Truth Tales #9: Unsettled & Old

Yesterday was a day. It was Yom Kippur. It was Wednesday. It was therapy day (thank G-D!). It was a day of realization. It was a lot of things.

As soon as my Face Time therapy session began, I started by saying, “The themes of the day are ‘unsettled’ and ‘old’. I thought it was going to be 50 minutes of talking about how I am feeling extra charges of anxiety, and not loving the aging process. It sort of started that way, but then morphed into something much bigger, more contemplative, difficult, but truth telling in nature.

Let’s back up to the day before, with me walking down the hallway toward the elevator, falling into that gross pool of self pity. I started talking to myself (out loud, yes), saying, “Is this really where I am in my life?” I have hearing aids in my ears, crackling like eggshells crushing….I have an oral appliance in my mouth to correct the dislocation of both sides of my jaw, making me sound like my tongue is too big for my mouth….I have a mask on, just because, and need to slip on my reading glasses in order to read a text that just came in. What is all of this STUFF?! It’s called aging, as one of my best friends let me know when I texted her, “Do you ever have days where you look in the mirror and just see a surreal picture of you, but old and ugly?

There is another component I must mention, that is a new member of the self pity committee. It’s called NECK SKIN, that thinks it’s a turkey! What the hell is that unwelcomed addition? Again….aging. What to do about that? I fly into solution seeking mode. That was easy- a neck lift. Yep. Yay. Easy. On it. I had a consultation yesterday morning (yes on Passover. Shhhhhhhh.). In and out, with all of the info I need, and a little relief that I can “control” this again process in a vane way.

Then came therapy…and as I mentioned above, I was pretty focused on ‘unsettled and old’ as the canvas for this session. But after talking a little bit about my feeling like I have too much adrenaline in my body, as well as the great possibility of my neck being smooth, I became teary….because what my unsettledness was actually coming from, was not so much about me getting old, but rather an all too pervasive and looping fear of my dad dying, of my mom dying, of my oldest son dying, of my husband dying. None of which do I have any control. Like. There is no doctor to run to to get a consult on “how do I make people in my life not die?”. It’s so much easier to focus on neck skin, than to focus on painful reality.

This horrible fear, happens to NOT be an irrational fear. My husband had a near death traumatic brain injury…where I did get “that call” from the hospital. My dad is such a lover of life and speaks about his daily experiences like they are treasured and precious, but while also mentioning, “How can I be so lucky? I know this is the last chapter.” (that comment makes me squirm in my seat, each and every time!). My mom had something develop with her leg while I was in France, and upon my return, seeing her limp while trying to walk, made me see her in a different light. My son recently went missing and I awoke to the text of, “Aidan left the house around 11:00pm and he is now missing.” ALL of these things trigger this- holy fuck, I love these people so much, life is so fragile, death is real and inevitable, it’s scary to feel, etc.

After realizing all of this, that my ‘unsettled and old’ theme was really about much bigger things, my therapist pointed out the need to remember that there are joy filled moments, that finding what brings you joy is so important, that taking the time to nourish these things is critical. Then he asked me, “So. How’s the writing going?” And I smiled. Oh yeah. That. A thing that I enjoy. No coincidence I am writing this today.

I will try to bring this full circle…or maybe, full oval…with some bumps in it, by saying that yes, I went to a plastic surgeon on Passover….yes, I thought I was doing a number of myself with self pity over the aging process…and all of that. But. Really it led to this- Passover is a day of atonement, which includes self reflection, and the gaining of awareness, while also honoring those who have had an impact in our lives. Yesterday…Passover…turned out to be exactly that. It just looked different.

Becky Sobelman-Stern, the chief program officer at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles states so perfectly, “Yom Kippur is not about being happy. It’s about thinking. It’s about self examination.” So there it is.

Passover ends with this…and so will I: May you be sealed in The Book of Life. Cherish your people, whomever they are. Keep gratitude front and center. THAT is my wish.

P.S.- I do have a chronic illness that is the cause for the most of the physical shit discussed. It’s called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (truth tale for another day).