I have never been more hyper-sensitive in my life than in these last six months.

At first I was ashamed of it. All my life, people have told me “You’re so sensitive” and not as an observation. Rather, as a criticism. There’s a lot of shame around that feeling for me. Even so, I’ve worked hard to keep my sensitivity intact, along with its siblings: empathy and curiosity, but I’ve learned how to not let it blindside me. I have an inner colander of sorts. And I am usually pretty good at running things through it before they lodge in me. I use this inner colander a lot when I’m in a city, the sudden onslaught of energy so different from my quiet Montana life. Since the pandemic, I’m having to use this filtering system more than I ever have, and now it’s not on the subway or fighting traffic on the freeway. It’s in my own house. In the tiny ablutions of life. The smallest spider dropping with its silk from the ceiling onto the kitchen counter…has my adrenals responding like I’m being mugged in a dark alley. A mouse running through the room? There’s a screaming woman running for her bedroom in Montana like she’s running for her life. As the months have gone by, it’s gotten worse. This hyper-sensitivity isn’t just flight or fight or freeze. Sometimes it shows up as a very new sort of disorientation.

Maybe this has been happening to you too. I wouldn’t be surprised. I think we’re all in some sort of shell-shock right now. Globally. Here are a few examples. Some of them are actually funny. In a sad sort of way. Maybe they’ll help you know you’re not alone:

I was having a conversation with my twenty-four year old daughter about college kids being back in school and about the likelihood of social distancing and how they could all so easily be sent back home, and about how all of this will affect them later on. And I was about to quote my WWII father, who used to remark on my generation (X) and all of our complacency and apathy and lack of patriotism when we were in our twenties, with this maddening comment…wait…what was it? I couldn’t think of it. It was something that I didn’t understand at the time and still really don’t understand. But with Covid, I keep thinking about his words and wanting their wisdom, and getting glimpses of it. I wanted to share it with her. Maybe we’d understand it together.

And I said a frustrated, “I don’t remember what I don’t understand.”

And we laughed. Because I didn’t mean it the way it came out. So tangled and maybe even metaphysical. I just meant that there was something my father used to say. And I didn’t understand it, until maybe Covid. And I couldn’t remember it just then.

But I don’t remember what I don’t understand is how this whole time in our lives feels to me. I wake up in the morning not knowing why I have this fist in my chest gripping all of my organs like they’re trying to fly out of my ribs, but with a fierce knowing that there are very bad things happening. I make myself try to not remember. And then I do remember. Just like I remember what my father used to say. “Oh yeah. He used to say, ‘What your generation needs…is a good war.’” Well we have one. We just can’t see the enemy.

Another one of these moments of disorientation happened in the laundry room recently. I was digging through a mountain of clean clothes for something I needed in order to get out the door and to the grocery store— because the cupboard is bare. Not even beans and rice. So I’m trying to get up the courage to brave the grocery store. And frankly, I don’t want that courage, because I don’t like going to the grocery store anymore. I thought I’d be able to see people’s smiles in their eyes above their masks, but I can’t. People aren’t really looking at each other anyway, never mind smiling. They’re in and out fast. Grocery store chats used to be one of my favorite small-town ways to connect with people. My kids used to hate that about me. They’d fume, “Mom, why do you have to talk to people? For so long? We’re starving!” So I’d go on my own time. It’s a little locally owned health food store where everyone cares about your gut health and your life health.

And now I just go in, grab a few zucchini and some chicken and maybe some white beans, and whatever else looks good and easy, and stand six feet away from everyone with my mask on and my glasses, which are fogging up so I can’t see anything, and when the nice woman at the counter speaks to me from behind the plastic barrier, behind her sunflower mask…I can’t see if she’s smiling or stressed that she has to be in the public all day trying to breathe with a mask on her face, and I really can’t hear her because my hearing isn’t great and I do a lot of lip reading, I’ve realized. And I know I need to go to the doctor but I don’t think I can bear the waiting room. It’s already scary enough. All that waiting for bad news. Or maybe good news. But these days bad news seems to be what we’ll get.

But I’m not in the grocery store yet. I’m in my laundry room. Looking for something that I need to clothe myself so that I can feed myself and all I can think about is how sad my little happy grocery store is and that I don’t want to go out in the world at all.

And I say, out loud, “I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I find it.”

Another one. These comments are meant to be mundane. But they are so symbolic and maybe even spiritual. I think they mean to be symbolic and spiritual. Need to be. I mean if happiness is an inside job, then it seems like most everything should be, especially during this pandemic. We don’t really have a choice unless we just want to watch Netflix all day. We are inside. We are sitting with ourselves. Whether we like it or not. We might as well try to learn something. (P.S. I was looking for a sock. I didn’t find it.)

To that end, I realized I needed to read a good book. One to help my hyper-sensitivity and my disorientation. I’d heard a lot about one called The Untethered Soul. So I bought it, and every morning I read a chapter before I get out of bed. This morning, I couldn’t find it. I rifled through my stack of books, felt between the mattress and the headboard, and looked under my bed. Nowhere to be found. This book has been a savior. I’ve been relying on its wisdom, underlining and writing all over its margins. And apparently not much has sunk in…

…because these words literally flew out of my mouth: “Where’s my mother f***ing Untethered Soul?!!”

And then I laughed, because how could you not laugh if those words came out of your mouth. Even if they meant to mean one thing, but maybe meant to mean something very different in actuality. One of the passages I have underlined and memorized from this book, is this:

 “You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.”

Just watching. With life being stopped and stretched into this slow solitude, there is so much time to watch. Watching the forest fire smoke stain the sky. Watching the birds leave in V’s and churring flocks. Watching a face on a computer screen look back at a face on a computer screen, not at an actual face. Watching news I can’t take, and then cooking shows that make me hungry but not to cook for just me. Watching myself go out to dinner and remember that you can’t sit at a bar, so I watch myself sit at a table for one, watching people at tables for two, and eventually watching whatever’s on the TV over the bar, like football. I don’t watch football as a rule, but suddenly it’s my only company out in the world. I should have brought The Untethered Soul. But I don’t want to watch myself being symbolic and spiritual and sensitive. I want to watch myself eat excellent Manila clams and sip Sancerre, and chat with the other single diners at the bar. Instead, I’m watching myself eat two bites of my meal and decide to take the rest to-go. This is my true home: watching the movie that is conscious human life. I am not the movie. I know this. I just wish I liked what I am watching. Maybe I’ll see what Yellowstone is all about. At least I’ll be watching horses and Montana. Only the irony is: I have horses and I live in Montana. I watch myself say “no” to invitations to ride. I watch myself allowing that. Sometimes I say “Yes.” It has to do with how I’m feeling. Is it a sensitive day? Almost every day is. I startle so easily and this is new. Along with this disorientation.

I am startling so easily over the tiniest things. As a horse person, I’ve been trained not to startle easily. Startling easily can get you into serious trouble. You startle, the horse startles. And when horses startle, they run away from the danger. Fast. Sometimes they buck along the way. I understand them. They just want to get back home. Where they feel safe. And can watch for predators. Like me.

The other day I was outside, and I saw something in the sky out of the corner of my eye— something that pushed into my vision and psyche, dark and foreboding and fast, and I gasped. Some nefarious intruder? Some otherworldly winged thing?

It was a rain cloud.

I laughed and said,

“Since the pandemic, now apparently clouds can fall on you. And maybe even suffocate you.”

I tried to shake the startle out of me.

It was cold then, and so I decided to make a fire because I haven’t had the heating ducts cleaned yet for winter and refuse to turn on the heat. God knows what’s been living in those ducts all summer. I don’t need hantavirus blowing all over my house. Especially during whatever other viruses might be amuk. I prefer a fire to gas forced air anyway. I like something alive in my living room besides my dog and me— something that casts light and warmth my way. That’s contained and feels economic and that also makes me feel brave for building it. Going out to the woodshed with the wheelbarrow and loading it up. Chopping kindling on the big larch round that’s been there for thirty years. I brought a load into the woodstove hearth, and stacked the logs with kindling and ripped up cardboard like I always do. And then my knuckle hit the top of the woodstove and it burned. But there weren’t any flames yet. It was like my knuckle was pressed against a hot ember that wouldn’t let go, and I realized that I was being stung by a wasp.

I shook my hand and saw it land on the hearth, still alive. Then I struck a match and let the fire burn, left the wasp, and went into the kitchen to find the baking soda to make a poultice. It stung and I felt very violated by that wasp. Is there a wasp nest in the chimney now? I want all of these uninvited visitors out of my home. Normally, I think these displaced creatures are sort of sweet and brave. I would never kill a spider. I’ve killed mice. They eat my electrical wires. I don’t have the heart to kill anything now. I’ll live in the dark. But I won’t be cold. Even if I get stung by wasps when I’m making a fire.

That’s the thing. It feels like nothing is safe.

One morning last week, I woke up to smoke in the sky. The smoke from the current heartbreaking western inferno finally hit Montana. We’ve been lucky this summer in the Flathead Valley. But there’s lightning in the forecast. I’ve wondered what I would take if I had to evacuate, like so many in the West have had to do in the last months. I can’t think of one thing. One thing becomes boxes of things, and there wouldn’t be time for boxes of things, and passports and birth certificates can be replaced. My grandmother’s piano, and all of my memories cannot. I think I would just grab the dogs and run for our lives. Leave it all behind. My house is my safety. I can’t bear to think of losing it.

So I go the other way.

I stay in bed and realize that my sheets are old and pilly and have holes in them, and some of the pillows don’t even have cases. And suddenly I find myself online buying high thread count percale pillowcases from Italy. I never splurge on things like that. Maybe a trip somewhere or a nice dinner. Experiences. But not really things. The pillowcases come in the mail a few days later, and I wash them, and dry them, and put them on my old sad limp pillows. I rest my head on them and I feel safe. But then it’s more than that. It’s that I feel luxurious. Like I’ve gone somewhere I’ve saved for and planned for and am finally there. Only it’s just my bed. Where I am every day. No long commute. No peopled place, exotic or not. And I think, Well it’s something. So I buy the matching duvet cover and sheets. Even though they are on sale, they are all out of my Covid budget. I’ve never had nice sheets anyway. Not like this.

And I say, aloud, “Why are you buying these?” And then I say, “I don’t know. I’m just lonely.”

Part of me feels like ending this essay there. With that last line. “I don’t know. I’m just lonely.” Because I know you feel it too. Even if you aren’t living alone. Even if you have a house full of people. The loneliness from not being able to connect with the world in person, is causing adrenal burnout. Mis-firing neurons. I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on with not just me, but so many of us. I’m disoriented. I’m feeling everything and all at the same frequency. And I know: I can’t feel the whole world. I would live in a constant anxiety attack. I just need to feel myself. But it helps me to know that behind the feelings, there is the watching. The knowing that I don’t have to be or become any of this. I can be and become instead, the observer of it.

“You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.”

I’m just glad that I have really great linens on my bed for now.

yours,

Laura

My next So Now What Workshop is

Sunday, October 25th, 10:00-3:00 MST

Using the powerful tool that is the written word…

We will spend the day digging deeply into:

What you want to let go of
What you want to embrace
What you want to dream alive

You do NOT have to be a writer to come

You DO need to want to find the answer to this question: So Now What

You can be very private and introspective, as it’s not a highly interactive workshop

All you need is a pen and some paper and an open heart. I will guide you through every minute of it!

The time flies by and you come out feeling new, with direction, energy, focus, hope!

For more information and to register, click here.