Borage. Even the flowers are blue!
I’ve had the weirdest feeling lately. Now that the country has loosened up on pandemic restrictions and I have more access to people and activities, I’m lonelier than ever. This new world is tinged with blue.
Not so surprising when you think about it. We’ve all lost a lot in the past 15 months, including people that we love.
The world has more in it now. Some things that we’ve missed are getting added back in. But it’s like a badly crafted puzzle. The pieces don’t quite fit. They should, but they don’t. The edges are irregular and the interlock is weak. The picture is impossible to solve: a solid sheet of blue.
OMG, the outdoor water dish is blue!
I don’t quite trust this new world and hesitate to join in.
I do join in, though. I make myself join in. But I’m not fully present in the present. I keep referring back to the restrictions and fears that started in early 2020. Taking part and letting loose feels unacceptably risky. A friend of mine put it this way: It seems that people all around her are doing fun things now, but not her. She doesn’t even want to join in. A wee touch of adhedonia is how she put it: the inability to feel pleasure.
Honestly, it feels like my early days as a widow. It’s hard to focus. There’s a PTSD quality lingering in me, a bunch of “thou shalt nots” that got necessarily ingrained during the pandemic which, as we are constantly reminded, is not over.
When experiencing the loss of a loved one, there’s a phenomena of mental fogging- -forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, emotional numbness. Some call this Widow’s Fog. It happens because the loss and the confusion about that loss, the inability to make sense of it so we can function again, is constantly running in our minds. We’re exhausted, don’t have the energy to be present or the bandwidth to process what’s happening right now.
Blue. So what do you do?
You make it into something funny.
Interesting suggestion, 9. Several years ago I played a game where you find your Blues name by picking items from three lists: physical disabilities, body parts, and names of US generals and presidents, assigned to your first, middle and last initials. At the time, my last name started with ‘A’; my Blues name was Blind Legs Jackson.
Do you prefer Ms. Blind or Ms. Jackson?
I’ll get back to you on that, Lily. These days, I’m Blind Legs Lee.
Can you see where I’m going with this? Good, because I can’t either. But I sure would like to find the key to enjoying life again.
Friday can’t see where this is going, either. Note BLUE collar!
This will take time and deliberate effort on my part, according to The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M. D. According to the author, when something (such as the 24/7 news cycle) reminds us of past traumatic experiences the right side of the brain, the intuitive part, takes over and reacts as if past traumatic events were happening now. It’s how our brains reconfigure themselves to help us survive. The left side of the brain, the regulator part, stops functioning properly. One of the things the left side of the brain handles is speech. Have you ever been so scared or so angry you can’t find words to express what you’re feeling?
That sounds really scary.
I think so, too, Lily. And I don’t want to live my life getting derailed by forever reacting to something bad that happened in the past, something that stops me from enjoying life right now.
I think you should eat more snacks. Fun ones, not cottage cheese with pepitas.
Food is definitely part of the recovering from blue puzzle, 9. It’s become hard for me to enjoy what I eat. I’ve turned into a “food as fuel” person. Make it, eat it, clean up after it. Get that meal down and get back to the serious work of survival. I’ve haven’t joined friends for meals for so long that I’m resistant to doing so now. It sounds scary. It sounds wrong.
I’m working on turning my perceptions about this around. In the meantime, I trick myself into enjoying meals more by eating them outside. That way I can watch the birds socialize, admire the bright blue spring sky, notice how things in the garden have grown. Plus, fresh air! My senses are engaged much more than when I hover over my plate at the dining table, listening to NPR.
It’s not just the economy that’s recovering: everything is recovering. Time to be patient with ourselves and with others, to be kind, to reach out even when it’s scary.
Beating back the blues with baby steps.
It’s even blue underfoot! New patio rug.
Ah but blue is my favorite color! Duke Blue! Go Coach K
Glad to see you are embracing Coach K once again, World! Or, using your Blues name, Sleepy Legs Bradley. . .
Thank you, once again for your personal candor with universal resonance. Change is hard even if it is for the better. One of my friends asked me if I had become an introvert when I said that now I like staying home and zoom visits are fine with me. Ive gotten used to being isolated and there is a sense of dread and threat to leaving the safety of my personal lockdown where there used to be desire, thrill, joy, even guilty pleasure. Ive literally been playing the blues but feel intimidated to get out to play.
Jill Bolte Taylor (author of My Stroke of Insight) has a mini lecture on the web and a new book out addressing anxiety. She is brilliant and shines with credibility, both the street cred of direct experience and academic cred of PhD neuro-anatomist. Her new book is winging, well, at least wheeling to me as I write. I think you would enjoy her insights as well as a step toward, at least, a major key for those blues. I am.
The squelching of “desire, thrill, joy, even guilty pleasure” is definitely something I am feeling, that so many of us are feeling; I think that’s what I grieve for the most. Here’s a realization I had yesterday evening as I was driving through downtown Walla Walla, the sidewalks thronged with wining and dining and happy looking people: See what is here, not what is not. When this adaptation falters, regroup by Box Breathing or some other relaxation technique. I had some success with this (though blues and the attendant tears kept trying to break in). I’m hoping what I’m going through is a recently acquired habit of mind, rather than something permanent! Raising a glass to willfully altering my brain chemistry to a happier formulation, and wishing you the same, Tom! Thank you so much for sharing your insights and personal vulnerability to this trying-to-take-the-pandemic-off-ramp dilemma.