Sunday, December 4, 2016

Blissed Out/Hellish Panic--"Thank You Ashley Madison" excerpt

    Wednesday, November 28

     I had a Kabbalah class this morning. Somewhere to go and get spiritual support. I felt relieved and hopped in the shower. It occurred to me that JB could possibly move into his sister Roz’s apartment. Roz was divorced and broke. I got dressed and, as usual, JB was at the computer.
     “Why don’t you call Roz and see if she wouldn’t mind having a roommate?” I asked.
     JB stared at me blankly. He furrowed his brow. He stiffened. “Oh! You mean me?”
     “Yeah, I mean you,” I chuckled. “I mean you living with her.”
     “Shit!” JB gasped and stared at his feet.
     “Call her. Bye.”
     I walked downstairs, hugged Tom, who was eating a bowl of cereal, kissed him, and left JB to take him to school.
     Kabbalah class was on the ego and the soul and figuring out which one I’m operating from. If I’m in the moment, excited, and passionate about what I’m doing, I’m operating from the soul. If I’m worried, anxious, fearful, doubtful, or angry, that’s my ego. So if I’m rehashing the past and getting twisted up about the future: ego. If I’m stuck in thinking loops about the same old crap: ego. I was advised to laugh at myself and pull myself back into the present and not beat myself up. Beating myself up is ego, too. I’m well practiced at beating myself up and all the other ego stuff.
     I drove away feeling happy. I was excited to start my new life. The sun was shining and the world looked beautiful. I was in the flow. Then I started worrying. Would we sell the house? How would I make money? I’d been a full-time mom for twenty-one years. I taught yoga and wrote part-time. Fear gripped me. I began to panic. I reminded myself I was in ego and brought myself back to the beautiful woods I was driving through. My phone rang. It was Nicole. I let her go to voicemail. Nicole had left many messages knowing I was going to pick her up from the hospital after my class. I’d visited her Monday and had to wear a Hazmat suit so I wouldn't catch her intestinal infection. Nicole had pulled a curtain around her bed several times and shat in a portable toilet.
     The drive to the hospital was an hour long and I swung on an emotional pendulum the whole way. I felt blissed out then hellish panic. I pulled in front of the hospital and Nicole was waiting at the door.  Apparently her nearby, drug-addict, alcoholic friends could’t bother getting her. She gingerly hobbled to my car.
     “Will you drive me to Walmart so I can get a prescription?” she drawled. She was pouring on her sympathy-seeking false hillbilly accent. “I don’t have money. I could pay you back. I could . . .”
     “I’ll take you to Walmart,” I said. “Forget about the money.”
     We waited at the pharmacy for Nicole’s prescription. Nicole rested against a wall periodically sucking in her cheeks and rolling her eyes and steadying herself and glancing at me to see if I was watching. A fat, bald, toothless guy limped toward me.

     “You single?” he asked me. “You live around here?”
     “No and no,” I said grabbing a magazine and pretending to read.

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