Field Note: I’m Not Doing It Right

Field Note: I’m Not Doing It Right

I’m not doing it right.

And that’s perfectly fine.

I’m waffling with my weight and my habits. My pours are too heavy. I still don’t open up easily to people. Interactions can cause anxiety. I feel beware when people talk to me or start asking questions. Sometimes just having someone enter my space causes a large portion of my nervous system to stand at attention.

Beware.

I tried opening up to friendships, but there hasn’t been reciprocal follow-through.

But it counts that I did it.

Life is life-ing all around me.

And I’ll go biking. I’ll go swimming. Walk the dog. I’ll listen to Khruangbin and Leon Bridges. I’ll lift weights to “Good Luck, Babe!” and “Cinderella.”

I’ll lose some weight, and then I’ll notice the skin, the shadows, the shallows of less elasticity. I’ll feel the stiffness and the little hurts that stay longer than they used to.

It’s never been easy or heavily rewarding. But the cost is getting higher, and the investment of energy is being challenged.

I got gray in weird ways—not all over my head, just peppery in a few places—so I dyed it ash brown, then espresso.

Better.

Less shine and softness than years ago, maybe, but I add some shine back in.

Better.

I can’t seem to make a hair appointment. One hairdresser didn’t get back to me. Another didn’t answer the phone. Another has a website that won’t load.

Fine.

I’ll take that as a sign: not now.

If it don’t fit, don’t force it.

Right now, afternoon swims are working.

Morning bike rides are working.

Ten-pound weights are working.

The budget is doable.

The car will get its maintenance.

The dental work is paid off. Again.

Those fillings I got at fifteen lasted a long damn time. Dr. Rosenblume did the best he could after I hadn’t seen him from about twelve to fifteen.

I don’t remember exactly why or how that happened.

Dad had largely left.

Mom was drinking a lot.

And now I am older, looking back at the woman she was around this age.

I am more than she was then.

That is uncomfortable to acknowledge, but I think it is true.

She is largely my warning.

The wine belly.

The lack of outside interests.

The lack of living.

Laundry. Soap operas. Late-night television.

Conflict. Anxiety. Fighting.

Not much else.

And I don’t want that.

Which brings me to Labor Day.

There will be banners and bunting and grilling and chilling and images of workers with muscles and sweat on their brows.

That labor is real.

Union labor is real.

Physical labor is real.

Paid labor is real.

But I am privately declaring another kind of Labor Day for myself.

An unofficial one.

For all the work that won’t be counted.

The labor of recovering.

The labor of developing.

The labor of family.

The labor of work.

The labor of trying to become a person with boundaries after spending years without them.

The labor of raising children while trying not to hand them the injuries that were handed to me.

The labor of figuring out money without shame and anxiety.

The labor of paying bills and fixing cars and making dental appointments and keeping up with maintenance.

The labor of getting seriously hurt at work and then having the injury made worse by a bad supervisor and a gang of untrained, stressed, delusional loyalists.

I think I have finally seen evil.

Not as a person.

Not as a coordinated crew of bullies.

As a psychological shadow—the thing a community can harbor that makes us doubt ourselves, turn against each other, or harm ourselves. Some people carry more of that shadow than others. Some seem to keep it close at hand, ready to use against anyone more vulnerable.

I understand now why The Dark Crystal showed the Skeksis without their robes: those bony, decimated bodies beneath all the ceremony, uniforms, and performance.

Creatures sucking the life out of others.

Killing for sport.

Feeding on what they could take.

Mmmmm.

That is the dark side.

Better boundaries would have told me to walk away in the first two weeks.

Assholes.

I endured three years.

Waste of time.

The labor of trying to understand what happened.

The labor of rebuilding confidence after someone worked to diminish it.

The labor of getting up and reporting for life anyway.

There is so much work I have done that would never be recognized as work.

If I brought some of it up, it could be minimized.

It’s a list of you should have been better.

Seen as self-centered.

Overthinking.

Dwelling.

Being dramatic.

Being difficult.

But recovery is work.

Restraint is work.

Learning not to react is work.

Learning when to leave is work.

Learning what not to carry is work.

Building a life after confusion is work.

Sometimes the product of all that labor is nothing anyone else can see.

It is simply:

I did not become my mother.

I paid the dentist.

I made the surgical appointment without delaying.

I maintained the car.

I kept the children fed.

I rode the bike.

I lifted the weights.

I went swimming.

I survived another workplace.

I stopped calling people who hurt me.

I learned how to say no.

I learned how to stay.

I learned how to leave.

I put shine in my hair.

I listened to music.

I noticed what was working.

I changed what wasn’t.

I let people go who were not what I wanted them to be.

I’ve always kept going.

So maybe I am not doing it right.

Maybe there isn’t even a right way to do this.

I can definitely be sneered at and minimized. I’ve lived among communities of people who do that as part of their identity performance.

More than once in a lifetime.

Enough of that.

But on this Labor Day, while the official celebration belongs to the workers whose history earned it, I am privately raising a glass—shallow pour—to all the labor no one saw.

All the things I carried without a title.

All the years spent recovering while still reporting for life.

All the letting go of what wasn’t mine.

I’m not doing it right.

I’m doing it alive.

The osprey is a lesson.

They return after disappearing.

Again and again.

A nest is destroyed. They rebuild.

Again and again.

A mate is lost. They find another.

Again and again.

They seize a fish. They lose a fish.

Again and again.

Someone shoots one for sport.

Still, they return.

They are surviving.

Imperfectly.

It is not a pristine existence.

It is perseverance in the face of all the unacknowledged adversity.