How do I celebrate my capacity for deep feeling…especially when it lands me into imagined dumpster fires of imposition, injustice, fear?
The facts of “my day” are these…
At least two months ago, our condo mailbox fell over due to rust or was knocked over by an errant car, backing up into it.
Friday, we got a new mailbox, but no instructions, nor, as it turns out, any keys with which to open a mailbox, if we even knew which box would be ‘ours.’
Days pass, no mail.
Emails of inquiry go out.
We wait.
I then discover this new free service from the Post Office–digital copies of your mail into your Inbox! What a great interim strategy, I think.
The Association President then arrives on our doorstep with our box-number and key.
We receive our weekend’s mail yesterday. All is well, but I forget about the digital service.
This morning, I receive a digital copy of all the mail that is coming today.
My heart sinks and my belly tightens, seeing a piece addressed to “Brian and Lisa.”
It’s from a woman who has faced overwhelming trauma and dysfunction in her family, projecting some of that onto Brian and me, eventually just onto me. She’s wounded/ing and can be mean.
My day now becomes soaked in dread: I’m about to get smacked. By a church member. Whom I cannot defend or retaliate against in any fashion because she’s a church member.
It takes over my morning, though I’m actively practicing ego-relaxation, relinquishment, centering in what I value.
I spin more and more…feeling the injustice I feel, and the fear…
Finally I text Brian: I don’t want to feel alone in whatever outrage is going to pour onto me next. Which would then put him in between his wife and a parishioner, a position both of us work hard to avoid but which is inevitable, from time to time.
[Just to be clear: I’ve actually done nothing to merit this woman’s anger. She would disagree, which is convenient for the one who projects, less so for the one who is projected upon].
Brian texts back with a cue-word for us: para. It’s Greek for “side by side,” picked up in grad school way back when.
I share the heaviness I feel with a spirit friend I get to visit today. We laugh together, recognizing my capacity to imagine worst-case scenarios.
I still spin with feelings of powerlessness, inability to avoid getting socially-political smacked.
I go to my home gym for a CrossFit workout, to be with people who move, laugh, tease.
Afterward, I get out to my car seeing a text from Brian.
It’s a Christmas card.
Oh for f*ck’s sake…
My whole body relaxes and I laugh aloud. I did my very best to NOT have this manufactured-drama day. Yet still I failed. Classic Lisa, whom I love to laugh at and with…who now gets to sleep the sleep of the relieved.
I love that I feel deeply…except on days like this.
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