Safety Nap.
I’m not ashamed to admit, I do enjoy the odd wee helpful phrase from time to time. I don’t love all of them obviously, because not all helpful phrases are in fact helpful. Like “calm down,” for example - because never in the history of calming down, has anyone ever done so after being instructed to by some smug bastard.
But some wee helpful tips are beauties. Like when we first moved to LA, someone helpfully told me, that “living here is like having the best snuggle you’ll ever have, followed by 16 really hard punches to the face - on repeat.”
Now I have found that incredibly useful. Because there are times when I couldn't love living in the Valley more, and then other times when I'm like, “This place sucks. I want to go live in a fucking cave on my own, with nothing but a vat of tea and a batch of gluten-free bread and a toaster.”
Usually around this time of year, if I'm honest, because nothing says let's celebrate American Independence like waking up in the middle of the night because some moron is letting off actual incendiary devices two streets down.
And by the way, where the hell did these morons actually come from, because they never used to be so prevalent? And, just so you know, I know they’re not just an American phenomenon, because back in the old country they seem to have the same issue every November with actual morons setting off random explosives at 2 o'clock in the morning in the name of ‘entertainment’. Maybe they're a traveling brigand of seasonally annoying bastards, like the ankle-biting mosquitoes, or midges, or cicadas.
Anyway, you can probably tell that my tolerance level is directly proportional to my hours of sleep, and right now they’re not great - which brings me to another piece of useful advice I’ve kept in my back pocket. Many years ago when we were about to become parents, someone once told us, “When you think you want a divorce, what you really need is a nap” - although the person who gave me that advice is now divorced, so clearly not all naps are sufficient.
Anyhoos, I cannot tell you how much that helped us. When we pottered about the house, drunk-tired during the teething years, our love language was grunting at each other, “It’s OK. You can have the first forty winks.” Even now, when either of us is feeling a bit on the ‘life is wearing us down’ front, the other might say, “Why don’t you just take a bit of a break for yourself?”
In fact, Mark said that very thing to me this week after I’d been out for a quick jaunt around the neighborhood.
Randomly, I had bumped into a wee lady I know who's been going through a bit of a rough time. She’s not particularly my flavor of person, but she’s generally a sweet wee thing, so it’s not at all a burden to exchange pleasantries and be polite. And of course both of us got on to the subject of the fireworks, and she said they seemed to be much worse where she lives.
And I was nodding my head sympathetically when suddenly, out of nowhere, she announced that she was so grateful for the Second Amendment because now we all need guns. And I was trying to work out how guns and illegal fireworks could possibly be a good combination when I realized she had moved on to why gun training should be obligatory in schools, along with religion, obviously, and traditional values. And as we’re standing talking in the street, I realize that my reality is that we’re in the San Fernando Valley, whereas her reality is that we’re in the middle of a post-apocalyptic world where every day is a battle just to stay alive - though as she was sipping on an oat milk latte, her post-apocalyptic world does apparently include a Starbucks.
Anyway, I had to stop listening to her, because it really just sounded like mania. Instead, I found myself standing there, thinking surely I must have some wee helpful phrase saved up in my back pocket that I could say. Foolishly, it did cross my mind to tell her to calm down, then luckily, I remembered that’s not a great phrase at the best of times, and certainly not for someone who’s just gained their concealed carry license. And though I could see there was nothing but fear in her eyes, honestly, how I felt was close to disgust.
Because even if she was right - even without the use of facts, statistics, or any actual proven information - she did randomly happen to be right; what a terribly sad existence. In terms of a timeline, we all get roughly about five minutes on this little blue planet floating in a vast Universe, and to think that spending any of those minutes believing that all other creatures apart from the ones who look exactly like you, or talk like you, or live in your frickin house, are out to destroy you, is such an absolute waste.
I wanted to suggest she maybe look about at what's really happening in the world around her, rather than on a screen, because if she did she’d see that most people are pretty lovely really and she's just been heavily marketed to. But she was on a roll. There was no helpful phrase in my back catalog capable of piercing the monologue, so in the end I made my excuses and suggested she had a nap, because the world always feels a bit better after a nap. And she did at least admit she was exhausted.
Afterwards, I just felt so incredibly sad. And I came home and, sensing my mood, Mark asked if I just wanted some time to myself, and I nodded and said I did.
You know, years ago back in the old country, I knew this woman who was an incredible writer but had an awful alcohol problem. She hid it well for a long time, but as the disease took hold, she could hide it no more. I’d go to meet her, and instead of us laughing and joking and talking theatre, I’d see the look in her eye and pick up the whiff of booze, and know that instead I was in for a long rambling story about stuff I couldn’t understand, involving people I didn’t know, constructed with sentences I could barely comprehend.
In the end I let the friendship go. Actually, I flatter myself. In the end, she let the friendship go because there was no phrase or helpful reasoning or actual real-life facts that I could ever offer that were significant enough to find their way through whatever concoction of fear, pain, and shame she was trying to self-medicate away from. And I could not continue to bear witness.
And yet here she was back in my head after all these years after meeting my post-apocalyptic Starbucks lady. I guess because though the nouns may change, the song of disappearing into addiction pretty much always sounds the same.
Whether it’s booze or guns, cults or dogma, drugs or food, or sex, or money, sometimes the world feels too heavy on our shoulders, and they each offer the same numbing, mind-rotting comfort for the spirit that ails. We are each of us beautiful, intricate, tender creatures, who are so easily broken - apart from those arseholes who keep setting off the fireworks, obviously.
Anyway, I’m not great when I don’t get much sleep, so I can’t tell you that I’ve come up with any great solution for any of it.
What I can tell you is that though there are loads of helpful phrases and tips to be found, there’s really no reason you can’t make up your own. For example, whenever I feel life is too heavy, and I’m overwhelmed by the weight of this mental wee world, I stand out in the backyard and open my arms to the sky and mutter, “I know I’m here for such a short amount of time. And some of it will feel magic, and some of it will feel unbearable. But even in the times when it might feel shitty, I don’t want to waste any of it. None of it at all.” And then I take a breath, and as I open my arms as wide as they can go, I say “So, bring it.”
And though that’s not as snappy as a Garfield poster or motivational meme, it works for me.
Mark, watching me, reappearing from the backyard, remarked that some people might think I was mental. And I smiled and acknowledged they were probably right. And then I told him about the lady with the guns and the oat milk latte, and he sighed and agreed, that in terms of lunacy, I luckily remain a rank amateur.
Lynn
Xo
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