pen

Do you ever notice how different people are in writing than they are in person?  I guess it has to do with a mix of a.) literary skill/training/interest and b.) social skills.

For example... my husband is not especially good in writing.  He is abrupt, to say the least.  One word answers are generally what I expect from texting him, and so I usually only text him to make small requests: Can you get the mail? or to give him information: You have a dentist appointment today at 4:00.  I might even say, I love you and get Love in return, but I know better than to expect a sonnet.

If I met him on an online dating service, I would skip over him very quickly, because I would assume he was a bit of an ape, which in actual fact he is not.  But he doesn't enjoy typing, and he doesn't enjoy putting his thoughts into written form.  He's happy to talk about things, but I don't ask him to write things down.  His social game is high, his written game is low to average.

I think I'm the opposite.  I like putting thoughts into writing because I can rethink them or correct them or delete them.  And it helps me sort myself out.  However, my social game is lame.  It involves a lot of long pauses and sarcasm.  It makes me think of Gavin, who writes very beautiful things, witty things, self-deprecating things; if I met Gavin in an online dating forum I would be highly intrigued by him, but in reality he is a very peculiar man who does not recognize faces, and does not know about things like sharing, or being on time, or making small talk.  I have a lot of empathy for people like Gavin (I think I have some of these shortcomings too) but I would not want to be married to him.
And then there's Rohan, who I always enjoyed in person, but who makes me furious when he writes things because somehow everything he puts down in writing comes off as arrogant and rude and intolerant.  It makes me dislike him, even though I liked him very much when we saw each other regularly.

I wonder which version of yourself is more real, the written version or the in-person version.



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no yoga.

No it's not decompensation; it's a real relapse and I'm not going to yoga today after all.  I was stretching in the living room, trying to psych myself up for yoga, trying to prove to myself that I was fine, when it happened again.  There is a problem again.  Fuck fuck fuck.  It's not really that surprising.  According to the literature, half of people with BPPV relapse in the first five years.

I've already made a physio appointment for tomorrow afternoon.  My guy doesn't work there anymore, but they have a new vestibular therapy person.  I hope she knows what she's doing.  I'm so mad.  But I'm trying to keep breathing.  This is different from last time.  Different because the dizziness is far milder.  And also different because this time I know what it is and there's not the same kind of fear about what might happen or what it is.  I know what it is.  It sucks, but it's liveable.  I'll be fine.  It just fucks up my plans to spend the next month in yoga class.

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BPPV again

The BPPV started in April of 2015, according to the notes I made, which means more than three years ago.  This summer I have returned to Bikram yoga more fully than I ever have since then.  For the first time in three years I have been doing full inversions, and even being able to get through the whole series without really thinking about vertigo at all.

This morning I woke up, sat up, and felt a weird wave of vertigo.  Not like the first time (the first time it was so strong I could not walk and had to cling to Shawn just to get across the room without falling down).  Not like that.  Just a wave, washed over and passed, almost gone before I was able to fully register it had even happened.

It leaves me wondering if it really occurred at all.

But it also scares me.  (Vertigo is a strangely terrifying thing; it doesn't seem like a person would be so afraid of dizziness when it's just a word.  Dizziness doesn't seem that scary until it's happening and you cannot stop it.)

We went on a hike this morning anyway, as we planned.  I scanned the ground the whole time, looking for evidence that I was relapsing.  Couldn't find it.  Except for the fact that when you are hyper-alert looking for it, every sensation feels like it could be something.

I did some Epley maneuvers.  Felt strange.  A little wobbly.  But not like the other time.  The ceiling stayed up and the floor stayed down.

So I'm not really sure what's going on.  Decompensation, perhaps.  But why?

Or if it's actually a relapse, it's far less serious than last time.

Tomorrow I'm going to yoga anyway.  Treat it with indifference, the Winter Prairie doctor told me once.  (He was referring to a virus, but I think it still applies.)

I really really really really hope it's just decompensation, and I can push my stupid little pea-brain to fix it.

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open letters

Dear Mark Zukerberg,

I guess I've already addressed you on the issue of dead people's accounts, but it doesn't seem to stop coming up in new and sort of horrifying ways.  This morning I found I had been "tagged" by a dead friend who wanted me to know that Ray Bans are on sale for a ten percent discount.  In life, he was not the sort of person who would have worn (or promoted) Ray Bans, and even less so in death.  Not only had he tagged me, but also about forty of our other mutual high school friends, and among the list of those tagged, another one was, you guessed it, dead.  She might have worn Ray Bans but I doubt it.  I wonder how many of the people who received notifications about Ray Bans through one of these dead friends or another went out today and bought some?  I wonder how many will?

Stupid social media.  It's all free, and so we haven't any right to complain, not really, not even when ghoulish things like this happen, but I find it jarring when the dead send me messages - through Facebook or any other medium.  I fear it also means I might start to tune out the messages from the dead until I miss a real one.  Mark Zukerberg, it isn't your problem alone to address this.  But I wonder what you can do, if anything.  I know I would appreciate it.

okay

It is hilarious to me that although most of what I write here goes unread, this post perpetually attracts attention from spambots who want to sell my dog prescription drugs without a prescription.  I have stopped deleting their responses because I like them.

Yesterday M posted something about how "junkies" get their naloxone shots for free, but people with allergies have to pay a lot of money for their epipens.  (She blames it on Trudeau.)  I teeter on the brink of saying caustic things, sometimes, but M is in her seventies and I decided to leave her alone.  She sees the world that way, and that's a luxury that maybe she deserves.  I don't know, maybe she does.  Maybe.


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John

John died about three weeks ago.  I didn't really know John, although I considered him a nemesis of sorts.  We were briefly engaged in a battle over the devotion of about twenty-five seventeen year-olds when I was hired to do his job in 2008, while he was recovering from an illness.  Who won that battle is unclear; perhaps it was a draw.  When he did not come back to work, and I kept the job, that was when the tide turned in my favour and that crop of kids graduated and took their I HEART JOHN t-shirts with them.  I was hired because he was sick, and yet I always felt there was some animosity between us as though I had pushed him out.  He kept in touch with the kids while I was teaching them and encouraged them not to connect with me because he would be back soon.  This turned out not to be the case, but his poison was still semi-effective.  There was a group I could never reach.

I only met John once, and he was pleasant enough that day.  He told me he intended to sleep on the floor of our shared office during his spare block.  He told me he was lucky to have the right kind of insurance that allowed him to work part time but be paid full time.  I cannot say he made a good impression on me.  Fortunately he ended up not coming back to work at my school after all, and therefore I never had to step over his sleeping body to get to my books, nor hear anything else about his finances.  He was pleasant enough.  Most of my understanding of him was developed through the words of others: staff members who told me how obnoxious he was to work with, and kids who told me he'd messaged them on Facebook to tell them to tell me what plays he would prefer I not teach.  I had a low key hatred for him that may or may not have been accurately rooted in reality.

Now John has died of a heart attack, which apparently was not a surprise to anyone.  It is interesting to see what people write about him now he is gone.  It is almost as though their words erase the reality of a perfectly imperfect human being, it is almost as though they intentionally choose words that reflect the opposite.

It makes me think about what I would want for myself if I was to die all of a sudden at the age of forty-eight.  I would not want to canonized on social media, nor in person.  As a theatre major, I know my most interesting qualities are my flaws - and I suspect John knew this too.  I would hate for anyone to proclaim me to be "principled" and "devoted" and "adored" when we all know damn well that I'm awesome only until I'm not.

The best funeral I ever went to was for Carol, a secretary from my first school.  Carol was a fiesty old lady who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and sassed everyone who got thinking they were too important.  Her family recognized her for her true self in that service, and told hilarious stories that reflected her comic genius and her true character.  And then they invited us to come up and share our stories too.  I laughed a lot at the funeral and left feeling like I knew her better, and loving her all the more.  That is how I want to be remembered, by people who really know me, and aren't afraid to point out my flaws and laugh at them with me.

Poor John.  He died very young.  I'm not afraid to say he was probably a narcissistic, insecure fuck who was taking advantage of his union.  I wouldn't put it his obituary, nor post it on his Facebook wall, but let's laugh about it here.  And let's also recognize that my information has been filtered through other opinionated people, and my eulogy of John may say more about me and them than it does about him.  Amen.



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