Well, this afternoon I will drive into Boston and check into a hotel, where I will meet W. when he gets off work, and where we’ll walk to the Prudential Center for a “Casino Night” party on the 50th floor. And I don’t know what I’m going to wear. I had this idea for a LBD-with-black-booties outfit, but when I went to look for shoes yesterday, I found NOTHING. Admittedly, I could only bring myself to visit two stores, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of the rest of the Mall, Macy’s, and all the awful-all-the-same stores there. So I went home. Walked into town and met A. at a café, where I got a latte to go. Back home, laundry, then off for a longer walk in what was by then the dying light of 4-ish afternoon. When we got back around 5pm, it was dark and I felt exhausted, even though my only activity had been physical.
But I’ve been feeling mentally exhausted, too. This morning I felt acutely disappointed that my last few morning pages have been so harried and disjointed, and I know it’s because of my distraction. Exhaustion from other-orientation – and yet I “have it so good,” right? I’m not the one who has to race off to a job every weekday. I’m just the one who has taken on the task of supporting it, making sure it goes off without a hitch …after which I’m left to my own devices. And usually a lot of chores, tasks, etc. Then I blame myself for not being more organized, or I castigate myself for spending too much time on …whatever.
This morning I felt this antsyness, this distraction, and it somehow, ever so faintly, recalled a childhood feeling. Something akin to a child digging her heels in and refusing, absolutely refusing, to listen. Not knowing why she doesn’t / didn’t want to listen, but truly knowing – somehow, experientially, preverbally – that listening and being reasonable was wrong and that being unreasonable and slightly (or massively!) upset and even enraged was right. But not knowing why, because the action-reaction is happening at a preverbal level and has to do with “asks” she can’t evaluate, has no experience with. How to be compassionate with that child? That feeling? Cry together? “Reasoning” is utterly unreasonable – it erases the child, invalidates her. Not maliciously or anything. Just ineffectually. Does the “unreasonableness” come from a wounded sense of justice? Or from just not knowing what she wants? Or simply from being tired or hungry or overwrought? What is this emotion telling?
NPR reports on the private debt crisis, and we get Mnuchin who wants to cut regulations so consumers can be more indebted. The next disaster is coming?