Such Is Life

Have you ever felt like your brain was too unoccupied? I do not mean that you are bored, or inert, or even too scattered to formulate a coherent thought. I mean that your brain clears itself, and then it suddently collects sediment and you mentally start trying to clear out what is settling. For me, it happens on long drives.

I am currently going on several long drives per week, which is why this is coming up now.

For some reason, no matter how awesome our lives are, it only takes a few of these periods of brain-clearing to get into a bad mental place. Perhaps it is an out-and-out depression, or something less severe, such as a darker version of pensive. Either way, it only takes a bit to get there. It is a sign that we are not settled, not relaxed. Something is keeping us off-center and we have a nagging fear we will not be able to right the ship, and we will always be pulling the mast with force to keep going both upright and forward.

I found myself reflecting over the past few years, and then the period of time increased to ten years, and then fifteen, and then all the way back to college, and finally, childhood. Something has changed in me over the most recent period of my life.

My brain started using every negative life event as a time marker in my head. Moving to my teeny condo, taking a $50,000 pay cut at Planet Walmart, selling my house, getting divorced, buying the Money Pit, losing the animals, enduring three years of misery and banging my head against the wall, moving to Texas, losing CJ, losing my dad, moving to Portland, moving to Phoenix, buying a car for the job at Kare, closing the coffee shop, leaving Nordstrom so abruptly, getting sick a second time, getting sick the first time...

Why in the world would I do that?

Perhaps the tragedies were more profound than the victories. Maybe there were just more of them. Maybe, just maybe, in some weird way this was my way of remembering all of the times where I learned something and came out of the other end of the tunnel stronger than when I had entered it. But I doubt it.

I was sitting on the front porch of the Money Pit yesterday, making my last sales calls of the day and waiting for a prospective tenant so I could tell them that, in fact, I was unable to show them the unit. I have a tenant who is leaving because she thinks I do not do enough to keep her safe. Here is what I know for sure:  if you (as a building) do not keep the bolts locked on the door, and then your husband thinks someone is breaking in, and he calls you at work, and then you call me at work, I simply cannot help you. Twenty minutes have gone by, nobody has called the police, and I am thirty miles away and unwilling to stick my body in front of a bad guy like Captain America's shield.

She is currently not speaking to me, not taking my calls, and not allowing me access to my own unit to show it to prospective tenants. I filed and injunction and emergency motion to get access, and then I asked the judge to deny it. If I have gotten to the point where I am using this period of my life as a time marker, "the time where I could not show my unit because I was getting played by my tenant," then I have hit the bottom. I refuse to call this The Bottom. It's not cancer, it's not cancer a second time, it's not losing a parent, it's not losing a fiance, it's not losing your identity in a miserable marriage. It is my brain and big heart against somebody else's anger. Neither of us wins.

I was approached by a photojournalist, who wanted to talk city diversity. She saw a bunch of neighborhood kids, plus the tenant's three children, on the porch with me. I must have looked like the best foster mom in the history of the world. She asked me what drew me to Chicago, and I thought about it for a few seconds before answering. "Community," I said. "People who welcome with open arms, people who come from different places."

When I spoke to her off the record, I told her about the tenant. My demeanor, and therefore my outlook, changed in a moment. "I feel bad for her," I said. "Here she is, obese, a smoker, and incredibly angry. She is going to die before she turns fifty and those three kids will be orphans." I do not want this woman to die. I do not want anyone to die, really...I do not have that streak in me at all.

I want her to realize that this petty crap is not worth it. Dwelling on the negative, conscious or unconscious, is not worth it. Look around you:  there is so much taken-for-granted good that all you can see in the forest is the couple of dead trees that stick out and cloud the view.

Ironically, the last time I saw this tenant, she was cheery and bubbly, friendly, and interested in my knitting. "I could never do that," she told me. I offered to teach her, and told her it was a great way to quit smoking.

I guess I do not ultimately care if she knits or not. But I know one thing is certain:  whatever vessel has brought her to this insanely angry place - even if the catalyst was me - that vessel can be broken down just as it was built. It was yet another moment when I realized that anger is just not worth it, and that seeking out the positive if you cannot readily see it will trump swimming in the negative any day of the week.

Maybe after she moves, she will have a similar moment of clarity. I will provide the worsted-weight yarn, a pair of US8 (5.0mm) needles, and the patience of a saint if it would help her get out of the mindset that will ultimately kill her. Because then I can look back and say, "Remember that time I mentally helped someone off the ledge and saved her life by teaching them a way to relax and help let the bad crap go?"

All markers of time should look more like that.

That Stress Scale Again

If I go back the past...let's say...six years, since my dad died, I bet I have lived an entire lifetime of just events in that time frame. But to be fair, let's use the Holmes Rahe Stress Inventory. I'll go back only two years.

I dare you...score yourself and compare.

http://www.stress.org/holmes-rahe-stress-inventory/

My score was 545, and that was with me trying to eliminate as many duplicates as made sense.

That said, I have been grieving, changing, and finding myself as much as I humanly can. My two-year plan has been quite successful; I just was not expecting all of the shedding of baggage, tears, and crap that was going to come with it. I have a self-sustaining real-estate investment company, new home paid for in cash, new gig blogging for loveknitting.com, and VERY new gig selling yarn to yarn shops for one of my favorite companies. 

Win, win, win, win, and win!

However, I realized that I was not finished...or in some cases, had not started...grieving some events in my recent past. There was CJ, of course...it is difficult to grieve a lost spouse when you marry his best friend, and the two of you have incompatible grieving processes.

Then...and this one took me by surprise. It was a year ago this past weekend that triggered the worst period of depression in my memory. I had to remind myself to get out of bed...it was that awful. So, as I was walking to Starbucks, I started to cry. You know those big, cleansing tears where there is no accompanying weep? Yeah...those.

So I stopped at the church across the street from the starbucks, and they have a good-deed box. I wrote the following note, as close as verbatim from memory (except with some parts deleted, due to a ridiculous confidentiality clause I signed):

One year ago this weekend, one of my dogs attacked the dog of my dog-sitter and dear friend, Renee. The dog had been socialized with both children and other dogs, but she was in an unfamiliar environment, and neither of us saw a problem initially since I had never seen her aggressive like that, and Renee had obviously cared for many animals. When she took her dog to the emergency vet, she left my dogs in her yard, accidentally leaving the gate open. By the time I arrived, I found out from Animal Control that Penny (my one dog) had attacked and killed a second dog. Lily, Renee's dog, died that night as well. The other person involved was so angry that first he blamed Renee, then me, then he did not know who to blame beyond that. Renee forgave me instantly; in fact, she did not see anything to forgive since it was just a horrible accident. I was going through a nasty time, and my remaining two animals ended up moving to Texas because of questions regarding my fitness as a pet owner and me just finally being too tired to argue. I know as well that it was a horrible accident, but I still had to put Penny down; it was the only right decision, and it was absolutely horrible. I hope you can please pray for the following:
Pray for Renee and her family, who continue to be models of His grace and of forgiveness, despite suffering their loss.
Pray for the family of the other dog, who just wanted money from me in their anger, and for hoping they get past it and are able to move forward.
Pray for Penny, Lily, and the third dog who are hopefully running together in Heaven and all is forgiven.
Pray for the other person involved, who will hopefully see one day that blame and anger is just preventing him from loving himself and others.
Pray for Bluto and Axl, who I hope are as loved in Texas as they were loved by me.
Pray for me, who knows it was nobody's fault but who still hurts from it, and wishes the best possible for everyone involved.

Writing this down in the back pew of the Baptist church at Irving and Kostner with tears constantly streaming down my face made me feel like Penny finally had a voice. Completely stupid, I know. But I firmly believe that sweet dog had no idea she did anything wrong, and the guilt I carried was certainly enough for both of us.

So in related news, sometimes, I am asked why I knit so much. My silly answer is "So I don't smoke." I have no desire to smoke; I'm a singer. Doing both is not a possibility, and I will always choose health over death, and singing over silence.

So I knit. Knitting prevents me from engaging in destructive habits like smoking, overeating (although sometimes I think the entire chocolate cake is a serving size...sue me), doing hard drugs, biting my nails, or even mindlessly scratching some benign thing, like a kitchen table.

I do not just love to knit. I need to knit. Reviewing yarns for LoveKnitting.com means I get to knit a simple, one-ball piece every singe week of my life. I will always have something to break away from my stress level. And now I get to sell Cascade Yarns to yarn shops, which is an excellent choice for every yarn shop in America (as far as I'm concerned, anyway), so my creative juices are flowing nonstop. If the creative juices flow, then the pipe does not have much room for holding onto guilt and shame and despair and disappointment and...

My goal for the next two years, however, is to get that stress score down just a bit.