Recover, Repair, Begin Again…

“I believe we have two lives. The life we learn with, and the life we live with after that.” — Iris, in the movie, “The Natural”

Read the ——- manual…

At 29, you could never accuse me of being wishy-washy or not willing to push the limits.

One sunny afternoon, I took a drive out into the backroads areas of Litchfield. I’d gotten to like that routine as a way to center and think. I had a new car and was trying to get as familiar with it as with my old one. I happened to notice that the fuel gauge hovered at “E.” On my old car, I knew from reading the manual that “E” meant there was about a gallon left and still a fair number of miles to spare. I wondered if this car did the same.

Now, your average person would have just pulled out the new car’s manual to check that, but hey, I just didn’t feel like stopping to read. Instead, with a streak of adventurous spirit, I decided to just do the “experimental” method and find out. Duh.

I ran out of gas. Out in the countryside of Litchfield. In an era of no cell phones. In a time when most gas stations were self-serve, and any kind of “rescue service” was hard to find. When I didn’t have AAA, and the nearest house was a half mile back down the road. So yes. I walked. Thankfully, someone was home, AND was even willing to make a call to a local station that still did repairs.

Suffice it to say that it was the most expensive gallon of gas I ever bought in my life when you added together the inflated cost of that gallon of gas and the service call fee. In any event, I learned that day, never question “E” again. “E” really did mean “empty,” not, “Hey, you better get to a gas station soon.” And next time, read the ——- manual.

But maybe the biggest lesson I needed to learn that day was the one I had been out driving around and thinking about – rules.

Why had I felt the need to push my luck that day in the first place? Why had I resisted reading the manual and instead just “rolled the dice?”

Rules. I had lived by so many my whole life. And they not only didn’t save me, they nearly destroyed me. I was angry and had thrown them all away. But was that serving me well? After all, there is angry, and then there is just stubbornly stupid. This ranked up there with shooting yourself in the foot to get back at the world.

I needed a new relationship with life, period.

A map to see what was?

When I was a kid, I came into possession of a topographic map of our town and the surrounding areas. I was fascinated. Here was something that not only showed you where various things were in relation to each other — north, south, east, and west —but also VERTICALLY!

Each of those rings stacked within each other told me if I was in a valley or on a mountain top, about to fall off a cliff, or amble on a level plain. Just the kind of thing I needed for my life.

I’d like to say I had the presence of mind to do something like this for my life then, but alas, I was still too unaware. I was just trying to stumble my way into new rules. And I would yet have a lot to learn.

But recently, I thought back to that map I had as a kid, and decided to look at my life during that period in a “topographical kind of way. Not just what happened and when, but what effect those events had on me.

What this tells me, what I was unaware of at the time and thus had no empathy for, was just how much damage all that chaos had inflicted on me. I saw the cliff I’d fallen off of when I saw that movie about incest that night in my condo. And just how deep the pit was that I landed in. Not to mention just how steep the walls of that pit were, and how hard it would be to climb back up.

By listing all the forces that pounded me all at once in that 1983-1984 time period, it left me amazed that I ever even tried to come back. And maybe a little less judgmental of that 20-something me. In contrast, looking at it all now, I am flat out amazed at her courage and tenacity. She was doing her best in spite of being a bouncing pinball at that time.

There is a saying that I’ll paraphrase: It’s not how far up you go in life, it’s how far down you had to start from….

New directions:

What I do know is that I came to the decision that I needed to get moving. I didn’t ever want to find myself that far off track again. In fact, I was proud to be simple, and if I couldn’t abide “complex,” that didn’t make me a baby. And…I had every right to be who I was.

I also needed to get back to focusing on my life and where I was going in it. There were some basic rules from the past that maybe were okay to keep. Basic decency. Love. Loyalty. But new things were needed… like boundaries. Never say “anything” again.

Regular life was resuming

As to my friend, we remained so for several years. It would be other things later that would finally break that.

In my outside life, work was getting worse. I had been working in the bacteriology lab now for seven years. I couldn’t do it much longer. That spring, I decided to take a solitary trip to Germany, a place I’d always wanted to visit. And a friend of mine had a brother there in the service that I could meet up with at some point on my travels. I went via a flight to Iceland and Luxembourg, then directly to Germany. I had no particular itinerary other than the one place where I would visit my friend’s brother. I drove around the countryside, saw some World War II sites and cemeteries, and thought.

It was, reflecting on it, a gutsy to just “wing it” on my own. I’d had German in high school, so I had a somewhat basic ability to ask questions at least. And for the most part, everyone spoke English. It was, at times, lonely and a little scary. But for the most part, it was beautiful, a boost to my confidence, and a breath of fresh air.

By the time I returned, I had decided I needed to make a change to my job one way or another. I started checking on pharmaceutical sales jobs. Looking back, I know I was not a good fit for that, but I was trying. And I kept doing my freelance writing, trying to sell articles to magazines.

Finally, a stroke of luck came late that spring — a second shift job opened up in the lab. It meant working all the lab departments — chemistry, blood bank, hematology, etc — and no longer doing the daily grind in microbiology. I applied. When the lab manager asked if I would reconsider and stay in microbiology, I told him I wanted the new position, or I’d quit and work at a burger place. So I got the job. THAT was a major shift for the better. Thank God. The second shift was all about emergencies, and getting back into all the lab areas versus only one. It also meant working with more of the other lab staff. It was a relief and made it possible for me to remain at the hospital job.

In that time period, I also finally resumed my dating service membership, which had been on hold for the last few months. It was a gentle easing back into life, and was working well. I met some very nice men, including one whom I dated for a bit and was able to be intimate with and experience no terror. There were others who were clueless that I didn’t bother with, and felt confident in saying so. I was slowly learning to trust my judgment, even as that quality would still take years to develop. But it was beginning.