Dead in D.C.

It's a little-known fact (or maybe a well-known one) that a lot of people die on the toilet, Elvis Presley being, possibly, one of the most famous examples. I know this because I am a dry cleaner's daughter and was intrigued by an article in the New Yorker or the Atlantic (can't remember which) about the real cleaners...the companies that specialize in taking care of the messes left by the dead. By the way, getting smashed by objects falling from high rises is also not that unusual in New York City, and I imagine that kind of cleaning takes a special sort of skill set I do not possess.

At any rate, I went to Washington, D.C. for a conference on Tuesday.

D.C. isn't really a high-rise sort of place, so I wasn't on the lookout for falling pianos. I also wasn't paying attention to possible airborne pathogens, but they're a lot harder to see. And I'd had my flu shot. So when I developed a cough Friday afternoon, I was sure it was from smoking a cigarette with a friend after dinner and a couple drinks (don't scold, I maybe smoke once a year). When I woke up Saturday morning to fever, chills, and muscle aches...well, you can't blame that on half a cigarette. My thought was I needed to get home ASAP. So I picked up my phone to call the Hubs regarding my condition when I noticed the tiny blue dot was blinking, indicating I had a pending message.

What could it be?

Yeah, flights cancelled.

Thanks, Obama.

So I went downstairs and extended my stay by one day, telling the front desk person I was sick and preferred just not to be disturbed.

At the Sofitel (where they answer the phone, "Bonjour, you have reached le Sofitel"), "Do not disturb" means something quite different than at the Super 8. At the Sofitel, it means call Ms. Le Nom to make sure she doesn't need towels, tea, orange juice, sparkling water, oatmeal. And ring her door bell (yeah, the rooms have door bells) to see if her mini-bar needs restocked. (Seriously, Nikita [names changed to protect the innocent] and I are on a first-named basis now; I have half the hotel management's business cards.)

That was extended day one. Flash forward to extended day number three (EXD#3)...that's six cancelled flights...and I don't know whom to thank ironically because the weather problems were in Dallas and Little Rock, not D.C.

I know the good people of Sofitel were truly concerned for my welfare, and I appreciated the complimentary trays that kept coming to my room. But I was starting to feel like I was in the hospital...a super pleasant-smelling hospital where all the food (if you actually feel like eating) is along the lines of steak tartare and escargot and no one sticks you with needles...and you feel like you are never going to get better despite how lovely the place is (some of you will get that allusion).

Begin TMI Statement::

At 3:00 a.m. on EXD#3, I awoke hacking so hard I nearly coughed up a lung. That lasted about 10 minutes, and then I decided I needed to pee. It's no surprise, really, after all the tea, coffee, orange juice, grapefruit juice, San Pellegrino, and Perrier that served as the hotel equivalent of an IV drip...and the obvious pressure coughing would put on my bladder...nature would naturally call. So I got up, went to the bathroom, sat down, finished. And then I kind of looked at my reflection in the glass shower door and thought, "I think I'm going to throw up."

I haven't thrown up in a long time, so I had kind of forgotten the feeling...I reflected on this looking at my reflection. But then when the water came to my mouth, I was like, "Yep, flush, pull up the jammies now: this thing is happening."

I barfed twice.

End TMI Statement::

And then I sat back on the cool marble floor (the hotel is next door to the White House, what do you expect?), sweaty and exhausted and waiting to see if I should expect another round.

That was when I realized I had run out of toothpaste the day before.

You would think life couldn't get any worse at that point.

Wait for it.

So I flossed and rubbed my teeth with my finger and went back to bed.

And then I had a little bit of a dream. Because I read so widely and variously.

I dreamt that I died in "le Sofitel" sitting on the toilet.

My body was hauled onto a gurney by a bunch of people I didn't know dressed in white who threw around words and phrases like "stat" and "Valsalva maneuver" (another good reason not to use Wikipedia as a reference), while the hotel staff...Nikita, Raj, Abdul, Djeynaba**...cried over me because I was such a wonderful guest. As everyone looked on, I worried I had never completely pulled up my jammies.

My body went off to wherever bodies go in D.C., but my soul stayed on at "le Sofitel."

And I had to wrestle with every new occupant over my rightful place in the king-sized bed (right side, next to the windows) over and over again. Sometimes I had to give in to couples and lie at the foot of the bed on the scratchy carpet with the extra blanket and no pillow. Other times I shoved the two chairs together to make a bed and used the cotton robe for cover.

I would make a great ghost.

This went on and on until I woke up in a sweat at 5:00 a.m.

I checked my phone.

And then I checked the bathroom to make sure I wasn't dead on the toilet.

Thankfully, I was not.

But when I came back around the corner, the clothes I had stripped off earlier when I went to bed looked shockingly like a dead body. I got down on my hands and knees and nervously went about feeling around for myself.

My hands felt nothing but cloth.

And the only reason I'm telling this story is because I'm sitting on the divan in my own damned house watching my two cats fight over who gets to sit next to my stinky feet.

That is the only way to be 100% sure I did not die on the toilet at "le Sofitel."

*Photo courtesy of Earthworm via Flickr's Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
**While I did change the names of the staff I came to know at the Sofitel, I tried to retain their cultural identities. Before I got sick, we had some fabulous discussions about life in D.C., coming to the U.S. for new opportunities, and learning to embrace difference. I wish they had a position for a tech writer.

Shiny Happy People

Confession...

I use the Internet.

I use it a lot.

In fact, I don't think my current job would actually exist without it.

So this post is about a trend I see happening on the Information Superhighway, specifically the street that makes up social media. (I'd like to explore which part of the Internet is not on Social Media Street these days, but that's a blog for another day.)

The trend has already been the subject of at least one research study, so I'm not alone in seeing this pattern of behavior.

The trend?

Everyone out there is so damned happy, it makes me want to open an artery...several arteries, in fact. (I promise that's hyperbole.)

On a daily basis friends and strangers alike (it depends on the particular social medium) post articles, memes, motivational "posters," suggesting that the key to happiness is being in the present, being mindful, slowing down. They brag about their five-hour meditation sessions or the retreat they took in the Rockies.

I don't mean any disrespect. I know it's well intentioned.

I also know that much of this is the curation of life that social media inspires ("Look, World, here are pictures of me with all my skinny, smart, beautiful friends!"). I started curating my own when we (and, by "we," I mean people few of us actually know) called it the ARPANET (yes, in all caps). That is, back in the 70s when I moved from my tiny girl bedroom into my much larger teenager bedroom and made all my own choices in furniture and decor straight out of the pages of Vogue, which was an excellent source of photos I could cut out and tape to my closet wall, photos of couture Lady Gaga wishes she could wear and major works of art I could only dream of one day seeing in person.

Yes, I am the original Pinterest (as were most of us...I won't tell who fell asleep at night gazing at Twisted Sister...I was totally into the Pet Shop Boys...so we're even).

But all this damned, curated happiness, this museum of bliss, is depressing me.

Okay, that's not what's depressing me.

My thyroid is out of whack. That's what's depressing me.

The doctor who originally diagnosed me (and for that I am thankful...the major symptom...the absolute lack of saliva production...isn't the one used as the "go-to" for suspecting hypothyroidism) stopped practicing medicine and sent me a polite letter two months after refusing to refill my prescription for the drug that treats it, levothyroxine. The pharmacist's guess was that the doctor felt I needed to be tested again, but I knew better: the final letter was the sixth time I had received communication about a reduction in the care being offered, and I had been tested the previous year with no changes to my TSH levels. (Yeah, I should have been more proactive.) I went on a search for a new doctor, and six months later, I now have an appointment. And I'm being treated in the meantime by my university's health service.

Unfortunately, it's still too little and too late, and I'm smack-dab in the middle of a thyroid-induced depression. The other symptoms (lack of saliva, weight gain for no reason, and complete exhaustion) just exacerbate the irrational sadness, the hollowness of everything, the "certain slant of light" that doesn't go away after winter solstice.

I've been through this once before. Two months before my diagnosis, the Hubs and I moved our bed into the living room so I could be close to the furnace (intolerance to cold is another symptom) and so the sounds of his getting ready for work could gently wake me up. Be still he had to bring me tea and pull me by the arms up away from the pillow. I didn't have the energy to do it myself. After treatment, I realized just how sick I had been to have made those kinds of adjustments to my life and routine. So I know this road.

But that knowledge cannot change what I feel. When people say, "Be present in the moment," I want to respond, "You be present in my moment for one minute and get back to me on that." When I hear, "Be mindful," I want to ask, "Of what? I know all about Buddha's 'right mindfulness.' How do I achieve that when my body is doing everything it can to conspire against me?" And when I'm advised to slow down, I want to yell, "That is the most unrealistic thing I have ever fucking heard; you've got to be kidding me right now. What life do you lead that makes slowing down possible?"

My reasons for this line of thinking are numerous.

First, I include myself among a line of thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida (and probably well before...if one reads Plato ironically) who believe there is no possibility of being completely in the present. They would argue that the developments of language first and writing long after add two filters to our experience. Human thought is shaped by language (for example, many languages have words for phenomena English speakers are unfamiliar with and must, therefore, borrow...,and I'm not talking about the debunked myth regarding Inuit words for "snow," but words like "hominy," which is Powhatan for a particular type of processed corn you love, hate, have never experienced, or have never heard of). For Derrida's money, any thought possesses the potential for being written down and, therefore, must be maintained in the mind (a good reason for memory remaining one of the canons of rhetoric despite Plato's frequent admonitions...hence my ironic reading). In other words, we are in the constant process of interpreting our experiences rather than actually experiencing them. Maybe animals have a being-in-the-presentness, but given my cats' complete nightly freak out at 6:40...exactly 20 minutes before supper time, I suspect they can see into the future and think of it with craving...and without thought about being in the present. I've queried them, they've yet to comment. The Hubs says he has come close: climbing 14ers in Colorado, where every step in high altitude required utmost concentration. But he won't go so far as to say "always present." And before anyone jumps in with an explanation in the comments, I'm very familiar with Thich Nhat Hanh's "telephone meditation," an exercise in acknowledging the thought but letting it go as a state of being in the present. Still, I wonder, what's the difference between my not thinking about it and answering the phone immediately and my trying not to think about it and delaying answering the phone? Which action is more "present"? Honestly, if you know me, you're in my contacts list: I know who you are and, most likely, what you're calling about when you ring me. So again, which is more present? The ring tone? Or the actual conversation?

Second, why are unhappiness, sadness, anger, frustration...all the "negative" emotions...why are they now wrong? And understand I'm just interpreting what I get from media headlines and the posts I see on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram...all the social media I visit frequently. I'm not saying this seems to be the new wave of psychological understanding. In fact, some of my friends over in the psychology department at my university (as well as our friends in biology) are dumbfounded by the pseudoscience people are betting their health and well being on. Emotions serve a purpose. Case in point: I am working really hard to fund a project that will tell the story of an important moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Without anger, conscientiously directed anger, that event would never have occurred. In fact, the whole movement would not exist. And, hey, sometimes sadness leads us to do things to forget our sadness...like writing blog posts. I think happiness as some sort of desired constant is a bit overrated...and unrealistic.

Third, if you're feeling blue because someone close to you died or you didn't get a job you really wanted or someone took you to task over something that seemed unimportant to you, meditation may very well help you feel better. But if you have thyroid disease, insomnia, are taking certain types of medications, or are truly suffering from "clinical" depression, it probably isn't going to help you...it might, but "might" is the key word. Yet I get the feeling, especially after a day-long drive down the Superhighway yesterday, that if it doesn't work, it's because I'm not doing it right...because, if I do it right, it will ALWAYS work. Y'all, if you're doing something to improve yourself in some way, and it doesn't seem to help, please try something else. And I'm not saying this because I hate yoga pants (only when they're worn as outerwear and not actually for yoga). I'm saying this because I often feel pressured by well-meaning people to participate in activities that work for them: "Jazzercize saved my life!" That is so awesome, but I'm still imagining Olivia Newton-John's video "Let's Get Physical," and I'm actually just creeped out right now. It may work for you, and I don't mind the suggestion, but when you extol its benefits with hyperbole (the usefulness of which is limited to extraordinary circumstances, like my own) and ad nauseam in that sing-songy way people do, my mind (which suddenly becomes very much oriented to the present) is taking inventory of my arsenal for getting away from people. It's the reason I paid for the premium version of the Fake Call Me app I installed on my phone.  

So this is my manifesto: I do not owe it to anyone to be happy.

Period.