Will Not Be Fine

Three days ago, it was my firm decision that I would return to San Francisco full time and continue with my life, though two days prior to that, I had decided to buy the house in Ypsilanti and enjoy life as a Lady Gardener. Part of the reason I firmly decided not to buy the house after all is the idea that it’s better for my physical and cognitive health to have two days a week of getting to work and home again by bicycle built in, along with a weekly bike ride to the grocery store and schlepping my provisions home in panniers; most medical or dental appointments also involve a bike ride.

The reason I think I would have a less active lifestyle in Ypsilanti is that I’d have to make a point of moving, and I might get out of the mood from time to time.

I also see lots and lots of people in San Francisco, at least the two days a week that I work. I am pretty sure this is essential for my mental health as long as it’s balanced out by plenty of alone time.

Or am I wrong that continuing with my work would be salubrious? Maybe it is simply a source of dementia-causing stress. This thing of feeling like I’m dying by 1 or 2 pm every workday worries me.

Basically, I’m worried that either ceasing to work or continuing to will lead to dementia.

After my firm decision three days ago to return to San Francisco, I observed that I nonetheless seemed to be proceeding as if I will be buying a house, or something, in that I’m marshaling financial resources.

Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe what I need to do is to take two months off work while I’m in San Francisco to see if I feel equally crappy if I don’t work. I’m not sure what it would prove if I did feel just as lousy or if I felt better, but in trying to identify which two months to take off, things became so complicated, what with canceling / rescheduling / booking this and that that I again decided just to leave Ypsilanti for the last time in mid-August, as currently scheduled, and then I immediately felt heartbroken, as I do every time I decide not to buy the house.

Whereas every time I decide to buy the house, I feel anxious.

It has been my intuition from the first iteration of that not-buying-the-house sorrow that it doesn’t mean I’m supposed to buy the house. It’s grief because this chapter will close, in a way. (Though it will never close in that my mother will never be undead.)

I discussed the matter with my Zen teacher, saying that I know that whichever I do, it will be fine. He said that actually, there is no guarantee it will be fine. Things will fall apart, but whatever happens, we can meet it. He suggested that I inquire of myself what the exhaustion is telling me, and also what identity I have latched onto.

But at this point, I can’t figure out what anything means. Does it just mean what it seems to mean? Or the opposite? Or both? Or neither? Have I latched onto the identity of San Francisco Chaplain, or that of Michigander?

Maybe the exhaustion is telling me I’m done being a chaplain. Maybe it’s telling me I’ve had enough of flying back and forth. I spoke with our Healing Harpist yesterday and she said that maybe making a decision sooner rather than later would be good, as it would end flying, which in itself is tiring.

Somewhere along in the past several days, I had a perfect day: I did my morning stretches, had breakfast, got ready to go out, went for a walk, did some reading and writing for work, had dinner, did my evening exercises, washed my face and brushed my teeth, meditated, and went to sleep. In San Francisco, there is virtually never a day where morning stretches, taking a walk and evening exercises all occur. One falls, or two or three of those fall by the wayside every single day. And yet the day in Michigan when I did all three seemed oddly vacant: It’s nighttime already? Is that all there is going to be to my life? It seemed kind of empty and lonely.

Often at the end of a day in San Francisco, it seems as if breakfast happened a million years ago.

Last night I was so sick and tired of the whole thing that at bedtime I (probably not whole-heartedly) offered the hope that I might die peacefully and painlessly in my sleep. I didn’t set an alarm and found this morning that I had slept for 12 hours, which sounds good except that sleeping absolutely enough makes it impossible to get to sleep the following night and then the whole schedule goes completely off the rails.

I remembered yesterday’s decision not to buy the house and cried and cried. I think the decision to buy the house is a form of bargaining, of trying to forestall a terrible grief (not that there has not been a spectacular amount of that). It is the grief of not having anyone, specifically my mother, to take care of any more. Though my father had cancer and went through treatment for cancer and went on hospice and died, he didn’t really ever need that much taking care of. I drove him to his chemotherapy and radiation appointments and sat there with him during them, but the truth is that he could easily have driven himself and also could have sat there on his own without the slightest distress. One month before he died, he drove himself to the grocery store without incident. One day before he died, his phone rang and he almost but not quite succeeded in answering it, while smiling at his own haplessness. He noticed that I was videoing and pointed at me as if to say, “Oh, you.” It is the most charming little video.

(When he was in the hospital once due to side effects from chemo, I asked if it was good that I was there. He thought for a moment and politely said, “Neutral.”)

But my mother had dementia and needed every kind of help eventually. Taking care of her house lets me feel I am somehow still taking care of her. I don’t want to not be taking care of her because then it would mean she was dead, which I could not endure and hope I never fully understand has already happened.