Overdue

I've been holding on to this library book way past its due date, intending to track down the quote I wanted to remember – and now I finally found it.

Going into your fear is like going through a fog. The key is whether you're regarding what you experience as simply something real or instead as monumental entrapment, imprisonment. If you panic further, you breed cowardice. If you don't descend into cowardice, then you just have an experience of fear. You can break through without being a coward at that point. ... If you are able to join fear and uncertainty with genuine confidence, then you will come through to the other side.

He really nails it here, for me: "If you don't descend into cowardice, then you just have an experience of fear." The problem isn't that I feel afraid sometimes, it's more than when I do, I tend to think of it as monumental, important, life-defining. For some reason I've learned to make it into much more than it is, which is just an experience of fear. End of story.

At least, that's how I'm trying to remember to look at it. It does seem much more manageable when I can remember to do that.

Yoga was great, of course. My friends were sweet – the one who met me there, and the one who teaches the class. I'd never been to her class before and it was quite different from others I've done. It felt really energizing to do something new, in a new setting, with new people. Afterward we sat in the steam room for awhile, and then in the whirlpool, and I met a new woman who seems like she could become a friend. I felt so good on the way home I started imagining myself going to a class every day. There's really no reason I couldn't!

One thing at a time, however. Right now I'm totally focused on passing my statistics class. I'm so focused on it that I can't even remember if I talked about this already; it seems like it's all I think about or do all day long, and all night as well – all I see when I close my eyes is more numbers and formulas, and when I wake up I have the feeling I've been dreaming about them the whole time I was asleep. I'm not certain I'm going to be able to finish by the end of May and still get 100% on my two remaining exams, so I may end up settling for a passing grade after all – which is all that's required, though I really want to do better than that.

It's been interesting to see how this compromise is affecting me. Making a decision about grad school and diving in the way I did this winter is something I've never really done before, at least not with anything this big. Normally I like to plan everything out waaaay far out in advance so I have plenty of time to get things done absolutely perfectly, without having to rush or sacrifice the quality of my work. It's one of the things that drove me crazy about my last job – it seemed like there was never time to do anything very well, and I was the only person who even cared.

Anyway. My intention here was to stretch myself out of my comfort zone and try doing things differently, and I knew it would be uncomfortable, and it has been, but it's also kind of cool to see what I'm capable of. Maybe I am blasting through this class in less than the ideal amount of time, but the whole point of it is to satisfy a prerequisite to the MSW program, not to memorize, recite and interpret the entire textbook by heart.

I still don't like doing just an adequate job of something when I know I could make it perfect, but in this case I'm going to let it be OK.

Other news. Hmm. The hospice work is starting to happen. I visited my first patient a couple of weeks ago but they passed away a couple of days after our visit so I didn't get a chance to do much. I have a new assignment starting next week and in the meantime attended an in-service training on grief vs. depression that I thought was pretty interesting.

A little closer to home, Mr. A's mother is starting to fade pretty fast as well. We spent a couple of hours there yesterday and the situation is not good, but she's on service with hospice now so I'm hoping that will be some comfort to her. I need to spend some time writing about this whole thing offline; it's been pretty intense for me in several different ways.

This decision to not write about Mr. A's family issues makes me think of that situation that happened with me and my group of friends about a year and a half ago, in which my trying to process my own experience of it in this blog contributed to the person in question deciding that they couldn't talk to me anymore. I've wondered if I might have made a mistake there ... and while I'm still sad about the loss of that friendship, I don't feel like I did anything wrong. So what's different here? I guess the first thing is that the first situation had to do with a serious breach of trust that affected me personally and profoundly, and in this situation, while it's definitely affecting me, I don't feel like I've been wronged in any way. I guess that's it. It's a very sad situation that I'm a witness to, and there isn't a lot I can do to make it better, though I am (we are) doing what we can.

Actually, I'm not sure I'm being totally honest here. I could have chosen to write about that other situation offline too – why didn't I? Partly it was because I know that only a handful of people read this blog (seriously, I get the stats!), and all of them either already knew all about what had happened, or don't know me personally at all. So I didn't feel like I was revealing anything sensitive. Looking back on it though I think I was also trying to regain a little bit of my own power in the situation, by talking about it because I wanted to talk about it, even though I knew the other person didn't want me to. Was I passive-aggressively trying to hurt him?

I sat here for several minutes trying to answer that question and I keep coming back to "no." I knew he would probably hate it that I wrote anything at all, but that isn't the reason I did it. Still, if I had it to do over again I think I would have taken that one offline too. It wasn't malicious or extreme but it wasn't really very sensitive or kind, either. Or necessary.

Yeah, the therapy function of this blog is becoming pretty evident again of late.

In any case – getting back to the matters at hand – I'm getting some practice here in what it's like to be with someone who is actively dying, and it's making me very grateful for everything I've learned (and continue to learn) about staying calm, staying present, and accepting life as it comes without judgment or drama.

One other thing I don't think I've mentioned is that my parents have gone on a mission for their church. They left last week and will be gone six months. I'm proud of them and excited that they get to have this experience. I'm also feeling lonely for them, knowing they're even farther away now than they usually are. My mom emailed me that on their first day there they found several other couples and friends they've known for years and decades. That seems to be a pretty common experience in Mormonism (maybe other organizations too) – arriving in a place you've never seen before and being instantly assimilated into a deeply connected community life. There's a lot I don't miss about being part of the Mormon church but that one aspect just makes me want to weep from the loss of it. I've lived here 15 years and still don't feel as connected here as my parents do after just one day in their new town.

Something to strive for.