Mess...

I wish I could have recorded everything that happened today. I wish I could fully explain what went through my head, fully grasp and be able to communicate each interaction. It’s beyond my own comprehension and very difficult to put out there.
During OA meetings I’ve heard people say that they were “high” on food or they “got high” that day on something sweet or salty. I didn’t understand that. I never feel much of anything when I eat but relief from whatever it is that’s bothering me, then guilt when it’s over, when I realize what I just did.
I didn’t give in to food today. I felt myself buzzing around the salon, chatting with my co-workers and clients unaware of myself or my feelings. I swear it’s as if something else takes over my body and instructs it to do my job and be ‘normal’. I have come to realize that I’ve become so adept at hiding my feelings that I don’t know I’m hiding them at times. Professionally this is a skill that I’m proud of. My clients see a consistently bubbly person, never without a smile. Personally, I’m embarrassed. It keeps me from having real relationships with people. I can morph into anything depending on the company I’m with. It’s something I’m just now learning to correct.
There is no caffeine pulsing through my bloodstream but I feel as if I’ve had three large cups of coffee. I can’t sit still. I am talking to a co-worker while simultaneously texting my ‘situation’. The more my phone beeps with a new message the quicker my heart beats, the more elated my head becomes. “Are you high?!” I scream to myself after texting back to him something I don’t want to repeat again. What is the matter with me?! My fingers are flying faster than my brain can keep up with, all the while I’m smiling and laughing with my co-worker, as if nothing is happening. “This must be what it’s like.” I think to myself. “This is what it feels like to be high.” I am reckless with my responses to him, saying exactly what it is that’s going through my head. I’m practically floating, not feeling my feet hit the ground and I like it up here. I am completely detached from reality and it’s fabulous. He asks if he can call me. I feel my legs stand and walk outside after replying yes. I want to hear his voice. I have fifteen minutes before my next client.
I sit outside on the stairs that are up against our building. It’s official. I have lost my damn mind. My legs shake. I can actually see them shaking. I press my knees together and put my left hand on them, trying to calm them down. “Is this what I want?” I think to myself as I hear the ringing on the other end of the phone. “Why am I not calling my sponsor? I’m going on a binge although it’s not with food.”
“Hi!” I answer, my voice is high pitched.
“Hey!”
After a few minutes of ‘how are you’s?’ he says, “You’re not ok are you?”
How did he know?
“Nope.” I reply, wearing a smile bigger then Texas, ‘cause I don’t know what else to do.
“You wanted this to stop remember?” he quietly states.
“Pay attention to nothing I say.”
“I am one big chocolate chip cookie to you.” he tells me.
“I know.” I sigh, not sure of what to say.
“You’re creating all this chaos in your life.” he reminds me.
“Yup.” I sigh again. He’s right. I do this. More than I’d like to admit. It’s the chaos that sparks my writing, and makes me feel something. Even though I’m racing around at the speed of light, never stopping, occasionally getting into trouble, I still find a way to somehow process whatever is in my head better when everything is up in the air. Or maybe that’s what I tell myself.
“So what’s going on? Talk to me.”
I can’t find words. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard already. I’m crazy, trying to find my way through the vast expanse of grief. I explain that I’m so overwhelmed with things I want to do and things I have to do and work that I don’t know where to start or what to do.
He suggests a few things but I’m not looking for him to solve my problems.
“What else can I do for you?” he asks.
“Be here.”
“That I can do.”
It doesn’t change how I feel. Doesn’t help the fact that I still want to rip his clothes off and when I tell him this he agrees with me and says in plain English what he is to me. Not like I didn’t know, it’s just hearing it that pops my crack-enhanced bubble and sends me descending back to Earth with a loud thump, sobering me up, and when I open my eyes, I feel mute.
“I have to go back.” I say when I realize my client is probably inside.
“Ok. It was good to talk to you.”
“Same here.”
We get off the phone and somehow, I make it back inside and start my next client, then the next one, then Catherine comes in. I saw her in March and told her all about Rob. There is something really awesome about Catherine. There’s a coolness about her that immediately makes you want to befriend her, hoping that some of that nonchalant coolness rubs off on you. She’s one of those people you feel safe being completely open with. When she sits in my chair, my ring catches her eye.
“Are you?!” she gasps.
“No.” I smile. “I have so much to tell you.” My hands run through her black hair and I take a deep breath.
“Ok” she nods.
“I was actually going to call you and I’m sorry I didn’t but I knew I’d see you at some point. Um…Rob was killed in a car accident in April.”
“What?! Oh my gosh!”
“Yeah, so it’s been crazy.”
“I’m so sorry! Oh my gosh!” she stands. “Let me give you a hug.”
Please, please, please.
I wrap my arms around her and dissolve, crying into her hair. I want this nightmare to be over with. When I let her go, she’s crying.
“That is the most awful thing I’ve heard. This has been one shitty twelve months. I lost my dad, then my best friend, and now Rob?”
“What?” I knew about her dad but not her best friend.
She explains her friend’s death then I explain Rob’s. Stuff I didn’t know I was capable of talking about at this moment came out. I told her about dad’s phone call, about going to Rob’s apartment, about speaking at his funeral, about the ring I bought, about everything I’ve felt in the past eight weeks. She heard it all, never interrupting, never asking anything, just letting me ramble.
After I got her shampooed I run the comb down the side of her head and exclaim, “I wanted to marry Rob!”
“I know.” she says. “I know I don’t know you very well but you sparkled when you talked about him. It was very “Sound of Music”, like little blue birds should be singing around you.”
The cracks me up. She tells me more details of her father’s death and how she’s been feeling. I’ve lost all concept of time while listening to her describe him, their relationship and how she feels there’s unfinished business and how she wants to go back and fix it. I inhale her words.
“I feel I’ve gotten closer with my step mom. I can’t imagine what it’s like for her.”
I nod.
“She says that 10pm is the hardest time.”
“Why?” I ask.
“That’s when she and my dad would stop what they were doing, turn off the T.V. or whatever, and sit and talk. For fifteen years they did this.”
I’m trying not to cry again, knowing that emptiness. Rob called me every day around 9pm. I stopped looking at the clock so much.
I realize as I finish her that my 6:30 no showed. It’s almost 7. I guess God thought I needed more time with Catherine. I told my friend Jeff I’d squeeze him in tonight. I can’t believe Catherine has been in my chair for an hour and fifteen minutes. It felt like thirty seconds. I don’t want her to go.
“I promise next time I’ll make you laugh.” she smiles.
“Deal.” I hug her hard as she leaves.
I walk to the break room, check my phone and walk back out to see Jeff sitting in a chair in the waiting area. He stands and hugs me.
“How are you?”
“Fucked up!” I exclaim, still sporting my Texas-sized grin.
“Ok…” he looks uneasy.
“Come on over.” We walk to my station and he sits. I’ve been doing Jeff’s hair since I was 21. We’re complete opposites but have still managed to maintain a friendship all this time.
I begin his scalp massage while feeling his eyes on me.
“So?” he raises an eyebrow.
“Yes?”
“What’s up? What’s got you messed up?”
“Oh, you know… Rob died.”
He’s still staring at me.
“Um, I can’t calm down. I haven’t been awful with food but it’s other things I want. I really want to feel close to someone. I miss affection like you wouldn’t believe and I‘m all over the place with that.” I’m not breathing in between sentences. My eyes flood with tears again and I stop moving my hands over his shoulders. I’m trying to speak but if I open my mouth I won’t be able to control my emotion.
“Why don’t you try leaning on God.” he says after a rather pregnant pause.
Yeah. I should. But it’s hard when I can touch my ‘situation‘. He’s tangible. I can look at his face and into his eyes. I can speak to him and hear an immediate response.
We’re silent as he waits for me to say something. I concentrate on my hands resting on his shoulders. I squeeze them, and take a deep breath.
“I know. It’s easier said than done. I don’t know what to do with myself right now. I feel pulled in a million different directions and I don’t know which way to go.”
“What’s got you the most worked up?” he asks.
“Social stuff. I don’t want to be alone by any means but I feel there isn’t enough time in the day or even in the week to squeeze everything and everyone in. Then there’s the things that I want to do, like writing and such, that I’m having a hard time making time for it.”
“You need to think logically. Figure out how to organize things and go at it one task at a time.”
My artistic brain doesn’t do logical.
“Everything will be fine, it’s just insane right now.” I say to him but it’s mostly for my benefit.
“Are you going to be ok to cut my hair?” he asks.
“I knew that was coming!” I laughed.
“I’m just askin’…”
“Yes I can still cut your hair.” I smile and roll my eyes. Ah, this is part of how I’ve become so adept at hiding what‘s really going on in my head at work. Heaven forbid I seem unstable while operating sharp objects. I get him shampooed and start cutting.
“So I’m working on your book and I need you to send me your table of contents.”
“Really?!” I squeal. I asked Jeff a couple of weeks ago if he could help me self publish the book I wrote. I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen or not so this is very welcome news.
“Yeah, or just the order they’re supposed to go in. I’m trying to set up…”
He goes on to explain something I don’t understand and will be sure to have a thousand questions about once he narrows down how he wants to transfer the manuscript onto the self publisher’s format.
“…so just get that to me by Saturday and I’ll be able to work on it while I’m on vacation.”
“You are so awesome.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.” he laughed.
“Yeah but you know so much more than I do and I appreciate you working on this for me.”
I finish up his haircut. It’s after eight I was supposed to meet my sponsor at eight. Dammit.
“There’s no charge.” I take off the cape that was around him.
“No. I told you that you aren’t doing that in exchange for this book thing.” he replied.
“And I said I was! I wouldn’t be able to do it without you.”
“I’m doing it because I want to. Because I want to help you.”
His sweetness is rare and overwhelming in the best way. I’m trying not to cry again. “I’m still not charging you. I didn’t even put you on the book.”
“Ok, but it’s not happening again.”
“Deal.”
When I finish Jeff’s hair I race over to Starbucks to meet my sponsor.
“Sorry I’m late!” I exhale.
“No worries! How are you?”
I shake my head. “Crazy.” I don’t feel the need to cry with her though. I am wide open and know that I could cry if I need to but I don’t. I simply state the events that happened today and the previous weekend. That despite all that madness, I didn’t pick up the food.
“I’m so proud of you!” she exclaims, then offers some tough love, followed with, “One thing I want you to keep in mind. If something screws with your recovery, you need to let it go. Ok? No matter what. Even if it means not hanging out with certain people. You can’t afford to get back into the food.”
I nod.
The conversation moves to her telling me how grateful she is that once she put the food down, she started living a fuller life. Mine is slowly becoming that way and yes, I’m ecstatic. It’s taken so many twists and turns that I’m just trying to hang on at this point, but it does make me very happy to be able to put more energy into creative things.
“Did you know that there are people out there who stare into space and are literally just staring into space?” she pipes up.
“What? Not thinking anything?”
“Nope. Nothing. Can you imagine? I read it somewhere that the majority of people do just that. Stare and not think.”
“Sad for them!” I laugh.
“I know! My mind is going a hundred miles per hour all the time!”
“Me too!”
“I think that’s why a lot of artistic people have issues.”
“I never thought about that!” I laugh.
“Think about it, a lot of artists deal with depression and addiction.”
I think about my industry alone and the heavy drug and alcohol use. I never thought about looping all creative types into that. We both agree that we wouldn’t trade our abilities for anything in the world.
“I narrate my life in my head.” she confesses.
“What?! Me too!!!” I’ve never admitted that to a soul before.
“You too?!” she squeals.
I swear she and I were separated at birth.
“Oh yeah! It’s helped me write!” I laugh.
“I’ve done it forever! Like, since I was little.”
“Me too!”
“Too funny!” she laughs.
I immediately feel better and less weird in her presence. I’ve unleashed all sorts of things on her and she’s heard it all without judgment or an unkind word. As we leave Starbucks another half hour later I feel a million times better.