Insomniac babies, Bob Marley, shiny buckets, Halloween
I am an insomniac. I have had this problem my whole entire life. Maybe not when I was a baby, but I’ve never asked my mom if I was an insomniac baby, and I probably should.
Anyway, I’m an insomniac. I have an almost childlike, kicky-screamy, aversion to “bedtime.” Seriously. I hate sleeping. The whole idea of it creeps me the fuck out. I also used to be a fall-down-pass-out-drunk, but life is full of complexities and nuances like that. Deal.
One way I treat my insomnia is with documentaries. I try to find films that won’t stimulate the mind too much, but are also not depressingly surface and meaningless. (You know what I — cough *Tiger King* cough — mean. )
One night my insomnia viewing was this documentary about Bob Marley (it was either Marley or Who Shot the Sheriff) — I stayed up late to finish it because I couldn’t bring myself to hit pause. And in the documentary, one of Marley’s friends told a story about his struggle with cancer. According to the story, one morning, Marley was out jogging with a group of friends when he collapsed and had a seizure. The friend said when Marley came through, he sprang up to his feet, a big smile on his face, joyfully shouting, “Rastafari!” I loved this story because, for me, it captures everything that was intriguing, beautiful, God-like about that capital-A-Artist.
I was down at the start of this week, reader. Ibrance + the nature of my work + my fears + my insecurities + my abundant, known, clinical physiological issues = An Occasional Sense of General Malaise. In my twenties, I’d get suicidal and anxious and drink. In my thirties, I’d get anxious and sad and drink. In my forties, I’d get anxious and sad and drink; until I stopped. There’s a lot between that “drink” and that “until,” but I’m not writing that kind of a post today.
This is a Bob-Marley-springing-up-from-pavement- after-a-seizure-caused-by-cancer-calling-out-”Rastafari!”
post. Not a “how-I-went-from-basket-case-to-more-of-a-shiny-bucket-case”
post. And I do not derive inspiration from that Marley anecdote because it centers Rastafarianism. On the matter of Rastafarianism I am mostly indifferent, in the same way I am “mostly indifferent” about all organized religions that do not seek to exploit and capitalize upon the suffering of other human beings.
(You know which ones I’m talking about, reader. You know.)
Wednesday, I decided to spring up from the proverbial pavement the best I could.
This.
The-bullshit-mother-fucking-cancer, the needlessly complex health insurance and healthcare mazes, and the many extreme, and extremely endemic stressors of life in America — particularly, unrelentingly, for those of us who have remained in k-12 public education — all of these challenges are part of my life, your life, everyone’s life. It doesn’t matter if we invited the challenge in or if the challenge busted, a la the Kool-Aid-Man, through the fucking wall. Here it is. Here is the proverbial Kool-Aid-Man, and now that he’s made his grand fucking entrance — whether by invitation or needlessly jarring imposition — he’s just standing here and it’s so unbearably, existentially . . . awkward.
There are multiple metaphorical Kool-Aid-Men in my life, reader.
Likely there are multiple metaphorical Kool-Aid-Men in yours.
I’m not talking about gender.
I’m talking about the Kool-Aid-Man who is just known as “The Kool-Aid-Man.”
Like that’s its Christian name.
You can’t say Kool-Aid-Person or Kool-Aid-Woman — or rather, you can say that because I am not-the-boss-of-you. Say it. Say Kool-Aid-Person or Kool-Aid-Grrl for all I care. What I’m talking about is that the figurative Kool-Aid-Men are here, cluttering up my life, and it’s kind of horrible sometimes.
(My sanity is fully in-tact, thanks for your concern.)
Last week was Halloween at school. Today is Halloween itself.
I’m pleased to report that despite how much has changed, kids are still stoked about Halloween.
I haven’t been stoked about Halloween since I was a kid. Once my trick-or-treating days were over, Halloween was just an excuse to get drunk while in costume. And I don’t like costumes (for myself). And I don’t get drunk anymore (for myself). So here I am, Halloween morn, thinking about how I will finish a whole-school lesson I’m cooking up on “The Day Lady Died” (we’re doing an extended whole-school unit on Jazz), and trying to decide where I can work outdoors. Tucson is glorious, weather-wise, right now. As I told my students, during a morning walk, “It’s an absence of weather. This is no-weather. And I love it.” Neither hot nor cold. Blue skies. Sunshine. The weather is none whatsoever.
Tomorrow is Monday. I’m not exactly “looking forward to” the week. I have medical shit to cram in alongside school work and somehow, during that time, I have to find ways to eat, sleep, and if I’m really lucky, do some of my own writing. What I mean is this: everything will be okay, and I am going to be exhausted by the end of it.
Wednesday, I sprung back up and decided to stop fighting my life so much.
This is my life. Even if the current iteration may well be hastening my death (some days, exhausted as I feel, I wonder about this), even if the current iteration is far more jam-packed with scary and tedious to-dos, this is my life. The only one I get.
I don’t want to feed my sadness, my angst, my rage anymore. Wednesday, I put most of the sadness, angst, and rage food away where it can’t be so easily reached. And the feelings of anxiety I have going into my week (they are there) are just feelings.
Of course I’m anxious — I teach middle school in a pandemic. I have cancer. I have a lot of doctor appointments, bills, and medications to swallow. Of course I’m anxious. My life is not without tremendous, anxiety-inducing complications. More than I would have ever requested for myself.
And on the days where I literally have to force myself out of bed, through the Ibrance fatigue, through the mental fog of living under chronic stress (say nothing of my chronic cancer), I don’t feel like Marley leaping up from the pavement, shouting, “Rastafari” — I feel more like that opening scene in the movie Flight where Denzel Washington wakes up super hungover and has to snort a line of coke to pilot his plane. Only in my movie, it’s coffee and I’m strung out on Ibrance not booze, and though I do not pilot a plane I am piloting roughly one-hundred children through their early life and education in America.
Funny story: on a couple of occasions, since I quite drinking, I have woken up a bit frantic thinking I was hungover and had drank, but no! It was just Ibrance! Maybe that could be in their ads: some poor disheveled woman waking for work, “Did I party last night? Am I hungover?”
“Nope! Just Ibrance!” Says a guy dressed like a large, oval, pale blue pill.
I mean, having cancer in America is a surreal fucking nightmare, so why aren’t our cancer drug ads?
As I work on getting well — in body, mind, and spirit — the hardest part of the work is loving myself through it. We are so often our own worst critics — and I know for a fact, I am (far, far and away) my own worst critic. I mean, I can be ruthless with myself. Straight up cruel. Just last week, I was getting ready to leave work, and absentmindedly pressed “home” on my iPhone maps like I needed direction back, and I said — out loud, mind you — to myself, “Bitch, you know how to get home!” Like this is the way I talk to myself when I’m not paying attention. It’s a little funny, until it’s not for me. Over time the “Bitch-you-know-how-to-get-home” inner voice builds to depression and paralyzing anxiety. And these are two mental formulations — depression, anxiety — that always led me to alcohol and what I have come to know as “alcoholic thinking.”
I don’t want to drink alcohol and I don’t want to engage in “alcoholic thinking.” For me, alcoholic thinking involved “going small” when I felt overwhelmed, pulling away, neglecting my own best interests and trying to disappear. For me, alcoholic thinking involved a ridiculous tolerance for the corrosive thinking of others around me because that’s what my drinking was: corrosive behavior beget of corrosive thought.
I don’t want to engage in corrosive behavior or engage corrosive thought. To quote Bob Marley, “My riches is life forever.” And for me, life is Light (capital “L”), the kind of Light that feeds the plants and the animals and us, the kind of Light that encourages things that are peaceful, beautiful, and true.
I want to live in light, as much as I possibly can. (I didn’t capitalize “light” there because I feared this post was beginning to sound/look like a Jehovah’s Witness tract. I am not a Jehovah’s Witness. I’m not even a Christian, really, if we’re going to be fussy about the matter . . . )
Problems? Still here.
Fatigue? Same.
Kool-Aid-Men? Everywhere.
Still? Yeah. Still.
My capital-fucking-P-Problems ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, and I’m pretty damn sure my angst, anxiety, and resistance-to-reality-as-it-is will not help me resolves a damn one of them. In fact, I’ve been told by medical professionals that chronic stress and anxiety actually makes health conditions worse. I quit drinking and started working on my soul to, in large part, get square in my body so I could be well enough to collect a few more years in this life. Why would I exacerbate the stress, the anxiety by “muddin’” in other people’s angst? My tendency to slop around in other people’s angst is a tendency that, also, in the past led me to drinking.
And this makes life tricky. Compassion, empathy — these are things I value. Perhaps above all else: compassion, empathy. These are traits I continuously am working on in myself, and traits I carry that make me good at certain activities involving other human beings. And the line between “compassion” and “codependence” (or something more sinister) is often very blurry to me. Perhaps my mind’s eye is as tragically blind as my body’s eyes.
This week, I recognized a few places where I was confusing Compassion for Something Else, and I put an end to that way of thinking about several situations in my life.
And you know what, reader? After Wednesday, after I resigned myself to put-on-my-big-girl-pants and cope, I had a better week. Not an easier week. Not an uninterruptedly blissful/delightful/joyous week. A better week. In the most Truly Difficult (caps intended, like always) moments of my week, I was aware that I was in a Truly Difficult moment and applied, to it, the same reassuring logic I use when I’m getting a dreaded PET scan: “Okay. I’m in this fucking machine. I don’t know what it’s seeing. I DO know this will be over, and in some not-so-distant-future I will be eating a cheeseburger instead of trying to talk this kid down from a meltdown.”
Funny how PET scan reassurances work on non-PET scan life experiences. Also, I’d take an upset adolescent over a PET scan any day of the week up-to-and-including Sundays and all Religious and Federal Holidays.
Happy Halloween, if it means something to you.
I can’t wait to say the same around the holidays:
“Merry Christmas, if it means something to you.”
“Happy Hanukkah, if it means something to you.”
Etc.
Nothing makes an acknowledgement seem more sincere than the addition of an “if it means something to you” clause.
I really am the worst.
And in summation: I am okay. I am tired. I am the best. I am okay. I am the worst. I am figuring out the most difficult stretch in my life (so far) without losing myself to the bottle, to other adults, or worse, losing myself to myself. I am great. I am stress eating too much Halloween candy lately. I am exhausted. I am full of energy. I am beat. I am running late right now for a gathering of friends so I have to go, and, mostly, I am okay. Kool-Aid-Men and all.
