sicking it up

It all fell apart yesterday. Not irreparably, but upsettingly.

The workday was somewhat normal, if another one of those days where certain attorneys who forget to do their work ahead of time cause me giant headaches. Come 1:00, off I went to Baltimore and interviewed with the placement agency lady. I had a nice time, actually – interviewing with placement people is a breeze, because they want you to tell the actual truth about your job situations instead of sugar-coating it. And I liked her a lot. And I think she liked me. The thought she left me with was “it’s not hopeless”, but I think if nothing happens this July to thoroughly change my life, I’m going to have to work in Baltimore. I do not want to work in Baltimore. At. All. But if I’m going to be jobless…

Anyway, after that I went back to Annapolis, passing a car accident that backed 97 up nicely due to all the extra holiday traffic, and to the studio I went. What Kathleen had to say was about the least radical good version of things that I thought: I want you on my sub list, classes are free, if you need yoga books to borrow to learn more or cut back on your expenses, I’ll make it happen. She told me some interesting things about the direction the studio may take, but she swore me to secrecy so I’m certainly not going to put anything down here.

Then Jennifer came in. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here, but I always manage to say completely the wrong things to Jennifer. She is both down-to-earth and jam-packed with inner peace and love for all things, and everything I say to her ends up sounding harsh or negative or vulgar. I usually feel like I’m hitting on a woman in a bar who’s way out of my league, or something. I admire her greatly and love her teaching style, and so the fact that I’m constantly chewing on my foot around her makes me crazy.

And today was another classic example. She asked me what was up, and I told her, and pointed to the flyer I’d put up. She looked, and then she said “You know, Yoga Basics has a scholarship.” I didn’t cut her off, but I did say as nicely as I knew how that I’d already decided on the teacher training I was going to. She looked a little taken aback by this and said that the scholarship wasn’t program-specific, it was a general scholarship. Oops. Foot taste good. I told her that half the world has been coming to me with ideas for what training I should go to and I’d really had my heart set on White Lotus and that was why I reacted the way I did.

She walked away for a while and then came back to sit with me and have a little talk. She started telling me that I should keep my options open, but one of the other students interrupted us. This other student, let’s call her Betsy, had seen my flyer and didn’t understand what I meant by “story”. I told her I wrote fiction. She still didn’t know quite what was meant by the flyer. I told her (laughing, friendly) that all the details were on the website, and that was why I’d printed the name of the website a ton of times on the bottom of the flyer and fringed it up, so you could tear off one and take it home to remember.

She let loose with a flurry of criticism about the flyer, telling me that she used to be in marketing and she thought I needed to add more information about this and change that or I won’t get any results. I nodded and said “okay” a few times, but she kept going. Eventually she wound down and I thanked her for her advice and she walked away.

There was a little silence between Jennifer and myself – I’m not sure what she was thinking, but I was a little stunned and didn’t know what to say – and then I picked up the thread of the conversation again. Jennifer told me about a wonderful program in North Carolina with her teacher, and said that she would write me a letter of recommendation if I wanted to and the teacher would probably take me on. (I don’t know if this means for free, or reduced, or just that it’s a competitive program?) She wrote down the web addresses for me and I thanked her as genuinely as I knew how.

Both of these things upset me badly. Betsy meant well, but she was so critical. It didn’t feel constructive to me at all, just hammering at me with how I’d screwed up the flyer and how she could have done better. (Incidentally, I know the flyer is not a work of art, but I thought the fringed website bits were the important part, so people could get all the info they needed if they just went to the site. If I’d included more information, the text or the photo would have had to be tiny, and I picked the photo.) I kept trying to tell myself that she was doing the best she could do, like me and you and every other human on this planet, but she really hurt my feelings.

Jennifer meant even better, but while her (exceedingly mild) rebuke was well-deserved, it still threw me entirely off the tracks I’ve been on since last Thursday, when I found out I was losing my job. I’ve been sure for over a year that I want to go to White Lotus, and I’ve been sure so far not only that doing this crazy phone-a-thon was a good idea, but that this whole crisitunity is going to lead to better things. But she made me question all these notions. Which makes me think that in fact I’m just bumbling along like I always do, fucking up and knocking things over and ruining my little irrelevant life instead of doing the smart, non-ruining things that are clearly right in front of me. Like going to a training that I’m not (yet) interested in (for a month). Or doing up a flyer that’s marketable (but that people won’t read, too much text on a flyer is bad, even I know that).

So then class started. I went in the studio and sat down, and I desperately wanted to just roll up my mat and go home. I felt frigging horrible. I felt as if my dog had just been run over. But I knew that would be awkward as hell so I stuck it out, made the intention for my practice to relax, and got going.

This was the strangest, saddest yoga practice I have ever done. I tried to breathe into the feelings I was having, the hurt and the confusion, but it was hollow and difficult. When we got to an active portion of the class, I really pushed myself, closing my eyes and s t r e t c h i n g into each little bit of each sun salutation, feeling the sweat begin on my neck, breathing through my nose for the challenge of it. I felt best during these moments, and started to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t've just gone running instead. I lifted up to standing and put my thumbs on my forehead and bent back to give thanks to whomever was allowing me to salute them -

- and the hurt, the petty feelings towards Betsy and the confusion towards my life, all of that returned, and I realized I was using the yoga to try and feel better about what had happened, and I was ashamed of myself. I tried to apologize instead for what I was doing, but the feeling I got was you should have just rolled up your mat and gone home, honey.

Physically it was a good class, but I still felt as if I had made mundane something that is sacred to me. Had cut it back like overgrown bamboo, had shorn it like Samson.

Leaving class, I called BF and told him I wanted to go out for dinner. Mexican, maybe, with a gigantic margarita. He asked me what was wrong and I told him I’d explain it when I got home so as not to yell into my cell phone for the millionth time.

When I got home, it was raining. I went out and stood in the rain, allowing it to pelt me, the chest and the head, feeling it. It was cold. When I lived south of here, the rain was warm; I’ve never known warm rain in any place I’ve lived since I was twelve. I miss it. I wanted to stand out there in the rain for an hour, wanted to wash in it, wanted to feel nothing else but rain, rain, rain, rinsing off what I felt.

But it was so cold.

I went inside, I went upstairs, I got into bed, I cried and cried. I cried because I’m going to lose my job and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I cried because a teacher I admire probably thinks I am an intemperate jerk with none of the other limbs of yoga in my life. I cried because maybe I didn’t make that flyer right, but Betsy didn’t have to be so biting about it, and anyway she could just go to the damn site and everything would be explained. I cried because I had sullied my practice. And then I cried some more.

BF came in and held me and comforted me, and then I explained everything to him and cried yet more and then he made me laugh and I felt better. I changed clothes. We went out and got huge plates of Italian food, because whenever I’m really upset, enormous portions of pasta always fix it, at least a little.

And life went on, and I cheered up.

I suppose it had been coming. It’s been a week, and I guess I hadn’t gotten over the shock until now. I also told BF that for the past several days I’ve had the chance to look inside the beautiful human heart, and it’s been glorious. But now that that’s slowed down for the moment, and I’m starting to get unhelpful feedback from other people that I know, the reality that I will soon be jobless in a major recession is sinking in. Which means lots of crying.

My father and I went on some driving trip once when I was a teenager. Before we left, my mother served me pretty much my favorite of her meals: stroganoff. (Out of a Pasta-Roni box, naturally.) Something about that meal went wrong in my stomach, and I felt ill for over an hour as we drove. I generally feel a little nauseous most of the time when riding in cars, but have rarely thrown up because I’m carsick, so I didn’t think much of it. Finally Dad and I stopped at a Cracker Barrel, and I went in the ladies’ room and vomited up the entire large bowl of stroganoff I’d eaten earlier in the afternoon. I rinsed off my face and came out of that bathroom feeling like a million bucks, and I ate a generous meal and felt even better.

Sometimes all it takes to feel better about something is to sick it up. I did that a little this evening. Something tells me it’s nowhere near over, but this was a fine first step.

Now how I’ll start convincing Jennifer I’m not a total idiot, I don’t know.