Fighting Gravity

and other useless endeavors

Hi there…hey. It’s been a while. There’s been……some stuff going on that’s keep me away from the page. A lot of things have happened in the last several months. And if you want to know the gory details, you know how to reach me.

So much happened so quickly that I simultaneously fought, fled, and froze; hashtag proskills. Everthing felt like it was snowballing on itself because loss and other strong emotions trigger past similar memories and sensations. As fun as that was, I didn’t know how to break it down into manageable bits. So I swallowed it whole. A bolus so big and tightly wound with those reeds that grow up from the bottom of ponds, that we were warned about as kids, to not get tangled in or we could drown. And there wasn’t much I could do about it. I mean, maybe there was, maybe there was a different way to go about it, but I couldn’t find it.  And, yes, I know I could have called (so many of you have said that) and I love you for that, but at the time, it wouldn’t have helped. It’s hard to explain why that’s true. I wasn’t trying to go it alone. I have wonderful support both personally and professionally.

I simplified the days. I filled the days. The early darkness of winter felt unbearable. I turned on as many lights as we have. I got a happy light to bask in during the gray mornings. I don’t know if it made me happier, but it was part of my morning routine and routines helped. I cried. A lot. Everywhere. My car, at work (not during massage sessions, which would have sucked. Can you imagine getting a relaxing massage from a crying massage therapist. Just a new kind of raindrop therapy on your back, dear, no extra charge for that!. Ugh.) I wiped away tears at the grocery store, the gym, at home, at the yoga studio. And glorious were the times I felt the most safe, with the most safe people, and I could full out ugly cry. Crying feels so good. Never apologize for crying. It is liquid love. 

And so much meditation. Did you ever notice how close the words ‘meditation’ and ‘medication’ are? I have deep gratitude for both. Way back, when I was only attracted to addicts and alcoholics, I made my way to Alanon and would joke, “sought through prayer and medication…”

Funny story (only in retrospect), I spent some time hanging out in a Zen Buddhist monestary in my 20’s. I fell ‘in love’ with the only monk in training who had a case of beer and a carton of smokes under his residency bed. That pretty much sums up that decade of my life. Not, with him. Of course that relationship was doomed from the start, but of how I moved through the world at that time. 

Back to more recent times. I did have days, even a week here and there, where the relentless anxiety would quiet down only to return when another expected event happened. The worst of it was that nothing was funny. Not one thing. I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t derailing staff meetings with one liners at inappropriate times. I wasn’t talking to strangers at the grocery store.

 I tried to fight it, but it was stronger than me. And not in a mean bullying kind of way. More in a matter of fact way. Like gravity. Gravity isn’t mean or vengeful. It just is. We can fight it as much as we want, but we will never win. Each time I lost, I got up and without even dusting myself off dragged myself back into the ring. ‘I will win this time, gravity, I will fly out of this sinkhole and rid myself of your force’. And then, just because life has a weird sense of humor, more things changed in ways that I did not approve of.  And any shred of delusional control over life that I had left, fell away. 

One day I was in the shower and damp tiles whispered, “Radical acceptance and surrender. It will save you.” And I was like, “What the fuck, that sounds awful.” And the whisper said, “Yes, you can even radically accept and surrender that radical acceptance and surrender sounds awful.” Over the next few days I made a list of  the parts of life that I don’t accept. Just a few highlights included illness, death, children growing up, aging, war. And those things are the stuff I can’t stop no matter how hard I try. I prayed (to what or who I’m not sure) for radical acceptance and surrender to life on life’s terms.

Over time, the bolus seemed to loosen up a bit. I knew I was starting to open up again when I started talking to people in the grocery store again. I’ve recently become aware that this is not only improper shopping etiquette, but that some people look straight ahead and slightly down intentionally to not make eye contact with anyone who might start talking to them. I, on the other hand, will call out across aisles, to someone I think I recognize to say hello and figure out how we know each other only to find out after several minutes that I don’t, in fact,  know them at all, but they look like someone whose name I can’t put my finger on. I’m happy to text you whenever I go grocery shopping so you can avoid going at the same time, if you don’t like that sort of thing. 

Today, there is joy in drinking my coffee and writing. Today, I’m grateful for gravity keeping me on my sofa, with my happy light on another gray morning, instead of floating off to the stratosphere where it’s cold and probably lonely and I could get hit by a rando plane. All we have is today and the knowledge that we are not alone.

With love and hope for us all,

Lorryn