The Balm of Friendship

Usually I have the title of a post before I start. It comes to me and takes me into the writing. Once in awhile an image stirs me so much I put it here and just sit with it. So it is today.

I am imagining myself in that little boat in a small, quiet area of the pond. I am trying to find that place and just rest there. Pushing myself too hard these last weeks has taken a toll.

No, it is actually not a lovely picture of solitude for me today, it is a picture of being cut off, and a biting loneliness. I once wrote, “Loneliness has eaten so many holes in me I feel like a piece of swiss cheese.” My lovely solitude of a few nights ago has turned into a bitter, biting loneliness today, the kind of existential loneliness that we almost can’t understand and that little can touch.

I was writing the above and then just positively broke down sobbing. I was crying for so many reasons. Crying because I am past the point in my life where being able to realize my dream of a community for women, something I once did with ease, was too much. And crying because I become very afraid about being able to do good work in the world, at nearly 64, that will create income that can sustain me without trying to do something that pushes me so hard I almost push myself over the edge from trying. Crying because of crying itself and what it implies. I have been doing so well off medication I don’t want to go back on it. I have been off medication for almost 2 months. Going back on medication would be a kind of death, death to the senses, to all of the areas of my life that have awakened after a long sleep. I have been like Rip Van Winkle waking up after 100 years. Life without medication is life. Having to be dulled by medication just to cope would be a kind of death to me. I do not want to ever have to go there again.

In the last two sessions with my therapist Helene — and I see her again tomorrow thank God — she has tried to explain to me that this is a period of readjustment, of learning how to live in the world in a whole new way, without the buffer of medication. I was on so much medication for so long that even when I thought “the medication wasn’t working” because I was suffering through terrible anxiety and depression it was still doing far more than I realized. It was creating a low level numbness that kept me from feeling a lot of what most people feel. Off of medication I am feeling those things again, the daily ups and downs. I haven’t felt the downs until I started pushing myself so hard to try to create the community, dealing with the technology that was over my head but which I pushed on with, hour after hour, day after day, until something in me just broke, not badly, perhaps it might better be put as having a crack in the edifice, that which has felt sure and strong for some time now. I pushed too hard and something cracked. Not enough to break clean through, but I did damage. I have to repeat what I’ve said a few times lately, I am off medication, I may be able, I hope I will, to continue to be off medication, but I have to be vigilant about self care. I cannot push so hard.

I was holding all these things and it all became too much.

Earlier I had a wonderful talk with my dear friend Claudine in Belgium. We have been communicating for some time daily through Facebook Messenger, and she has written me wonderful letters and sent me lovely gifts and handmade journals that she created, and lately we have begun, a few times, to talk live through Messenger. Oh it’s so lovely to talk face to face. This is something I would not do easily or often with people, I don’t even like to talk to people through Messenger except a rare few who are really close to me, but this was so perfect. She had written me a long note saying that she had become so worried about me watching me pushing so hard to try to create this community that she was ready to get on a plane to North Carolina! She, too, has struggled with many of the things that I have for a very long time. We talked a lot about this.

It is so good to have friends my age or older who are also trying to navigate these years, find their way in the world at a stage of life when time is more limited, and you don’t have the ability to do things you once did, but you still have a lot to give. To find a way to use your gifts and talents in your 60’s can be daunting especially when you deal with other challenges that can make life difficult day to day. There is no springing up out of bed and facing the day without thought. For me everything, though it may be very wonderful and much appreciated, must be measured, and handled gently and with care. There are no days of thoughtless abandon as there are for those who are much younger. Every moment counts and must be counted. I am having to learn to balance it all in a new way.

So I sat down to write this post, and it was so hard. I was crying uncontrollably and not sure how I could make it through. But just as I was feeling most hopeless my phone dinged. There was a text from my dear friend Noni. She said that she had left something on my front porch last evening and forgot to tell me. I went to the front porch and there was a big bag. Purple tulips just coloring up, not yet in bloom, a precious stuffed animal (when you pull on her tail she makes music!), and a lovely card and note. I texted back to thank her and told her I could not stop crying, and I appreciated these lovely things so much. She said she would stop by for a short visit and she did. She hugged me while I cried. We talked and it made me feel better. I felt, as I am, so blessed.

When Noni left I took the pugs outside. I blew the deck off with the leaf blower and put fresh seed out for the squirrels for the morning. I fed the pugs their dinner and walked out and got the mail. I sat back down here to write and the tears flowed again. I can’t seem to stop. My sweet daughter Rachel texted me to see if I was okay. She said she was there for me. She said she could call but I told her I had to get this blog post finished and up. I sobbed while I texted her. I told her that I had tried hard to do something that I wasn’t able to do and I felt like a failure and like I would never amount to anything. She was so sweet and supportive. It has all come crashing down today and I don’t know how to make it stop.

But I got this blog post written. For today this is enough. And Claudine, and Noni, and Rachel have been here with me and let me know that I was not alone. And I am deeply grateful. I have done this. Tomorrow is another day.