I gotta stop doing that

Some days I get so weary of my obsessive, anxious, chatterbox mind, so slumped over by the dying beauty of this earth.

I think about this all the time: We are born, each one of us, onto a sinking vessel. We have so little time! Ever since I was a very little girl, this fact has, on a daily basis, broken my heart, scared the crap out of me, and opened me. "Oh God! What if I don't get life right?!" is, sadly, probably my most-used mantra.

I don't even know what it truly means to get it right. Who am I to say? But when I am kept awake at night by a picture of decapitated Mexican drug lords hanging by their feet from an overpass in what I remember as the quaint, sunny, flower-filled city of Cuernavaca, where I first learned to speak Spanish and fall in love Mexico and her generous, kind people, I am haunted.

I can't help but sleeplessly think, "The people who cut off those guys' heads did not get it right." But then I think, "Who am I to discern or judge the divine calculus of life? Maybe God understands it all, and He or She is okay with it. Go the fuck to sleep."

But I can't. "How many degrees of separation are there between those drug lords and me, really?" I think, "Who am I to believe for an instant I am immune to finding myself in a life that would end up like that? Oh no! Not only is life fragile, but my lifestyle probably is, too! One day you're in a recession in the most bountiful country in the world, and the next you could be prostituting yourself to drug lords, who knows? We definitely need to sell all our shit and move to Norway. I'm telling Jay first thing in the morning."

See? This is why I avoided looking at any kind of footage of those doomed, smoking, tumbling towers for SEVERAL YEARS after 9/11. I just knew. I knew I wouldn't be okay after that. It's also why I can't even look at commercials--commercials!--for horror movies. I cannot even watch--Oh God, this is embarrassing--"Scary Movie".

It's like everyone I encounter, even strangers in magazines and movies, is my corsican twin, and I feel their pain. It's one of those things that makes me a good healer. It's also one of those things that makes me a good crazy person.

Two years ago I watched a documentary on the 2004 Thailand tsunami. Yeah, that was a GREAT idea. It took my eyes three days to de-puff from crying. Ever since then, I think about this no fewer than oh, a hundred billion times a month: a mother and father telling the story of how, as water began to swell in their hotel room, the mother instructed their five year-old daughter to wrap her arms and legs around her, telling her over and over, "It's okay, Mama's holding onto you really tight! I'm not going to let anything happen to you!" and how a moment later the water ripped that little girl out of that woman's arms, and they never saw her again.

One minute you're on a dream vacation with your little family on the coast of Thailand and the next, all your dreams are washed away, leaving your heart to beat its broken rhythm all the rest of your days. Have a nice life.

"Note to self:" I had thought, watching that documentary, "Never go to Thailand. Or Indonesia." But I really want to go to Thailand and Indonesia! Which brings us to the next thought I had: "How could you forgive yourself if you never let yourself experience Thailand and Indonesia? Life is so fleeting! Carpe Diem! What are you waiting for?!" Aaaaaahhh!

You should have seen me when we had that earthquake a couple weeks ago. Ho-ly Shit. First of all, I grab the kids like I'm a fireman: I snatch them from their chairs at the dining room table, and I start running. In circles. Because I don't know what to do. Because we get earthquakes like NEVER. And we end up in the bathroom, because that's where you go if there's a tornado. Stop laughing.

And I'm thinking, "Their arms are too short to wrap around the toilet! They're going to blow away! No, wait. Crap! I've got it all wrong! The house is going to fall in on us! We should have run outside! We're gonna die because I'm a dumbass!" Meanwhile Tavish is laughing, exclaiming, "Mama! The house is WIGGLING!"

In a flash, the earthquake is over and I'm still holding onto the kids, squeezing the crap out of them, and they're like, "Ow!! Let go of me!" And I'm saying, "It's okay, guys, everything's okay! Everything's alright! Everything's okay!" And they're going, "Um, yeah, we know. Can we finish our lunch now?"

My hands were shaking so bad after that, I could not hold the phone to call my husband. For many, many minutes. I had some sort of Post Traumatic Stress response to something that didn't even knock our lawn chairs over.

Do not ask me how I get through one single day of living with myself. "You totally drive me nuts," my husband laughingly (and sometimes not-so-laughingly) tells me on a regular basis. "Oh yeah?" I say, "I drive MYSELF more nuts than you could ever imagine."

Do not EVEN get me started about my germophobia. It's not bad like those people you see washing their hands a hundred thousand times a day on those Discovery Health shows about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but still, with two grubby little kids, I think about germs a lot. Or T.S. Eliot. Good Lord, I cannot make it through one of that man's poems without bawling my fucking eyes out, all his aching, mortal beauty of this world stuff making me re-think and regret 98% of my life. And Walt Whitman? Fuck.

By the way, if you are still reading this, bless you. I might have some pain medication left over from getting my wisdom teeth out--you'll probably need a little at the end of all this. Sorry.

You know what? I take that back. I'm not sorry. I say that way too much. I say it for things that aren't my fault at all, like if someone next to me drops something. Why? Why do I do that? And I apologize for things about myself I can't help, like crying at Hallmark commercials and sneezing.

I gotta stop doing that. I'm sorry I say sorry so much.

GAH!!!

I almost don't know what to do with myself. I mean, except just love my quirky-ass self. Just about the only thing I know to do anymore is try to love. You know, really notice people, including myself, and try to set aside fear, and just pour love onto them. I'm pretty sure that's gotta be at least in the top ten on the "How to Get Life Right" list. So I'm sticking with that. A little more love, a little less fear...maybe that can be my new mantra.