The vulnerability of choice
Yesterday was a day to reconsider my relationship to my choices. So many adults chose to behave like children stuck in their own wounding. Venal is a word that comes to mind for a few of these adults. A woman in Tucson who believes her own story of loss pocketed my money outright. A couple of adults have co-opted a gift meant for a loved one. And yet another adult chose to lash out like a child when things did not go his way.
You’d think that would be enough, but wait there’s more. I went to a matinee to see the Bob Dylan movie and before the film began, the theater previewed horror movie after horror movie, people dismembered, bloody, banging themselves to death until I, too, was shaking in my seat. My sensitivity to gore is acute. I got up, not certain what to do, but knew I didn’t want to stay for more.
I spoke to the manager who said they have no control over the previews. I then got a refund and went to my car and waited till I was calm. I drove to the Post Office to mail a book to a friend and saw my friend Linda there. I was sitting at the desk about to write in the card when she came over and sat with me. We laughed about our day, the absurdities of the mundane, the insanities of people making choices that are head scratchers, the desire to be alone in our house and not have to confront other people’s mishegas. And yet, there we sat, connecting at the P.O.
I am vulnerable to other people every day, every interaction, every communication. The awareness is helpful but it doesn’t block or prevent me from being dumped on. In a clearing of the air, I held all of today’s affronts in abeyance till I finally decided to respond. It was Adam’s voice in my head: tell them what you need, tell them what you want. So calmly, I responded to each interaction, I called the corporate office of the theater to make a complaint. If they don’t know, they don’t know. Now they know. I responded to the Tucson woman that her venality is on her, I won’t hold that for her. I protected my child. I met the other’s lashing with humor.
I was done with responding, trying to connect, and being vulnerable to half-formed adults. I went back to reading my book, Jon Fosse’s The Other Name, which is described as hypnotic and truly that is the perfect word for Fosse’s prose about an artist and his doppleganger and the choices we make in our life and why.
And what about my choices in life? I cast a wide net, so naturally it leaves room for the emotionally and spiritually immature to get swept in. I know better than to write myself as the victim of my own story, so it is with awareness that I witness and take a beat and a breath before responding to these folks. It used to be very easy to goad me into a reaction because I have my own childhood wounds that love to bleed just like anyone else’s. It is tender loving care that allows me to hold my wounds gently, lovingly, with breath, and know where I began and end.
… and sometimes to wrap myself in a force field when it gets too turbulent out there.
