Relapse

Before I get into it I want to put down here a comment I made on a Facebook friend's post about thinking young and keeping on dancing as we age:

While I still feel like I'm 12, I'm respectful of being 64.👵

In other words, just because I can doesn't mean I should. Take time. There will be even less of it if I trip on the way. Prioritize sleep. Stay hydrated. Eat when hungry. But keep up with the world and how younger people are faring with it. Look after myself so I can be here for others.😇

We oldsters need to reclaim the commons, stand up for the public good, so get your placards ready.😎

I enjoy reading all the lifestyle change stories of the over 60 crowd, too. My goal is to feel like I've had psychedelic therapy without actually taking psychedelics. Comments welcome.💁

So two weeks ago I was revisited by a panic attack, although I'm not sure panic attack is the right name for what I'm experiencing and have been for over a year now.😱

It's more like a reaction to a buildup of feelings, too many feels, some of them resurrected from  childhood. Gabor Maté would say it's trauma, both bit T and little t. He might also say it's a lack of boundaries.🙅

I over-identified with a little beastie and it tipped me over the edge.😿

TMI alert but putting it down in writing helps me connect dots, and I'm well past privacy after a couple of decades of online dot connecting. It's my public service, an indecency I can perform that decent people would rather not.😇

I said yes instead of the no! no! no! no! no! a thousand times no! I was screaming in my head and the result was having to purge from my stomach every bit of the dinner I enjoyed a few evenings into my people-pleasing yes instead of a people-disappointing no! no! no! no! no! a thousand times no!. On the upside, I didn't have to make myself sick, it came up naturally, and probably only lasted an hour or so, with a shorter lead in as well. I felt less alienated than previously and maintained the awareness throughout the unpleasantness that it would pass, and I would feel better soon. On the downside, I had to make quite the dash to the bathroom.😬

It's no one's fault, but it's my responsibility. So live and learn. "No" is a complete sentence.💪

Also, I am enough, I am enough, I am enough. You, on the other hand, might be too much.👸

It's tricky, feeling like I'm enough - as is - when I no longer work for money (or haven't in a while, anyway) don't drink, smoke pot, eat meat, fish, seafood, poultry - mushrooms. Suffice it to say that going out on the town isn't like it used to be, that's for sure. I'm a day person now, too, and unless it's lunch out, I'd rather be at home, winding it all down. I like going to bed. A lot. My dreams are very revealing, sleep as important to me as fibre.💃

Drinking, inclusion, adulthood are all very intertwined in our culture. It can be an effort to not feel left out the social scene when one doesn't drink (anymore). Seasoned teetotallers would advise finding a new social scene, which is maybe what the pond has become in spring, summer and fall, and something else could be in winter.😎

I'm not sad, or feeling deprived, I'm relieved. Happy, really. But the panic attacks (purging attacks, really) are upsetting my apple cart, an unwelcome, but I guess necessary, reminder all is not well within. Being a Sober Sally is a good re-start (I even enjoy it!) to a process of introspection, that's all.😷

I helped a friend at the pond recently. She's up at night worried about a proposed rent increase. She's been in her home for years, so the landlord is trying to bully her out. But she's feisty and an able researcher so I told her, "don't take it personally, take the personal right out of it, build your case as a civic duty".💁

It's advice I'd have to be a completely different person to follow myself, but she got back to me a few days later, delighted with her new perspective. I couldn't believe the headway she'd made, although I could because, like I said, she's feisty and an able researcher. Also, she doesn't have the internet to distract her from the work of life that needs doing, not opining on to other tweeters.👵

Having left Twitter (and now you have to log in to even read it) I've no longer got the distraction of it and am reading more - whole books! - but still having trouble keeping up with the day-to-day maintenance of life. Decision-making is less fraught but still fraught enough I have trouble sweating even the small stuff. I can decide to leave a marriage (well, after 20 years of having one foot out the door, my ex and I having about as much chemistry as any two people who don't like each other can - love/shmove) but deciding what to make for a non-meat dinner is a challenge every day.😖

Normally Anne Tyler errs on the side of staying married, so read "The Amateur Marriage" for a different take. I devoured it. One of the characters could have been an estranged sibling of mine, a friend's estranged child, maybe even one of my own. We'll see. Reading the book I was struck by how desperately we try to keep our families together, keep everybody in the fold, in spite of some members not wanting to be in it. I left a marriage for good reason but you'd think from the reaction of my family and his I'd run off and joined the circus. Growing up, my older sister and mother were at war with each other, the spoils my dead father, whose tragedy they each wore like a banner. Reading the book I remembered a time when my brother, younger sister and I were at home with Gram, my mother and older sister both away, and how nice it was. And yet later I would try to convince my sister not to cut us off, in spite of her behaviour, which was awful, my mother uncompromising. Why? Why do we want relationships with people who don't want relationships with us? Why does it feel like our failure when a family member chooses to drop us? Why does it feel so personal and yet like collective punishment? Is it ego? Why do we step in, some of us, to take responsibility for the choices of others, while others of us can let that relationship go, move on, oh well, onward and upward.💔

Years ago I decided to try a trick I'd read about and wish an enemy, who was preoccupying my life, well. Sincerely. Wish him success in his endeavours. And it worked. He no longer preoccupied my life. So why haven't I tried that trick with a loved one, never mind just a friend or family member, an actual loved one, wish him well, success in his endeavours?😘

Ah, and there it is, why I blog.😉

Thanks for reading.💗