Learning to Live Without Guilt - Part 1

Some stories have to be told so I’ll feel better. Feeling guilty about everything is built into my genes, so when I worry about having made a wrong choice, I try to remember what drove me to it in the first place. Then I tell the whole story to the first five people who walk through my door. After that I either feel better, feel a need to atone, or get bored enough to move onto new topics of self-doubt. For example, whenever I start to feel guilty about divorcing my second husband, I remember the story of fainting in the kitchen and that totally clears the air. You need some background to appreciate the beauty of this tale. I suffer from Idiopathic Sensory Neuroma. That’s the expensive term a Neurologist laid on me when he couldn’t figure out why I get muscle cramps. I know why, but there’s no pill to fix it and therefore my doctors don’t want to hear my views. Rather than wake up everyone in the house so they could listen to my screams, I learned to hold my breath and walk crab-like through the night until my feet went back to where they belonged and I could go back to bed. However, the problem with holding my breath was that sometimes air stopped going to my brain and then I fainted. As long as I did it silently, no one complained. Also, you should know that we squeezed three cats and two dogs into our tiny house. The dogs were permitted to go outside via the kitchen dog door, but the cats had to stay inside regardless of their determination to flee the joint because a previous cat had been eaten by a neighbor’s dog. Therefore, the rule in our house was: if the kitchen-to-dining room pocket door was pulled open, the dog door must be closed. If the dog door was open, the kitchen pocket door had to be pulled closed, with cats on one side and dogs on the other. This is neither of interest nor comprehension to anyone other than people who juggle indoor cats and outdoor dogs. Nevertheless, the kitchen door rule applies to this particular Guilt Begone story. One night, after second husband and I agreed to divorce but before he actually moved out, I attempted my customary crab walk in the night but that didn’t work, so I quietly eased into the kitchen to eat salt. (Yep, that’s the cure. Nope, I’m not on BP meds. Yes, the American Heart Association thinks I’m going to die and go to hell.) I made it to the kitchen table and the salt shaker but before I could close the dog door, I realized I was about to land on the floor like the Phantom’s chandelier, so I tried to get back to the dining room to fall on carpet instead of linoleum. Don’t ask. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get all the way into the dining room before I found myself with a cricket’s eye view of the furniture. My legs were sticking into the kitchen and I was too light-headed to get up and pull the door shut to keep the cats from escaping, but I had a plan. I was laying on my side, so I figured if I raised my top bent leg, I could create a steeplechase hurdle that would defeat the most determined of our kitties. This was a stupid idea, but I wasn’t dealing with a full deck at the moment. Apparently, the sound of the pocket door opening but no followup clank of the dog door shield falling into place roused my sleeping soon-to-be ex-husband, so he donned his green bathrobe and came to survey the situation. (He loved green and was the only one in the house permitted to use a green towel. I rest my case.) Seeing me prostrate caused him to hesitate. I glanced at his feet and managed to mutter “I was feeling faint.” That used up all my available words so I tried to communicate that I had the cat situation under control by flapping my top leg up and down, like an insane moat bridge. He understood my sign language and set forth to protect the cats. This meant he had to cross over me in three steps: right foot back of head, left foot front of stomach, right foot behind bent knees. This he did without making a sound. Seriously, the man was part Cherokee and could glide through the dark in utter silence, scaring intruders and family alike. I’ve heard big, strong young men say to my son, “Dude! Who is that out there?” “My stepfather.” “Dude! He’s scaring me!” But I digress. The green-robed protector of cats floated to the dog door and sealed it before the wiliest of the three cats woke up enough to realize freedom had been snatched from its jaws. Then he made his return trip. As I saw him walking toward me, I had a moment of terror. I recall thinking, “He’s going to step on me.” Not only was I afraid he was going to step on me; I was afraid while he was stepping over me I would be able to see up his robe. My fears were baseless. I shut my eyes and he made the return trip deftly across my prone body. Then he disappeared into the nether regions of the house where he’d set up his cot, G-d forbid he should put a regular bed in his room like a normal person. Eventually, my head cleared enough to sit up and crawl back to my bed. In the morning, I posed a question to the Green Phantom. I said, “You know, once you closed the dog door you might have asked if I needed any help, seeing as I was, you know, on the floor.” He replied in a serious tone, “I thought about that once I got back to bed. I just couldn’t seem to get up and do something about it.” I laughed. Yes, I did. His answer was so pure, so honest, so replete with the essence of our entire relationship, I just laughed and the subject was never raised again. Never, that is, until the first year after he left and I began to feel guilty about the divorce. It was my idea, not his. Maybe I had been selfish in my decision. Maybe I should have just continued to put up with things. Then I remembered, “I thought about that once I got back to bed” and all my self-doubts disappeared. The dog door story was my guilt tonic for years thereafter. For the cats, he could get up and do something about it. For the lady on the floor, not so much. By the way, he took the cats with him when he went to live in a trailer in East Texas. But that’s a story for another day. Also, I haven’t written Living Without Guilt - Part 2 yet because I’m still figuring it out.