HUNGRY FOR WHAT

I opened up the editor side of this website and looked around like it was brand new territory. This was not unlike the feelings I had when I walked into the microscopy room at work Tuesday morning. In fact, after taking all of the objective lenses off of one system and cleaning each one, I set them next to the microscope and walked away to do something else. It was about twenty minutes later when I remembered that I never actually put those lenses back on the microscope. I have been away from work (and here) for a week and two days. I let my emails fester in my inbox for nine days before finally giving in and clearing things out. I barely took or posted any photos. After returning home from Oklahoma and furiously cleaning my house, I was down right lazy, not leaving the couch unless it was absolutely necessary. Do I have regrets?

Just one. I don’t feel as though I ate as much cheese as I could have eaten in the last eleven days.

Well before the holidays, I was feeling a constant gnawing hunger twinge in my guts. I wanted to eat all of the things and none of the things. I wanted to fill my body up with something, a lot of different things and not necessarily food. I was hungry for changes. My social media ads went into overdrive, filling up my feed with food prep services, fancy ramen noodles, weight loss programs, face yoga and shape wear. For the most part, I ignored those ads, but every once in a while one would sneak its way into my brain. I’d click on the link and search for price tags. Then I’d come to my senses, shake my head and turn it off. Being so well organized for Christmas allowed for some reflection time and I sat down and wrote out a detailed list/flow chart for what I want in 2024. There is nothing unreasonable on that list, except maybe the part about seeing a moose, but I woke up on January first feeling a little bit guilty for not getting right to work. Instead of getting up and getting on my mat or playing my seven minute exercise app, I snuggled back under the covers and watched three episodes of The Diplomat.

When I finally did that seven minute workout on Tuesday morning, I thought “Damn, why is this so hard?!?” while I coughed between squats and mountain climbers. That head cold I had the week before Christmas turned into a cough that still hasn’t gone away. It has at least changed from sounding like masses amounts of wet cotton is about to explode from my body. The cough has been reduced to an irritant and a wish for a zero gag reflex (yes, place all of your dirty thoughts here) so that I can scrub my esophagus with a bottle brush. Half of the people I follow on Instagram posted pictures of New Year’s Eve plans that included cold medicines and tissues. I don’t feel alone in thinking that a mere seven minutes of exercise right now feels like two hours of torture exercise.

On Christmas Day, Michael and I went over to our Jenn and Wade’s house to have Christmas dinner with them and their family. Upon walking into their home, every visitor was handed a card that contained some kind of conversation starter and then everyone in the room would take a turn at answering what ever question was on the card. One of the questions that came up was “What’s a lie you tell yourself?” Look, there’s a number of lies I tell myself on a daily basis, but the one I was willing to speak out loud to the group was this. I tell myself that I am not a healthy person, that I do not take care of myself. Some of that stems from a month of sporadic yoga practices and a pause in dog walks because of the weather. Some that stems from allowing someone in my life to speak to me on a daily basis in a way that is not healthy and letting it go on because I just didn’t care enough to stand up for myself. But also, if I don’t speak kindly to myself, how can I expect others to speak to me in a positive way?

This is something I’ve been working on before the new year, not just being kinder to myself but demanding kinder and more thoughtful speech from others. So by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I wasn’t as hungry for change as I was in late November. Just the act of writing down the things I want for this year, filled up some of that empty gut feeling. So many things on my list are not resolutions of self improvement, maybe only two or three items. Everything else is all true wants: camping, joyful movement like roller skating, bike rides. I treated my resolutions like they would be part of my Life List, filling the year up with activities of joy and spacing those activities throughout the year like tapas plates of snacks. I’m walking into this year with a little trepidation (the world is very much a dumpster fire and it’s an election year), but mostly I’m walking into this year feeling peckish and excited about snacks.

I’m going to treat this year like Rick Steve spends an evening tapas bar hopping in Madrid.

FAULT LINES

I went to bed at 9:00 pm, but woke from a dream where I had a Christmas wreath stuck on my head and raccoons where trying to get into the house. That was at 10:30. I fell back to sleep and into a strange world where I was captured by evil aliens who tossed me into a mud pit. I emerged from the pit transformed into a small pig like animal and I woke to the sound of my own voice saying “This is all my fault.” You know how people tend to put the blame on anything but themselves? I am the opposite.

Climate change.

Cancer

Wars

Brain diseases

I don’t recycle enough or well. I don’t take enough action or push for hard discussions that might really need to happen. I haven’t cured cancer or even how to see it in the one I love. I haven’t stopped any bombs or put up much of a fight. I am supposed to be able to hold it all together. I should be able to hold it all together. Wonder Woman is on my wall. Not just because Jen painted it. Not just because it is an amazing piece of art. No; its because she’s fierce and strong and when I look at this painting, it becomes my mirror. As if I have the power to stop, change or fix any of the above. Yes, I know this is unrealistic. I know that I am not the reason for all the suffering of and on this planet.

Yet, there’s always that nagging little voice saying “you could have done more.”

After making sure I had all of the things done that I usually do on Sundays, I drove to my local CVS and got my COVID booster. I purposefully scheduled it for Saturday afternoon because that would leave me with Sunday and Monday to deal with the side effects. I spent Sunday mostly not moving from my bed. Monday was better. At least I showered, but the day was spent mostly not moving from the couch. Even as I sat there soaking in all of season one of The Empress, I shook my head at myself for being so dang lazy. Surely there was a closet to be cleaned out or something to be organized. I mean, I had the house all to myself. It was a holiday that felt like a sick day because Michael did not have the day off. I had ample opportunities and still I did nothing. I didn’t even walk the dog or get on my yoga mat.

Now I’m spending my week soaking in a tub of guilt.

Someday I will write about why am this way. I will place blame on something for the blame I place on myself. You probably won’t be surprise where I point my finger. I’ll point and then add in that I could have chosen to ignore the conditioning, thus turning it back around to it all being my own fault. The nun I was in a past life was pious and devout. Her scars were deep from self flagellation, so deep they transcended lives. I can feel them back there, tight itchy ropes of flesh. I can trace the ones on my shoulder blades. I slather the scars I can reach with coco butter and Arnica gel until I forget or fall out of habit of caring for myself, like forgetting to clip my toenails until I rip holes in my socks.

Someday I won’t need to write about why am this way.

MONGERING

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * Aug 25, 2018 at 11:00pm UTC

5 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram

Recently I noticed this thing going around Facebook about a man raping a four year old girl and how the hospital where the little girl is getting treatment will get a $1 for every time you share the meme. At the bottom of the meme is a picture of the so-called rapist who just happens to be a young black man. When I first noticed the thing I just ignored it, but the more I thought about the more I could not ignore this. First of all, for any of you who are uncertain about this, NO ONE gets any money every time you share their meme. Bill Gates does not donate $50,000 every time you share something. Bill Gates just donates millions of dollars. Period. 

This is not the part of the meme that bothers me. It just makes me roll my eyes a whole lot. 

Wait. How do I know the meme is a lie besides the obvious "if it looks like a lie, it's probably a lie" reason? I looked it up. The hospital name they use in the meme issued a press statement on their website denouncing the whole thing. It took me less than two minutes to find out this information. I barely had to type my question because Google already knew what I was about to ask. It wasn't difficult. The thing that bothers me the most is how this meme links a horrific act of violence against a child with a man of color, thus perpetuating fear, anger and hatred towards a specific race of humans. The meme is dangerous.

Racist propaganda has been a tool since the invention of print. During World War II, the Nazi's distributed propaganda that depicted Jews as monsters. American cartoonists depicted African American men 'stealing' jobs that should be given to white men who were at war. In fact most cartoons tend to depict non-white characters as dumb, lazy, evil and dangerous. The intent is simple. It is to make you fear and distrust and to see the color white as 'superior' even though we know there is no such thing as a 'superior' race. The problem is that those earlier forms of racist propaganda were so blatantly obvious in their racism with their over drawn features and cliched dialects. The racist propaganda of today is bit more subtle. Tell a horrific story and attach a random picture of any person of color, claiming this person to be the perpetrator. It has become the most hateful and dangerous kind of gossip.  

You know what's more simple than making a racist propaganda meme? Not sharing it.

THE LIES I TELL MYSELF

Rainy days and Mondays

4 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Rainy days and Mondays"

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about that last year with Chris. At times the memories of it comes to me in a rush, a big swirl of moving stress and clap happy happiness. There were times I was so happy it physically hurt. We were so happy. This is what I tell myself. I say that we were stupid happy, the happiest we'd been in ages. And for a while now, I believed this. I believed that Chris was just as happy as I was. I believed we were happy. Lately though, as I look back on fading memories, I think that maybe that wasn't true. I don't think Chris was stupid happy with that last year. 

How awful and hard typing that sentence is, but there you have it. Oh, I'm sure he was happy enough, at least up until maybe October. He was happy that I was happy. He was the type of person that received more joy from participating in acts that provided happiness and joy and seeing the resulting smiles than the other way around. Making Chris laugh, really really laugh more than a chuckle, was not easy but when you did, it was the best magic. Chris felt joy in seeing my elation with the new changes in our life, but mostly I feel like he was just humoring me. He was just going along with my choices. We stayed in Oklahoma as long as we did because of my job. We left Oklahoma because of my job. Our decisions seem more like my decisions. I see it more clearly now.

I can imagine his days here beginning to wear on him, the loneliness in his days at home with out a job while I left the house every day to go to a job I enjoyed. It was probably worse late at night when he'd normally be meeting Tracy for coffee and now was left with his own devices. I took him away from his framily. For a while, I was enough but I could see as the year progressed that he needed more. That on top of the beginning of the symptoms that would kill him was a sadness of isolation. If I think really hard about that time, I see it. I see the consequences of my selfishness or my self centeredness and I hate myself for it. I used to be all "no regrets!" but now I see I have one really big regret and it is way too late to say "I'm sorry. No excuses. I am sorry." 

I so desperately wanted to ignore the small details. Except now, I have had enough time to dwell on the big things that all that is left are the small details. It is like I've spent the last five years taking a shirt apart seam by seam. I've made it to the pockets, buttons and cuffs. At some point I am either going to have to send the pieces of this shirt to recycling or put it back together. I am bound to put it back together with crooked seams and with the right sleeve on the left. When I am done getting it all back together, I'll look at it, with crooked seams and all, and declare it to be beautiful. 

Even if it is a lie.