drunk monkey on a bicycle. Will one day be enough to restore the energy reserve? Maybe it will take two. Maybe a week! It’s hard to tell until one day you say to yourself… I have had enough of this for now. Then you just start again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. You keep hoping today will be the day that the stone is out of your guts. The day that this is behind you. You never know when that day will come and you will not notice it the day it does. You will only notice that it is there. Then one day, it will have gone. It will return intermittently but mostly it will be gone. I do know this. I know. But it does not take away what is here and now. It is LIFE. And it hurts. And I could wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster. It just is what it is. So, I am going back to my zen water and my conscious efforts to relax my jaw and slack my shoulders. I am going to continue to say as many prayers through the day as I can. I am going to get up and ask the day what is on the agenda and do my best. All the while reminding myself… this IS normal. This IS alright. This too… shall pass.

Be well friends. Peace be with you today and thanks for sharing my thoughts today.

JHW