I hate to admit it, but yesterday, the panic won out for a while.
It started building about 1:30 that night. I couldn’t sleep, I tried reading, watching ASMR videos, even tried writing a country song (that’s a subject for another post). I saw 3:30, then 4, then 4:30. It was really only 4, my alarm clock is still set 30 minutes ahead to trick myself into believing that I didn’t actually have to get up at 5 a.m. for my last job. Last resort, i put the squishy pillow over my head, leaving just enough room for breathing. Sometimes this signals my brain to be quiet.
I woke up about 8 a.m. because the environmental crew was coming sometime during the day to pick up the fans and plastic in my basement. See, during a home inspection, they found some moisture and a bit of mold. (Did I mention I was selling my house?) Well, that bit o’ mold turned into a bit more than expected. Not the nasty slimy toxic black mold, but the “oh, you had water in your basement and didn’t call the professionals?” kind of black, green and white stuff.
It was successfully cleaned and detoxified… that sounds like the prep actresses go through before the Oscars, doesn’t it? But the nice mold scrubber guys were coming at some point during the day, so I needed to get up and at ‘em.
I got up, that’s about as far as it went. No “at ‘em” at all.
Most people will tell you that the last place you want to be when your basic Flight instinct kicks in is sitting in traffic on any road in metro Detroit after 3 p.m. on a summer Friday. You can’t go anywhere, let alone FLEE (with all caps). You are stuck stuck stuck. Unfortunately that is where I found myself when the panic washed over.
Looking back on it now, I know what the trigger was. I heard an ad for tickets to see Steve Martin and Martin Short appearing at Caesar’s in Windsor, Ontario. That would be a fun show to see. I realized that I couldn’t go. As in “not able,” even if I found someone to go with me. That started a bit of a spiral.
You see, right now, I have no disposable income, because I’m also looking for a job. I really thought someplace would want to hire me by now. But things are looking bleak, and there is no way I can buy groceries or gas or pay bills or even contemplate having a night out like that. Sorry Steve Martin, its not you… its me.
I have no options.
This week marked my 9th week of unemployment. Next week it will be 10… double digits. I know that doesn’t seem like a long time in the grand scheme…
I have worked pretty much continuously since my teens, and the only summer I didn’t have a job was the one after college. I did some temp work, but finally got hired that September.
However, with the lack of sleep, and the cocktail of stress chemicals running through me, 9 weeks seems like, well, forever. And when you are plagued with uncertain self-esteem and a job rejections numbering into the years, well, it all swirls together into something like an attack of panic.
And there I sat, in stalled traffic, with no disposable income, depleting cash reserves, feeling very very very alone, and what seems like (at times) a never-ending process of selling the house. All of this adds up to all but one of my typical coping mechanisms being off limits. Completely. No options.
Only one way to keep me seated in that car was to roll down the windows to get fresh, if not swampy, hot air into my lungs, and SING.
Singing (translation: hearing a live voice, any voice, out loud) helps me stay in control. If I have an audience, I can’t do something irrational like open the car door and run across the nearest field. And keep on going. Like Forrest Gump.
Unfortunately for those around me, and for the general Spanish-speaking population, the song on the radio at that moment was “Depacito.” I am heartily sorry for the demented sounds that came out of me in my attempts to sing along to the Spanish lyrics. Thankfully, the more freaked out I am, the softer I sing, so I wasn’t belting anything out like I was opening at the Ryman theater. I can say that I avoided shaming my ancestors by making other ears bleed.
More songs followed over the 1.5 hours it took me to get home. But the mantra in my head was “I can’t go see Steve Martin.” I’m not the biggest fan, so I know that these tickets were just a symbol of the lack of control I was feeling, am feeling. No options.
I hate this feeling. I hate being overwhelmed. I hate that I find myself in this spot again. In my 20s, I couldn’t afford chicken and could only buy two-packs of Larry’s Frozen Twice Baked Potatoes that were on sale two for $1 between paychecks. I couldn’t buy Christmas presents without putting them on credit cards. I could only window shop at the mall and had to conserve gas until pay day. Thankfully my commute at that time was only about 3.5 miles.
I’ve been in this position before — lack of funds, lack of control, lack of a way out. I did survive that time, even thrived for a while. But I have no answer to the question, “How did I get end up back here?”
What’s scarier is that yesterday, I really didn’t know if I could find my way back out again.
I admit it, I like control. It’s not because I crave power or that I’m driven by unquenchable ambition. It’s because I can see the how things on the path in front of me are interconnected. One false step, one bad surprise and WHAM-O — the ENTIRE chain come undone. Picture hitting a domino cascade in the middle and the pieces start falling in six different directions at once until they all collapse. There are no ways to stop all of those dominos in all of those directions. And some of those pieces are connected to people. So its not just me at risk. I try to insulate things as much as possible, but I’m not always successful. Others shouldn’t be hurt by my choices and my failures.
And so, stuck in traffic for 1.5 hours to go 15 miles, I kept singing and metaphorically tried to keep the dominos standing. Trying to focus on one at a time. Eventually, I rolled up the windows and cranked up the air conditioning again. It’s hard to feel calm when you are sweating.
I came home and the mold damage wasn’t as extensive as I thought. I got a note in the mail that signaled the house selling process is moving forward. I asked for help to talk through a smaller problem that could be solved, and read another chapter in a book that I am currently obsessed with. (Yes, I recognize that this obsession is another symptom of the current crazy.)
I’m not writing this down as a cry for sympathy or for help. I’m not really fragile most of the time. I have tough, if worn leather bindings… in book parlance. Be not afraid!
Sometimes writing it all out helps me put order to the chaos that is my mind. I have to turn the internal dialogue external to shut it down. I’m okay, you’re okay. I do believe most days that there is more good in the world than bad.
Late yesterday I came to have one of those moments when I could actually take comfort in the fact that tomorrow comes whether we want it to or not. (Because it’s always already tomorrow in Australia.)
It will all be okay. But really, house-selling, job hunting, financial troubles, mold, contract contingencies, lack of health care, the price of market fresh vegetables, rising gas prices, crazy politics, a new cold war on the horizon, and general uncertainties can really take a toll…. thankfully, I think the next song on my playlist in the car is “I Will Survive.”
Thanks for listening.
Christina's New Deal 