I'm a Mess
but who cares?
Today I went to Trader Joe’s on my usual weekly grocery run. While in the checkout line I was asked if I needed help bagging my groceries.
”No thanks, I got it!” I said, because I always bring reusable bags and apparently I’m a control freak who needs to put things in bags a particular way.
I zoned out for a minute and then asked the guy helping me, “did I get garlic?”
He looked at my stash, “No, but I see a shallot.”
”Oh. I didn’t need a shallot… can I… go get garlic?"
He gave me permission to leave and retrieve garlic. I came back and saw someone else had continued bagging my groceries.
This small moment feels pretty emblematic of where my entire psyche is at right now.
I was supposed to go on a trip with my family for a few days at the beginning of April…
Meanwhile, my whole personality and life circumstances revolve around my super old dog.1
She had a really rough night this past Saturday. Dementia pacing for nearly four hours that involved me following her around the house while she kept stumbling and falling and not being able to get up and whimpering.
I tried to pet her to soothe her to get her to fall asleep but no dice. I gave her loads of chicken2 and that didn’t seem to calm her down. I really try hard not to give her the trazadone the vet prescribed for dementia anxiety because it totally knocks her out the next day, but I succumbed and gave her half a pill… and then half a pill more. I took her out to pee several times, which she never did3.
At one point I just held her and sobbed.
She finally went to bed at midnight, and then woke up at 3am again to almost barf, and then we went back to bed again.
I had to get up at 7:30am because I had work.
I was fried the next day.
I canceled most plans I had made.
I am taking a new clown class though.
We were asked to do an exercise where we just stand in front of our peers with our hands at our side and then say, “Now I Feel…”4
We say how we’re feeling, and then we update everyone on how we feel in the next moment… and the next… for an inordinate amount of time.
In the course of however long I was up there I felt:5
loved
like I could cry
my heart beating in my chest
pressured
present
hungry
rushed
blank
blank
like I was making people bored
but also who cares?
The exercise ended for me on that revelation. Who cares?
When I got home I watched this YouTube video-
Then I had kind of one of those panic attacks where I couldn’t stop cry heaving and saying, “I love her” over and over again.
Finally I went to bed.
Today, in the morning I spoke with my grandma about the events that had transpired over the weekend. I thought, perhaps, it was time we set a date to say goodbye to Rita. It seemed like the right thing to do.
I don’t want to wait until it’s too late… where she’s in so much pain we can’t say goodbye in a peaceful way at home.
The 27th seemed like it made sense, since I got her on March 27, 2012. It would mark 14 years of us being together.
I informed everyone the plan had been made. I received condolences and messages of support.6
I told my mom. She said maybe I shouldn’t go on that trip we had planned for April then.
I took this in the worst way possible, like my grief was an inconvenience for them having a “good time” on the trip. My mom insisted this wasn’t what she meant, but I couldn’t hear it.
I cried a lot today. I panicked and asked my therapist to move our appointment up to tomorrow. I kept informing people the end was nigh. I canceled more plans in anticipation of pronounced post-mortem grieving.
And then… I talked with my grandma again and we realized a few things.
If saying goodbye to Rita ahead of the trip still means not going on the trip, then maybe we don’t need to say goodbye and I just don’t need to go on the trip
Rita can give us her cue on when she’s ready to go when she stops eating. She’s still eating. She still has good days, in spite of the bad ones. I don’t have to make the choice on her behalf, she can let me know what’s best for her.
We can take all the pressure off. We can take it a day at a time.
I called my mom and we made amends. I understood finally that she wasn’t trying to tell me that my grief was an inconvenience, but just that she wanted me to not feel pressured to perform happiness on a trip where I couldn’t be happy. We both decided it was super sad but also better if I didn’t leave town right now.
I wish I hadn’t had a knee-jerk reaction and canceled closer to home plans that can probably still take place.7
I am all over the place right now. I’m getting shallots when I really needed garlic. I have felt pressured and needy. I do feel loved. I also feel like I could cry, and often I do cry.
I am feeling less of that pressure though, now that we’ve taken said pressure off. I don’t have to set a date for the inevitable. I can let it unfold in its own time. I can take it day by day.
At the end of clown we sit around for reflections.
We learned that in the circus trapeze artists and the like represent the pursuit of perfection. They perform at the top of the tent, toward the spire, a literal symbol of aspirations. We all have some human need to be the best, to defy gravity and reach the heavens.
The clown, however, is not that. Clowns = ground.8 Clowns showcase our imperfections, and their own.
I commented that I noticed I want to be perfect at being imperfect9 and feel like I’m failing at being imperfect10.
”Good,” my teacher said.
I’ve been having a really hard time lately, but I also feel that in many ways the Universe is prying my grip open.
Rilke said no feeling is final, and I’m really feeling that too11.
I am a little more aware now of the myriad of ways internal pressure has been showing up and running the show, exhausting me in the process. I’ve been clinging for dear life to find easy answers and resolutions. Like most humans, I’m desperate for order and control12. On top of that, I’m needy.
But… I don’t have any control. What seems true one moment is not true the next13. I’m not perfect. I’m not even perfect at being imperfect. I don’t know what’s really happening. I’m a mess.
I’m learning how to embrace that. I’m learning that I make mistakes, and that’s okay.
At synagogue this past Shabbat our rabbi spoke about mistakes… how after the Israelites made the mistake of making the golden calf their next command was to observe Shabbat.
When we’re in a place of making a mistake, or, we’re in a place of — I don’t know is anyone feeling tremendous anxiety these days? ….
We start going faster… and especially after we make a mistake we tend to go faster.
In the midst of everything feeling really intense… the tradition tells us we’re just going to slow down right in that place. Right in the moment where we want to speed up, where we want to say, let’s just pretend everything’s fine…
We’re going to slow down here. We’re going to slow down inside of what’s happening in our lives because [that] is going to connect us to what’s deeper and wiser, and also to that place of reminding us that all of our values all of our spiritual gifts are in abundance, the love, the generosity - it’s all in abundance.
— Rabbi Susan Goldberg
I’m learning how to slow down now. I don’t need to have it all figured out. I never will have it all figured out. I just have to take it a day at a time, and accept that I’m just human.
as most of you are well aware
almost too much honestly
she peed the bed several times in the night, which is okay, because we have pee pads now for that scenario
I did the exercise wrong. I kept saying “Now I’m Feeling…”
in retrospect this is mostly just how I’m feeling at all times, which is possibly the point of the exercise
Thank you
but Nicole said we can still do it
The etymology of clown is some latin clod which means ground.
ie. make people laugh and therefore like me
I literally accidentally fell on my ass in one exercise in front of everyone
for now
I’m realizing now that I mindlessly play a lot of app games like “water sort” and "“mahjong” which is basically just putting things in order over and over again on a loop
doesn’t help that mercury is retrograde
Jessica this was really beautiful I’m sobbing
I love you!