It's amazing how many blogs I write in the middle of the night ---- in my mind. By morning, they're gone. But that's the way life is, these days. Living with a dementia "loved one" as they're called in the books, brings everything abruptly into the here and now. Gone are those delicious mornings of waking up slowly, chasing thoughts and images around before opening my eyes. I hear her bedroom door and launch out of bed to see what surprises await, usually forgetting to even put on my glasses. Tip for the uninitiated: don't try to put hearing aid batteries in without your glasses ---- they're slippery little devils.
Since I have a long established pattern of resisting and avoiding anything that is good for me, Sunday mornings have lately meant slogging through a cloud of fatigue, petulance, crabbiness and "I don' wanna". Fortunately, Jill is high on Unitarians these days, so she pays no attention, whistles and sings as she fixes a revoltingly protein-laden breakfast, and whisks my grumpy self off to UUFR without the least sympathy for my position. And I'm always glad, afterward. Matter of fact, it's hard to get me out of there, what with so many people to talk to.
Yesterday, like usual, I heard a message I needed to hear, the reminder that I don't have a lock on the answers and it's unattractive to act like I do. That's what I heard, anyway. I remember settling into the fellowship in 1998, shortly after I came out of the closet and my second marriage disintegrated. I had flirted with the Unitarian-Universalists off and on for years, but this time I landed square in the middle, right where I needed to be. For most of the first year, I cried in every service because the message, the music, the community touched me so deeply. I got involved with the newcomer classes. I completed the feminist-theology curriculum, "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven". I joined a discussion group that met once a month and delved into topics that fed a hunger I'd forgotten I had. UUFR was a lifesaver for me in a time of great need.
Now it's many years later. I still cry sometimes and my favorite sermons are the ones that call my beliefs and ideas into question, that make me examine my integrity ---- how well do my insides and my outsides match? The circumstances of my life are very different now, which means that there is a new set of challenges. I am called to be of service in new ways, without getting lost in the process. I'm naturally inclined toward high drama, so keeping that in check, keeping myself right-sized, is a big focus. I'm shooting for Goldilocks: not too extravagent, not too mousy, j..u..s..t right! Never been good at that one!
How DO you make it not all about you, when you're the only one you know from the inside out?
I often watch people when I'm out in public. Now that I'm like the invisible woman, I can even stare at people with impunity ---- though I usually don't. My mama brought me up better than that. But I look at people and wonder what it feels like to be them --- who is that in there? How do they see the world? How do they see themselves? I guess that's one reason I love writing, to try to create characters with different perspectives, but I sometimes fear that all my characters are actually just me, in costume. That's another story, though.
Jill and I have an ongoing discussion about how to be in the world without "letting the bastards get you down". I've spent years and years of intention, attention, meditation, education ---- all the tions -----to develop the ability to let things slide off, not take things personally. I can't do it all the time, but to the degree that I am able to detach and remember that almost nothing is directed at ME, Kathy Bundy, I am able to dismiss most angers and upsets. That doesn't mean I love, love, love everybody and everything ---- that's not even the goal. I'm just trying to not live in constant stress and discord, with cortisol coursing through my system from morning till night.
Alanon has a saying ----- How important is it?
I would add in parentheses (to me and my peace of mind)
This applies to everything from the folks who are trying to defend marriage from me and my kind, to when my mother, in her confusion and dementia, lashes out at me because I suggest that wearing her bra on the outside of her shirt might not be a good idea. How important is it?
Right here, right now, I usually just need to take a breath and remember who I am.
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