Messages from Myself
I have always believed in messages from the great beyond. Once you tune in to those messages, they're like a radio that you can't turn off. However, lately I have been getting messages from a most unlikely source: myself.
Recently I read two autobiographies in which full-time caregivers of the ill, which is what I am currently, wrote about having their loved ones pass away. The caregivers wrote that for several weeks afterward, they slept in their clothes and make-up.
Years ago, I did the same thing after my mother died. I slept on the couch, fully clothed, with a face full of make-up. After a lifetime of caring for myself immaculately, I had suddenly chosen to live like Oscar Madison. And there I was in the family home, with a lovely bedroom of my own, and a heavenly clawfoot bathtub.
In the many years since, I always wrote off my sloppiness during those few weeks as just the wacky exhaustion that sets in when one finally comes down off the relentless high of caring for a sick person 24/7.
However, those autobiographies made me realize something.
That sloppy behavior is the perfect example of the Tarot card that describes the process a person goes through when she desperately needs her outside to match her inside.
After my mother's death, my life was chaos. Everyone wanted me to pull myself together and get on with my life. But I wasn't ready. I needed a little more chaos.
So what did I do? I ruined my clothes by sleeping in them. I splotched my skin by sleeping in make-up. I ruined by back by sleeping on a couch.
But each and every morning I woke up early and had a lovely bath. I styled my hair, applied make-up, a light cologne, and put on fresh, pressed clothing. Then I went to work, all pulled together.
I didn't know it then, but I know now - I was rehearsing. Every morning, I was rehearsing for the big transition. I was pulling myself together and getting on with the rest of my little day, in the subliminal hope that one day I might be able get on with my life. It worked. One day, I moved out of the family home, switched jobs, and went back to school.
Those mornings were dress rehearsals, or should I say, badly dressed rehearsals.
Now when I find myself suddenly overly preoccupied with something small, I ask myself, "What larger task am I rehearsing for?"
For example, when I push too much food on my husband, is it because a simple meal is all the caregiving I can manage until I am ready to have a serious conversation with him? Or when I drench a conversation with a new friend with "darlings" and "honeys," is it because I'm planning to become close to that person one of these days?
I've always heeded signs and signals from God. But I have only recently tuned into messages from myself.