Chewing Thoughts

February 5, 2018

I came home in an odd mood tonight. Pensive, reflective, almost apprehensive; vexed in a certain way There is nothing wrong in my own life to contribute to these feelings, and yet I  tend to absorb the moods of others; their thoughts, fears, sadness’s; their anxieties. It is not a quality I am always glad to have, though. I did the handful of odd jobs I normally do when I get home. Living alone with no husband or children does not mean there are not always odd jobs to do; there are, In fact, there is no one to share normal duties with, and sometimes this can be a cause for its own distress. Today, though, I know where my mood stems from. Still, the knowing does not always stop the mood. Immediate tasks completed, I lay back on my bed, Jimi-Kitty cuddling and purring in my ear. I rubbed his silky head and ears, and his purrs were a soothing balm to me. He curled up around my head, his world complete. My biggest cat jumped up on the bed too – something he seldom does except at night when it is time to sleep. His purrs were louder than Jimi-Kitty, and he took it upon himself to nuzzle my eyelashes. Both my male cats do that when I am stressed or sick, or even just very tired. It snapped me from my revelry, my pensive thoughts, and I mentally shook myself. Nothing is wrong in my own personal life. What I was doing, was projecting from my friends pain and an running wild with an innocuous comment she made about the value of a house for sale close by, and how it was “dated”. I lay there on my bed imagining future days and future actions. I was imagining myself purging my house of belongings in an effort to minimize, and I was imagining what I needed to do around my house and yard to make it more “sellable” and just how dated was my own house? I was adding up in my head the costs, and subtracting it from the mortgage due and the equity earned. Why, I wondered? I don’t have any intention of selling my home in the next few days, or even months, and yet here I am staging the sale. My grandmother used to call that “borrowing trouble”; imagining wrongs where nothing was. Doing tasks that are not even the most remote of possibilities today, and not even physically doing them, but imagining them elaborately inside my own head.

This summer we had to go through Mom-Carole’s things. It is a thankless task sorting, someone else’s belongings. Every little thing, at one time, had a purpose or a meaning. Sometimes personal, sometimes long forgotten reasons why it was kept. But to sort through belongings that were collected by someone near and dear – that is so hard. My friend’s mom is laying in that semi-state of life and death, with death imminent. I’ve been visiting daily’ bringing food, giving hugs; helpless, as every person is in that moment of life. Wanting to help, not being able to; seeing the pain, knowing what all are feeling and experiencing. It is a tough place. Because I have that absorbent personality, I have been taking it all in, carrying it around with me, and keeping it inside my heart. There is a song from Sister Hazel called “Your Winter. One of the lines of lyrics says “Why do you chew your pain?” That is what I do. Chew my pain, and that of others; I absorb moods around me like a sponge. It is almost a physical feeling. Knowledge of it still does not allow me to distance myself. I found myself redirecting my thoughts once I realized what I was doing, and I managed to shake of my reverie and the strangeness I brought home with me. Now the evening is upon me and my day is winding down. I am grateful, once again, for the peace and quiet of my own thoughts and my house and possessions all around me.