Reminders to Myself

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I want to start a practice of writing something every day, but today, my mind is a blank canvas. I feel tired and foggy. The day was a confusion of hormones and anxiety.

My father called me today. He had some X-rays done. I am not certain why exactly. He is seeing a lung specialist later this week, and we still don’t know the date for his open heart surgery. Naturally, he is nervous about it and so am I. He told me he found blood in his urine. It’s very upsetting. He called his doctor.

I find myself filling with the same sense of helplessness and hopelessness that I had when my mother was ill. I feel a surge of anxiety when the phone rings. Of course, I always feel anxious when the phone rings, but it seems worse these days.

I wonder whether I should write about something else, something more useful or positive. Some days, I try to do that. However, on days like today, I can’t really muster the strength for another topic. To write about anything else would be ridiculous. It would be ignoring the elephant in the room.

Many times in my life, people have told me that I am “very real.” The first time someone told me that, I had no idea what the person meant. Of course I am real. Everyone is real. We are not imaginary, right? I asked the person to explain what they meant, and the answer made little sense to me.

Now, decades later, I understand what they mean better. However, I have come to understand that this “realness” is a double-edged sword. Some people like it and other people do not. It is not something I can turn on and off. Strangely, I have tried “faking” not being “real,” but it doesn’t work for me. That whole sentence sounds insane, I realize.

What I mean is that I try to engage in small talk. I try to appear appropriately positive and optimistic when I feel the opposite. It’s an uphill battle. It’s an act. I find it is difficult, goes against the grain, and the results either do not come off as genuine or they do come off as genuine and… wait for it… people end up telling me that I am “refreshingly honest” or “very real,” which is ironic when I am making such a concerted effort to put on an act of being a positive person who engages in small talk.

I think this is why I don’t generally enjoy being around people. I find it is a major energy drain. I end up feeling depleted.

Do you like small talk? Does anyone enjoy small talk? I think people must enjoy it or why is so much of it happening all the time? I sometimes want to pull my own eyebrow hairs out one by one when I listen to small talk.

Remember the Regis and Kathy Lee show? That was all small talk. I remember years ago it was on the television at my doctor’s office. It drove me so crazy that I told the receptionist I would wait outside. In the cold. It was winter. It is extremely cold here in winter (below freezing). As much as I hate the cold, I stand by this decision. Between small talk and freezing, there is no competition.

The problem with avoiding small talk is that there are only three ways that I know of to do it:

1. Completely avoid human contact. I am cool with this for the most part, but it does get weird after a while.
2. Talk about yourself in a non-small talk way. This can get very personal, and it might be more than the other person wants to know or deal with, so I generally avoid it unless I know the person really well.
3. Ask the person questions about themselves in a non-small talk way. Some people might find this invasive, but if they do, it is usually written all over their face, and it is easy to choose questions that the person will want to answer. The problem with this, and this happens to me all the time, is that people end up telling you their entire life story. I find it fascinating, but it can also be draining in a way.

However, all of the pitfalls are, in my opinion, a small price to pay for avoiding small talk, which I try to do at all costs. And yet, I still occasionally end up in the ubiquitous, but idiotic local conversation, “It sure is cold today.”

“Oh, my. It certainly is. Did you hear it will be even colder next week?”

“Don’t say that. Really? Wow. That is cold.”

“Yeah. It sure is cold.”

“It sure is.”

If you added up the total collective amount of time Canadians spend discussing how cold it is, and you somehow managed to harness that time and convert it into cryptocurrency, you would be rich beyond your wildest imaginings! However, it is true: it sure is cold. This week is particularly cold. Most of the week, it is negative 30 degrees Celsius, which is negative 22 degrees Fahrenheit. If you aren’t sure, that is very cold. It’s the kind of weather where you just stay home if you can.

Actually, in a way, telling you about the cold is not small talk because the weather makes it extremely difficult for me to go swimming, and going swimming cheers me like nothing else. It is difficult because I hate so much to go out in the cold. The car has to be warmed up. I have to be bundled up (and, even so, I am cold). The roads are icy and treacherous.

I didn’t mention it, but a week ago, my father got into a car accident because the roads are so icy. His car got totaled. The roads are ridiculous. I am pretty good at winter driving, but it adds stress. I was thankful that neither my father nor anyone else was hurt. It was a low speed accident, but the intersections are so icy that it is very difficult to maintain control sometimes.

Now, he needs to buy a new car, which is an additional stress. He is worried that his insurance carrier will refuse to insure him because they might perceive him as a risk since he is 84 and had this accident. I really hope that does not happen. It would be very upsetting to him to lose his ability to drive. It would be a devastating blow to his independence.

I worry about it. I think I worry about it more because, on my mother’s death bed, while she was dying and not conscious, one of her friends told me that her death was my fault. Why? The year before she died, she had multiple car accidents. Besides dementia, she had a Parkinson-like tremor, and I started to feel genuine terror about her driving, so I literally begged her to stop.

Her friend told me that it was the fact that she stopped driving that sucked out her will to live and killed her. Her friend explained that this was my fault. I have to say that I was at a really low point or I would have told her friend to fuck off. I cannot imagine a world in which I would ever go to someone’s death bed and tell their daughter that their death was the daughter’s fault unless that daughter literally put a gun to their head. It’s pure insanity. Yet it haunts me. I need to let it go.

However, I mention it because it explains why the idea of my father potentially losing his ability to drive is particularly upsetting. There is a quote by Henry David Thoreau from “Walden”: “… if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” That is how I feel about not telling my mother’s friend what I thought of her when she said what she said. It’s funny how often we get so shocked by someone’s stupidity or bad behaviour that we fail to inform them that they are behaving unacceptably.

I think the trick is to catch ourselves in those moments of shock – when our minds are reeling and to start narrating our thought processes. For example, I could have said, “Wait… what did you just say? Are you telling me that I am responsible for my mother’s death on her deathbed? Is that what you are doing? That is unacceptable. You must leave now.”

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but I think it sometimes helps to consider what we might have done differently because it’s funny how often similar scenarios occur.

I felt slightly better today than I have for most of the week. I don’t know exactly why. Yesterday, I mentioned that I want to start writing a novel, which I did not start today. I feel a lot of despair about my father’s situation, and I often wonder what the point of my life is. I think maybe everyone wonders that? I worry about my daughter also.

It is the new year, and I don’t believe in resolutions, but I do believe in renewal. I would like to renew my commitments to:

1. Writing as a practice.
2. Meditation.
3. Exercise for physical and emotional health.
4. Good nutrition (mainly for emotional health).
5. Regular self-hypnosis, which is similar, but different from meditation – in many ways, it is the opposite.
6. Gratitude as a practice.

I found out a few years ago that just the act of writing down three things you are grateful for at the end of each day has measurable emotional health benefits. For some people, it sounds like an obvious thing to do, and for others it sounds very out there. However, it is something extremely easy to do considering the rewards you receive for it, so it is worth the small effort it takes. It’s funny how often I forget to do things that would benefit me.

With that in mind, I consider this article to be a reminder to myself. I need to remember to do the practices that help me to stay sane, balanced, and physically healthy. I need to remember to appreciate my positive qualities rather than just being frustrated with the negative ones. I need to remember to breathe. Are there things you forget to remind yourself of when you are stressed? How can you remember them?