As I hack away the remnants of my first experience with COVID, I'm forced to contemplate once again my declining capacities. There wasn't a lot of difference in my activities of the last day or two, and my activities on any given day. I can still cook (I did not do so on the first two days of this illness, though). I did my mild morning exercises eventually except for the balance ones, which seemed too daring for someone in recovery. It's days like this that are not possible to explain to younger people. I maintain my appetite for typing up a storm, as long as I can sit comfortably, but going out and doing things and talking with people? That appetite, never sturdy, may have vanished permanently, just like my sense of smell (I thought, until I detected the spilled fish oil in the pet-food cabinet). Russell had it too, and Brian. I seem to have gotten it from Brian.
My post of mid-June is long and accurate and covers a lot of ground. It'll make a great read for me in another year. Now here I am ten weeks later (too soon?) with one nice event and two complaints. A week ago, on Sunday the 18th, Russell and I drove to Clarksville, Tennessee, to pick up the ukulele being made for me by Jonathan Mann: the "Raptor" jazz baritone electric, lacquered a deep green. It plays beautifully, as I'd hoped it would. My fingers slip around less. The action is slightly easier, the tone is fine. Best of all, it's not intimidating, and I almost feel I deserve it. The thing cost me $1,750. I do realize it will not solve my playing problems. I don't practice much, and my aging fingers are not as reliable, especially when I'm playing in public. But it's already proven itself at an online open mic, and it will be a treat to write songs on it.
I have, for the last day (since I accidentally found out about it), had to consider that I might be suffering from being ignored as a child, which supposedly causes something called "Complex" PTSD. I watched someone's video; I did a meditation. So far, so good. And yet I know that I was decidedly NOT ignored. At times I was micromanaged! It's not exactly psychobabble, but these earnest attempts to categorize What Ails a Person are so clumsy and general. What I think now is that I was ignored at a certain crucial point, around the time Michael was born. I have evidence of ancient feelings of abandonment, one being the overwhelming crying jag I went on when Russell stayed out with Steve Linney late one night early on, maybe the first year we were married. It was an irrational response, and I'd had such responses before, with Bob Brattvet in the 1970s. I sobbed until I choked. It went on for what seemed like hours. (They weren't even at a bar, they were at an all-night coffeeshop.) There was another time a two decades after that when someone I'd been talking with at work acted as if I did not exist once we'd arrived at a cafeteria line and other people were around. My response was one of terror and loss of identity, which I managed to cover up. Again, irrational. (That I felt a tinge of that two weeks ago at an open mic when I looked up and no one was looking my way does not bode well.)
I try to be "normal," but I do lack self-control occasionally, and I have never felt secure within myself. However, I do not come across as insecure; in fact, it's the opposite, unless a person knows my secret triggers, which not even I know! Tell you who does--Felicia. She's turned into a real manipulator. When did this start? Was it when I had some beers and confessed some insecurities to her back in 2017 when she dropped Tomas off for his year at New Century High? But long before that there were times she tried to get my attention, and I never understood, and she was very disappointed in me. Resentment can grow. The collapse of her marriage must have had an effect; she's almost viciously independent now, and full of mockery of women (like me) who are less so.
At least writing all of this down makes me feel less sick at heart, even if I am still slightly sick from COVID.
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