Raking
When one’s emotions have been raked over the glowing coals of someone else’s decisions that directly affect their life and plans, some of us have a meltdown. If you are lucky, it isn’t a public scene. If you are really lucky, your apartment neighbors can’t hear you slam cabinet doors, curse the powers that be that just threw all your plans down a commercial grade garbage disposal under the force of a cafeteria water nozzle with enough pressure to remove the gum some high school student snuck in to chew during a third period exam and stuck in the utensil section of the lunch tray so that no human hand, nor standard issue muck-boot thick cafeteria-lady rubber glove can dislodge before being sent through the baking sterilization of the deafening industrial dishwasher that shoots out the cleaned trays in a tray of their own that has to set for ten minutes to cool before being removed and stacked by the muck-boot glove wearing cafeteria lady.
It hurts. It is devastating when you miss your hermit hovel. When the operational tempo of your current abode goes against your own rhythm and flow. Well, it wasn’t so bad before, The Virus. Before you at least got to go to new places and experience new things. You had a reason to drag your ass out of bed at Oh Dark hundred and forget to wait for the coffee to cool, burning your tongue on five out of seven mornings a week, but never on the weekends because you can sleep without an alarm, or a text message or phone call waking you and that magical reason you are here to begin with who sleeps through them half the time, so you wake them after their phone wakes you. Though on their own, they never seem to miss a call when you aren’t there. Just like the children who you made sure were up, dressed and fed before school for twenty-seven years.
This is your time. You had your children early, and now have the chance to pursue your “career.” Sure, you like any young and anxious soul, you make some missteps. Study and change your major a few times, eventually you land where you belong. Though because of your age, you feel the judge-y looks that you interpret to be criticism and disapproval in all those eyes and snarky comments from younger, older and even your very own age humans. You know there is the gossip of jealousy and pity. You aren’t that deaf, yet.
You persevere and get the chance to “find yourself” and are excited that the opportunity to figure out what happened to your own voice in the middle of life after having been a responsible, mature adult. When you aren’t trying to fit so much responsibility into the twenty four hours that we all have to contend with. You get the opportunity to have very little responsibility, sleep in, . . . but you can’t. Because of tempo. And you see on the horizon, this thing, and it stops you in your tracks and stops you from exporting the world around you. It makes it so that the only voice you hear in your head is your own voice telling you that you missed out on studying. Missed out on practicing. And you are so far behind in what you are trying to do. Such a goober.
So The Virus that ran roughshod over everyone’s plans for you became your opportunity to catch up on all those books you didn’t get to read. Do all the studying you need to succeed, if you can get it all done in the relative to you short time that everyone had to shelter in place. So you pushed hard. Not enough time in the day to dwell on concepts and let them sink in. You still feel stupid and old, and out of sync. People are so edgy and quick to jump to criticism now. Existing closer hate, well, maybe actual hate that instead of reaching out to ask questions, you feel it is safer to think about how, why and what to do next on your own.
So you pull the plug on being social. You stop sharing your work. Work, as if what you do is worthing of the word work. You know it is but others just look at all the things they see wrong with it. Punctuation, grammar, spelling. You are very glad they aren’t your boss or teacher. You would have been fired or failed in the speed of an atrial fib beat. And you know that all your chosen adjectives are your darlings others want to kill but for the sake of being a pain in retribution to anyone who has ever hurt you, you make the choice to leave them because you are still so mad that your plans to return to your writing room that has been waiting for you to come back with your own voice after having lost it and wandered around trying to find it and out of petrified fear of never ever having it again, pushed yourself to read and take notes on most of the books you have read in the last ten years only to find the damn thing whisper screaming in your heart and soul, being the messenger, to reminding you that your plans to return to your favorite writing chair have been thwarted, again.
Not in that exact moment, but in the moments that you lay tossing in the shared bed , turning over in your mind all the vile thoughts and feelings you can pounce upon the decider of your fate, while the reason you are in this situation to begin with is snoring on the couch in the other room. The moment when you find yourself again, because you can’t sleep.
So you sit up and write out the words that are coming, crashing out of your brain, past your conscious faster than your inner voice can enunciate and down out through your fingers. Just like this.
Damn it all to hell. That was the moment of the break through. At least for this moment, past the grief and frustrated and self shame. Now you are doubly worried that the extra time will cause you to lose it as quickly as your found it. The anger passes and it is still there. Shaky, but there. How the hell do you hold on to that? That part of you that you missed, the emotional compass that in a split second makes you want to rant and rave and cuss, but also walk away from others so that you can let the words tumble out on their own here, where you can come back and read and make notes in a calm and sane mood. Perhaps edit and rewrite a few sentences, and change some order of them to make a much more concise on point piece that others can read while thinking, ‘oh, yeah, I know how she feels. I have felt that way, too.’
Knowing that in this moment of recognition of similarity, we share a moment of understanding and compassion of one another’s hurt feelings. Breathing in the peace of knowing and out the sigh of relieved understanding.