I worked on putting more weight on the outer edge of my left foot and shifting my hips, so there was more weight on the inside of my right sits bone while walking, driving, and at yoga.
I stopped at Office Depot after yoga to buy brown wrapping paper and rolls of packing tape. It said, “Buy 2, get one free.” So I went up to the counter with two of each. The discount didn’t register. Neither the woman at the checkout counter nor I could figure out what the problem was. The store manager finally sorted out the problem I went back and got the third one of each product. My excuse is that I had yoga brain; I don’t know what the clerk’s problem was.
I have been thinking sadly about all the ways I disappointed Mike or made him sad. Gifts were an issue. The man never got the right gift for me, but, Lord, he tried. I have two gifts he gave me for Christmas 2018 still unopened. I don’t want to get rid of them because he gave them to me, but they accuse me. He tried so hard and always got it wrong one way or another. It makes me so sad that I couldn’t be more gracious.
That is not to say that I never appreciated anything he did for me. If he went to the store and remembered to pick up something I might need, my heart swelled with joy; I shared that with him. I was so grateful that he thought of me.
The theme was the same in both cases. I have adverse reactions to people who ignore who I am. My mother accused me of all sorts of sins. She also insisted that I had thin, baby-fine hair. People on the street would stop to tell me what beautiful hair I had. I argued with them; why would my mother lie to me?
I continued believing that I had thin, baby-fine hair until I was thirty-five. I was using the same beautician my sister was. The guy commented about what thick hair I had. I set him straight. I also told him I wasn’t the one with thick hair, Dorothy was. He said no. You have thick hair; she doesn’t. Now, I believe that was the year she had a medical problem, and it may have been hard on her hair.
Then I was treated to any number of therapists who had no idea what to do with me and made it up as they went along rather than acknowledging their confusion. Loved it! Once Mike and I got together, he often came to therapy sessions with me to protect me. He saw me the way I saw myself and agreed these therapists didn’t have a clue. I didn’t fit into their paradigms. All told, I don’t do well with people who lay a trip on me. Inappropriate gifts feel like that.
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Musings:
Brooks on love- OMG! He writes about the process of falling in love most romantically. His language is excellent, but heaven protect me from that form of falling in love. Been there, done that. It doesn’t work for me.
In my experience, that total consumption of self into the loved one. “I love you. I am you,” as Brooks describes it, is the experience of a repressed personality that has been cracked open. In being cracked open, he discovered something about himself he didn’t know; he had never let himself know. He fell in love with this aspect of himself.
He married the woman who affected him this way. I hope they find/found stability because I don’t think you can happily be someone else, or even see that person entirely responsible for the person you became.
There are those moments of inspiration. Brooks writes about Thomas Merton’s moment of inspiration, the moment when he realized the universality of man, himself included, and loved everyone. While this is one aspect of our spirits, there is the other. There is a part of ourselves that is not universal, which is specific to us. That part leaves us feeling ‘other’ and isolated.
While it’s great to remember our universality, as long as we’re alive, we must be our unique selves, too. That is our contribution to this mess we call being the human life form on this earth.
Hopefully, we can pull this off without killing each other. We’ve had good moments. We’ve had truly horrible moments. We are pulled between the universal and the specific. Finding that balance means being truthful with ourselves and to ourselves. But like all abstractions, that means different things to different people. I guess I’m just along for the ride. I can only hope that I can continue to find it interesting. Hopefully, it doesn’t become too interesting.
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