slowly pulling back together

I feel an obligation to end the story of a particular bad episode. Even if I’m only writing it for me, I want to recap from a calm stable place. Because I’m superstitious like that, I don’t like the only thing I put out being when I’m in extreme pain. I’m not me then, not the me I want to be.

It may be difficult to understand, but coming back up can be the scarier part of an episode. Yes, feeling better is scarier than feeling like death warmed over. This is because this is the only specific situation I’ve lost complete control. Usually, the worse I feel the more I withdraw, because I know that to be a dangerous time for me. So when I think I’m coming back, I start trying to let my guard down. I can’t keep my guard up indefinitely, because my guarded state is severe enough to endure trauma.

I’m trying to learn to moderate my response, to withdraw less in reaction to relatively minor stress. It’s still very much a work in progress.

All these nebulous philosphizing aside, it’s been a rough week. It’s been a busy time, and not in a way that things I plan are happening, but that there’s a lot to react to. This is the more distressing because recently I’ve started to find some sense of normalcy and safety. Realizing how fragile that is scares me. To provide the shortest possible context, in the last 30 days;

• I experienced the violent loss of my primary ambition of attending graduate school, which ended with an acrimonious break up with the university I would have attended.
• I experienced secondary trauma/rehashing of past trauma watching the same thing that happened to my primary career happen to someone close to me. Literally, same job, same department, same BS.
• I was present for the death of a dog I loved deeply. Throughout the last year when I was struggling I’d go over to my friend’s house, yes, same friend, and this dog would come over and cuddle me. This provided me significant relief, and though it wasn’t a dog who lived in my house, I cared about him as much as any dog I’ve owned. He died in the heat, and me and the heat I am forced to live in during the summer already have a dark relationship. Seeing a dog I loved die of something I’ve experienced, heat stroke, and not being able to save him was destablizing in a way words fail to capture.

That’s just the context of the past month, and I would think that would be enough troubles to heap on my shoulders. After all of the above, I had been trying to catch up on my self care, and struggling.

Then, my wife got a potential win which I wanted to support. She got into a class meant to help her secure employment. She still has hope regarding the job market, and though I can’t relate, it seems to be something good for her. So for the past couple years we’ve had one reliable car. She had a car that broke down two years ago and we never recovered sufficient to fix it. In the past few months we decided to write it off, the conditions required for us to fix it appear permenently out of reach.

I own an old truck and a small car. The truck has always had troubles, but it’s sort of my mess, I’m emotionally wrapped up in it as a project. The car, in contrast, has been relatively well kept. Last week, anticipating my wife needing the car, I started trying to work on it a bit. I fixed a bumper issue that had long plagued it and felt like life was on the upswing regarding transportation. It felt like in the near future I’d be able to take pride in my vehicles, a boost that was very tempting.

The events started Monday morning. Both my wife and I got up early, because she was planning to rise early all week, something she’s less experienced in than I am. So, to encourage that, we went out for coffee and to do our grocery shopping for the week. Remember, all of this was to create the most ideal circumstances for her classes possible. When we got home from that, we heard a hissing sound coming from the right driver side wheel. It was still fully inflated, but we both suspected that it was going flat. I set aside time that afternoon to resolve this seemingly small issue.

Yes, in the next few hours it went entirely flat. This seemed to me a slow leak, and so I assumed that if I aired it up entirely, it could make the drive across town to our regular cheap tire shop. I did so, airing it up and inspecting it to assure that there wasn’t significant damage that would make driving impossible. I got halfway there when it went flat going full speed on the highway. At this point I was mildly frustrated, but I pulled it together and got a roadside assistance person out to change out the flat for the spare which was a donut.

In five years of owning the car I had never had a flat serious enough to use the donut. It had sat in my trunk since I bought the car. Hence my lack of a tire iron or jack capable of changing the tire. I have both for my truck, because I’ve had it for 10 years and flats have happened with it. They do not work for the car. So after an hour of hanging out on the side of the road waiting, I got the assistance to change the tire, and at this point I thought the trouble would soon be over.

I stopped for at least three hours here, because this is where things took a determined turn. It wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t intentional in any way, but it represents the current economic climate for working people. Even though I’m not a working person (at least for pay), I support working people. It’s getting harder out there, that’s an objective fact. It is, probably, worse than any individual knows.

I got to the tire shop. I’ve been using this tire shop exclusively for a decade. We have a relationship, they know my car when I pull up. They’ve worked with me in the past, vis a vi costs and difficulties. So when I got there, I felt like I was working with friends. It was safe harbor, but that’s not what it became. Their card reader wasn’t working, and due to inflation their charge had risen by between $5-$10 a tire. I was willing to pay that, but I don’t carry cash. There are a lot of long winded reasons for that.

They were asking for cash, and they couldn’t work with me. So, already drained, I decided to cut my losses and drive home, 10 miles on surface roads in my very poorly maintained city. On the way home, I had a progressive breakdown. This had moved from inconvenience, to frustration to full on crisis in a really short time period. I talked to my wife multiple times during this whole thing, and one of our friends said they could step up and help. So, I took them at their word, again assumed we were on track to resolve the issue within the day.

I got home, only to find that they couldn’t help us that day. At this point I still had a car, albeit with a donut temporary tire on it. My wife could still go to work, and I was under the impression the resolution was incoming, if not immediate. My dad even offered to help financially, and my wife offered to go get that help to let me rest. It was while she was doing that which  the spare tire got a flat.

Two flats, one on a spare on a car that has never had a flat tire in the time I owned it. Since I thought help was still coming, I resolved to try and be supportive.

Again, I tried to be understanding. I really thought they would do it the next day. I put the problem away in my mind, and tried to rest….. with challenges.

The next day I found that the solution I thought was in progress was not formally arranged, and it was now back on me to resolve it. At this point I decided to pull all my resources and try to deal with it. I thought, get my truck running would be the shorter path. It wasn’t something I could resolve, and I found that my mechanic father in law had gotten sick, which goes back to that pain point of working people literally being worked until they dropped.

The next day I reached out to a different friend, seeking help. It turns out they were also sick, and wouldn’t be able to help until the next day. This was an ongoing stress, I was not able to eat or function properly at this point. So, I finally broke down and decided to try to resolve it by myself. I had other people I could reach out to, but after being rejected twice when I tried that, it appeared a waste of energy.

So I had to ride a mile to the nearest ATM, that was the first step. This is on my little commuter bike, and if it was over established trails or an area with bike lanes or routes, it would have been a doddle, easy. Instead, it involved traveling through a heavily congested area that is also under construction. Multiple times on the trip I had to stop because cars do not see bicycles. I had to shift to the sidewalk for at least a mile, and the way the sidewalk was set up there were power poles every 25 feet in the middle of the walk. So, it was slow going and very frustrating.

Then, on arriving at the adress of the ATM, I found it in a store, so I had to leave my bike unattended to go in and get cash. It seemed very likely that my bike would be stolen, but I saw no other way forward. It wasn’t stolen, the stress still bothered me. I ended up going two miles out of my way rather than return down the treacherous path I had come on. This is all the more a pain point because I’ve used the same bank my entire life. Up until a few years ago, they kept a bank branch half a mile away, less than two blocks from a bike route. They closed it with no notice, and I now have to go between one mile (through construction, or two to as much as five miles out of my way. I now plan my trips based on the location of their ATMs. Again, this agrevated the situation of my loss of mobility.

When I finally got home, I was fried. I didn’t know how to rally, but I knew if I was to meet my goal I’d probably have to.

and right here is where I finally caught a break. My wife’s sister dropped by unexpectedly, and she was able to arrange for me to get to the tire shop. So, I got the tire.

I had purchased a new tire jack, which didn’t work. I ended up calling a roadside assistance call in and they came and changed the tire.

Finally, three days later, the stress was starting to die down, with provable effects. I had previously planned on doing a lot of things this week, things that didn’t happen. When it first happened, I set myself an additional day off…. but I kept having to put that off until today. Finally, today I got to myself. I feel somewhat better, but I’m not sure I trust it.

This whole thing, the intuition I’ve been taught was undone quite effectively and completely. I’ve been taught to keep calm, to not catastrophize. Rather, this seemingly small inconvenience snowballed into a three day ordeal. My cynicism underperformed, which was so contrary to my past experience I felt lost and alone.

Nevertheless, I survived. It wasn’t really optional, surviving, but I’m somewhat proud of where I stepped up and tried to take ownership and resolve the issue. In the end, that is why I prevailed. I need to work on myself more though. I don’t like the way I behaved at some of my more shameful giving into despair and hopelessness. I also feel guilt about so completely misreading the situation for the first two days.

Sometimes a situation just is really bad. There isn’t any looking at it better, or reframing it in any way. There’s just carrying on and getting through.

It’s getting pretty rough out there, and everyone I know is struggling but still succeeding. It’s very scary given my limited control, my lack of income, and my lack of identity within my work. So while my pain and fear are fair, I don’t think it is fair to expect so much of myself as I do. I’m struggling with this, because I believe in improvement, and I’m trying so hard. It seems I either give myself too much credit, coddling my worst aspects, or I’m so harsh on myself as to be borderline abusive. When I try to moderate, to see shades of gray, I feel lost and afraid.

Day by day, that’s where I am right now. Within that, I feel some safety and familiarity. I want to do better, but that’s a wish that I can’t make happen all the time.