I had a terrible night's sleep. I dozed but didn't sleep deeply. It reminded me of the endless insomnia I experienced after my father died when I was fifteen. There I was, left to deal with my mother all by myself. I was so scared. I don't remember feeling sad about my father's death; I was overwhelmed with fear. My insomnia ended the first night I slept in a dorm during my freshman year of college. I was far away from the most dangerous person in my life, my mother.
With the loss of Mike, I can face what I am feeling: grief, deep grief. However difficult my situation is, it is not as bad as it was when I was 15. I know I will survive this time; at fifteen, there was no guarantee I could make a life with what I had left. I often thought of suicide. It was difficult. Now, I have the luxury of pure grief. Unfortunately, it sometimes manifests in unattractive ways. I don't think a loss like this can be a winning situation immediately – in the long term.
As I lay in bed, I could feel my body pounding. I was hyper. I had been hyper last night, which made me less sensitive than I should have been. Judy and her sister are true believers. They are good people who serve so many people and do no harm. Their faith gives their lives shape. I'm a born skeptic, as her husband pointed out. He's into astrology. He says my chart predicts my personality. I'm open to both belief and skepticism. I learned to live comfortably in that in-between zone. But others don't. I don't want to lead other people who live with a secure faith in any number of ideas to lose their grasp on life.
I went to Bikram for the first time in a week. My back and leg had been good enough for me to think taking a risk was worthwhile. I still did all the work lying down. I have been incorporating the exercises my primary doctor gave me into my walk, and I emphasized the objectives of those exercises in the yoga class today. After the class, the teacher said it looked like I was doing less. Boy, it didn't feel that way to me. I was working on my psoas like mad and could see some progress.
There is a student in the yoga class whose name I have been mispronouncing. I can't seem to get it straight. It's like the difference between Mary and Merry; a nondifference in pronunciation if I came from Connecticut, which I didn't. Every time I say it wrong, she corrects me. I apologize, and she says she doesn't mind. Today, I asked her why she always corrected me if she didn't care if I said something wrong. She responded she did it, so I learned. She says once she had corrected me, she let it go. I told her I don't. I would appreciate it if she didn't correct me. That's my mother's voice telling me I do nothing right. This woman corrects me with the sweetest smile. If she had done it once or twice, that would have been one thing, but this goes on and on. Remembering names gets more difficult as I get older. I will be 79 in December, in about one month. I expect people to cut me some slack.
I've decided that if this woman feels she doesn't want to respect my boundaries, I will have to ask her not to reach out to me. I can imagine her saying that my reaction is my problem. That's her philosophical perspective. True, it is my problem. My thought was that I'd tell her when I felt I could be the person she thought I should be, and I'd let her know. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if she had nothing to do with me. Most people at Bikram are genuinely respectful of me.
Today, when I stood up after class, I was on tilt. I swayed back and forth like a drunken sailor struggling to stay upright. People rushed to my aid. One student helped pick up my equipment from the floor. This other woman would have been helpful, but she couldn't also respect my boundaries since she didn't mind when I mispronounced her name. I suffered when she corrected me. What can I do?
I stopped by Costco on the way home to pick up some salad ingredients. There was a demonstration of standing vibrating machines. I have had one for the last fifteen years. Shortly after I got it, I pulled an inner thigh muscle, and any movement, no less jerking movement, was out of the question. It sits on the bedroom floor, serving as a resting place for my clothes. Just this morning, I started thinking I might be able to use this machine again. The offended muscle is much better; it can tolerate being jerked back and forth. However, I am worried that I might fall because the machine has no handlebars; it's a bare platform. I was thinking of getting this machine, but it costs $3,300. That's pretty steep. When I got home, I checked the handles of the standing vibrating machines on the Internet; they cost $189 to $250. Why this incredible price difference?
When I got home, I asked the young woman staying with me if she could help me prepare the house for the tenting. I have to pack up all the foodstuffs. I want to put the dry goods, drinks, and oil in boxes and bring them to B's shed. The stuff in the refrigerator will have to be stored in Styrofoam coolers. B may also have room in his freezer or fridge. I have a fantastic collection because I've been collecting boxes to pack up Mike's books for shipping. I successfully emptied the pantry.
When the young woman's boyfriend finished work, he came home, and they set out for a festival in a neighboring town. I asked her how she slept in that small side room with a futon bed. She told me she was not well and went into the big bedroom to sleep. That is out of the question. That floor is a disaster for Yvette and Josh. The squeaking sounds those panels make are impossible to sleep through. They cannot be in that room when either Yvette or Josh is home. I told her to sleep on one of the sofas in the house if she was uncomfortable there.
I wrote and listened to my NPR Saturday shows while packing the pantry items. I ate dinner, read more of Sebastian Junger's book Tribe, and wrote. No TV and no work in the library. I am, however, feeling somewhat better this evening. I feel a little less like I'm swimming in a broth of grief. I may be better off completely alone. I found it stressful having two people stay in the house with me, particularly since they are a new couple deeply involved with each other.
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Musings:
I loved Junger's book. Of course, I did because it confirms all my theories about how humans function better when dealing with basic survival needs in small groups than in our modern society.
He cited research after research showing that when faced with disaster, we revert to our primitive behavior. Society becomes more egalitarian, material goods are shared more evenly, and people work for the group's benefit rather than their own interests. (There are always those who think it's a perfect time to loot.)
He also says that while people were not necessarily more moral when living in hunter-gatherer groups, they did carefully monitor everyone's behavior. A coalition of men from the rest of the group quickly dealt with theft, murder, hoarding, and even bullying. People who violated the group's ethical standards, which always prioritized the group's interests over individual ones, were censored, expelled from the group, or punished. A trial was unnecessary. When dealing with a group of 50 people, everyone's behavior is under surveillance 24/7, for better or worse.
In today's society, we are moving steadily to increasing anonymous interactions, where people can do things electronically anonymously and get away with it. Maybe it's time for a disaster. We're too far from our roots. From where I'm sitting, it looks like it's coming whether we want it or not.
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