For the past few weeks we’ve been grappling with a landscape lighting issue here at our tiny townhouse complex. The sticking point is a neighbor who is both mentally challenged and deaf. Her cable wire has now been cut twice and because she is accustomed to getting what she wants, when she wants it from her parents, she has thrown what I can only describe as a wall-eyed hissy fit.
Yesterday it really did get to be too much when the woman’s father harassed the 90-year-old HOA president almost to the point of tears. Logic and practicality are clearly on the side of the repair to the broader system, but these people will have none of it.
The father has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer and is in the opening stages of chemotherapy. The only thing that restrained me in dealing with him was the fact that a friend recently described to me her experiences with radiation and chemo, so I had a reference point for what can only be his inner emotional turmoil.
That being said, the man is killing himself. And I mean that literally. In failing to maintain a focus on his own health, and to find some peace of mind, he is setting up a situation for his body to betray him rather than to heal. Essentially, he’s created a family dynamic that could prove to be a critical component in the engine of his own destruction.
I have not hidden the fact that I am dealing with all the major issues of perimenopause. Every day I become increasingly aware of the mind/body connection. Invariably on a day when I have been stressed to the limit and have not had a chance to do whatever small things keep me “even,” I will have what I call a hormonal storm.
These incidents are difficult to explain to anyone who has not experienced them and frankly, men just can’t go there in terms of understanding. These are literally situations where chemicals flood your systems and, as Whoopi Goldberg says, “you lose your damn mind.”
I don’t have any answers about appropriately caring for the total package, but I will say that with middle-age has come an increasing awareness of a more systemic sense of self. As a younger woman, when I had hormonal issues of another kind, I felt at the mercy of my body. Now, I try to be more merciful to my body. I’m not good at it yet, but it’s a conscious work in progress.