I wake up at 3 or thereabouts. This has happened a lot lately. I am usually a good sleeper. The little cancer lodged in my right breast is whispering to me: what if I’m not so little? What if I wake up after surgery and get the same news as the other time, that the cancer is much larger than anticipated? Maybe my swimming every day has pushed cancer cells into my lymph nodes. No, that’s not it. I am concerned with the small bump under my left breast that might be a tick. What if I get Lyme disease? I get up and have a look. I put some antiseptic cream on it. No, that’s not it. There is a deep wakefulness that anyone who ever couldn’t sleep would recognize. It’s not “about” anything in particular, but attaches itself to whatever passes through the mind.
I have lain awake worrying about our children and several of our grandchildren. I have worried about Jerry’s health. Worry is not exactly anxiety. Worry has a story around it. The “what if.” Anxiety is free-floating hyper-alertness.
I will say, we’re having a glorious summer. We’ve had two groups of children/grandchildren. The weather has been perfect, fish have been caught, the end of the dock has been endlessly sat upon, the porch has hosted a succession of “sparkle-times,” which is what we call cocktail hour. Today, I should also say, Jerry and I will have been married 30 years. They’ve been very good years, filled with a number of surgeries and recoveries, true, filled with worries about first one thing and then the other. Good does not, as far as I see, preclude trouble, or suffering. It doesn’t even preclude anxiety.
Anxiety is increasing among adults under age 50 in the US, with the most rapid increase among young adults. Look at the statistics. The burden of being aware of our planet’s distress is frankly, unbearable. Here we sit, for example, watching the pink sunset spread across the water, having a glass of wine, while—as we well know—people are starving, people are being tortured and shot, water is rising, fires and disease are wiping out whole forests, Covid is mutating. The background of our beautiful evening on the porch is an apocalypse.
We’re nearly done, those of us my age. The apocalypse is something to lie awake with. We made this mess. I say “we,” meaning my generation, my grandparents’ generation, and on back. Maybe it couldn’t be stopped. Maybe the human race is just like this. I don’t know. But I do know if I were young, my strong, agile muscles and tendons would be tied in knots. I would be sprinting back and forth, trying to stop the leaks in the dam.
Little triumphs. It comes down to that. How to live well. We’ve had triumphs at the cottage this summer. Not seeing each other, then seeing each other, you’re aware of the shifts, the maturing. There has been an increasing closeness. A ripening of relationships. Conversations while swimming or kayaking are the kind that would likely not happen inside a house. Bless my grandparents for buying this cottage, the catalyst for many revelations.
Revelations don’t require language, true, but language, when it’s accurate, is a good vehicle. Talk is a good vehicle. There’s also the body awareness that comes from doing dishes together in our cramped little kitchen. Our bodies know that even if we happen to be kind of hermits, like me, we need the physical closeness of other people. Covid has been hurtful in that way, also.
I think, and this is my guess, that anxiety lessens when we have close, meaningful relationships. For one thing, we see we’re not the only anxious ones, not the only ones who feel vulnerable, ashamed, guilty, or in pain. Nothing wrong with any of those feelings. It’s just when we hold them alone. You might call it the narcissism of suffering. Woe is me! I am being treated unfairly! I am hurting so much! No one has ever felt as ashamed/sorry/depressed/alone as me! Yeah, well. We’re human. We have a zillion nerve endings, all of them designed to respond.
My surgery is the 31st. I’ll let you know how it goes.
P.S. I’m very happy that Brilliant Books in Traverse City is going to host a combination live/ Zoom book launch on Sept 11th for my new collection of essays, Mortality, with Friends, due out in September from Wayne State University Press. Pretty amazing, how apt the title is. Here’s the information. It would be lovely if you could join me, one way or the other. https://www.brilliant-books.net/event/book-launch-event-fleda-brown