I walked across the strip of grass on the side of the repair shop cursing that I can’t seem to catch a fucking break. Really, this is how 2022 starts?
Not more than three or four miles into my morning commute, the car nearly stalled out in the middle of an intersection approaching the highway. I pulled across the other lane with my hazards on as the car sputtered and slowed. It never stopped running, but the engine light was flashing and so was the vehicle stability control light (or whatever it’s called). I hung a u-turn and pulled into the Home Depot parking lot – figuring if I needed a tow, it would be easier from there. The car continued to run and sputter. The window fogged up because I was panting and nervous. I weighed my options: chance it and drive the two miles back to the repair shop near my house, or call a tow. I decided to chance it.
In low gear, the car was ok, but it wouldn’t go above 40 mph and it sputtered every time I stopped. I stopped a lot, because as I’ve written elsewhere, traffic lights and timing are not my friends. I hit nearly every red light in those two miles… which made me hate the fact that I live off of a stupid 4-lane road with a gazillion fast food restaurants and strip malls and traffic lights. Each time I stopped, the car shuddered a little more and I got more impatient and panicked. “Why won’t this light turn green… there’s nobody coming the other way… gaaaah!” I’m pretty sure I waved my arms at the light or the intersection or the stupid dashboard lit up and flashing like an underground bunker from which some nukes were about to be launched. At the shop, I wanted to unload on the mechanic. I didn’t. He’s a nice guy and doesn’t deserve that, but I just spent three grand there fixing a gasket and a water pump in the hopes of getting another year out of the car. Last time I was there – literally less than a month ago, we joked that hopefully we don’t see each other too soon in the New Year. As I left the shop this morning, silently cursing, I was ready to quit – everything.
It’s another gray day here – I don’t think the sun has been out for at least three or four days. Everything is wet and soggy and partially frozen. The winds came in last night and the temperatures dropped. I woke up later than I wanted to, but was still tired and not ready to function. In the cold and dark, I sat at the breakfast table in front of my computer wanting, in the worst way, to go back to bed. I started to write about it – being up early, wanting the warmth of sleep, and how exhausting the cold and dark and not sleeping can be.
I tried to imagine that type of exhaustion being the reason for a divorce. The wife can’t stand her husband’s sleep patterns and how they disrupt hers. She’s exhausted – to the point where it almost hurts… like a hunger, but worse. I imagined how, after he had left for work one morning, she sat on the sofa looking at all of the things they had accumulated over their life together and told herself, first in a small voice, I can’t do this anymore. She had heard this voice before, but as she sat there with her coffee looking at the pictures and furniture, she could no longer recognize that this was her life. She hates the color of the walls. She hates that the closets are too small and that there isn’t enough counter space in the kitchen. The toilet handle jiggles. Their friends are never around. She’s worried about cancer and she’s sure her main client at work is going to leave. She’s so tired. She hates that she never feels rested. All she wants is some peace. She wants to go back to sleep, but anger has set in. I can’t do this anymore. The voice grows stronger, the statement becomes fact – as if it were already a part of their history – as though she left months ago.
Because I was tired this morning as I wrote, I tried to imagine a person feeling so tired, after years of feeling tired, that they just give up. As I wrote the scene out, I was thinking about how the fight she was sure to have later would be about so much more than not sleeping. I thought about how most of our fights with the people we care about begin in silence, sometimes days or weeks before they ever actually occur. Resentment is a fire that burns slow and often unnoticed, hollowing out the core. It is the storm before the storm – the change in atmospheric conditions.
I’ve been reading my book on Buddhism and thinking about our Monkey Minds – always swinging from branch to branch. I was thinking about how we often project on to others the turmoil we have inside. I had a partner who said she couldn’t be my sole source of happiness – blaming me for draining her. She was right, of course, nobody can be the sole source of someone else’s happiness (or sadness, or anger, or joy). Where her complaint was disingenuous was that she would also say that more than anything, she needed peace – and while I would sometimes ask what I can do to help with that… peace, like happiness, begins within (maybe). Where I struggle with the Buddhist notion that we have everything we need within ourselves, is that there are a lot of outside, physical factors that impact us and our moods: weather, hunger, rest, high blood pressure, our physical space, pain, etc. That was part of the woman on the sofa’s torment… pressures both external and internal. I suppose this is why monks meditate for long hours in uncomfortable positions – seeking peace despite the hunger pains and the burning in their joints.
I crossed the street and walked into the house resigned to a lost day and maybe a lost car. I told the dog who was happy to see me again to leave me alone and I thought of all the things that might be wrong with the car. I had already concluded the worst and was trying to figure out how I’m going to drive a car that barely runs to a dealership (or several) so I can buy a new one. I was already game-planning solutions to “and what if it doesn’t run at all?” What do I do, Uber to the dealership, and how do I get rid of the current car? Of course, there might be simpler explanations. There might be explanations, like a misfiring spark plug, that have easy solutions and don’t require me, in a tattered suit, to push my car into the lot, dragging a tail pipe as a door falls off along with the sole of my broken left shoe. But this is the Monkey Mind… imagining the worst, and piling on the injustices (the stupid traffic lights, the cold, the gray, the I can’t catch a break mentality).
The thing is, I think we’ve all been there. We’ve all been the woman on the sofa hating the color of her walls. The Michael Douglas character standing in the middle of the freeway holding his briefcase and a gun. The hiker setting out on a walk and stepping in a puddle… all you can think about is your dumb wet sock and you start to hate the trees and the sky and everything is so so stupid. These are life’s many indignities piling up. I sat down at the breakfast table where earlier this morning I was tired. I sat with my mind racing – trying to figure out my next play and how unfair it all felt. I looked up to the wall across from me where hangs the photo I took in the alley a few years ago. A photo of a brick wall with the Buddhist-like mantra “so it goes.” written in chalk. It disarmed me and made me chuckle. When I write (even here), I’m usually trying to pay attention to, and also tame, the Monkey Mind – to explore the moment of panic as the car stalls out, or the heaviness of exhaustion that might feel unbearable. I’m curious about our breaking points, how the kindling is stacked before the fire, our conflicts big and small – many of them internal. On a more practical level, I try to take a less antagonistic approach to life. I continue to practice slowing down, and learning to sit. Traffic lights turn red because that’s what they do, regardless of who is approaching. Cars sometimes stop working (almost all, eventually). The walls can be painted over. The amped up dog puts down the toy and takes a nap. Storms pass. So it goes.