agingwrinklesandwondersdot.com

Admit it! You too were sick of the princess’ complaining about not being able to sleep because of a teensy pea under the 9th mattress on her bed. I wanted to tell her to just get over it! Or take a sleeping pill! I surprised myself today by using the Princess and the Pea tale to describe my state of mind. There’s a pea in my psyche and it is most irritating to me —I can’t get over it and Zanax and/or a sleeping pill are not options for me. I know I am not a princess but I sure am sensitive and just plain bothered lately.

Dis-ease. Irritated. Narked.(British) Vexed. All of the above. It’s no dark night of the soul, more like a tiny rock in your shoe that needs to come out. I can limp along for awhile but its such a relief to get the rock out of there. Maybe the irritant is my job. I have such varied duties from day to day it is hard to feel any mastery, but I like the variety and maybe there is nothing to ‘master” except my need to feel in control. Speaking of control, or lack of control, of course I am not working out as long and hard as I should and I can’t seem to lose those last 10 pounds( more like 20!) either. I am disappointed in myself for my lack of discipline and resolve. I can’t even return calls or stay on top of emails. There’s more but I’m too tired to think about it.

No wonder my psyche is narked ! I have a boulder of failed expectations under my mattress that is already lumpy with 2 dogs snoring away. There’s a lot of little negatives, regrets, disappointments and self -recriminations unsettling and stealing my peace of mind. What it all boils down to is I need to be perfect and meet all expectations of others and myself while maintaining perfect control. No problem! There’s that nagging feeling of nagging myself! No one likes to be nagged and picking on myself makes minor issues into major issues. What would happen if I let go of all my expectations and accepted myself just as I am? I could maybe take some deep breaths, relax and fall asleep on a bed of nails.

Nighty-night.

My hearing is the first sense to awaken. I am dreaming, and then I hear a very quiet whimper on the inhales of my dog Mia’s breaths. I am awake, then asleep for several cycles. Mia’s whimpers are becoming louder and soon I am awake and hearing each whimper. Mia has to go outside and pee. I want to stay under the covers, but I have to respond to her need to pee. “Okay, okay I hear you.” I say this every morning but I doubt she cares. Roscoe wakes and winds up for the day. There are mornings when I need to peel myself off the sheets and make a super human effort to throw the covers off. Does anyone really jump out of bed completely awake, ready to face the day? If so, I hate them!

I have always been fascinated by the mystery of sleep. Awake one moment and asleep the next, how does that work? I think sleep is not turned on and off like a light switch, but is on a dimmer switch. Muscles relax, breathing gets slower and deeper, the mind wanders into mazes and the next thing you know you wake up and it is then you realize you were asleep. My emotions seem to happen in the same way–slowly, growing with intensity and soon I am wandering through the maze with my fire and my heart. The next thing I know, I “wake” up and realize I have fallen in love or I am so sad I don’t know if I can survive it. Most of life is lived in between sleep and full awareness, somewhere on this continuum which rests on the fulcrum of denial. I can refuse to deal with a painful situation and deny it is happening, but I may start having bad dreams and night terrors. Asleep or awake, pain must be reckoned with.

When I live my life on automatic I am not asleep nor am I fully awake. Habit and memory keep me moving, but I am not becoming more aware or more human. I am “sleep walking” through life. If I bump someone they may say “Pay Attention , you idiot!”. I can only attend to my life when I am awake and using all my senses. In the first few months after Roger died, sleep walking was the only way I got through. I did not want to be fully awake, I was pretty sure it was a nightmare and I would wake up and all would be fine. I was obsessed with needing to know when the exact moment was that Roger became “not ” Roger and dementia claimed him. Even though I understood that dementia happened in increments , I wanted to know when the scales tipped to “not” Roger.

As he got sicker Roger slept a lot and he could not stay awake by sheer will-power. Was sleep more real to him than being awake? What were his dreams like? There are some things that are not limited by time, no before and after. I don’t remember who said this or where I read it, but I understand it more now: “I would not know until I knew.”

My shoulder hurts, sometimes the pain is dull, sometimes it hurts like hell. I have numerous issues with my hands—arthritis, carpal tunnel, numbness…. a litany of complaints. Don’t you just hate it when “old” people sit around and complain about all of their aches and pains? Just a simple “How are you?”, and you’re sorry you asked. Oh my God, I am one of those “old” people! With thousands of connections and moving parts, it is no surprise my body-years have caused wear and tear on the ole’ bones. I can relate to the Tin Man who locks up and can’t move without the oil can.

On a scale of 1 to 10 how much pain are you in? Glad you asked , I’m at 20! Is childbirth more or less painful than a heart attack or kidney stones? Loneliness is usually thought of as a dull ache, a heart attack more like stabbing pain. Where does it hurt? I may have a headache,a tooth ache or a heart ache. We say “He broke my heart when he left me.” or “I was so scared I almost had a heart attack.” The line between physical and emotional pain, if it even exists, is very fuzzy. I think emotional pain can be present in every cell in my body. I have fear so where does it hurt, on a scale from 1 to 10 how afraid am I, and can you make it go away?

Age and physical activity can cause the body’s’ joints to wear out. Heart aches, traumas, disappointments, anxieties and worries age the body/mind and can become the weight that holds the door shut to joy, and keeps the pain in. Is this just the way it is or is there another way to face toxic emotional pain? Can we be healing even while we are hurting? The physical body may be aging and dying , but at the same time the spiritual/emotional body may be experiencing a renaissance. Aging often brings a freedom that evades the young. This ‘How important is it?” or “Who gives a f__k?” attitude can not be reached by thinking. Only experience, feeling our pain and an open heart can get me and you to freedom.

Emotional baggage can be let go of, but only death allows the body to be let go. The emotional traumas we acquire through the years can die before we face death in the physical plane. I may be saddled with an aging body and the aches and pains attached to my body, but I have much fewer emotional/spiritual aches and pains. My spirit will remain, lighter and freer after I let my body go. This sounds pretty good to me.

Recently I wrote a poem about being a book end for the Sister Book series. I am the oldest of 8 sisters and my youngest sister Lisa is the other bookend. Lisa and I keep the books on the shelf from falling over. Having worked in a bookstore for many years, I remember the almost constant job of straightening the books and keeping them in alphabetical order. Keeping my sisters in order is nearly impossible! At any given time one or more sisters may be mis-shelved or out of stock. Family tragedies like death, depression and divorce have struck all of us. One of the threads running through all of our stories is cancer. Half of us have had cancer and that is not counting my own skin cancers. Actually all of us have had cancer because a diagnosis for one is a diagnosis for all of us. One for all and all for one. The Sisters move closer, the bookends lean in to hold the cancer victim upright and on the shelf.

Once again, cancer is making a forced entry into one sister. Surgery is today and we are waiting to hear from her partner that she is out of surgery and in recovery. There will be a flurry of calls, texts and emails between the sisters to spread the news. A collective prayer and fierce hope will follow as we wait for pathology results. We have learned from the past that cancer means a lot of waiting. We all hope surgery will be the only treatment needed but we also know there are other outcomes.

Later: She is out of surgery and in recovery. Things look pretty good. Pathology reports are the next hurdle and so we all wait some more…. The sisters are holding strong.

Who has dinner at 5 o”Clock? The Early Bird Special is for Seniors who might fall asleep in their soup at 7. I am now an “Early Bird”! The time I left to go out for the night in my 20’s is now my bedtime. This is why my friend Susan and I found ourselves at 5 o’clock on a Friday night at Avo’s listening to a band called “The Monday Night Band”. We were part of a crowd representing all ages from a couple of cute toddlers, to young adults, to oldies but goodies like Susan and I. Mostly I was glad to be out of the house and experimenting with being a social animal. Susan and I talked about how our old lady bodies don’t fit with how we feel inside. We look one way and feel another. This is what getting old feels like, this disconnect between interior and exterior.

I don’t believe that our bodies betray us or we need to hold on to youth at all costs.
Living, loving, learning, and earning our wrinkles, is an honest approach to aging. Running from the years on the calendar just makes me tired. It takes courage to stop running and allow the moments to add up to the sum of our lives. But back to Susan and I out on the town at the 5 o’clock hour ….we complained some about how we couldn’t hear each other, decided the band was pretty good (not great), and lamented that the men we found attractive were 20-30 years younger than us. We were invisible to them and certainly long past the adjective “sexy”. I am past my prime and my body has a stamp on it: “Best before yesterday”! Men can morph into distinguished older men, but women “look good for their age” or just fade away.

Since our night out on the town I have become obsessed with my hair. Does my short hair make me look un-feminine? Should I grow it out? Where is my curling iron? I do want to look good and not blend into the woodwork. I keep thinking that there is nothing sadder than an old wallflower. How do I shove off from the wall and get on the dance floor? If I am not asked to dance do I have the courage to take the first step and find a dance partner?

I’m not convinced that opening the Pandoras Box of male/female relationships is a wise move. I loved Roger with all my heart and sometimes I feel disloyal to him when I think about a new relationship. I know this isn’t true, but I still struggle with this feeling. My fear is weakening, and grief taught me waiting for “when…” is a losing proposition. I am popping my head out of my hole, looking around, and trying not to scurry back into my hole at the slightest sound of life. Look for me, but remember you have to come early for the “Early Bird Special”.

Often I am bursting with ideas and inspiration for my writing. I have scraps of paper everywhere with words and phrases that I can’t forget before they can come spilling out when I sit down to write. I tell myself when inspiration sneaks away that writers write, so I get my ass in the chair and write. Usually this discipline will allow me to listen to myself and ideas will come. Then there are times when the words slow to a trickle or just drips. It’s that annoying drip that you hear at night when it is quiet. Eventually it becomes like the sound of a jet engine. The drip is eroding my peace, the hard water is creating a rust stain, and I am not writing. I am not in the flow of ideas.

What goes up, must come down. Gravity. Waves hit the shore reaching farther onto the beach, and then the waves slowly recede. Tides. The ebb and flow of water, ideas, and life is simply how the world works. There is a Buddhist tenet that says “This too shall pass.” I know that change is certain, but I am still surprised by it. Life doesn’t make any promises. I make plans to go from point A to point B and arrive at point Z! There is no forever. The skies cloud over and it rains and then the sun comes out. I am sick and I get better. How can I keep my balance? I fall down a lot and get back up a lot. How’s that for balance?

I don’t like to be tossed around, so when change inevitably comes I need an anchor.
There is good change and bad change, or at least that is how my limited mind views it. I admit what seems like a negative experience can morph into a monumental and necessary learning experience. Damn it! So life is uncertain and constantly changing and there is really nothing I can do about this. Whatever is happening– is what is happening in this moment. If I take one moment at a time I become aware of the nuances of my emotions. When I thought I could not handle my grief for one more moment, I noticed that in the next moment there was a change, however slight, in my experience of grief. “This too shall pass” works both ways. Sadness and happiness will pass and come around again. The constant is me and even I am changing. I have tried to fight change and hold tightly to the status quo and to my dismay, life still slipped through my barricades.

Denial is always an option but seems less attractive to me as I age. Wasting any moment by resisting what is just means one less moment of life for me. Happiness, anger, or sadness come and go and I am the vessel . So if resistance and denial are no match for the relentless cycle of change should I concede, just give up? I know that the answer is yes, give up, accept and say yes to every moment. It will change.

I wasn’t born yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or the day before …. Am I not young or am I old? I would rather be old than a negative young. My quibbling over word choice prompts a memory of my college days. A bunch of us are sitting on the dorms’ hall floor with an over- flowing ashtray in the center of the circle and a bottle of cheap wine being passed around. We are discussing “the meaning of life ” and being very profound. Before too long several of us will think of a boyfriend we are fighting with or missing a lot and (under the influence), tears will come. The group will break up as members slip away to make that important phone call to reconnect. But before this happens we are very profound. I can’t remember any of the conclusions we reached, but the comraderie was great and the wine was bad. Thank god we were not being filmed or we would have made a very bad film. Listen and learn as the college girls discover the meaning of life, blah,blah….blah.

These days I don’t smoke or drink and getting up off the floor would be a question mark. Of course, I am still profound! As I started writing today I was headed towards the ” leave the world a better place, find your purpose” noble hypothesis for the meaning of life, but I am taking a big U turn. Life is lived hiking in the mountains, on dorm floors, in a hospital room and around the table playing a silly game. There’s laughter, tears, giggles, fears, rants and the triumphant fist in the air “Yes!”. So my new hypothesis is: the moments of life that we are present for and experience fully are the “meaning” of life. That’s it! So there we were, a bunch of college girls laughing and crying, smoking and drinking and thinking very hard about the meaning of life when all around us and within us life was shouting “Pay attention. This is the meaning of life. This moment is all there is!”

I have written about being with Roger as his dementia slowly claimed his mind and body. He was only in the moment, and when he invited me to share that moment with him I was honored to accept his invitation. Listening to the birds, feeling the sun on our faces, looking at books, playing games and going on walks were just a few of the life moments we shared. One of my fondest memories of healthy Roger was his singing the theme from “Rocky” as I finished an hour run and raised my fist and shouted “Yes!” It was a beautiful Sunday morning, warm, sunny and clear blue skies and I was alive and Roger was alive. We were the meaning of life in that moment.

In the movie “Shawshank Redemption”, Red (Morgan Freedman) says:

I guess it all comes down to a simple choice really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Last Saturday, my best bud Susan and I were driving to Estes Park to snowshoe. We drove past a sign that said “cemetery”. I started to giggle and pointed out those who ended up at this destination couldn’t read! Susan and I spontaneously and simultaneously began to sing “And the sign said long-haired freaky people need not apply, so I tucked my hair up under my hat and went in to ask him why. He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you’ll do. So I took off my hat and said “Imagine that , me working for you.” By Five Man Electrical Band   I am sure everyone in my generation remembers these lyrics! I am going to take a little liberty …. stay with me.

And the sign said nasty women need not apply. So I put on my nice and went in to ask him why. He said you look like a nice young woman, I think you’ll do. So I took off my nice and said imagine that, me working for a son of a bitch.
And the sign said “No homosexuals allowed” So I put on my straight and went in to ask why. He said you look straight, I’ll think you’ll do. I said imagine that! You are very cute, but so not my type. Look there’s my boyfriend!
And the sign said Muslims need not apply. So I took off my hijab and went in to ask why. And he said I can see you are not a Muslim, I think you’ll do. So I put on my hijab and said imagine that me working for a bigot.

Signs, signs, lots of signs! Keep out, Do not Enter, Yield, Road Closed, Stop. With all these signs to follow how can I determine what is me, what I want, and which direction to take? I know I need to stop at the red stop sign on the street, but do I need to let every fear stop me? Where were all the signs that said “Road closed” when I tried to find love from hearts that were closed? If signs at the Y in the road had said “Heartbreak This Way” or “Love This Way” I might have taken the road less travelled for me and chose love. Or maybe not.

As the years pass, I need fewer signs to direct me. I don’t ignore a road closed sign, instead I look for the detour. It’s not personal, the road is just closed. The sign says “Yield” and I do yield more often. Some things are just not that important so I go with the flow. When the sign says sharp curves ahead I don’t assume that I can ignore centrifugal force and go faster. Currently, there are lots of signs carried by protesters on both sides of the political divide, I pick up my sign and respectfully protest. Signs can be inclusive or exclusive, but either way those based on respect and tolerance are signs we need to see more of. From the moment we are born all signs point to our final destination, Death. We will all arrive at the end of the road, but life is all about which signs we choose to follow.

I’m laying here sick
and the damn birds
Are singing away.
No respect
For me and
My pain.
My doggies are
In their usual
Niche snoozing
In the curves
Of my body.
Not getting any
Sympathy from
Them.
This is not right!
Lying here I notice
One bird
Is singing
A song that
Is clear and strong
Like a solo
With a Chorus.
There is no director
But the breeze is waving
And pointing.
It’s easy to doze off
With the warmth
of my dogs’ bodies
And their quiet snoring.
2 Dog Night and day.
A song and warmth.

When I am young again, then I will…
When I get published, then I will
When I get thin, then I will
When I die, then I will…

Wait a minute! If I am dead then it is too late, way too late! Do I need to get permission, attain a certain goal, or prove I am worthy before I do whatever it is that I want to do? If I am seeking evidence to prove that finally I have suffered enough, then maybe I need a different equation. I have a deep-seated feeling and belief that I am undeserving . I do not deserve to be happy. I do not deserve to enjoy my life. Most certainly I do not deserve to spend money on something I can afford but do not need. I almost stutter when I say “I want”, its hard to speak when this voice in my head is shouting “selfish”!

Reviewing my first paragraph I notice how many sentences begin with “I” and I feel uncomfortable drawing attention to myself. Permission needs to come from someone else doesn’t it? Without validation from others, I question even my questions! The committee in my head is loud and disagreeing. My toxic companion, Depression, throws it weight around too. I get lost in this maze and soon I am paralyzed with fear and undeservingness.(not a word, but it works for me). I am waiting for a booming voice from above that tells me ” Go for it Danita, you deserve the best life has to offer.” Do you hear anything? Me neither.

Damn! It looks like I am responsible for changing my beliefs and practicing compassion for myself. So what I tell myself is the origin of my best or worst life. My beliefs are not facts or alternative facts, I can change them and allow the good into my life. So challenging my negative beliefs is a good place to start my abundant life. First I need to hear what my thoughts are saying, especially when they come so fast I can have a feeling without realizing that a negative thought preceded the feeling. If I become aware of my negative beliefs, I can then ask “Is this true?” or as my friend Susan says “Would it hold up in a court of law?” It would never go all the way to the Supreme Court, case dismissed! I can choose my beliefs about allowing abundance in my life and mute the naysayers in my head.

It is hard work challenging my negative beliefs because for many years they have been in charge of my life. They are part of my status quo and my brain has ruts where my thoughts have travelled so many times. Neural pathways of negativity. With practice I can create new thoughts, new neural pathways and new habits that support abundance. I can over-ride the undeserving thoughts and resolve that I will survive the backlash of guilt and shame which come up. I am very excited about a cruise I am taking in October and several shows on my calendar. Guilt and shame, I am warning you that I might just let you go!