Day 86: Pins and Needles

I fell asleep on my arm in a weird way the other night, and when I woke up everything from the elbow down was numb.  I've cut off circulation to my arm before, but never quite that severely.  The pins and needles when the feeling started to come back were awful.  I kept hopping around my bedroom like a loon, flapping my arm up and down as though I were suddenly going to sprout feathers and take flight.

You've all been there.  You know what I'm talking about.  It's painful, even as you know it's doing a positive thing for your body.

 Like therapy.  Or Yoga.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I'm in a pins and needles stage of life right now.  It's kinda funny, because for someone who always identified as being incredibly emotional, I've become surprisingly un-adept at feeling things.  It doesn't hurt, precisely, but it's shocking to have sensation rushing back into places where there didn't used to be anything.  Sometimes it tingles a bit and then settles, and I decide I like it.  Sometimes it doesn't settle, and I have to carefully evaluate how I feel about it.  Once or twice I've even sat bolt upright, shaking my head and declaring out-loud to the empty room "Oh, no.  Oh, I do not like that at all."

I mean, that doesn't make the feeling go away.  I just have to tell the invisible audience that follows me around how I'm taking it.

...

I realize I just told you all about the invisible audience, and I'm rethinking whether that was a good idea.  On the one hand, it's kinda weird.  On the other hand, if you're not convinced I'm crazy by now, I doubt telling you that I have an invisible audience made up of the imaginary versions of people I know will have much affect on what you think.

 I mean, you all knew I was weird already, right?

...

Anyway, the point is that I'm trying to get used to my emotions again.  They're strong little buggers, and they keep ambushing me when I'm not paying attention.  It's like I'm playing a complex internal game of Assassin, and I never know when an emotion-tipped Nerf dart is gonna hit the pit of my stomach.

A friend asked me how I was doing this morning, though, and I didn't really have to contemplate my response.

"Really good, actually."

I've missed my emotions, and I'm super pleased to have them back.  Even the ones I don't like so much.  It's like getting back to the technicolor of Oz after you've been stuck in the black and white of Kansas.  Sure, you might get attacked by flying monkeys, but it's a small price to pay for the wonder all around you.

Day 85: Playing Pretend

Okay, clearly, I need to explain the soul crushing...

At some point along the way in life, I came to realize that my trick with fear worked for other emotions, as well.  Most of them, really.  You can pretend not to feel almost anything, if you set your mind to it hard enough.  Now, those who knew me as a child and young adult can well attest, I almost never chose to do such a thing.  I was always a heart-on-my-sleeve kind of gal, and while it was undoubtedly a little difficult for those closest to me to deal with at times, it was at least an honest and authentic way to live my life.

I don't think I ever actively made the decision to start pretending away my emotions, I think it was more the natural consequence of needing to function during a time of enormous upheaval.  It worked tremendously well for me, too.  People who really should have known better were convinced that I fully had my shit together.  Hell, some days even I was convinced I had my shit together.  I'm not saying it was a horrible thing for me, at the time.  I really needed to be able to take care of my kids, and if I'd been experiencing my emotions to the fullest I probably would have been sitting in a corner doing a jello impersonation for a few years.

The downside is that, once you get into the habit of pretending your emotions away, you start doing it all the time.  And that sort of thing is simply not sustainable.  When I refuse to be scared, there is an immediate and overwhelming reaction that hits me as soon as the danger is passed.  The longer I've had to be calm, the bigger that reaction gets.  There was inevitably going to be a huge reaction when the crisis was over and all the various feelings I'd been smooshing took their revenge.

And here we get to the part where I say "although I've just recently come to realize it, it turns out I've been dealing with depression for a really long time."

This is, perhaps, socially awkward of me to say.  Depression is still slightly culturally shameful, plus lots of you know me and think I'm a pretty happy, upbeat person, and it will feel really odd to you to hear me say I've been depressed.  I have considered both these things carefully, and here is my response to that:

Fuck it.  It is what it is.

For those who will inevitably ask... yes.  I'm doing better.

Kind of.  

It's a process.

More on that tomorrow.

Day 84: Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck... Isn't a duck.

I'm not a very brave person.

We all know that quote about how bravery isn't a lack of fear, but rather the willingness to act in spite of the fear, right?  In order to truly be brave you've got to be scared of something.  Now, I am scared of plenty of things, but I am terrible at facing my fears.  Fear paralyzes me.  It's one of the reasons I consistently bomb auditions.  I've got the nerves of a chinchilla.

From a very young age, however, I figured out that I could keep going if I just pretended I wasn't afraid.  I'm pretty good at pretending, so I've developed a method which looks, from a  distance, a little bit like bravery.

But don't be fooled.

Really, I am just pretending that I'm not scared.

That's not the same thing at all.

It's useful at times.  I'm great in a crisis, because I shut down anything that gets in the way of dealing with what's going on.  When I was eighteen and my best friend flipped his car off the road with me and a bunch of others in it, I held it together until I'd scaled the bank and flagged down help.  It wasn't until I found the rest of our friends that I broke down and cried.  When a volunteer and I got mugged on the way to Roberto Clemente I was totally calm and cool, and I kept her calm so she didn't get stabbed.  Then when I got home I lost it.  I would be a great party member in the event of a zombie apocalypse, but if I happened to survive someone would need to shut me in a closet for a week once the danger was passed so I could cry it all out.

Anyway, the point is, I'm not brave.  I can just Fortify like max-level Priest in tricked-out gear.  It's a special talent, and I'm not denying it's handy.  But I've just realized that I might be using it to crush my soul.

I mean, just a little.

But maybe a little soul crushing is still a bad thing?

A Game of Sacrifice

I don't get Lent.

 word cloud of Lenten sacrifices

Now, before some well meaning individual tries to explain it to me, let me clarify; I know what Lent is.  I'm fully educated in the theological significance of the forty days, as well as the reasoning behind the fasting, the penance, and the sacrifice.

I know what Lent is.  I just don't get it.

Here's the thing.  I've been surrounded, my whole life, by people who are deprived.  I'm not talking about someone who missed their chance to get a pumpkin spice latte this fall.  Far be it from me to hate on coffee, I just want to clarify that I'm not using that term casually.  When I say deprived, I do not mean they haven't had chocolate in a week, or that the store is out of their favorite brand of bath soap.

I'm talking about people who don't have homes.  People who don't have a place to clean their bodies.  People who don't have basic health care, not even Tylenol for their fevers.

 These people.

I am talking about the 795 million people who go to sleep at night with their insides gnawing at them, because they don't have enough to eat.

So I don't get Lent.  I see people giving up chocolate, or Starbucks, or swearing for forty days, and I fail to see the point.  Maybe, if they took their coffee money and donated it to the World Hunger Foundation, maybe that would mean something to me.  Maybe, if they tried to live on $2 a day, and came away from the experience with the determination to change the world so that no one ever had to live on $2 a day ever again, maybe then I would appreciate the season.  Maybe if they gave up swearing and instead filled their mouths with words of solidarity, and revolution, and commitment.  Maybe then I would get it.

Lenten Sacrifices: Current Top Ten List

Instead I see nothing but the privilege of having so much that you have something to give up.  I see nothing but wealthy people playing a game of deprivation, giggling about how awful it's going to be to go without wine for six weeks.  I see them using it as the jump start for their diet, or their exercise plan, or whatever other personal improvement project they're working on.  I see yet another example of the wealthy of the world skating atop the misery that supports their self-involved lifestyle, turning even their moments of deprivation into a kind of party.

 These kids are hauling water to wash in.

That little dude is six.

But it's cute that you gave up bar hopping for Lent.

This may sound like a harsh critique to some, but I cannot apologize for it.  I have recently been reminded of the stark difference between this middle class life that I lead, and the lives of over 70% of the world's population.  It is unconscionable, and this game of sacrifice merely highlights it.

Besides.  I gave up my internal filter for Lent.