Mental Gymnastics

It was a surprisingly good Friday after what turned out to be a highly emotional week; full of dramatic events that – as usual – I find myself directly involved in. In fact, just a small percentage of those events were instigated by me, but the ones that WERE caused these massive ripples, like when you throw a stone into the center of a very calm, very still body of water. Some of those ripples seem to go on forever, getting bigger and bigger, covering a wider and wider area, until pretty soon that very calm, very still body of water is in chaos; alive with the movement, and disruption.

In the course of my work I make a lot of phone calls; this morning’s agenda was fairly light as I realized that I felt so emotionally drained I couldn’t face the challenge of overcoming strangers’ natural objections to speaking with a salesperson when one happens to call. I have a good record on the phone; I have a very soothing phone voice, I’m very quick in establishing rapport, and I know just how many questions I can ask before I push my prospect over the edge into annoyance or irritation. Being empathetic comes with its perks, and in a sales career I find it an absolute requirement in order to do my job, and do that job well.

It’s close to noon and I leave the office to meet a friend for lunch a few cities away. Driving down the main street on my way to the freeway, all of a sudden I see brake lights in front of me. I slow down, and notice that all three lanes of traffic are merging into the farthest right lane. Now, I’m in a hurry, but not so much in a hurry that I’m enraged by the delay (that does happen, but not today). I signal, look in my rearview mirror to make sure the guy behind me is paying attention, I inch over to the right, very, very slowly… the minutes trickle by like beads of sweat rolling down your face on a hot summer day. But I’m thinking, you know, it’s cool.. it’s Friday, I’ll get there when I get there… if it’s a few minutes late, no big deal.

Finally my car brings me close enough to see what’s going on. Two police cars with flashing blue and red lights, an ambulance facing the opposite direction of my flow of traffic, a car off to the side. These vehicles register in my peripheral, it adds to the information my mind is collecting automatically, filling in the blanks: Brake lights. Traffic. (processing: Shirley, you need to slow down) Merging to the right. Signaling. (processing: Shirley, you need to watch these other drivers so you don’t hit anyone and nobody hits you) More merging. Glancing behind. More signaling. More merging….

… And then I’m driving by the accident itself. The only thing that my eyes focus on – and that my mind immediately registers and processes, literally a split-second – is a motorcycle lying on its side: a cruiser. I feel this jolt; a physical reaction throughout my entire body. I remember feeling uneasy, and I looked all around the bike as I crawled by in my car… no body. I did not see a body. I think if I had, I would have vomited right there, in my car.

The mind is a strange and mysterious thing. Everything we see with our eyes sets into motion a corresponding chaos in our brains – just like those ripples that get bigger and bigger – the movement in mine is a movie on fast-forward: the phone call from the hospital that my husband was involved in an accident. I was at home watching “True Blood” at the time (I have not watched an episode of “True Blood” since that night). Seeing him in the hospital, three weeks in intensive care. Looking like he was sleeping. All these machines hooked up, beeping noises, nurses coming in, checking his vitals, hanging up a fresh bag of blood.. Bunny, wake up… wake UP! Quit messing around – you’ve had your fun. This is really a sucky thing to do to me… really, enough is enough. And the disruption… Shirley, he’s gone. He’s dead – he died back in December. He’s gone.

At the time this all actually happened, as I was driving to meet my friend for lunch, I managed to cut off my emotional response to these thoughts whizzing and crashing through my brain. How would it be for me to show up a blubbering mess… I hate for my friends to worry too much about me. But, now, alone in my house, just my laptop, me, and my thoughts – I mourn my loss. I’ve lost plenty of things – valuable things – in my life, you would think I would be desensitized to it by now. But each new loss connects itself to the pain of everything I’ve experienced in the past. That’s how unintentionally cruel a person’s mind can be. Mine, particularly so.

My cat Eezma is sitting on the floor in the corner of my office… she’s been hanging out in this same spot for the last week or so that I’ve noticed; she isn’t acting like she normally does – just sitting there, staring off into the distance or with her eyes closed – a thought jumps into my head: She’s getting old (I do a quick mental calculation: almost 10 years old). The next thought: How long do cats live? She’s going to die someday too… I cut off my emotional response before my mind can connect back to my most recent death experience, that one from December.

I listen to the sounds coming out of my living room – my son’s first violin lesson. His teacher, Rob, is explaining the proper way to hold the violin. I hear Christopher play a few notes… and my mind jumps forward to seeing Christopher play the violin in a concert – somewhere, sometime. And I am reminded again that I am alive, and that each day brings with it something new to learn. Some unexpected adventure. I’m not quite done yet… I’M. STILL. ALIVE. And I gotta keep moving.