The End
(This is a long story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
I live next to a stream, the bank of which has eroded a bit, making all my neighbor’s trees very vulnerable in a storm. Many have fallen across the stream, destroying parts of our fence and, once, a section of our roof. After a few of these tree-falling fiascos, my insurance company said they would drop us unless my neighbor took down all the worrisome trees. So they did.
The change was really jarring at first. If you were approaching my house from the south, suddenly you could see the whole side of my house – most of which used to be obscured by those many trees. I didn’t like it. I felt really exposed. And sad, too, because I figured it would take 20 years for new trees to grow tall enough to give us back our privacy.
But today, as I was walking toward my house, I noticed for the first time that it was again cloaked in a leafy screen. It’s only been a few years since those trees came down, but the healthy ones grew bigger and fuller in the light – they filled in the open spaces.
Things change in their time. And sometimes so slowly you don’t even notice it’s happening.
***
I have to say, this is not how I thought this story would end. I thought one day I would wake up and just be “healed,” like a miracle. (I really did.) But the actual experience has been more like the trees on the side of my house.
A few weeks ago I put on a pair of sneakers – footwear that had been making my feet feel the worst – and suddenly they made my feet feel the best. I took three long walks this week!
But still there are other shoes I can barely even stand in.
I was looking in my notebook today – the one I started when I began this story – to make sure I’d gotten all the little errant pieces of information in, the things I didn’t want to forget. Like the time AE and I were talking about how we make our favorite smoothies and, after she gave me a sip of hers, told me it was made with raw egg and raw milk. I went to sleep that night afraid I was going to die of botulism.
Or how, at the end of our sessions, before I get off the table, she slides one hand under my tailbone and cups the back of my head with the other, cradling me like a baby, and how it’s one of the most amazing sensations I’ve ever had.
I wanted to remember my husband’s analogy, early on, that seeing AE was a little like calling a handyman because you have a leaky faucet and him telling you he’s going to build you a whole new house. Even though to the uninitiated that analogy makes it sound like seeing AE is a bad thing.
There’s still so much to say about perception. How some days I come to my session in glass-is-half-full mode and other days I show up negative and cynical, and how my attitude on the table really contributes to what the session is like. A friend recently said to me, “I work really hard every single day to be positive and I need to protect myself from people who bring me down.” I feel the same way, but often the main person I need protection from is me.
And there’s plenty more to say about body image. How we romanticize the body we had 20 years ago. And 20 years from now, I’ll romanticize this body. The one I just complained about for 33 blog posts. I’ll pine for this body – if I’m even around to pine at all.
If nothing else, this process has taught me to try and shift how I see things. That just because something feels unfamiliar doesn’t mean it’s bad.
I remember walking in the park with my friend Susanne early in this AE process and, after about 45 minutes, I started to complain about my foot hurting. “Do you want to stop?” Susanne asked.
“No, if I just slow down for a while it will start to feel better,” I said.
“Well, let’s just walk slow from now on,” she said.
“I hate walking slow,” I said. “It actually makes me agitated and unhappy.”
“Hmm,” she said. “That’s something to look at.”
Or another time when I was complaining to AE about my weight gain, but explaining how I needed chocolate after our sessions, and a lot of it.
“The chocolate soothes me,” I said.
“What about being held?” she suggested.
“I don't want to be held. I want cookies,” I said.
“What about placing a cookie on your heart and seeing whether just having it there is soothing enough?” she said.
That still seems like the most ludicrous idea in the world. But now, I’d probably try it. Just to see.
There was a point, recently, where I realized that nothing is quite as painful as that first step out of bed in the morning. It only gets better after that. Which is a really great lesson, both about my foot and as an instruction for life.
This has been an incredible and scary experience writing this way as well. Putting up pieces of a story whose ending I was never sure of. Usually when I write, the real meaning of a piece reveals itself after a revision or two and I can shape the narrative to support some bigger idea. But that work is typically done in private – not in front of an audience.
Here I am at the end, and I have no idea yet what this story is really about.
If you’ve stuck with me through this – thank you. I can’t say why, but I now know that my foot is just going to get better and better. I think I’ve said all I need to about this journey, and, although I’m calling this The End, for the first time in a long time, it feels like it’s the exact opposite.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Change: 33
The Penultimate Post?
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
Years ago, I was sent to a therapist (I’ll call him “Dr. Bob”) by Dr. John Sarno (the back pain guy) to help me deal with repressed emotions that were presumably causing my recurrent back pain. (This idea still sometimes amuses me, as I don’t think I could repress an emotion if I tried.)
Dr. Bob’s area of expertise was somatization, which is when all your psychological doo-doo manifests as physical symptoms. I’m not pooh-poohing this phenomenon – far from it. I have witnessed tennis elbow, back pain, even hemorrhoids “dissolve away” after a good therapy session.
Bob had a book he would often pull off the shelf called You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, an author of many books about loving the broken parts of ourselves and healing ourselves by changing the way we talk to ourselves (a concept that seems to work wonders for many people but has never done anything for me).
I would be sitting cross-legged in the oversized leather chair and Bob would sit across from me on his swivel chair, his tired feet crossed at the ankle, clad in the type of super-cushy shoes that you’d think wouldn’t be needed by someone who just sits and listens to people kvetching all day. At some point during our session, he would ask me if I’d ever seen the Louise Hay book, a question that would infuriate me, because he asked it practically every session. Seriously: every two weeks he would hand me this book he’d shown me countless times and ask if I’d ever seen it before.
If I were a stronger, more confident person, I would have said, “Of course I’ve seen this book. You give it to me every fucking time I’m sitting across the room from you.” But I never did say that. Instead, I'd smile, take the book, and look up what might be wrong with my body, all the time wondering what was so unremarkable about me that my $200-an-hour psychotherapist couldn’t remember from one session to the next that he’d handed me the same stupid book at least a dozen times.
That said, the Louise Hay book usually had some interesting insights.
I stopped seeing Dr. Bob, but I did buy myself my own copy of the book. When I look up “Foot Problems,” it says, “Our feet have to do with our understanding of ourselves and of life – past, present and future.” And, “Foot problems often signify fear of the future and not stepping forward in life.”
A skeptic might say that all of Louise Hay’s body part assessments are relatable to everyone. But when I look up something like “Bulimia” and read, “Hopeless terror. A frantic stuffing and purging of self-hatred,” I can say with confidence, “Nope. Not me.”
This week, my son and I went dorm shopping for the first time. I suspected, years ago that, given my physical history, I would have some severe malady overtake me as I prepared to let go of my oldest child. That like my mother, who was incapacitated by back pain for the months leading up to her retirement, my physical pain would disappear as soon as the feared emotional event occurred and there was no longer a need for a distraction.
I’ve wondered throughout this year whether these foot problems were that distraction. Whether AE was just an accidental catalyst for some monumental physical malady that could have been anything, but ended up being my foot, and if it weren’t my foot, would have been something other all-consuming thing.
I wonder still whether my foot will be back to normal come September once my “real” trauma has passed. Whether “fear of the future” and “not stepping forward” have everything to do with trying to hold on to my boy just a little bit longer. And whether the fact that my foot is feeling better lately, in small but regular increments, is actually a harbinger of that back-to-normalcy.
It’s hard to know. I’m sure AE wouldn’t rule it out. And Dr. Bob, after having me read the foot passage aloud, perhaps for the 800th time, would most certainly say, “What do you think?”
NEXT
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
Years ago, I was sent to a therapist (I’ll call him “Dr. Bob”) by Dr. John Sarno (the back pain guy) to help me deal with repressed emotions that were presumably causing my recurrent back pain. (This idea still sometimes amuses me, as I don’t think I could repress an emotion if I tried.)
Dr. Bob’s area of expertise was somatization, which is when all your psychological doo-doo manifests as physical symptoms. I’m not pooh-poohing this phenomenon – far from it. I have witnessed tennis elbow, back pain, even hemorrhoids “dissolve away” after a good therapy session.
Bob had a book he would often pull off the shelf called You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, an author of many books about loving the broken parts of ourselves and healing ourselves by changing the way we talk to ourselves (a concept that seems to work wonders for many people but has never done anything for me).
I would be sitting cross-legged in the oversized leather chair and Bob would sit across from me on his swivel chair, his tired feet crossed at the ankle, clad in the type of super-cushy shoes that you’d think wouldn’t be needed by someone who just sits and listens to people kvetching all day. At some point during our session, he would ask me if I’d ever seen the Louise Hay book, a question that would infuriate me, because he asked it practically every session. Seriously: every two weeks he would hand me this book he’d shown me countless times and ask if I’d ever seen it before.
If I were a stronger, more confident person, I would have said, “Of course I’ve seen this book. You give it to me every fucking time I’m sitting across the room from you.” But I never did say that. Instead, I'd smile, take the book, and look up what might be wrong with my body, all the time wondering what was so unremarkable about me that my $200-an-hour psychotherapist couldn’t remember from one session to the next that he’d handed me the same stupid book at least a dozen times.
That said, the Louise Hay book usually had some interesting insights.
I stopped seeing Dr. Bob, but I did buy myself my own copy of the book. When I look up “Foot Problems,” it says, “Our feet have to do with our understanding of ourselves and of life – past, present and future.” And, “Foot problems often signify fear of the future and not stepping forward in life.”
A skeptic might say that all of Louise Hay’s body part assessments are relatable to everyone. But when I look up something like “Bulimia” and read, “Hopeless terror. A frantic stuffing and purging of self-hatred,” I can say with confidence, “Nope. Not me.”
This week, my son and I went dorm shopping for the first time. I suspected, years ago that, given my physical history, I would have some severe malady overtake me as I prepared to let go of my oldest child. That like my mother, who was incapacitated by back pain for the months leading up to her retirement, my physical pain would disappear as soon as the feared emotional event occurred and there was no longer a need for a distraction.
I’ve wondered throughout this year whether these foot problems were that distraction. Whether AE was just an accidental catalyst for some monumental physical malady that could have been anything, but ended up being my foot, and if it weren’t my foot, would have been something other all-consuming thing.
I wonder still whether my foot will be back to normal come September once my “real” trauma has passed. Whether “fear of the future” and “not stepping forward” have everything to do with trying to hold on to my boy just a little bit longer. And whether the fact that my foot is feeling better lately, in small but regular increments, is actually a harbinger of that back-to-normalcy.
It’s hard to know. I’m sure AE wouldn’t rule it out. And Dr. Bob, after having me read the foot passage aloud, perhaps for the 800th time, would most certainly say, “What do you think?”
NEXT
Sunday, July 14, 2013
The Change: 32
MOO!
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
AE and I talk about a lot of things over and over, but the thing that seems to come up most often is my weight.
I’ve gained weight since I started seeing her and it’s no surprise. I used to walk all the time and now I never do. I spent a few ugly months feeling sorry for myself and mollifying that self-pity with nachos and chocolate chip cookies. I don’t play tennis. I sit at a desk working more. No wonder my ass is fat.
But here’s the thing: in the beginning of my treatment, AE hooked me up with several clients so I could get real life testimonials. Women who called me on a Sunday afternoon and whom I spoke to from the wicker chair on my front porch. Women named Mary and Amy and Kathleen, who all told me that they had gotten THINNER during these treatments. Lost pants sizes. Were in the best shape they’d been in for years.
So, you know, I thought that might happen for moi.
And these last few months, when I stand in front of the mirror in AE’s treatment room, she kvells about how my body has changed. How I’m so much longer and leaner and how my legs have become so slim. She’s very convincing, because I think she probably believes it’s true.
But it’s not.
I just took out a stack of shorts from last year and many can’t even be buttoned. Others, shorts that used to hang loose on me, now fit me like sausage casings. It’s been many weeks since I’ve gotten a handle on my eating and found an exercise regimen to take the place of walking, but I still feel like a cow.
The hardest part of it all is to feel at odds with AE. To explain to her that every indicator – scale, perception, tautness of pants, reflection – demonstrates that I’ve become bigger, and for her to say that, in her eyes I look smaller.
I’m not smaller. And I’m not even the same. I’m bigger, and in all the worst places.
Nearly every chronic pain that I’ve suffered from over the past 15 years is completely gone, and a huge amount of my daily anxiety has disappeared. But I’m heavy. And it’s depressing.
Utterly.
NEXT
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
AE and I talk about a lot of things over and over, but the thing that seems to come up most often is my weight.
I’ve gained weight since I started seeing her and it’s no surprise. I used to walk all the time and now I never do. I spent a few ugly months feeling sorry for myself and mollifying that self-pity with nachos and chocolate chip cookies. I don’t play tennis. I sit at a desk working more. No wonder my ass is fat.
But here’s the thing: in the beginning of my treatment, AE hooked me up with several clients so I could get real life testimonials. Women who called me on a Sunday afternoon and whom I spoke to from the wicker chair on my front porch. Women named Mary and Amy and Kathleen, who all told me that they had gotten THINNER during these treatments. Lost pants sizes. Were in the best shape they’d been in for years.
So, you know, I thought that might happen for moi.
And these last few months, when I stand in front of the mirror in AE’s treatment room, she kvells about how my body has changed. How I’m so much longer and leaner and how my legs have become so slim. She’s very convincing, because I think she probably believes it’s true.
But it’s not.
I just took out a stack of shorts from last year and many can’t even be buttoned. Others, shorts that used to hang loose on me, now fit me like sausage casings. It’s been many weeks since I’ve gotten a handle on my eating and found an exercise regimen to take the place of walking, but I still feel like a cow.
The hardest part of it all is to feel at odds with AE. To explain to her that every indicator – scale, perception, tautness of pants, reflection – demonstrates that I’ve become bigger, and for her to say that, in her eyes I look smaller.
I’m not smaller. And I’m not even the same. I’m bigger, and in all the worst places.
Nearly every chronic pain that I’ve suffered from over the past 15 years is completely gone, and a huge amount of my daily anxiety has disappeared. But I’m heavy. And it’s depressing.
Utterly.
NEXT
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Change: 31
Fuck Growth
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
Here’s how I feel about my body: I hate my legs and my arms and I have for as long as I can remember.
I hate them because they’re fleshy and thick, and no matter what I do – no matter what I’ve done – they don’t change. I’ve tried to run (which gives me shin splints) and have embarked on every imaginable weight-training regimen. Parts of my body respond, but not my thick extremities.
When I was in my early 20s, I remember sitting on the living room floor in my mother’s condo and pulling at the skin on my inner thigh, explaining to her that if only there were a way to cleave this fat and stitch my leg back together, I might finally have a shot at true happiness.
I don’t think liposuction had been invented by then, so my mother, who has always had slim, feminine legs, simply said, “I wish there was something I could do for you.” That may have been the most understanding thing she’d ever said to me.
The young woman sitting on that floor pulling at her thigh was 5’6” and 135 lbs, (perhaps the slimmest I’ve ever been in my life). Still, she hated her legs.
I didn’t start hating my arms until later, in my 30s, when I was pregnant and the whole rest of me was so misshapen and rotund that only a pair of sleek, muscled arms would signal me as expecting, rather than obese. But I didn’t have those arms. Mine were soft and flabby, making the whole of me look all the more dumpy. I interviewed birthing doulas and rejected a woman simply on the basis of her musculature, afraid that I might resent her arms and end up hating her.
Even now, with at least half my life behind me, somewhere in my heart I still believe that if my arms were toned and cut, my life would have turned out better.
My feet, on the other hand, have never failed me.
I don’t want to sound conceited, but I have good feet. Aside from a lack of obvious deformities – no bunions or hammertoes – they’re a pleasing shape and texture. My feet are not drop dead gorgeous, but there’s not a thing wrong with them and, with a little polish, they’re really very pretty.
Aside from their physical prowess, my feet are an abiding source of pleasure. I don’t like getting a massage, but I love having my feet rubbed. It’s like a Xanax for me – all my troubles melt away.
Given this ardor and appreciation, I feel like what’s happened with my foot over the past six months is more than just a physical setback. I feel betrayed.
“I love you so much, how could you do this to me?” I haven’t said those words out loud to my foot, but I’ve certainly thought them. After all we’ve been through, I feel like my foot has turned on me. And I’m not just angry – I’m hurt.
The betrayal feels very specific. My foot does not feel like a spouse who’s taken another lover. It feels like a teenager who has decided to challenge the status quo. To go off and pursue some dream that doesn’t seem prudent or well thought out, a dream that may or may not be attainable, a dream that leaves a mother worried for his future and exasperated by his caprice. It’s a betrayal that goes with the words, after all I’ve done for you. Even though what you’ve done for him most is just enjoy what he’d been.
I want to sit my foot down and say, “What’s happened to you? Why are you treating me this way? You’ve turned out to be no better than my arms and legs.”
And I imagine it saying, “This isn’t about you.” And maybe some nonsense about having to change in order to grow.
At which point, stung and confused, I will resist the urge to shout, “Fuck growth” and try to figure out how to love it anyway.
NEXT
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
Here’s how I feel about my body: I hate my legs and my arms and I have for as long as I can remember.
I hate them because they’re fleshy and thick, and no matter what I do – no matter what I’ve done – they don’t change. I’ve tried to run (which gives me shin splints) and have embarked on every imaginable weight-training regimen. Parts of my body respond, but not my thick extremities.
When I was in my early 20s, I remember sitting on the living room floor in my mother’s condo and pulling at the skin on my inner thigh, explaining to her that if only there were a way to cleave this fat and stitch my leg back together, I might finally have a shot at true happiness.
I don’t think liposuction had been invented by then, so my mother, who has always had slim, feminine legs, simply said, “I wish there was something I could do for you.” That may have been the most understanding thing she’d ever said to me.
The young woman sitting on that floor pulling at her thigh was 5’6” and 135 lbs, (perhaps the slimmest I’ve ever been in my life). Still, she hated her legs.
I didn’t start hating my arms until later, in my 30s, when I was pregnant and the whole rest of me was so misshapen and rotund that only a pair of sleek, muscled arms would signal me as expecting, rather than obese. But I didn’t have those arms. Mine were soft and flabby, making the whole of me look all the more dumpy. I interviewed birthing doulas and rejected a woman simply on the basis of her musculature, afraid that I might resent her arms and end up hating her.
Even now, with at least half my life behind me, somewhere in my heart I still believe that if my arms were toned and cut, my life would have turned out better.
My feet, on the other hand, have never failed me.
I don’t want to sound conceited, but I have good feet. Aside from a lack of obvious deformities – no bunions or hammertoes – they’re a pleasing shape and texture. My feet are not drop dead gorgeous, but there’s not a thing wrong with them and, with a little polish, they’re really very pretty.
Aside from their physical prowess, my feet are an abiding source of pleasure. I don’t like getting a massage, but I love having my feet rubbed. It’s like a Xanax for me – all my troubles melt away.
Given this ardor and appreciation, I feel like what’s happened with my foot over the past six months is more than just a physical setback. I feel betrayed.
“I love you so much, how could you do this to me?” I haven’t said those words out loud to my foot, but I’ve certainly thought them. After all we’ve been through, I feel like my foot has turned on me. And I’m not just angry – I’m hurt.
The betrayal feels very specific. My foot does not feel like a spouse who’s taken another lover. It feels like a teenager who has decided to challenge the status quo. To go off and pursue some dream that doesn’t seem prudent or well thought out, a dream that may or may not be attainable, a dream that leaves a mother worried for his future and exasperated by his caprice. It’s a betrayal that goes with the words, after all I’ve done for you. Even though what you’ve done for him most is just enjoy what he’d been.
I want to sit my foot down and say, “What’s happened to you? Why are you treating me this way? You’ve turned out to be no better than my arms and legs.”
And I imagine it saying, “This isn’t about you.” And maybe some nonsense about having to change in order to grow.
At which point, stung and confused, I will resist the urge to shout, “Fuck growth” and try to figure out how to love it anyway.
NEXT
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The Change: 30
Pollyanna, But True
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
I try not to think about how much time and money I’ve spent on seeing AE, but sometimes I can’t help it. I’m a bean counter that way –– time and money must be spent productively.
I know it must seem like I have an endless supply of both, but, sadly, I don’t.
I justify both the time and money by keeping an inventory of all the things I’ve been doing without. I barely play tennis anymore, and indoor tennis is a fortune. I don’t see my chiropractor or physical therapist anymore, neither of whom took my insurance. I don’t see a shrink anymore (money that, years ago, I decided was better spent on tennis).
I know all those things sound like big, bourgeois extravagances anyway, and to some people they might be. But for me, those were the things that kept me stable. And even though that sounds like a really self-involved, privileged point of view, it’s also a generous one.
We’re all suffering in some way or another. We lose people we love. We have friends or family who are ill or dying. We’re scared or lonely or feel unworthy. And we spend a lot of our lives making ourselves feel better – with cookies, or martinis, or Birkin bags. (Birkin bags are $15,000 purses, in case, like me, you were unfamiliar with such things.)
Sometimes we’re suffering because someone is acting like a dick. Maybe it’s our kid. Or the guy who owes us money. Or the woman behind us driving the black BMW SUV.
If someone is acting like a dick, chances are it’s because they’re suffering, too. Maybe not today, while they’re reaching deep into their Birkin bag to find the special cell phone they use to call their illicit lover. But, you know, a long time ago – when it really counted.
I remember a particular day, at just this time of year. I was in my twenties and was in the throes of some post-adolescent funk. Maybe it was because of a boyfriend or maybe there was just some disharmony with life events. I was in Morristown, NJ, walking down the sidewalk, and I came upon this little theatre that showed art films. The sun was out and there were flowers in a big cement planter out front. The owner came out of the theater, picked a few flowers and handed them to me.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“You look like you needed them,” he said.
We talked for a minute and he asked me if I would do him a favor. I followed him into the theatre and he gave me a piece of paper with a list of movie titles and times. “Can you read this onto our answering machine?”
I sat on a red leather stool and, in my very best diction, recorded the movie times for that week’s showings. How ridiculous is it that his small gestures completely turned my day around? I went home positively giddy.
Now, decades later, I don’t even remember the events that were causing me such suffering that day. Only the remedy.
My friends tease me because I need so many handlers. I just want to live in a world where we can all go out and be like that theater owner. Where we can be each other’s remedies. And I guess I believe that whatever time and money I spend on AE is going to ultimately help me do that.
NEXT
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
I try not to think about how much time and money I’ve spent on seeing AE, but sometimes I can’t help it. I’m a bean counter that way –– time and money must be spent productively.
I know it must seem like I have an endless supply of both, but, sadly, I don’t.
I justify both the time and money by keeping an inventory of all the things I’ve been doing without. I barely play tennis anymore, and indoor tennis is a fortune. I don’t see my chiropractor or physical therapist anymore, neither of whom took my insurance. I don’t see a shrink anymore (money that, years ago, I decided was better spent on tennis).
I know all those things sound like big, bourgeois extravagances anyway, and to some people they might be. But for me, those were the things that kept me stable. And even though that sounds like a really self-involved, privileged point of view, it’s also a generous one.
We’re all suffering in some way or another. We lose people we love. We have friends or family who are ill or dying. We’re scared or lonely or feel unworthy. And we spend a lot of our lives making ourselves feel better – with cookies, or martinis, or Birkin bags. (Birkin bags are $15,000 purses, in case, like me, you were unfamiliar with such things.)
Sometimes we’re suffering because someone is acting like a dick. Maybe it’s our kid. Or the guy who owes us money. Or the woman behind us driving the black BMW SUV.
If someone is acting like a dick, chances are it’s because they’re suffering, too. Maybe not today, while they’re reaching deep into their Birkin bag to find the special cell phone they use to call their illicit lover. But, you know, a long time ago – when it really counted.
I remember a particular day, at just this time of year. I was in my twenties and was in the throes of some post-adolescent funk. Maybe it was because of a boyfriend or maybe there was just some disharmony with life events. I was in Morristown, NJ, walking down the sidewalk, and I came upon this little theatre that showed art films. The sun was out and there were flowers in a big cement planter out front. The owner came out of the theater, picked a few flowers and handed them to me.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“You look like you needed them,” he said.
We talked for a minute and he asked me if I would do him a favor. I followed him into the theatre and he gave me a piece of paper with a list of movie titles and times. “Can you read this onto our answering machine?”
I sat on a red leather stool and, in my very best diction, recorded the movie times for that week’s showings. How ridiculous is it that his small gestures completely turned my day around? I went home positively giddy.
Now, decades later, I don’t even remember the events that were causing me such suffering that day. Only the remedy.
My friends tease me because I need so many handlers. I just want to live in a world where we can all go out and be like that theater owner. Where we can be each other’s remedies. And I guess I believe that whatever time and money I spend on AE is going to ultimately help me do that.
NEXT
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The Change: 29
Arrows. Orangutan. Patience.
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
Yesterday morning, when I stood in front of AE for my assessment, she grabbed a red marker off her shelf and started drawing arrows on my right foot and leg. The arrow tails curved around my extremities; it looked like the work of a weatherman indicating wind patterns.
“Why are you drawing on me?”
She explained that there are things she can understand about my foot patterns when I’m standing up that aren’t as evident when I’m lying on the table. “They're going to remind me what to do,” she said.
She worked slowly and methodically on my foot and I watched her expression as she did. Sometimes she closes her eyes and looks like she's a musician playing a long, slow ballad. Other times she looks like a hunting dog, sniffing around for just the right spot.
There are many sessions where she doesn’t even touch my foot, but yesterday, she had her way with it and for a while it was pretty awful.
Sometimes AE tells me stories to take my mind off of what she’s doing to my body.
Yesterday, she told me a story about a woman who came to see her that looked like an orangutan. “Her arms hung down to here,” said AE, “and she had virtually no waist.”
Then she went on to tell me that in three sessions – THREE – the woman’s arms fell to a regular place above her knees and she had a normal-looking torso.
I know she chooses stories that she believes will give me hope, but often they just depress me. Why, why, why, why, why? Why is there an orangutan who got better in three sessions and it’s taking me forever?
On the way home, I listened to an audio book from my favorite Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, and guess what she was talking about?
Patience.
If this experience is nothing else, it is an instruction in patience. Which is probably the part of me that needs the biggest fix of all.
NEXT
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
Yesterday morning, when I stood in front of AE for my assessment, she grabbed a red marker off her shelf and started drawing arrows on my right foot and leg. The arrow tails curved around my extremities; it looked like the work of a weatherman indicating wind patterns.
“Why are you drawing on me?”
She explained that there are things she can understand about my foot patterns when I’m standing up that aren’t as evident when I’m lying on the table. “They're going to remind me what to do,” she said.
She worked slowly and methodically on my foot and I watched her expression as she did. Sometimes she closes her eyes and looks like she's a musician playing a long, slow ballad. Other times she looks like a hunting dog, sniffing around for just the right spot.
There are many sessions where she doesn’t even touch my foot, but yesterday, she had her way with it and for a while it was pretty awful.
Sometimes AE tells me stories to take my mind off of what she’s doing to my body.
Yesterday, she told me a story about a woman who came to see her that looked like an orangutan. “Her arms hung down to here,” said AE, “and she had virtually no waist.”
Then she went on to tell me that in three sessions – THREE – the woman’s arms fell to a regular place above her knees and she had a normal-looking torso.
I know she chooses stories that she believes will give me hope, but often they just depress me. Why, why, why, why, why? Why is there an orangutan who got better in three sessions and it’s taking me forever?
On the way home, I listened to an audio book from my favorite Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, and guess what she was talking about?
Patience.
If this experience is nothing else, it is an instruction in patience. Which is probably the part of me that needs the biggest fix of all.
NEXT
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Flashmobbery
(This is part of an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
The weeks leading up to the flash mob could have been filled with anticipation – a constant wonder whether my foot would be all better by then, which was the plan (at least in my mind). But instead, it was filled with rehearsals.
I thought we would have a total of two rehearsals and then the event. That’s what the original announcement said. But it obviously didn’t take into account that most of the flash mobbers were women of a certain age – that is to say, women with only an infinitesimal capacity to learn four minutes of choreography by heart.
My house became the ad hoc rehearsal space, usually out in my garage and on the driveway, though sometimes, in bad weather, we would dance in my crowded basement. We practiced two or three times a week for five weeks and at the end of it all, we were as ready as we'd ever be.
My foot hurt during most of the practices, and if it didn’t hurt while I was dancing, it hurt for the rest of the night. I didn’t care. Once I started dancing, I didn’t give a second thought to the fact that I would be limping into the next day.
On Flash Mob Day, many things conspired against me. I’d had a bad cold all week and that day was the worst of it. We rehearsed in a windowless, airless gym at the high school a few hours before the event and it was so hot in there we were all dripping after a single run-through. (We called it our Hot Flash Mob.)
Then the rain started, and soon after that, the thunder. Then more rain – rain so heavy I couldn’t see the house across the street. I sat on my living room sofa, sneezing, head pounding, watching the torrents of rain outside and finally texted one of the organizers: “I think I need an understudy.”
Then, an hour before we were set to perform, the sun came out. My head cleared up. I put on my sneakers and made my way to our meeting place.
It wasn’t a true flash mob in the sense that it had ceased being a surprise at least a week earlier. Someone accidentally divulged the location and the day before the event it was leaked in the local press. This was troubling to me (I had already been in one lame flash mob) but the truth is, our dance followed such a big storm, if it hadn’t been publicized, there may have been no one there to see us.
No one to see our four minutes of glory. Which is here:
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
NEXT
The weeks leading up to the flash mob could have been filled with anticipation – a constant wonder whether my foot would be all better by then, which was the plan (at least in my mind). But instead, it was filled with rehearsals.
I thought we would have a total of two rehearsals and then the event. That’s what the original announcement said. But it obviously didn’t take into account that most of the flash mobbers were women of a certain age – that is to say, women with only an infinitesimal capacity to learn four minutes of choreography by heart.
My house became the ad hoc rehearsal space, usually out in my garage and on the driveway, though sometimes, in bad weather, we would dance in my crowded basement. We practiced two or three times a week for five weeks and at the end of it all, we were as ready as we'd ever be.
My foot hurt during most of the practices, and if it didn’t hurt while I was dancing, it hurt for the rest of the night. I didn’t care. Once I started dancing, I didn’t give a second thought to the fact that I would be limping into the next day.
On Flash Mob Day, many things conspired against me. I’d had a bad cold all week and that day was the worst of it. We rehearsed in a windowless, airless gym at the high school a few hours before the event and it was so hot in there we were all dripping after a single run-through. (We called it our Hot Flash Mob.)
Then the rain started, and soon after that, the thunder. Then more rain – rain so heavy I couldn’t see the house across the street. I sat on my living room sofa, sneezing, head pounding, watching the torrents of rain outside and finally texted one of the organizers: “I think I need an understudy.”
Then, an hour before we were set to perform, the sun came out. My head cleared up. I put on my sneakers and made my way to our meeting place.
It wasn’t a true flash mob in the sense that it had ceased being a surprise at least a week earlier. Someone accidentally divulged the location and the day before the event it was leaked in the local press. This was troubling to me (I had already been in one lame flash mob) but the truth is, our dance followed such a big storm, if it hadn’t been publicized, there may have been no one there to see us.
No one to see our four minutes of glory. Which is here:
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)
NEXT
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