i've been wandering around all day in a fog. over the last hour or so it's occurred to me that it's because i'm tired. my feet hurt. my knees hurt. my hips hurt. okay, all of that can be traced to dancing in ridiculous heels last night -- but the outside of my forearms? my neck? i guess it's like this when tension leaves the body.
what i've realized during the last hour of slow consciousness (see slow food, slow growth) is that although i am tired, i am also really and truly better than i was a year ago or two. it's not just that i didn't pass out in the middle of the night and rip my forehead open, as i did at the end of exposure '07. and it's not that i find this easy: although i wrote breezily a few days back that i had lost track of my identity as dr zwicker, that kind of emotional dislocation is profound, for me. this week of supreme highs (bathhouse) and fears (will people come to the festival? will they like it? will our small board survive it?) and frustrations (which aren't worth rehearsing) and fragmentation (from 9-9:30 i'm schlepper, from 9:30-11:00 i'm teacher, from 11:00-1:00 i'm hzwicker@ualberta and zwickerhzwicker@gmail, then dr zee, then doctoral supervisor, then, starting at 4:00, professional lesbian, then sombre audience member) and neglect (does walking to the car count as exercise? how many nights a week is it ok to eat trail mix for dinner?): this kind of disaggregation is precisely what the doctor didn't order.
but i'm ok. i'm not great. in particular, i'm still bothered by that perennial sense that i should have done more; it grieved and guilted me to leave the party last night, for instance, knowing how much work it would be to take it down, and i can't believe i forgot, literally forgot, to go to play on friday night after the amy fung event at the ARTery. i feel uneasy, unsettled, uncertain -- all those "un"s suggesting that i don't feel any identifiable thing, just the opposite of many things. my sensitivities are dialed up, so i still don't know whether i'm right to be upset about the unlimited business, and i am spending way too much time fretting about people who are, really, tangential to my life (but did KW seem out of sorts to anyone else this week?). i don't know what i'll do with all this unclaimed time on my hands, nor how i'll survive without sending and receiving a hundred exposure-related emails a day. i worry, what if my sense of self really is predicated on being indispensable to others?
as i pause and read the paragraph i just wrote -- slow consciousness, remember? -- i'm struck by the repetition of "not knowing." apparently, i find it emotionally dangerous not to know. (my name is heather, and i'm a control freak....). but it's puzzling, nonetheless. isn't the unknown one of the main things to love about art? and isn't risk built into dealing with people? i'm all about grooving on folks who are unlike me, and i love seeing a painting or a photograph or a performance or a room -- the starlite lounge last night comes to mind -- that startles or intrigues or comforts or moves me into a different mental and emotional space.
it's odd, then, homeopathically odd, that the things that scare me the most are the things i seek to do. i probably should have been a bank teller, not a teacher who falls in love with her classes right before they end. i should work on safe events like the olympics rather than start-up queer arts and culture fests. i should make friends with the old and settled, not the up-and-comers who regularly leave this city.
"expose yourself" was the slogan of this year's festival. it's only now, as i spend a day musing and loitering, that i really understand that challenge. i'm pleased to discover that i'm well enough to meet it.
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Phantom: a true story from the blood lab
a day with a triumph is a good day. a day with a triumph before 8am is -- well, i don't actually know what that's called, since this was my first.
i underwent a blood test at 7:50 this morning without quaking or shaking, without psyching myself up or psyching myself out, without fainting, without crying. i didn't talk maniacally to the lab techs. i didn't even feel particularly nervous. it was like being someone else and getting a blood test done: utterly uneventful. i went to the clinic, they took my blood, i went home.
it is not always like this for me. last time i did a fasting blood test, i worked hard at not wigging out. granted, i hardly slept the night before, but on my way to the clinic (i'll walk, i thought, that way my blood will be thrumming) i started to get nervous. then anxious. then downright scared. but also -- and this is the fatal part -- impatient. how can a self-respecting, professional, propertied woman in her forties be afraid of a banal lab test?
the lab tech -- chinh, i think her name was, and it must be said, she was lovely and gentle and did not deserve me -- could tell i was nervous because when she said to make a fist i whimpered. it's the worst moment: they ask me to make a fist, and my muscles turn to water. even so, when chinh asked if i'd rather lie down i played the hero: "no, no, i'll be fine." she gave me another chance: "it's really no problem to put you in the room back here, we do it all the time." "oh, don't be silly," i said to her -- i mean, myself, "it doesn't even last very long! go ahead."
you can see where this is going, right? i thought i was fine, i said i was fine, but i wasn't fine. on my way out of the cubicle, i passed out, taking chinh with me. we crashed into a filing cabinet and i smacked my head on the floor.
even then my overwhelming sense was embarassment rather than endangerment -- god, i thought, i'm lying on the floor of a blood lab! this is hardly the image they want to project to the outside world. i struggled to get up and out of there, but the lab techs were wise to me now and forcibly held me down. new patients tiptoed fearfully around me while i tried to look serene. someone got me a juice box and i tried not to dribble while i sipped, prone on the concrete floor.
i had a lump on my head but of course my pride hurt the most. that, and my tender inner elbow. the rest of that morning i found myself splinting my left arm. i reached across my body to shut the car door with my right. i twisted around to reach a glass from the upper shelf just so i could keep my achy left arm tucked close.
what with all the mortification and hoopla, it wasn't until early afternoon that i realized what was wrong with this picture: they took blood from my right arm, not my left. i pulled up the sleeves of my sweater to check. sure enough, there on my right was the telltale tape. my left arm was clean. and here comes the really trippy part: even as i gazed down at my own two arms, i could feel the left one throbbing, while the right felt whole and strong.
welcome to the psychosomatic.
i underwent a blood test at 7:50 this morning without quaking or shaking, without psyching myself up or psyching myself out, without fainting, without crying. i didn't talk maniacally to the lab techs. i didn't even feel particularly nervous. it was like being someone else and getting a blood test done: utterly uneventful. i went to the clinic, they took my blood, i went home.
it is not always like this for me. last time i did a fasting blood test, i worked hard at not wigging out. granted, i hardly slept the night before, but on my way to the clinic (i'll walk, i thought, that way my blood will be thrumming) i started to get nervous. then anxious. then downright scared. but also -- and this is the fatal part -- impatient. how can a self-respecting, professional, propertied woman in her forties be afraid of a banal lab test?
the lab tech -- chinh, i think her name was, and it must be said, she was lovely and gentle and did not deserve me -- could tell i was nervous because when she said to make a fist i whimpered. it's the worst moment: they ask me to make a fist, and my muscles turn to water. even so, when chinh asked if i'd rather lie down i played the hero: "no, no, i'll be fine." she gave me another chance: "it's really no problem to put you in the room back here, we do it all the time." "oh, don't be silly," i said to her -- i mean, myself, "it doesn't even last very long! go ahead."
you can see where this is going, right? i thought i was fine, i said i was fine, but i wasn't fine. on my way out of the cubicle, i passed out, taking chinh with me. we crashed into a filing cabinet and i smacked my head on the floor.
even then my overwhelming sense was embarassment rather than endangerment -- god, i thought, i'm lying on the floor of a blood lab! this is hardly the image they want to project to the outside world. i struggled to get up and out of there, but the lab techs were wise to me now and forcibly held me down. new patients tiptoed fearfully around me while i tried to look serene. someone got me a juice box and i tried not to dribble while i sipped, prone on the concrete floor.
i had a lump on my head but of course my pride hurt the most. that, and my tender inner elbow. the rest of that morning i found myself splinting my left arm. i reached across my body to shut the car door with my right. i twisted around to reach a glass from the upper shelf just so i could keep my achy left arm tucked close.
what with all the mortification and hoopla, it wasn't until early afternoon that i realized what was wrong with this picture: they took blood from my right arm, not my left. i pulled up the sleeves of my sweater to check. sure enough, there on my right was the telltale tape. my left arm was clean. and here comes the really trippy part: even as i gazed down at my own two arms, i could feel the left one throbbing, while the right felt whole and strong.
welcome to the psychosomatic.
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