Day 22: What the Hurricane Taught Me

Bitch.

So....Irene.  I live in one of the floodier parts of town, and although I'm up the hill from the river a ways, I'm at the bottom of a small ridge so all the water runs down from the hill and spills into my street, and manhole geysers are a pretty regular thing here. So who could tell whether my first-floor apartment was going to food or not? It was a toss-up. But I decided to wait and see what would happen, and besides if I did flood I wanted to be there to move my Harry Potter books off the bottom shelf of my bookcase. So I hunkered down by myself in my apartment with my supplies: "non-perishable food items" in the form of wine, frozen pizza, chips and salsa, wine, the biggest jar of reduced-fat Skippy I could find, and wine; also my lantern, batteries, duct tape, and a 1000-page book with dragons in it. Oddly, the duct tape was the thing that reassured me most of all. I could duct tape the cracks in the door frame and then the water wouldn't get in? Yes, I did this, laugh at me.

You know what sucks about being all alone during a hurricane?

Ev. Er. Y. THING.
Imagine that! See, when you're all alone, there's no one to tamp down your irrational fears. As in, how serious is this tornado warning? The Governor of Delaware said everyone should sleep in their basement (although wtf flooding?!?!), but there isn't any wind? Is the amount of water in the street more water than usual and what does this mean since it doesn't even count as The Hurricane until 4 hours from now when it "really gets bad?" If I go to sleep will I wake up having drowned? My neighbors didn't take their recycle bin inside what if it becomes a projectile and smashes through my picture window, I don't have anything to board it up with?!?


Even all alone, I didn't let myself get scared.  I didn't give in to panic. I briefly thought of running across the street to the bar, but I thought a shivering wet girl sobbing, "I just don't want to be alone" was a recipe for disaster. Besides, I was too nervous to really even drink! You guys, I did Irene wrong. If I had to flash the silver fox signal to have Anderson Cooper come and save me, I didn't want him to see me off my ass drunk.

But everything was fine! The only part of my neighborhood that flooded was the really floody part that floods all the time anyway, and we were all like whatever! Because, Yunkers: You Can't Drown Us. It was a beautiful sunny day and everyone went to brunch and then looked at the water (or tried to paddle a floaty raft in it if you're a college student) and tried to get on the news. I figured that since everything was fine I was fine, and the next day skipped merrily to yoga.

Of course after a long night of trying to convince yourself you're not overreacting/paranoid/freaking out, the best place in the world to be is the one place in the world you can't hide from yourself: the yoga mat. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the yoga mat is the same as the Magic Mirror Gate in the Neverending Story that shows you your true heart ("most men run away screaming!").  And in the middle of the billionth handstand (WHY does it always have to be handstand?) my brain decided it wanted to deal with everything.

I hated the fact that I was alone that night. Even though "I always thought I'd be married by the time we had a hurricane" is nobody's life plan, I felt like a failure. Especially for being so scared. I'm not a person who gets scared. I get nervous, I get paranoid, I get overthinky, and then I say fuck it right to it's face and I slay that dragon. I don't get to be scared: in my job people call us when they're scared and we give them info and play their favorite song. If we panic, everyone panics. And I'm not supposed to care about doing it alone: this is my life. I picked it. There are plenty of guys who would have loved to be with me and I turned them all down. And if I had been in it with any of my exes, I would definitely still have been alone. This is my life. But I don't want this to be my life anymore! But there's not really much I can do about it.

So, the billionth handstand. Which of course I can't do because my arms don't straighten. So my brain uses this, along with everything that hadn't been conciously addressed the night of Irene, and starts chanting, "You're not as strong as you think you are."

Bullshit! I walked away from a two-year abusive relationship and all my friends abandoned me for it and I was fine! I wrangled a living out of seven part-time jobs because I was unwelcome in my childhood home after college and I was fine! I'm stronger than anyone else I know!

You're not as strong as you think you are. You're not as strong as you think you are.

And then tears. Because why not! I am now officially That Weird Lady Who Cries In Our Yoga Class. I mean I don't know if anyone actually could tell, no one said anything. (Would you though?). But there was audibly sharp I'm-not-sobbing-in-child's-pose breathing. During the meditation portion the teacher was going on about "how you approach problems on the mat is how you approach them in real life," so maybe it was obvious? God how embarrassing. Although, ironically, the way I approach problems off the mat is to not deal with them at all and then be blindsided to find them breathing down my neck at yoga, so that logic is busted.

I can't say it enough and don't know why I don't take my own advice: before you go to yoga, unpack all your existential shit and sort it the hell out.


Further misadventures at the 30-Day Yoga Challenge Page