We flew home from the Chicago/Northern Indiana area today.
I’m tired.
Jay had a bad cold the whole time we stayed together. I didn’t sleep well, but oddly, I’m not that tired. I am weary. I’m going to bed soon. But I used to take naps almost everyday, for over a year. After that period ended, I still would fight sleep and be exhausted by bedtime.
I am stunned, STUNNED, to be realizing how much energy it has taken to 1) be in almost constant physical pain and 2) be in constant emotional/psychic pain.
My eating has changed a little bit in that I’m eating less meat and more plant-based food, but it’s just not that big of a difference.
My poor body.
I wonder about my heart, if I’ve had permanent damage from all the stress. I’ve read that abuse survivors have more health issues. I can understand why. They all start to turn into each other and wrap into a circle until you’re chasing symptoms and connected diseases that just spiral.
Forty years of almost constant stress.
The last few months, I feel I’ve come out of some of the worst of the emotional struggles. I feel a sense of equanimity. I still get triggered by some things, but it’s not daily and weekly and monthly and year round, day in and day out.
I was with a friend this evening and know some of her history. I know she is still fighting all the battles I used to fight in my head. I can feel it in the energy she has, the way she acts and reacts. Mostly now, I can just stand with her as a friend and not leave. I know she’s lost friends, and I understand why. I almost left. Someone that is regularly defensive, passive-aggressive, jumpy, it’s hard. She’s also incredibly generous, thoughtful and loving in many, many ways. It often can come out wrong. And on top of it all, she has her own personality which I suspect is defiant and strong to a fault. It all can clash.
What is my personality? What do I want to do? What am I? Who am I? Those are the questions I’m now asking, amazed that I get to do this, to slip into my mind as maybe it was designed to be, pre-trauma.
I went and saw First Man again this evening, the movie about the life of Neil Armstrong and his place in the history of space exploration. He and his wife had a hard marriage. It reminded me in many ways of ours. The tension over Neil’s career, his wife having to be constantly supportive regardless. His emotional distance. Family tragedies. Their eventual divorce.
All of that is pretty identical minus the divorce part. We were close though. We were close.
I was triggered at the end of our work trip. I was tired of the sleeping arrangements. I just moved out onto the couch finally last night. I guess I never even think to ask him to move. I just move. I’m the one who is impacted by his snoring.
I see a lot of people around him having to catch all that’s happening. Many of the staff closest to him are acting in ways as his personal assistants. He seems resistant to hiring people that would fulfill that role, like the travel agent I used to have. So they drop balls, things get missed.
The things I used to do in my sleep, it seems a lot of that is missing now. I tried to train people and I tried to show him what I’d done. I don’t know. It sucks. Once he tried to make me feel good, during one of the training sessions. “This is your baby,” he said, as back to back sessions were occurring in rooms next to each other. “Yeah, I guess so,” I replied. I’m too disconnected to care. It would be too painful to track all the details to know how I’d feel about everything.
It’s just better if I don’t go. I need to focus on my own life and future ahead. I have spent years “helping,” which feels a lot right now like just continuing to fill the gaps he leaves behind, knowing I can handle it.
I’m still an owner so I have pride in some of this. Some, I’ve had to just let go. It’s not what I’d want or how I’d do it. It is what it is.
I went on this trip to mainly take our main client to dinner. He took a risk on us almost ten years ago when we had very little to offer. He is an unusual man, a risk taker, someone with business and political savvy in a world of conservative scientists who get dinged for making mistakes, tiny ones.
He said at dinner that you have to take risks. You have to keep trying things. You can’t stand still because the market isn’t standing still.
He said he hopes maybe to go into academia when he retires, maybe do some work in the community. He doesn’t want to consult. He’s ready to be done w/ business, the pressure to make the margins and bring in the profit. I get it. It was good to hear someone as talented and successful as he is admit what the cost has been. He’d like to go back to what his roots were, at the university. What a guy.
So yeah, that’s why I went. I asked engaging questions. I listened and then asked follow-up questions. It was a charming evening. I thanked him for taking the risk on us, and he was deferential, as he always is.
I don’t know that there will be more trips like that. I don’t know if I will go if there are.
All I really wanted to do on this trip, was get out into the fields of reeds. There were thousands lining the freeways and interstates in Northern Indiana. They are different than what we have here. They were hearty and strong, waving in the harsh Midwestern wind. I wanted to study them, photograph them, draw them, write about them. It’s time I fed that after all this.
*****
We also hiked this weekend up at Mt. Spokane. We saw a moose in the trees, not too far away. They are so very, very big. i’m glad we didn’t bother it and vica versa.
Walking and being outside is such a reset. We think we understand so much with our minds. We think we can reason everything out when in fact, we need to often shut it all down and let the body take over.
I felt like some things in me started to unwind and loosen up from this trip and some tough things that happened.
Outside is good stuff.
Mt. Spokane, WA