Denying feeling and sensory states

 September 14, 2020

 

I spent a considerable amount of time last week denying how badly the vertigo that hit me Wednesday was debilitating me. It was bad enough that August, where I had been caught up with handling bank stuff in Bombay, had felt so unproductive. I wanted, I needed to feel it was behind me and that I could move forward. 

 

And in a small way I had done that. The circular days of August had given way to the zigzag of October. Not quite forward movement but a zagging towards making some choices about the next months, actually finishing reading a book of short stories, thinking of changing my days to include outings -- bus rides and leisurely teas -- where I could soak in some sensory inputs from the outsides and dream into the lives of the girls having an animated conversation on the table next me, or translate a conflict from my own life into a tale others might identify with. 

 

But then the sinus flared up and soon full-blown vertigo descended on my head, spinning me, spinning me round and round, and I couldn’t bear it. Not after the August I had just lived through. I needed stable grounding and a mind that could focus. So, I tried desperately to just close my eyes and imagine it gone. I even forced myself to write a vapid blog post on Friday that I cringe when I look at today.

 

I had a conversation with a friend this weekend. It had a familiar ring to it, at least part of it did. He had become aware of how he was losing his positivity and how that made him cynical. He wanted it back as he identified more with the parts of him that felt life was a precious gift. I listened to him explain his process, the videos he had watched or the passages he had read that helped him find his way back to positivity. After, I tried to share my own states and struggles but found a door closing each time. So, when he said he would read something from a book to me I said nope. I said I felt he wasn’t listening to me, that he wasn’t interested in what I had been up to over the two weeks we hadn’t been in touch. He admitted it was true. He felt my despair about what was going on in India was too heavy for him, it pulled him back, away from the positive, and he didn’t want to hear it. He said though he felt sad about how bad things were he also knew that there was nothing he could do to help and so wanted to shut it out. I said when he shut the door on that about me, I shut more of myself from him and withdrew. I said though I didn’t quite believe in his ways of coping, or his belief systems I was interested in his authentic search for himself through them. I needed to feel he was interested in me. 

 

Of course, the conversation got very real and things shifted, and we spoke and heard at a different level. This was an old conflict between us, one that had created much distance between us before. I think perhaps we handled it differently this time, but I also wonder what it means about the friendship. It feels it limits it when one person cannot bear to share the burdens the other is feeling. I don’t know where things will go after. 

 

But beyond the relationship questions, I also wonder about how one gets back one’s positivity? It feels too forced to me. But perhaps I don’t understand it so stuck I am on my side of this river – believing that negative and positive are both part of the whole and forsaking one would diminish life and just make me feel worse. If I am despairing or in pain that is where I am. 

 

I mean trying to deny the unpleasant spinning of vertigo in the hope that it would go away didn’t work for me – it just made me more miserable. Perhaps it’s not a good analogy. Vertigo is largely an out of control process while choosing to be positive is in one’s control. I don’t really know why I value sadness or heaviness, but I feel that allowing it to exist is what helps me deepen my soul and be compassionate to others. I wonder sometimes why my friend does not feel that as I suppose he wonders why I choose not to be more positive. 

 

Today I am accepting that I will not be productive or creative or even useful practically till the vertigo passes. There is anxiety about when that might be but also curiosity about what happens.