In acceptance of this feeling of dread
Sometimes I think my life is defined more by the things I don’t like than by the things I do. I don’t like office buildings. I don’t like malls. I don’t like overhead lighting.
I don’t like cinnamon brooms, mean people, Southern food, Febreeze or the drone of a TV set in the background of anywhere. And I don’t at all like that nip in the air that announces the com- ing of winter. That nip has arrived.
Because this is Chattanooga and not Antarctica, there will many more comfortable, even warmish, days ahead. Knowing this doesn’t comfort me. In resignation to the inevitable coming of winter, I switched over my closet this morning. Goodbye, age-inappropriate sleeveless shirts of unknown airy material in which no woman, no matter her age, has ever had a hot flash, ever. Into the bottom drawer you go with the supportless strappy sandals and the tankinis and the cargo shorts.
Hello, asymmetrical thigh-length black sweater I bought last year to try and cheer myself up midwinter, because as everyone knows, you can’t be unhappy in anything asymmetrical. Hello, gray wool hat with flowers I wore all over Amsterdam last spring, because although it was supposed to be warm and sunny, it was cold and rainy, thus making you the mascot of travel-related, bone-chilling disappointment. Hello, collection of nearly identical maroon sweaters, of which there are, inexplicably, too many to count.
I know that some people (many of my friends included) revel in the change of seasons. They eagerly bid adieu to the careless, hot kisses of summer and just as eagerly welcome the warm embrace of nubbly hats and nearly forgotten about sweaters. I have never been those people. Someone might as well have served me biscuits with gravy on a cinnamon broom for all the joy I felt when I was finished changing out my wardrobe. Because my closet looks less like the celebration of a new season and more like a funeral in the Gulag.
It’s going to be a long winter.
The thing is, I know better than to approach the things I dislike with dread. And yet there’s a part of me that thinks maybe if I dread hard enough, the thing I’m dreading won’t come to pass. When I was in my early 20s, I lived on the edge of a cornfield. Every day after work I raced home, changed my clothes and walked the fields until the sun had burned the chill of office air off my skin and returned me to who I was outside the confines of work. My sanity depended on those walks through those fields, and when fall came and the threshing machines revved up, I dreaded the inevitable harvest.
Eventually, my walking fields were cut. Dread doesn’t stop progress, just as it doesn’t stop the change of seasons. You’d think I’d give it up already. But no.
A few weeks ago, in a nod to the Jewish New Year, I decided to play a little game whereby I pick a word that embodies something I want to work toward or incorporate into my life in the coming year. When I mentioned this to my therapist, she said she does a similar thing, only she picks the word at random from a deck of cards. There’s no arguing with the deck, she said; what you choose is what you must focus on for the coming year.
“One year I got ‘surrender,’” she said. “It was awful.”
While I already had a word in mind, I thought it might be interesting to see what the deck would deal me. But because the deck was at the therapist’s home and I was leaving town, I asked her to pick the word for me.
“I’m not sure it works for me to pick your word,” she said. As I recall I gave her a look that said, “It’s magical thinking any way you slice it. Just pick the word.” I did let her know in no uncertain terms that should she happen to pick “surrender,” the gig was up.
She sent me a text that night. “Your word is ‘acceptance.’”
I let out a stream of cuss words that would make Kanye West cringe. Why? Because there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned that I really, really do not like, and that is laying down the sword of rebellion and accepting the things I cannot change.
Like the exit of hot weather on the shoulders of the sweaty pallbearers of summer. Like winter’s haughty entrance. Both of which are happening so fast it’s all I can do to paw through my funereal collection of sweaters and hunker down for the duration. I will not like it, and I will not be happy until next May, at which time I will begin dreading the following October. This I accept.
Which means I’m already working my word.
Dana Shavin is the author of “The Body Tourist,” a memoir about mental health and anorexia. Email her at dana@danashavin.com, visit her website at Danashavin.com and follow her on Facebook at Dana Shavin Writes.