Whenever there is a miscommunications like the one that swirled around the arrival of the dumpster last week, I pause. Communicating is important to a writer and where there is a misunderstanding as large as that one – it was substantial and surprising, if not that significant – I like to go back and wonder what happened. My business is to communicate clearly and well and I take that seriously.
I suspect the dumpster affair was in part about anger, mine. I carry a lot of anger in me, and most of the time it bubbles along out of sight, slumbering, waiting for something to come alone and wake it up. I am learning – slowly and the hard way – that when there is unacknowledged anger in me, anger from the outside world will find me. It was finding me. Last week I got a letter from my health insurance company promising to cancel my insurance if I didn’t submit a form in several days. As no one had ever requested the form, I was upset at the kind of violation that sometimes occurs when dealing with remote corporations. Then an accountant at a publishing house seemed to renege on an understanding about a travel plan, and I was further irritated. Finally a group asking me to speak demanded that I appear in a suit and tie, as they were worried somebody living on a farm might show up in dirty or smelly clothes. I was not comfortable with that (years ago I gave away my suits and burned my ties in my backyard, swearing never to wear one again.) request, to say the least. I took offense.
The next day I wrote that I was getting a dumpster and I was suddenly flooded with messages urging me to recycle, lecturing me on the existence of poor people, and advising me that charities like libraries and the Salvation Army could use my stuff. Took some more offense. After a bit, it occurred to me that something was off, something was wrong. Was I off kilter, angry? Yes. As the presidential candidates demonstrate almost daily, anger breeds anger, not understanding. I did the work I am learning to do, moved along and got to a better place. I saw what was happening, and the only part I could really deal with was my own.
Today, a few days later, I see things in a different way. I need to own up to the anger and deal with it privately. I am not seeking sainthood or political office. It is sometimes healthy – even necessary – to be angry and express anger. To speak up for yourself. To set boundaries. I do not know of a healthy relationship in which some anger does not exist. It can be cleansing, and protective.
By week’s end, the forms were on the way to the insurance company. The account apologized for the misunderstanding. The group said they would not mention my dress again. The dumpster was filling up with junk, and the readers of my blog seemed to understand that Maria and I could handle our own garbage in a responsible way, perhaps because I chose to communicate more clearly about it.
Garbage is different from baggage. People have to make their own decisions when communications fail. And many of the messages were surprising in their invasive gall and presumptuousness. But I am learning to own up to who I am, which is my job, and that includes a good deal of anger that I will work to release. Everybody else will have to reach their own conclusions. We are all responsible for the things we say and write. I am grateful for anger, really, because it has helped me take care of myself along the way. And I guess this new world, this blog, this new environment we have is a relationship, too.
I have really loved watching Frieda’s evolution, from the “Helldog” locked up in the barn for a year to the protector of the farm. She is a working dog through and through now, and her protective instincts and energy have been challenged in a calm and (mostly) positive way. Aside from her occasional escapes into the woods to stalk raccoons and skunks and chipmunks, she is always on guard, always protecting her farm, including the chickens she once tried to eat. She also is my writing dog, always on station outside my study.
Rose was more of a partner, Lenore a companion, Izzy a contended and peaceful companion to Maria and me. I love working dogs, they embody the great spirit and glorious history of dogs and people.
There is nothing that touches my heart more deeply than to hear of someone’s struggles with sleep. I have to say that sleeplessness has been the most painful, enduring and destructive things I have ever confronted, perhaps because issues relating to my sleep and perhaps so many others are so closely linked to fear, anxiety, spirituality, an unexamined mind, my struggles to understand my mind, and the cruel and greedy ravages of modern health care.
My sleep troubles began from first memory. I was a bed-wetter, well into my teens and this became a grinding and awful struggle between my father and I, one that echoed all through his life and mine. One of its consequences was sleeplessness. After bed-wetting, fear took over. My mind raced from one danger to another, fueled by the endemic Fear Machine that is so much of American life. I could not get to sleep, or stay asleep, and the template was this: when I woke up, my mind racing, I was always in a panic. Beginning in the years after adolescence, doctors prescribed one kind of medication after another, until we settled on Valium, which I took nightly for more than three decades. I can not count the doctors I saw, the remedies I tried, the pills I took. When I expressed concern about my drugged state – the pills only worked sometimes – doctor after doctor assigned more tests, tried different pills and expressed puzzlement that I was uncomfortable with medications. I cannot imagine how much money was spent, and how much was wasted. I could not begin to relate how long and awful these nights were, how much of a struggle it was to write and live in so exhausted and disruptive a state. It is not a healthy way to live. One doctor said I should just accept taking pills for the rest of my life. Another said anxiety was endemic to my family, so why not to me?
When I got divorced and broke down a few years ago, Maria witnessed my Hellnights, and I would not care to relate them – the nausea, panic attacks, awful nightmares – more specifically. I hope to never talk of them again in any detail. I changed course and stopped taking medications. They are not part of my life now. I stopped seeing conventional doctors. I began meditating. I found Maria. Saw a spiritual counselor, my friend Mary Muncil. I saw a naturopath who suggested some gentle herbs and changes in diet. He asked me if I loved anything about my life, and I said I loved everything about my life, and he said you are well, you are healthy, you will sleep. I found a chiropractor who taught me how to be more comfortable. I changed my evenings – after dinner, reading, talking, meditating. I gave up the news. I paid more attention to what I was thinking, reading, absorbing in the evenings, and throughout my life. I stopped telling struggle stories. Stopped arguing my life. Understood the importance of love and its centrality in a healthy life. I chose a spiritual, rather than a medicinal, cure. The other simply had not worked for me. It was difficult, frightening, wonderful.
It is so important that I pass along the news that I have been sleeping well for some months now. No medication, no visit’s to the doctor, no bloodwork, no MRI’s or sleep clinics. I am not here to say those things do not work or that nobody should use them, just to tell you that there can be another way, a different way. I woke up yesterday in the light and I started crying. What’s wrong, asked Maria? Nothing, I said. I just don’t ever remember waking up in the light. Not ever in my life.
I don’t share these stories to relate a difficult life. My life is wonderful, I am nothing but lucky. But some stories – fear is one, sleeplessness is another – need to be shared, especially when they offer hope. It is a wonderful experience to wake up in the light, only with the aid of your own pure soul. I am here to tell you it can be done.
