Day One: It’s Just Me

Arriving at the Christine Center was a series mini-disasters. Many wrong turns, incomplete directions, a disappearing boyfriend who stopped responding partway through the trip, and then ultimately, my car wedged up onto a plowed mound of ice. The chassis was balancing on top of enough ice to prevent the front tires from reaching the slick ground beneath them, and my shovel and then baseball bat attempts to break the ice left me with wet knees, frozen hands and tears of frustration in my eyes. I’d never gotten a car stuck in snow before. I tried to call Adam, but he couldn’t hear, was with a bunch of guys post-packer game. The Christine Center staff suggested AAA – a novel idea that didn’t occur to someone who still considers herself carless. It worked, they came, they pushed, it was fine.

Then I arrived at my broken-furnaced hermitage "Love," feeling sorry for myself in the cold of a small space heater. I layered, bundled, texted a friend, complaining. Adam bore the brunt of the negativity rock slide: It was freezing. There was an open pipe leading outside, an old furnace out-take of some kind – it was stuffed with a rag to keep the cold out. This is what I’m paying for? Sure, I expected the 1970s furniture – and not the cute stuff either, the big-honking, boat-sized kind of chairs in a puke shade of green with a mothbally smell. I expected a “rustic” cabin, with funny smells and an overly well-used flyswatter; the mismatched sheets were even sort of endearing. But the place was a dump, the kind of cabin your friend’s parents owned up north, and when you went up there, you’d spend the ride joking about how shitty it was, but you didn’t care too much, because you were just going there to drink anyway. Except I wasn’t going here to drink, it wasn’t free, it wasn’t for a night and dogdamnit, I was supposed to feel freaking at peace and one with the universe here. How was I supposed to do that when I had to stay buried under the covers, afraid to move an inch or I’d lose the little patch of body heat I’d gained? This wasn’t Tibet. I wasn’t here for exotic suffering. Eventually, Adam needed to call back later. I settled into my discomfort, resolving to ask in the morning to move to a different cabin.


A staff member knocked on the door to check on me. She wanted to make sure I was settled in and when I asked about the pipes that no longer connected the silent furnace to anything, she offered to let me move to another cabin with a working furnace, apologizing for the oversight. They had ordered a replacement in October, and yet it still wasn't here. She showed "Holy Angels" to me, gave me a tour of the community showers, bathroom and laundry. Within ten minutes, I'd moved in to my new cabin, with only one minor scrape on my hand from cutting it on the screen door in the cold. And then I turned up the heat, and climbed into bed, and waited. I'm not sure what I was waiting for. I was concious of being too sleepy to read, too cranky to write, and it being too early to sleep.

Where was my boyfriend? He said he’d call when he got home. Didn’t he realize what a horrible time I was having? He said he’d tell me how my dog was, and he knows that my dog is my baby. You don’t mess around with me and my baby. I waited. I dozed off. 6pm turned into 7pm, and then 8pm. I slipped back into sleep, finally becoming warm for the first time in hours. 9pm. I called. Sobbing. Why was he being so mean to me? Why didn’t he care about me? What happened? He said he would call. Was Bandit even ok? Enter exhibit A: part 2 of Sandy’s Sunday meltdown.


Nothing really major had happened. Adam had fallen asleep after a long day out in the cold before calling me. (And to be clear, he is ordinarily overly conscientious, loving and attentive). My car was fine. The cabin was fine. (This one was more of an 80’s mélange). And yet my mother’s daughter is rearing her ugliest head.

I suppose I should have seen it coming. I’d been taking chronic pain meds for almost seven years, and had finally gotten around to asking my acupuncturist if maybe he could take a swing at the problem. After two sessions, my body no longer felt like it was being stabbed with a thousand knives if I sat in a chair wrong, so throwing out my nightly 50mg of nortriptiline seemed like the logical next step. Trouble was, anytime I hadn’t taken it two days in a row, I’d had a total meltdown. Like, verging on nervous breakdown, meltdown. (I railed at that stupid allergist for months after not letting me take my meds for two days). I should have realized this inexplicable side effect of some kind of unanticipated mental dependence wouldn't just disapear if I spent a few more years taking it.


Finally on the phone together, I talked to Adam about my decision to stop taking it this week. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea. Maybe this wasn’t the time to mess around with my brain chemistry. Maybe it was ok if I just kept taking it for a while longer. Unless I was going to have kids or something, there was no immediate need to get rid of it. But as I slowly the digested the first pages of Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, I thought, what am I afraid of underneath my medication stability? Whatever is under there, it’s just me, right? Whatever emotions or insecurities or fears, they are coming from me, not from something outside me trying to hurt me. They are mine, and they are part of me, and looking at them head-on might seem scary, but it wasn’t a siege, it wasn’t a war, there was no need to cower or hide. Underneath the meds, it’s just me. And so however hard it might feel, even nervous breakdown hard, those things I’m feeling are mine, and they are mine to hold onto or let go of or observe or hide from.

And so it seems like it’s time. It’s time for me to own myself more fully. I can’t just be a piece of me, I have to embrace, accept, good Lord, even just tolerate the parts of me it’s easiest to see as diseased or unbearable. However ugly it gets, it’s just me. And in theory, fundamentally, I am good, with a core as divine as God himself. So with only mild reluctance and a few kicks and screams for good measure, I'm finally, mostly, ready to open the front door and let myself in.

Wish me luck, send me your advice and wisdom, and pray I don't overstay my welcome.