Month: December 2024

A Cascade of Bad Choices

Several alarming news stories have run in The Salt Lake Tribune over the past several days. They all have ties to Utah and involve children. I can’t be more specific without being censored by Facebook. Two of the stories are linked in my feed if people want to read them. There’s a paywall, but you can get an idea of the subject matter by reading the parts of the stories that are visible.

Each story is horrific on its own, but together, they’re overwhelming. I cried most of yesterday morning. It was too difficult to process this news, especially given what’s happened and appears to still be happening in my own family, so I engaged in several forms of avoidance, including employing maladaptive coping skills that threw my metabolism off and undercut the work I’ve done following a ketogenic diet for mental health, doing intermittent fasting, exercising, getting the right nutrients, and maintaining healthy biomarkers.

I’m writing about this because I can see how something that’s upsetting can cause someone (in this case me) to do one thing that throws something off, which in turn throws something else off, which in turn throws something else off. Then maybe more bad decision-making gets thrown into the mix as things start to slip, and pretty soon a little movement in the ground turns into a mudslide that swallows an entire house, trees, retaining walls, and more.

Yes, the upsetting thing is upsetting, but the behaviors that follow and aggregate are what drive the mind and body into a state of disequilibrium that prevents a person (still me) from finding ways to sit with and work through what’s upsetting to whatever extend they (again, me) are able to.

Here’s what went down yesterday. Upset about the news stories, I developed a sudden craving for brownies. It was an all-encompassing desire. I went to Lin’s, where they sell Num Bars, which are ketogenic. They didn’t have them. (Turns out, the Utah-based company went out of business.) In my desperation, I got no-bake chocolate cookies instead. (This is when the whole ageism incident happened with the cashier, which added to my distress.)

I came home and ate the whole container of cookies, thereby consuming four times my typical amount of carbs, and none of those carbs were good ones. My body can’t tolerate carbs anywhere north of 50 net grams per day. (I have data from my cardiologist and endocrinologist that supports this assertion. It’s not just a thing I’m saying to be dramatic.)

The rest of the day, I made terrible choices or simply didn’t do what I should have done for my health. I failed to take my supplements. I didn’t drink water. I didn’t do my intermittent fast. I didn’t eat enough protein or, really, anything healthy for the rest of the day. I didn’t lift weights, something I do regularly for my metabolic health. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t meditate. I wasn’t mindful.

In short, one bad choice became more than one dozen bad choices.

Here’s the thing: I was terrified of having nightmares last night based on those news stories. I’ve already had several nightmares involving my family in the past couple of weeks, one of which was incredibly difficult to process. So I sabotaged my sleep before I even went to bed. I’m not surprised that I woke up at 3:46 a.m. this morning and had trouble falling asleep again or that my sleep was especially restless according to my Fitbit or that my sleep score was ten points lower than usual.

What I am surprised about is how difficult recovering is for me. I have a seven-day intervention I do when I need to really focus on my metabolic health. I told myself I’d start that intervention today. I didn’t. Instead, I stayed in bed most of the day. I just now made my way to my computer. My food choices today aren’t great but they aren’t stellar, either. My digestion is hosed, again, just after I got it back on track. I haven’t exercised. It was a struggle just to get dressed, to make the bed, and to make my way to the living room, where I stopped for a long while and watched reruns of “The Conners” as I mustered the strength to get to my computer. I haven’t bathed. My hair is weird. I didn’t even have it in me to put on lotion.

And it’s cold and the days are short, which makes getting on track that much harder.

This all illustrates how a single genuinely upsetting thing can lead to a systemic issue and why it’s so important that we recognize these kinds of patterns. I know I’ve been talking about me, but I’m not the only one who experiences this kind of domino effect under stress. Many of us do, perhaps most of us.

Right now, I’m trying to do things that will help my body recover. I’m starting with water. That seems doable. Then I have to process these stories about children without doing more harm to myself. I don’t know how to do that. Process the stories, I mean. How does one come to terms with the kinds of things discussed in this type of reporting, things happening here in Utah, across the country, and around the world? I want all living beings to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, but we’re often the cause, and children should never suffer the way too many of us make them suffer.

Realms Beautiful and Terrifying

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Our water purifier started making a high-pitched noise a few minutes ago, a steady ewwww like a piece of industrial equipment humming in the distance, at once piercingly but almost inaudibly. I unplugged it, but the sound made me hyperfocused on my tinnitus, so now I’m just a body that screeches and won’t stop.

I took some sleep medicine, something I rarely do. As I wait for it to kick in, night thoughts do their dark work. I don’t ruminate about minor issues like some folks. My waking nightmares are about my father, my family, Oklahoma, me, the ways in which I’ve been purged, and the things I feel like I need to purge that find me at night when I’m closer to my personal unconscious and the collective unconscious than I am during the day.

I had an unthinkable thought that was immediately ushered by my circuitry to every central and distal part of my body. My feet. My hands. My tongue. My scalp. My shoulders. My gut.

What if, I thought. What if it’s true?

This particular thought is a hard one to put on a shelf until I can process it in the light of day. The “what if” feels less like a possibility than a haunting, a visitation declaring what the world is and who I am in it. I don’t like either. I hope I’m seeing an old lady that’s really an owl, like in one of those optical illusions.

The unconscious realms are beautiful and terrifying. I’d prefer a different ratio of beauty to terror right now. I’d rather experience both while asleep, not while sitting in bed awake, my warm dog pressed up against my calf doing what I can’t do: slumber. I feel her breath on my foot. I feel her chest rise and fall. I feel how soft and small and fragile she is. I feel how much I love her and how much I don’t want to be a monster in a monstrous world.

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Terror is my second least favorite. Monster is my third least favorite. To be an awake, terrified monster inside of what is monstrous is nothing I’d wish on anyone.

Unthinkable

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Our water purifier started making a high-pitched noise a few minutes ago, a steady ewwww like a piece of industrial equipment humming in the distance, at once piercingly but almost inaudibly. I unplugged it, but the sound made me hyperfocused on my tinnitus, so now I’m just a body that screeches and won’t stop.

I took some sleep medicine, something I rarely do. As I wait for it to kick in, night thoughts do their dark work. I don’t ruminate about minor issues like some folks. My waking nightmares are about my father, my family, Oklahoma, me, the ways in which I’ve been purged, and the things I feel like I need to purge that find me at night when I’m closer to my personal unconscious and the collective unconscious than I am during the day.

I had an unthinkable thought that was immediately ushered by my circuitry to every central and distal part of my body. My feet. My hands. My tongue. My scalp. My shoulders. My gut.

What if, I thought. What if it’s true?

This particular thought is a hard one to put on a shelf until I can process it in the light of day. The “what if” feels less like a possibility than a haunting, a visitation declaring what the world is and who I am in it. I don’t like either. I hope I’m seeing an old lady that’s really an owl, like in one of those optical illusions.

The unconscious realms are beautiful and terrifying. I’d prefer a different ratio of beauty to terror right now. I’d rather experience both while asleep, not while sitting in bed awake, my warm dog pressed up against my calf doing what I can’t do: slumber. I feel her breath on my foot. I feel her chest rise and fall. I feel how soft and small and fragile she is. I feel how much I love her and how much I don’t want to be a monster in a monstrous world.

Awake is my least favorite word when I don’t want to be. Terror is my second least favorite. Monster is my third least favorite. To be an awake, terrified monster inside of what is monstrous is nothing I’d wish on anyone.

Justine Chan’s ‘Should You Lose All Reason(s)’

Should You Lose All Reason(s), by Justine Chan

I’m reading Justine Chan’s poetry collection, Should You Lose All Reason(s). It’s based on her experience of a Southern Paiute myth she told over and over when she was working as a park ranger in Zion National Park, which is just a few minutes from our Utah home. I found the collection in the Springdale, Utah, library the day Jon and I drove out that way.

Chan lives in Washington state, where we lived for about a decade. Somehow, that makes her work resonate even more deeply for me. I’ve always felt a connection between Eastern Washington and Southern Utah. Where the land is concerned, I mean. The wildlands and the wildlife and how human consciousness is informed by both in ways they might not be elsewhere.

These poems are enveloping. They’re somehow a deep dive that feels like wading slowly into a welcoming body of water. Some parts remind me of Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin. Others remind me of a pillow book, namely the poems Rebecca Lindenberg has written in that spirit.

These poems speak to place, to identity, to what it means to live in a larger, natural world—or to live away from nature. Of who we are and how we become and how we continue. The speaker, I mean. The speaker, but also all of us. Also me, as a reader. (And maybe you if you choose to read this collection.)

Chan writes this place, Southern Utah, in ways that are image- and sound-driven without sacrificing authenticity, vulnerability, or accuracy:

You will get used to never seeing the full red sun as it rises or sets. You will see peregrine falcons and turkey vultures circling overheard, but never the condors.

None of the pictures you take will be quite right. Not in focus. Or the light’s not right. Or there is just too much.

You will bask. You will burn.

The bark of the spruce on the rim will always smell sweet and fresh in between its flaky scales.

The people will forget there was ever blanket poisoning of the public lands. That there are bounties for pairs of hacked off ears. That less, to rescind, must mean more.

Most of Chan’s lines are impressively long, like someone trying to stretch their arms as wide as the mouth of a canyon. The book is actually much wider than it is long to accommodate those lines. (It’s designed to look like an oversized postcard.) Her approach is somewhat experimental: at times bivocal, at times hugging the right margin or drifting cloudlike down the page, at times interspersed with dates and facts, and frequently breaking into song. (She quotes lyrics from sixteen songs throughout the book.)

I hope folks take the time to read this collection. Because. Just because.

Because the air is so hot, full of rasping. The land so full of landmarks and stories you can’t even begin to know.

Because you feel some part of you was / is / will always be secret.

Because the crickets are madness, a roar that fades to silence / if you forget / to listen.