Category: Essays

Like I Want To Jump Out of My Skin

~ Deb ~ 4 Comments

According to WebMD, “Irritability and feelings of sadness are the most common emotional symptoms of menopause.”  And to be completely truthful, it so totally pisses me off that some asshole at WebMD thinks they have a flipping clue what might be going on with me that I may cry.

Writing this at all is evidence of the intensity of the aaarrrggghh-ness. It may be that I courageously face alone, in admirable fashion, any less than happy and pleasant (read: in control) feeling.  Or it could be that I am completely incapable of emotional honesty.  I haven’t figured out which.  All I know is that I don’t readily admit to depression, sadness, or pissy-ness.  And even if I do admit to them, I insist on using my Aries ram-like approach to barreling through.

But, all of that — the avoidance, the denial, the forging ahead — it’s just not working.

Sometimes I feel deeply, deeply sad.  There might be a reason — a reason that in prior days would have made me slightly sad, but nothing I couldn’t handle — or there might not be a reason at all — that particular pink of the sunset, or the way Buddy nuzzles my neck and reminds me of past nuzzles, or just driving down the damn road. Let me be clear about this one thing: this is not depression.  Are there elements of depression at play?  Perchance.  But, this is something different, a specific shade of sadness that introduced itself to me in the past year or so.

And let’s talk irritability.  If you don’t like colorful language, you might want to stop reading now.

EXAMPLE 1:  People in Tennessee are usually polite drivers.  They will stop to let someone turn into the flow of traffic.  I have to turn left out of my apartment complex, and often some guy, usually in a pickup truck, possibly because 1 in 3 people in Gallatin, TN, seem to drive said vehicle, will be directly across from me waiting to turn right.  He has the right of way.  More times than not, however, he (always a different he, but we’ll make him an EveryHe for now) will motion for me to go on ahead. It is possible that, once or twice, I have rather forcefully motioned him to go first and expressed something like this out loud (though thankfully I am my only audience): “Motherfucker!  Just drive, you fucking moron!  Jesus!  If you’d just follow the fucking rules of the road, everything would flow just fine.  You know what happens when you break the fucking rules?  Accidents fucking happen.  Fucker.”  (Please note that this is what happens when someone is being nice to me.)

EXAMPLE 2:  Another car example.  Lots of emotion gets expressed in the car, probably because I don’t have anyone else around to witness what an unbearable ass I’m being.  This example most often happens when in the left turn lane waiting for the green arrow.  The guy at the front (or any person in front of me) does not proceed with appropriate haste when the light turns, possibly creating a situation where not all cars will make it before it turns back to red.  Appropriate haste would mean zip-zip.  If you are not the first person in line, then appropriate haste means staying within 5-10 feet of the back bumper of the car ahead of you.  When appropriate haste is not displayed, my juicy monologue goes thusly:  “NOBODY in the world but you, buddy.  NOBODY in the world but YOU.  Fucker.” (The last word is like the “amen” to my prayer.)

EXAMPLE 3:  Could happen anywhere.  Ordering food through the drive-thru.  Engaging in seemingly benign conversation at work.  Walking past a stranger on the sidewalk.  Nothing happens.  I just open my mouth and absolutely anything I say sounds like the bitchiest thing any human has ever uttered.  I can hear it.  In my head I’m saying silently, “Stop talking.  Just stop talking.  Close your mouth now.  Say nothing.  Fucker.”

I’ve heard the entire playlist of the Pandora Deva Premal station 762 times at least.  I light incense and candles.  I snuggle my puppy.  Sure, I could do some more exercise (which makes me precisely like every other human I know), but I’m not a total slug.

I’ve rammed through until my head hurts.  So now I flip on the klieg lights and say, “Here it is.”

I have no answers.  This essay/rant/diary entry has no ending.  It just has an approach I’ve never tried before: admitting emotional imperfection (gasp).  So, sometimes I’m deeply sad.  Sometimes I’m a real snippy bitch.

I’m 52 years old, and I’m in menopause.  Fuckers.

True North

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

A satisfied life requires a few basic elements — love that is undefinable, work that compels, time for whatever expands us, and music, always music.  We could crawl around on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need and toss in shelter, security, and self-esteem, but let’s not go crazy here.

Another core element to a satisfied life is one that often gets overlooked: one or more guiding principles.  Guiding principles are often seen as a requirement for living a good life or a moral life (whatever that is).  The satisfied life, however, is more readily connected with items that fill or nurture us — love, work, time, music — rather than that which directs us.

Guiding principles are the border collies of the spiritual journey.  They nip at our heels when we wander too far into the land of compromise.  They outrun us and come up on our blindside every time we try to turn a different direction.  They guide us into the safety of the barn every night . . . if we let them.

In this age of labels, we can become deluded into believing that the groups with which we identify can provide some of the above services.  But the lines aren’t as clear anymore.   In his essay Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “If I know your sect, I can anticipate your argument.”  But, I’m not so sure that’s as true as it used to be.  Does Christian mean what it used to?  Does Democrat?  Single?  Southern?  Race?

Being a Democrat or a Republican might not guide me to do what is right and good and true, but a principle will.  One of my principles, for instance, is an abiding belief in the equality and unity of all people.  Because of that, I stand against racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance, etc.  I don’t have to make a decision on each of those.  I don’t have to consult a party platform or a church tenet.  I simply have to establish my principle and every decision after that flows with ease.

In an era of fake news and fallacious rhetoric, we need personal principles more than ever. I mean, what if, just what if, we decided that one of our guiding principles was the idea that loving one another was more important than politics?   What if, just what if, we decided that our shared humanity was higher up the priority list than our religious differences?  And what if, just what . . . if . . . , we decided that honoring and respecting each other was more important than winning a damn election?

That just might be . . . satisfying.

Puppies Don’t Hold In Their Bellies

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

This is Buddy. He came home with me yesterday. Almost immediately, Buddy started working like medicine on my soul, a kind of spiritual Propofol (and that’s some good shit, trust me, as in hash-tag-can-I-please-have-another-colonoscopy-this-year level of good).

I’ve always had dogs.  I know the singular nature of their effect on the human psyche.  But I have been dogless for the last year-and-a-half and thought I was doing just fine.  I had Shasti, the tortoise-shell cat-dog who both greets me at the door and selectively ignores me in that schizophrenic feline way.  And I had a busy life.  Cats can handle your busy life.  Dogs are permanent toddlers in constant need of attention.

In the last five (six?  oh, crap) years of being single, I’ve dated quite a bit.  Okay, a few people.  Okay, two.  Two people.  One might think a good relationship would replace the lack of canine companionship, but frankly, it’s easier to get a dog.

Besides, even the best relationship doesn’t do what a dog can.  A dog lives in the moment and reminds us to do the same.  A dog is both mindful and playful, a combination that is perhaps the best definition of the divine.  A dog lives and thrives in love; we do, too, but it’s a dog that can remind us that we actually should.  A dog can nibble your ear and cause the oxytocin to move down your spine like a rushing shiver.

Dogs don’t look in the mirror and worry that they might be getting fat. They don’t spend Sunday night worrying about that thing they didn’t do on Friday which will cause Monday to start already behind. They don’t give up sleep to nibble on mental bones like wondering if Jessie really knew you were joking or how Kenneth actually feels about you or if you’re truly a good teacher or your students are just blowing smoke up your ass.

It took just that first look in my eyes for Buddy to remind me that none of that matters one  minuscule, microscopic, itty-bitty bit. The worries and frets and obsessions are puffs of smoke that I could walk right through as if they don’t exist, but I treat them like stone barriers to goodness and peace.  Buddy is the breeze that blows them away.  He knows they’re only smoke, just as he knows he is the mirror to my truest self — the self that loves and lives in the moment and engages in mindful play.

I’m grateful for my Shasti-cat.  She is a good pal and has been a loving presence in my life.  But, cats, . . . well, cats are just different. Cats know they’re God.  Dogs remind us that we are.  And I thank the heavens that I have one in my life again.  Welcome home, Buddy.

Shhhh . . . Start Talking

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I used to think I had a whole lot to say.  A friend joked that I must have had a daily word quota.  I was, well, verbose.  Teaching seemed a perfect fit for me with all that strutting and crowing  I was able to do at the front of a classroom.

Perhaps the most obvious change I’ve noticed in myself as I’ve gotten older is the attraction that silence holds for me.  Some who know me might contend I can still hit my quota now and then, but generally speaking, I prefer listening or even the absence of that – just being.

I find that I’m not as certain of what I think these days. That will quiet a person down. The impassioned, assertive, and sometimes obnoxious speechifying of my youth seems somehow . . . dangerous . . . scary . . . unnecessary.  It has been said that wisdom begins at the place where you realize how little you know.  Well, I must be getting wiser, because some days I don’t know my ass from my elbow.

I also no longer feel compelled to engage in the energy drain — oh, god, the energy drain — that comes from the dogmatic pedantry of head-driven conversation.  Some days even the very lectures I’m paid to give my students leave me with, at best, a feeling of exhausted detachment, and at worst, a particular sort of soul weariness caused by over-analysis or maybe just by the verbalization itself.  It’s as if the thoughts are creatures of mayhem made immensely more powerful in the act of speaking them into existence.

As mayhemly powerful as my spoken words might be, however, I have learned they are but cowering and skittering field mice when compared to the elephantine magic of my silent intention.  More is accomplished through my silence than I can ever wrangle into being through circumlocution.  Some problems actually solve themselves without me controlling them.  Who knew?

I still love words.  I still love teaching and speaking and writing.  But, the silence speaks, too.  In fact, silence, it would appear, actually has a few things it would like to get off its chest.

The words that spring forth from the place of stillness are words that contain the essence of silence even in their audible form.   They come from a completely different place, and they have a completely different impact.  Those are the messages that energize me when I allow them to come through.  I also believe those who hear them are somehow enriched or at least a little more aware of being alive, and they may not even know why.  I’m sure I don’t know why.  I just know that the message is somehow less important than the place from whence it sprang.  And the words that are born in silence have so, so much more to say than I could pack into a thousand days.