Life’s weird.
I’m standing outside in the, for this newly spring-awakened Swedish gremlin, blinding sun. Whisps of wind sweeping between the houses, passing by and ruffling my cardigan layers, because I refuse to wear a jacket. Layers are needed because the weather has a tendency to fall between sunny and sveltering (everything’s relative okay), or cloudy and freezing and the two are often separated by mere seconds for the entirety of April and May.
Below me a steady sound, something like shchnorfrnnnmmpffff. The creature making the sound is my pug. My kind, dense pile of mashed potatoes that shadows me all my waking hours. What is displayed for me right now is a furry, busy butt with its cinnamon bun of a tail, wiggling as he’s deeply inhaling some scent that tickles his fancy. He turns to look at me, his little jaw vibrating from the hormonal load of the scent. There’s likely a female dog somewhere around these parts and she’s leaving post-it notes for everyone passing by these notice boards.
The social media of dogs.
I just calmly meet his gaze until he turns around again after establishing I’m not going anywhere and there’s absolutely nothing demanding his attention elsewhere, resuming his intense sniffling in a particular tuft of grass. I’ve been standing here for five minutes, I can stand here for five more if that’s what he wishes. By now we’re six years into walking, or more suiting – loitering, on walks with this more decorative than sporty piece of canine delight. We’re far into the abandonment of all hope that dog walks will raise even a smidge of a pulse, except for his when the Dog Billboard posts a female in heat.
While I’ve been standing here keeping enough track of my potato to make sure he’s not eating something weird, I have let the other amount of my available thoughts wander, and I find myself just… chillin.
No particularly measurable amount of anxiety, no stressing over either important or dumb shit, just standing around and being.
While that sounds like an entirely reasonable way of experiencing standing around outside the house of an unfortunate person that has the most popular dog-sniffing place in this entire neighborhood, for me that feeling is so odd and so unusual at this time that it strikes me.
I mean it’s nice, it’s something that I worked hard for, not entirely willingly. The universe has its way of forcing me into a corner so that I do what I need to do for my health or soul, because I’ve been stubbornly trying to survive in a way that isn’t right for me. After 40 years, those patterns are complicated to break.
But now I’m just here, halfway into a budding magnolia tree with a schnorf on a leash, just hanging out.
I remember when I was some kind of mid-teen and had my first day, in years, not feeling really depressed. It almost frightened me then. I just walked around the makeup store in our local mall, looking at the same makeup that I’ve seen time and time again, but everything just felt so neutral. Just… like, being. It took a good while for me to recognise that the weird feeling stemmed from the lack of depression and that crushing weight of hopelessness and it weirded me out.
Life has had its ups and downs since then. Today I don’t feel unsettled by the feeling of just chilling, it’s more like an reminder of something I experienced more often in my 20’s and that was much more of a distant memory in my 30’s. Being six months into being 40, maybe it’s time for a new era, ya know?
Maybe I’ve just taken a five percent step closer to calm and a more healthy way of existing in this world, but for me it may be the most important five percents ever. Having a day of stillness here and there feels weird, and good.
Don’t get me wrong, the little catastrophe goblin on the inside does inform me that “oh no, now we have MORE TO LOSE AND WE WILL!”; surely none of my ills has gone away.
But today it kind of just settles in a little box that I can shuffle to the back instead of letting it spill onto my entire day, not splattering all over my thoughts. Nice!
The last decade of my life has been a journey with twists and turns, and I have learned so very much, but I’ve also gotten wounded and carry the sore scars, not being able to really heal them. The soreness has been sneaking up on me, and it’s taken a while for me to catch how bad it’s actually gotten.
The reason has been known for me for just two years. Like so many people out there I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to integrate my nervous system with what the society seems to value and expect, demand. It has led me further down the anxiety and hopelessness funnel, just like it has with so many other neurodivergent people out there.
But along with my wounds, now I carry answers that I didn’t have two years ago.
And I do find myself just chillin’, halfway into a magnolia tree. Progress.
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