the shovel

I decided that it went way back. Particularly when later in the evening, when the whole volanteerism was winding down, my friend changed the arrangements we had earlier that day. All of a sudden he was suggesting that my daughter get a lift with another colleague or with her friend who showed up about an hour after my tantrum. This about face was so startling that my daughter and I had a greater conversation about it. I discussed my tantrum with her, told her what I felt was going on with me and now ...this weird situation. After making me feel somehow in the wrong and telling me things like we are doing this for the project and yadda, yadda, yadda...he was very glib about changing up plans and not taking anyone else into consideration! He did apologise to me later, but it made me feel icky about it! I thought, here we go. I am beholden to another person here! Why are things this way? I had every reason to feel like that because this is the second volantary thing that I am doing when it would feel so much damn better if I were being paid! The spiralling was at the tip of my tongue or gut...I was a ball of trauma waiting to erupt, yet, as he dropped me home, I began to snap out of the sense of discomfort and confusion and then as I was getting into the house my mother made a comment to me that started out so wonderfully...she mentioned when I was in college and told me that she recalled me coming home for a weekend. I was feeling great hearing the recollection and then just like that, she punctured my baloon by saying fifteen, twenty pounds lighter! That stabbed at my heart so hard! I called up my daughter, she had arrived home and everything was good. I knew that she'd be fine, it was just that I do not take things for granted. Then, I got online because the same friend had sent some images to me from the volanteerism and I saw in full color those fifteen to twenty pounds of myself standing from the back and sides! It knocked the wind out of me. My baloon is in my gut and not my head! Lol. I can't do both. I can't feel both mentally and physically poor? That makes me laugh! I am crying and laughing! Today it was just a lot. I felt that my structure, sense of self, my confidence ...whatever makes me feel stable, was being rocked and crumbling. But, I also did not feel that I was somehow being annihialated because of it. Somehow, by gods grace, I intuited that I was also being moved to know something else. When I used the word trauma in connection with the exchange between my colleague/friend and I, I knew that it ran deeper than the moment. It took me back to when I didn't feel in any way in control of my life. I find myself stating many times, if only this or that had worked out...I would be feeling better about what I do next. PART 2