Is This Radical Self Care?
(Grief Therapy Part Two — The Wallowy Part)
[In Part One of this three-part series, I talked about my grief process, but kept it mostly philosophical. Here in Part Two, I went with the ugly cry. In Part Three, I finally get to the action sequence. May it all be of service.]
It’s Wednesday. I’m wearing Monday’s clothes. Who cares? Whatever.
I barely get the dishes done.
I hardly feed myself because, inevitably, it leads to more blessed dishes. And, by blessed, I mean fucking.
I’m losing weight.
It’s not because I’m exercising. I’m not.
I’m hardly in my body anymore.
I miss yoga asana. I miss being in water. I miss a good cardio to blow out the pipes.
I miss feeling integrated in this gawky leggy construct that carries me around and drives my car.
I tried to get back in.
A few months ago, which was a few months after my mom died, I thought it was time to try to call my energy back from the brink. Pull my agni back down into my belly. Reintegrate body, mind, and spirit.
I got massages — finally found an LMT who can work with my scoliosis, remarkably well. I found a Reiki Master who got me so grounded that I was giggling and dancing, spinning and twirling after our second, and last, session. As if I wasn’t old and brittle, broken and wounded.
I visited my craniosacral worker and my chiro again. They’re both amazing empathic kind practitioners. They held my body and helped me come home to it. They make it hurt less. It being my heart and my musculoskeletal stuff.
Then I realized I was running out of money and had to abort.
Can’t I just do it by myself?
Can’t I just do abhyanga? Don’t I know how to do self-massage? Can’t I just do my own damned asana practice at home? Don’t I know how to construct a series of poses start to finish to address any of my concerns? Haven’t I had more training than many beginning yoga teachers?
Um yup, sure, yes, def, and mm-hmmm. But,
I ripped my bootstraps out long long ago.
They were frayed from all the pulling.
When my mom first died, in the days and weeks and months since — Oh Jesus God in Heaven, it’s been months! But it was just last night, at 3:40 AM , I remember it — I told anybody who would listen,
Grief is a lot like depression.
Only this time, well you know, I have a real reason.
Anyways, I’ve more than proven that I can’t pull myself up by my bootstraps. Whether that means I’m spoiled or lazy or self-indulgent or suffering from Western affluenza — welp, the therapists tell me it doesn’t matter.
I don’t have It that bad.
By Christ, it’s not like I was raped in the refugee camp last night. My child and my wife didn’t drown in the dark when the rubber raft capsized carrying too many people across a jagged sea. My government is barrel-bombing my neighborhood to human-dust clouds and rubble.
Shit, I don’t even have credit card debt. (Although I may be about to.) I don’t even have car payments. (I more than make up for it in health insurance premiums, though.)
I wish I could have a dog.
I think a dog would be the trick. A therapy dog. A PTSD dog.
As I understand it, all dogs are. I wouldn’t know. I’m allergic to fur and feathers.
I’ve lost enough weight that my rings are too loose to wear.
My grammas’ rings — Mom’s Mom and Mom’s Mom’s Mom.
One’s an opal, a shared birthstone. I was born a day before my gramma in October. The other’s her mom’s wedding band. Probably a hundred years old by now. If I rub my hands together, like I’m cold, the rings go flying and pinging off walls.
Can’t have that. I’ve lost too much already. I’ve quit wearing them.
I’m not losing weight for lack of appetite, either.
I’m hungry.
I just don’t want to prep the food, cook the food, eat the food, or wash the fucking dishes.
Junk food is bad. It sits heavy. It affects my mood, my chemistry, etc and blah blah.
I don’t remember the first time doctors gave me a special diet.
I was too young. An elimination diet. A rotation diet. The Caveman diet. But, I had a stay-at-home housewife then. I had a cook. I had a mom. She did all the grunt work.
Not just for me.
I believe she took years off her life taking care of everybody else.
The first time I tried to go gluten-free on my own…
… was before it became fashionable — or perhaps I was just the canary who lucked early into this coal mine — was a millennia ago.
It nearly broke me.
Go bake your happy ass some teff muffins in College Station, Texas, in 1996, and lemme know how you do.
Don’t even talk to me about limited GF options.
Bitch, please.
They got an aisle now. At the main grocery stores, especially in big cities.
You don’t have to go to the so-diddy rich folks’ corporate-and-kept wives’ fancy granola and crystals market. You don’t have to brave the patchouli smoking at the front door just to get to the bags of Bob’s Red Mill and the ugly-ass 70’s branding of Ener-G boxes.
With all my sensitivities and allergies, it’s easier not to eat.
Sure, I get a tired easier. That’s fine. I like sleeping. Sleeping is safe. And warm.
Bed loves me. Bed doesn’t appreciate my call and ask me to hold for the next available automaton. Bed won’t get to me in the order in which my call was received. Bed doesn’t have a hold time. Bed doesn’t make me listen carefully because Bed’s menu options haven’t changed. Bed doesn’t take a copay. Bed doesn’t require insurance and proof of registration. Bed has no deadlines, no dotted lines, no self-checkout lines. Bed understands.
Can’t remember when I last washed.
I took a bath Monday because I caught a chill. I used Epsom Salts and essential oils.
See, I can self-soothe.
I don’t think I used soap, though.
They say Americans are too clean anyway. So whatever. I’m in a coffee shop in Austin. You can’t smell body odor over the espresso roast. I don’t think.
But no one’s sitting next to me…
I don’t even pretend to do laundry anymore.
Since I’ve moved in with my boyfriend… that’s his thing, I guess. How he makes sense of the world. Cleaning. Tidying.
Dad says I’m spoiled rotten.
“You know that, don’t you?” and it sounds like a sneer, venomous in my ears. (I could be projecting. We have almost 40 years of baggage, he and I.)
I think he says it to make me feel good, somehow, about the man I’ve chosen. That he approves. Or something.
It’s always seemed like an insult, to me, to call somebody a princess. It’s not like he asked me if my uterus hurt. But, it’s still a patronizing misogynistic thing to say. Right?
Child of Privilege
Then again, I am spoiled. How could I not be?
I’m an only child. I was raised upper-middle class. (And, yea though I’m sliding down that slippery slope with 99% of my closest friends, I’m nowhere near poverty.)
I’m “free, white, and 21.” I’m a straight, cis, chromosomal female. The only way I could be set up “better” in this world is if I carried my genitals in a sack outside my body.
(Later, Dad asks if I think my boyfriend will ever hit me.
And if I’ll be strong enough to leave him when he does.
Um, wtf, Dad?
“Well, that’s what most battered women say.”
His dumb ass wouldn’t do it more than once.)
At any rate, I’m damned lucky that someone’s keeping me in clean clothes. And so are the people at the coffee shop.
So, I’m having a hard time taking care of myself.
That’s the point I’m making here. Whiny, pissy, and moany, though it may be.
But, the damnedest thing is that…
I happily easily gingerly take care, to the point of fondling, knick knacks, bric brac, paddy whacks, and assorted other trinkets, trash, and treasures.
If I didn’t know better, I’d be reminding myself of the young lady who lived in the same nursing home where my great-grandmother spent the last of her days. I’m uncertain of this gal’s diagnosis. But, she was cray.
She roamed the halls all day, every day. She was always glad to see us. She drooled a little. So did my Gramma…Musta been something in the water.
This gal carried a stuffed teddy at all times. Her own companion to walk with her through the valley.
Maybe I’ve found my teddy? Maybe I’m cray?
In the next post, I try to figure it out. Because that’s what I do. I try to figure shit out. (And I want to finish it in time to show my art therapist. See? Art.)
