It’s for you…

Talking with a friend tonight, he mentioned that he is not one for keeping up with others via the telephone.  He said that he felt a worry of it growing awkward at some point, and I’m guessing he meant due to the lack of things to discuss.  I’ve never really thought of myself as someone who’s a very phone-y person, however, I do consider myself good at keeping in touch with people long-distance, when they are interested in remaining in touch.  Out of curiosity, I checked my phone log for the past eight days (I got tired of clicking on each one, so I stopped after eight days.).  I had two conversations of about half an hour (one with this particular friend), one conversation of about 45 minutes, one conversation of about an hour, and two conversations of about an hour and a half.  That’s just in the past eight days.  There were a few conversations between ten and 15 minutes, but most of them were under five minutes in the total phone log for the eight days.  I’ve never thought much about this, but I suddenly wonder if this is not quite normal.

To be fair, one of the people – she had two of the very long conversations – is a friend from college who now lives in Georgia, and another is my brother who lives in Japan.  So, they’re both long-distance folks in my life.  But it wasn’t like we were ‘catching up’ on things.  She and I were just chatting about whatever, keeping on another company while we accomplished other things, and my brother and I were talking mostly about this book I’m reading, and then a little about taxes and insurance, before returning to the book.  We hardly even mentioned anything relating to ‘catching up’ on what’s going on in life for each of us.  I guess we just don’t have difficulty discussing things fluidly, and so we never reach a point of dryness in the conversation.  Or, as in the case of the friend in Georgia, if we aren’t talking for a bit, it’s because we’re focusing on something else, and so we want the pause in the conversation.  It is in no way an awkward silence, but, rather, a welcomed, desired moment for focus to be elsewhere.  Our goal is to hang out together, and so we do just that… miles and miles apart.  (I looked it up.  It’s about 700 miles by plane, 800 by car.)  My best friend and I would Skype like that, just hanging out together as though we were in the same room as one another, even though we were in different countries.  (We don’t right now, because she’s had to hunker down to finish her PhD, and so we couldn’t have our hanging out distract her from the much-needed focus.)

Maybe I’m just super accustomed to long-distance relationships, beginning with my parents’ having divorced and lived across town from one another from the time I was five.

On the other end, I have one of my best friends living in DC.  We learned from the first time I studied abroad that she is not a great long-distance friend.  Even when I would reach out, she wasn’t great at getting back to me on things or at getting herself on the phone in the first place.  Even today, she’ll stay on the phone for a while if she gets the chance, but the chances don’t come often.  And so, we talk little on the phone, but hang out like mad whenever she’s in town (or I surprise her in DC by just showing up to her office one day).  And, when we did live in the same city, we hung out constantly.  We saw one another probably every couple days, and at least once a week.  She’s a spectacular in-person friend.  And I think that balances out the long-distance aspect, because, even though so much has changed and we have changed so much since we were last together, it is always fabulous when we hang out, and it is always still the wonderful bond of friendship, of “us”, when we are together.  (Cheesy, I know, but it’s totally true.)

Anyway, just some thoughts.  Kind of makes you wonder what kind of phone person you are, huh?  (Or maybe not at all, but whatevs.)  😛

Post-a-day 2018

Atlas Shrugged (and so do I)

Have you ever read it, Atlas Shrugged?  I am listening to the audiobook while driving, and I am finding it oddly wonderful.  Occasionally, I want to jot down sentence after sentence from it, and then just give up the idea, realizing that I might as well just tell people to read the whole book, because there are only five million quotes worth sharing from it.  Obviously, that is exaggerated.  However, I gave up bothering to write down anything from it, because before I can even pause the book to write down what I’d just heard, I’ve already heard something else, something additional, that I now also want to write down.  And that goes on for quite a while, such that I would be pausing the book far too much to be able to stay in the book.  So, I don’t copy any of them down, and I don’t even bother working on remembering them either, there are so many of them.  I just listen and absorb and enjoy and wonder.  I have no idea what this book is about.  I had ideas related to something from the era of Fahrenheit 451 and the other Orwell future-is-a-terrible-place sorts of novels, but I don’t know where I got the idea – I genuinely knew nothing but the title of the book before I began reading it just last week.

But I like it so far.  It has me ever on my toes, and the reader is wonderful with making everything seem important and worth hearing.  I feel like I’m in a spy novel of some sort, but, instead of its being about a murder of some sort, it is about life as a whole, and we are spying on life as a concept, and examining each little piece and evaluating it as though it were unique and brand new to us.  All this with a love of a railroad company taking the driver’s seat, and being good at whatever work one does in the passenger seat.

Post-a-day 2018

reading to…?

I feel this sort of desperation regarding reading still, as though there is something very specific and very important to be gained by reading some undetermined but great number of books, and it is on a sort of time limitation – I must go through them as fast as possible in order to make everything okay.

Because, I guess, everything is not okay right now.

But… what if everything actually is okay right now?

…But, if it is, then what’s with the reading frenzy?

Post-a-day 2018

Bliss on the winds

Walking, walking, I hear the swish-chh, swish-chh of my steps through the ankle-high grass, plants, and flowers.  Taller grass lines my path, and flowers surround me in any direction, waving delicately in the wind, reminding me ever so slightly of bobble heads and those dashboard dancing creatures.  The wind makes a muffled howl over my ears as it whoos around and past me, giving me the perfect balance of cool air and hot sunlight.  My hair whispies whisp around my face like the pitter-patter of raindrops on my face during yesterday’s sprinkles.  Goats bleh at nothing in particular ahead of me, frolicking in the grass and climbing in the trees, occasionally falling out like it’s no big deal.  I see one of the new babies following suit, monkey see, monkey do… for goats…  I want to bottle this up (and take it everywhere with me, so I can pull it out whenever I am sad), runs through my head.  But I know that it would be odd, bottling something that, in itself, expresses freedom, openness, and ease.  You Can’t bottle this – that’s the point.  That’s why it is so special.  That’s why I am here right now.  Because God and the world knew it was perfect for me right now.  And it is perfection.

Grace, followed by gratitude and love.  That is my today.

Post-a-day 2018

Ill

I just don’t understand how I have to be sick still.  It has been almost 14 days that I have been ill with whatever this is.  Sure, I’m loads and loads better than I was at the beginning, or even for the first week.  But it still sucks.  What lesson does the universe want me to learn from this?
Post-a-day 2018

A small, small slice of (my) OCD life

‘Will you open the compost bucket?  I need to put this in there, and I have it all over my hands already.’

Hesitation.  And inward tug of panic.  A sigh.  I walk over, and hold open the bucket, then close it after she has dispensed of the boiled vegetable (from dying eggs).

‘Can I wash my hands?’  She moves over a little, so that I can use the running water to wash my hands (with soap, of course).  The water is hot, but I’d rather get my hands washed than mess with anything else.

I only had to wash my one hand, so I air dry it easily enough, and wipe it on my clothes for good measure, as I walk away from the sink and kitchen.

‘Crap.  Will you just move the whole thing over here?  This is all just going to drip, if I try to move it over there.’

A shudder runs through my insides, and a brief sense of paralysis overcomes me.

‘Oh, come on.  I just cleaned it.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I snap.  ‘I’m still going to wash my hands again.’  And so I walk back over, move the bucket to the sink, where I know she wants it set, but about which I purposely do not think, and I step away again quickly.  She blocks the sink, and asks for more paper towels on the plate.  I can barely breathe, but I carefully pull off two layers of paper towels, without touching anything else but those specific paper towels, and I drop them on the plate.  As I rush away, she fusses that they aren’t placed correctly.  I almost begin to cry, but manage to return and to lay them the way she wants them lain.  Finally, as I can feel the panic and the tears brimming, she moves to the side, and allows me to wash my hands.

I leave immediately afterward, because I don’t want her asking/demanding my help her do anything more.  I need to get somewhere where I can breathe.  Somewhere clean.

The kitchen is a dirty place, and I dislike being in it.  Even thinking of it is a source of anxiety for me, so I do my best to avoid letting it spend any time in my mind.  Now, as I share this, tears caress the edges of my eyelids, and I swallow with difficulty, unintentionally doing my best to breathe as little and as lightly as possible.

But then I remember that I am somewhere clean right now, so it is okay to breathe.  I do breathe, and it is comforting.  I will pause from this for a moment, so that my heart rate can relax some.

…………..

I think my mom just thinks I’m being dramatic, or that I’m making a big deal out of nothing.  I know that, for her, it actually is nothing.  For me, however, while it can be nothing at times, it usually is one of the most overpowering, overwhelming things I have ever experienced.

I saw a Facebook Memories post from last year just recently, of the time I was trapped in the bathroom at school (work).  Well, one of the times, anyway.  I’d said something to the effect of, “When you’re stuck in the bathroom, because your OCD saw her not wash her hands.”  I eventually washed the door handle, then washed my own hands again, and then used toilet paper from the stash on the countertop (there are no paper towels) to open the door.  It took me a while to get to that point, though, because I was mentally battling the situation.

You see, it made no sense that I couldn’t open the door and walk out.  I regularly do so.  I know that most women in Japan tend not to use soap to wash their hands, and many do not even bother with the water at times.  So, whenever I grab the handle to walk out of the bathroom, I can easily assume that it is covered in whatever germs get on people’s hands in the bathroom.  It took me a long time to be able to push the thought enough out of my mind to be able to touch the handle ever, let alone often.  But, I typically succeed in not letting the thought arise, so long as the bathroom is reasonably clean-looking, and so long as I do not actually see someone not wash her hands and then grab the door to leave.

Once the thought has arisen, there is nothing I can do about it (most of the time, anyway).  If it doesn’t occur to me, I am completely fine grabbing that door handle and walking out.  I don’t even need a paper towel, the way plenty of women in the US tend to do.  So long as the thought doesn’t occur to me.  If, in any way, something draws my attention to the possibility of contamination of the door handle, I can not touch it.  Ideally, I stand and wait until someone else opens the door, and I sneak through then.  If, after a while, no one has come or gone, I’ll find a way using paper towel or toilet paper.  However, using toilet paper has its own issues, because the toilet paper comes from inside the bathroom stall, which is where I know hands are not clean, because that’s where they are exposed to the whole dirtiness of the bathroom in the first place.  And, if someone has touched the toilet paper already, well, then, those germs are on that paper.  not to mention if something else splashed onto the toilet paper or the dispenser, and made its way onto the toilet paper.  Plus, I’ll have to touch the stall door in order to get into the stall.  All of these are factors that require me to wash my hands again.

So, I have even gone into the stall I had just used (so the toilet seat is cleaned off still), carefully pulled off a full round of toilet paper, thrown it away or into the toilet, gone and washed my hands again, returned to the stall, pushed it open with my shoe sole, removed fresh toilet paper without interacting in any way with the dispenser itself (and not letting the toilet paper touch it either), backed up out of the stall, used the toilet paper to open the door (without touching any bit of the door, and not even through a single layer of the toilet paper), held the door with my shoe sole (ideally what had held open the stall door, so as to wipe it off), thrown away the toilet paper, and then rushed out the door.  I can’t take the paper with me that held open the door, because that’s too much time for the germs to have been able to travel on the paper that is still in my hands.  I must dispose of it at the bathroom door.

It doesn’t matter that the germs are either there or not, or that I sometimes grab the door handle and sometimes cannot.  No matter how I think it through, no matter how I reason with myself, if I think about it while in the bathroom, I quite likely will be unable to touch the door.  Period.  If I don’t think about it, I’ll grab the door fearlessly, and continue on happily in life.  (Unless, of course, I think about it as I am already opening the door, or have just walked out of the door.  In such a case, I usually’ll have to find a way to wash/sanitize my hand then, sometimes even by returning to the bathroom to do so, because I don’t much like hand sanitizer – it leaves the germs on you, even if they are now dead.)

And now I am going to stop sharing about this for now.  It is exhausting to consider, and it makes my chest tight.  As I mentioned, bringing it to mind is the trouble of it all.  When I don’t think about it, I’m fine and dandy, breathing freely.  So, I want to forget all of this before I next go to the bathroom, because I want to be able to use the bathroom with ease.  However, the fact that I am even considering how I want to forget this and why, that is possibly going to prove troublesome later, because I’ve already made the connection between the two in my head.  Now, when I go to the bathroom, I am likely to think of how I wanted to forget this before I next went there.  This is why I usually do not even allow myself to finish thoughts.  For example, this paragraph normally would have ended at that “And now I am going to stop”, because that would have been enough into the thought process of what I shared afterward.  I’ll share some more about other parts of the OCD stuff another time, though.  Just, I’m finished for now.  🙂

Post-a-day 2018