Leaking

Sometimes I lose focus on my deadlines, but I always find my way back.

My Higher Power sure does have a sense of humor. Amongst other things, I have been stressed these past few days about not having an essay for my April publication on Substack. I know, first world problems. I have gotten as far as I have in my arts and writing by setting goals and keeping them. I took a month off after the release of my memoir, Self-portraits, last summer and didn’t write a word for four months. To be fair, I stayed busy producing my album, so I digress. When I started my monthly essay back up in January though, I set the intention of consistency and that is still where I stand.

In last night’s Recovery Dharma (RD) meeting, I expressed my challenges with caregiving for the first time. I talk openly in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) about my struggles both with caring for an elderly lady and the difficult personality that she comes with. Having started Recovery Dharma a few months ago with a clean slate, I didn’t want to come off as whiny. Sometimes I feel like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls in the sense that she can’t stop talking about Regina George. I can’t stop talking about Grandma.

On Monday night, when I was at my home group AA meeting, Grandma fell. She was sweeping the floor on the small linoleum patch near the back door, lost her footing, and crashed onto the singular step in our whole house. She picked herself up and called my aunt to come over. My aunt stayed until I arrived home later that night and debriefed me. Grandma was pretty sore the next day, but for being a couple weeks shy of 95, she took it incredibly well.

As I fought my desire to not share my struggles with caregiving at my RD meeting, the conclusion that I came to was that none of my other problems make sense without the context of being Grandma’s caregiver. All of my current issues, in one way or another, root back to my home life. I do all this spiritual and emotional healing in these recovery groups and then I come back home and step into Grandma’s world. I have tried countless times to bring lessons from my meetings back to her, but she gets so angry about… well, everything. Maybe I would be the same way if I was 94 and couldn’t hear, see, or tell my body what to do. But honestly, I don’t think so.

After the RD meeting, several people approached me with advice, suggestions, and relatable stories. Most of them, in one way or another, suggested that I cut some time out for myself in the week to follow. That stuck with me through the night.

Knowing that my aunt fully intended to spend the following day with Grandma, I booked myself a morning yoga class on ClassPass. It is much different from the yoga I am studying; I call these classes Lulu Lemon Yoga. Loud upbeat music. Weights. Heated room. A shouting instructor. Brand name yoga mats. Matching sports bras and legging shorts. I say this as an observation, not a judgement. I enjoy that type of class, but I do struggle a little bit to call it yoga. It does wonders for my physique, but very little for my spiritual wellness. In fact, this class was the first workout I have done in a week due to my eye surgery, so I rested more times than I ever have. I left the class feeling more defeated than energized. 

After “yoga,” I drove to Santa Cruz so that I could meditate on the beach and then work on my sequencing assignment to wrap up my yoga teaching training. I thought after surviving that class, I deserved a nice calming flow on the beach. The drive was quick but my brakes were sounding really bad and that gave me a few waves of anxiety as I drove over the mountains. When I parked the car, I walked around to the passenger side to grab my tote bag and noticed a flow of liquid coming out from under the car. I closed my eyes and let out a big sigh. This wasn’t on my agenda for the day. I pulled a paper towel out of my pocket and dipped it in the clear liquid so I could smell it. Odorless.

Water. I think.

As I walked toward the beach, I passed a small town museum and saw a whole elementary class climbing and playing on a life-size whale sculpture. The sight of them reactivated my rumination about working. I have been trying to decrease my social media screen time and in true addict form, I have replaced it with job searches on Indeed and LinkedIn. I am very close to finishing my yoga studies, but my experience is all in teaching kids. It’s familiar. But also exhausting. Teaching sounds overwhelming right now because any job I get will be in addition to my duties for Grandma.

Truth or dare? Truth.

Sometimes I hide behind my Grandma's responsibilities. If you read the last essay in my book, Self-portraits, you know that I have my struggles with depression, suicidal ideation, and Hypomania. The specific diagnosis was left undetermined after my therapist convinced me to focus on the symptoms, not the diagnosis. Bipolar and Schizophrenia are both in my bloodline and - at one point or another - have both been on my own patient chart. Currently neither are. I haven’t had any psychotic symptoms in a year and a half. Guess what else I haven’t had in a year and a half? A job. Even though my last job was my favorite job I ever had, it was still a job with stress, rules, guidelines, restrictions, and stimulation. I am afraid that getting back into the workforce will bring me back to that headspace. That’s exactly why I started the yoga teacher training. I thought if I make my job the thing that de-stresses me, I’d cook two pizzas in one oven. I’d still be in the front of a room, exposed and vulnerable, but maybe teaching adults would be different than teaching kids.

The beach was cold and the wind was powerful. The tide was high and there was an unfamiliar lagoon across the part of the beach where people usually sit. It must have leaked over from the ocean overnight. I walked to the end of the beach to go around the lagoon instead of going through it. It was quite cold and I was wearing jeans. As I walked, my anxiety about the car leak grew. A few weeks ago, when my sister was in town, she had pointed out how bad my brakes sounded. I thought nothing of it because they had sounded bad for a long time and I had brought the car in for other various repairs a few times in the last half year. Wouldn’t they mention that my brakes were bad? Or would they? When I go to the doctor for my chest pain, they don’t check my hips. Maybe my brakes were stripping away below my nose and I had no idea.

After some struggle from the wind, I finally laid my blanket down on the sand and tossed my bag on one corner to hold it down, my Birks and water bottle on another for balance. I sat in Sukhasana and began taking long breaths to set the tone. Fears and questions about the car raced through my mind, almost as fast as the small pieces of sand hit my face from the violent ocean wind coming from every direction. Annoyed, I opened my eyes. To my surprise there were three adults and a dog standing within arms reach directly in front of me. We had the entire beach, and that is where they chose to stop and take a selfie. Bizarre.

I picked up my phone and typed “clear liquid leaking from my car” in the search engine. Many of the headlines said it was probably water from the air conditioner condensation on a hot day. I wanted to believe that, but it wasn’t hot, and I couldn’t even be sure that the air conditioner was on. It didn’t work for half a year so I got used to not using it before I bought a new one. One headline suggested that maybe it was brake fluid. My heart skipped a beat. The article said if there was any possibility of it being brake fluid, absolutely do not drive the car. I had a vision of my car flying off Highway 17, Thelma & Louise style. I packed up my bag and stomped my way back to the car.

When I got back to my car, I lowered my head between the car and the curb to look underneath. The puddle was bigger, but it was not actively dripping. I called the nearest mechanic. He was too busy to see me so he gave me another number. That mechanic was too busy to see me, so he gave me another number. That mechanic didn’t answer, but he was only a mile and a half away, so I drove to him. He was too busy to see me, so he gave me another address. The fourth shop took her in. He said he would call me in a few hours. I left my keys with the stranger and stepped outside the auto body shop door with my tote bag on one shoulder and my water bottle in the opposite hand.

Though I was only a couple miles from the beach, the weather was incredibly different. I stripped off my ex-boyfriend’s heavy denim jacket as I walked through the neighborhoods. It had been a while since I walked through the town part of Santa Cruz. There were some new buildings that were boring and sleek like what I see upward along the Bay, but the majority of it seemed weathered.

Now what?

The buildings blocked the wind and the sun was becoming so powerful that I was uncomfortable. I was growing annoyed with the way the day was panning out. I had dressed for colder weather and felt unprepared to spend the day without my car. As I walked by a music studio, I debated stepping inside. Music is still my biggest passion, but I swore off from making a new song until I finish the yoga studies, yet I am having a hard time staying focused on those because of my deadlines for writing. And I have an upcoming painting exhibit that I am working on in between. People often tell me how they admire my many different creative outlets. I am grateful for them, but sometimes it is a challenge to switch between them. Maybe that’s not all that strange.

Grandma finally agreed to kick me a few hundred dollars every month. It’s hardly helping my future self buy a house, but I am grateful that I can buy groceries and gas. And car repairs. I do need to get a job though. What do I want to do? Aren’t I already doing it? I write often. I paint or work on some type of art nearly every day. I do yoga daily. I am doing the things I want to do; I am just not getting paid for any of it.

I saw a sign on the side of a building that said “Bhakti” in bright orange. I slowed for a few steps to see if there was any indication of what the building was for. I was getting total yoga vibes. Maybe I could take another class or maybe they were looking for new, inexperienced yoga teachers. I walked along a driveway that was old and overgrown with weeds through the cracks in the aged asphalt. The building was pushed way toward the back, near a slope that descended below ground level. I walked up to the front door and saw a sign:

Business hours - Wednesday 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

That’s it. Two hours, one day. They are probably not hiring.

I turned around and looked at the building sitting directly across from Bhakti. It was a big abandoned house. The windows and doors were boarded up. Some graffiti. Overgrown weeds, plants, and succulents. I looked up at the large tree the hung over the old building. She was inviting. I unfolded the heavy denim jacket, tossed it on the cracked asphalt, dropped my tote bag to the floor, kicked off my Birks, and sat down. I took my sweater off to use as a pillow. It wasn’t exactly the beach, but it did seem like my Higher Power found me a good spot to sit down and write.

Before I pulled out my notebook, I took a few moments to meditate. I closed my eyes - the right was still bothering me from the surgery recovery. Memories of being way too high in Santa Cruz flooded my headspace. A lot of the memories were positive. Some places just remind me of the good ol’ days. It’s not that I want to go back to that lifestyle, but I am grateful I experienced it when I did.

“Okay, Matty, let’s do this,” I whispered aloud to close my meditation and then opened my notebook.

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