Slapped by the peloton of my past

Last year, I had the experience of holding a real human brain in my hand. I remember thinking: This is a lot smaller than I expected it to be.

Which is why, today, I am so ridiculously amazed. I am having a hard time fathoming how much this little brain of mine can injest in one 24-hour period, especially without cracking this hard head of mine open and pouring marinade on my cerebrum.

Allow me to tell you about yesterday.

As my blog entry from Thursday notes, an old friend of mine died this week. Lesha, who was one of the friendliest, most open-hearted and generous people I've known, went to bed Tuesday night and didn't wake up. She died in her PJs, listening to music on her headphones. Frankly, that sounds like a pretty good way to die, but it's not natural for a 41-year-old, so the news was a real shock. It also brought me in contact with a few people I haven't spoken with in at least several months -- and one I hadn't spoken to in more than seven years.

Dr. M said something to me last week about me getting my "energy from other people." That's largely true (but not entirely)and it's a good thing. Because check out the log from my cell phone yesterday:

8:40 a.m.: The Drama Queen who informed me about Lesha's death calls and gives me no more information. We talk for 10 minutes, 41 seconds. It was nice to hear from him, but I was still a little pissed about the voice mail obit.

8:53 a.m.: I call my sister to talk to her about the genogram I'm working on for Family Therapy. She was trying to avoid grading some papers, which probably explains why she talked my ear off for 2 hours, 1 minute and 38 seconds. (As a benefit, she did help me find a DSM diagnosis -- or two -- for our dad. He's got Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder for SURE and seems to meet the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well. That explains a lot.)

I take a shower.

11:23 a.m.: I call The Debutante to find out what time we're getting together in the evening at a wine bar with friends. It takes 1 minute, 45 seconds to ring her up and leave a quick voice mail.

I leash up the pup and start him on his walk while calling a friend who I expect will have useful information about Lesha. So:

11:41 a.m.: I call The Mountain Girl. As we haven't talked in about a year, we have some good catching up to do. It takes 57 minutes, 40 seconds. (At 45, she's fallen in love for the first time -- yea! -- and thinks she might finally learn to identity of her birth father, who has agreed to a DNA test. She's also shaking up her work life, which I'm thrilled to hear about because she deserves some excitement.) This was the best phone conversation all day.

The Debutant returned my call while I was talking to TMG. So that requires a quick trip to my voice mail.

12:43 p.m.: I call S2 to tell her what time we're meeting in the evening and whatnot, a call that lasts 5 minutes, 17 seconds.

I grab my bike and prepare to ride to the grocery store to get tapas for this bring-your-own-food wine bar.

1 p.m.: XGF calls to tell me two other friends from California have called, presumably about Lesha. (I say "presumably" because both of them had the tact not to deliver this bad news in voice mail. THANK YOU.) XGF also wants to know how to use the lawn mower. I tell her I will be over on my bike in a few minutes to help her with that.

1:31 p.m.: Done helping XGF with the lawn mower -- and having added air to my bike tires -- I place my first call-while-biking ever. I'm supposed to be meeting The Good Witch at my place at 2, and I want to tell her I'll be late. Fortunately, she'll be late, too. 2 minutes, 13 seconds worth of communication and biking.

2:05 p.m.: Just after I arrive home from the store, XGF calls to give me the phone numbers of the friends who called about Lesha. It's a quickie: 1 minute, 44 seconds.

I decide to vacuum.

Then, I think: Well, I'm going to have to return this call eventually.

2:25 p.m.: I make the call. I get voice mail and leave a message. 1 minute, 25 seconds.

2:26 p.m.: I return the call from a The Jewish Baptist. We catch up for 38 minutes, 38 seconds. (Check out that symmetry!) Some of it is Lesha talk. Some of it is about how The Jewish Baptist found The Mountain Girl's birth father. And TJB also wants to know why I didn't call to tell her XGF and I had broken up. Uhhhh... OK, that was a good question.

While on the phone with TJB, The Good Witch calls and talks to my voice mail. At 3:07 p.m., I spend 37 seconds to find out what she had to say. She's on her way.

3:46 p.m.: Just after TGW arrives, the practicum coordinator calls from school and spends 2 minutes trying to talk me into changing my practicum term. There's a reason the conversation is brief: I tell her no.

TGW and I hang out and chat. FINALLY, there is a face to all this talking. It feels like a relief to see the person to whom I'm speaking. She stays for about an hour.

4:54 p.m.: Single Gay Female calls to inquire about the wine bar. In 16 minutes, 48 seconds, I fill her in on the day I'm having, tell her I'm looking forward to meeting her new girl and talk about the wine bar.

5:17 p.m.: There is a 6-minute, 28-second conversation with S2 about the wine bar and tapas.

5:31 p.m.: For reasons I can no longer recall, SGF calls me again and talks for 1 minute, 8 seconds. I have NO RECOLLECTION of this conversation at all, so I'm assuming that's when I had my regularly scheduled Alien Abduction and my Pod Person was speaking on my behalf.

6:03 p.m.: Lesha's ex calls me back. After 33 minutes, 46 seconds of nearly non-stop details of her life -- when I asked about Lesha's -- I check to see if I still have ears. But, on the upside, I learn that Lesha had been carving out a good space in her life and died peacefully. Maybe she was listening to the Grateful Dead....

7:11 p.m.: The Debutante calls to see if I think the wine bar will be crowded and whether we should go a little early. It takes 2 minutes, 28 seconds to decide I'll check it out when I take the pup for his walk and call her back.

7:27 p.m.: I call The Deb and say, It looks crowded. There's only one table open right now. She announces she'll be on her way earlier.

7:47 p.m.: Dr. M calls because she's confused. It seems sometime earlier in the day, I actually found a minute to send a text message or two, and one of them was to her. I wrote: "4 tapas, I'm bringing smoked salmon mousse." So Dr. M was subsequently unsure whether 4 tapas are on the menu at the no-food-here wine bar or if we were still supposed to bring them. In 1 minute, 42 seconds, I straighten out my bad shorthand -- I meant, "For tapas, I'm bringing..." -- and learn that Dr. M intends to bring pate. (Later, she is the recipient of my unabashed admiration because she turns up with a lovely liver mousse, an olive tapenade, wine-soaked goat cheese and some good stiff crackers.)

8:01 p.m.: *Mercifully,* the last call of the day comes in -- and it's from The Deb. In 36 seconds, we have a funny conversation about a bit of southern slang. In short, she's coming at me.

I walk downstairs to the street, smoked salmon mousse and a box of crackers in hand, and The Deb pulls up in front. We walk down to the wine bar.

Within 15 or 20 minutes, The Deb and I are enjoying some wine. I am digging into the large plate of mozarella caprese she brought with her (and she gets a dose of unabashed admiration for whipping *that* up, let me tell you!). She also brought paper plates and forks. She came well prepared. ... And then, in short order, in walk SGF, followed by Dr. M and S2 (and, a little later, by SGF's girl, who provides the evening's titillation by draping herself all over SGF and mugging on her for the rest of the night).

For the next several hours, I enjoy the incredible, vibrant, intelligent and outrageously funny company of these four women (and the silent kissing girl). Rather than being drained from the excessive conversing I had throughout the day, I feel energized. Talking to all those people was a huge trip into the memory banks, and it was generally a good thing.

Lately, I have been feeling off my game. All the upheaval in my life these past couple months has felt like a torpedo hit, and I've been trying to right the ship. I don't have an even keel yet, I can tell you that. After six and a half years with XGF, I'm not going to get over the divorce this quickly. But hearing from all those people reminded me of pretty much everywhere I've ever been in my life.

Thursday night after my blog post, I had called The Asian to tell her about Lesha's death. We talked for a long time, and I told her about some of the problems I've been having with my genogram. She had said to me, "I'm *glad* you're alone. You should not be a part of that family. You don't need to be involved with those people, except your sister. ... And anyway," she added, "you always land on your feet. I've seen you make some really gigantic changes in your life, and I *know* this about you: You always land on your feet."

I knew she was right when she said that. But it wasn't until I had contact with all these other people from My Former World that I really felt the accuracy of her statement.

In the wine bar, Dr. M turned to me and said, "I'm in a *great* mood." She was pleased to have the end of the term in sight and feeling very good about a display of statistics prowess earlier in the day. I replied, I'm in the best mood I've been in for a long time.

And then I told her a little story about sitting too close to the course at a bike race and thinking I would lose my knees when the peloton passed. The friend I was with at the time had said, "Wouldn't it have been funny if they all stuck out their hands and slapped us as they passed?"

I feel like I've been slapped by a peloton of my past, I told Dr. M, briefly recounting the day. Talking to all those people made me realize I'm gonna be just fine.

Dr. M patted me and said, "I've known that all along."

Distance allows us to see things in other people that they can't necessarily see in themselves. In the aftermath of this divorce -- with my tilting, torpedoed ship working to find its keel -- I apparently needed to get that message from a mirror that only My Former World could provide. There is tremendous power in being a witness to one another's lives. In fact, it may be the most valuable thing we do. (Certainly, that's a big part of what calls me to counseling.)

The day ended as a good day should: Four of us crossed the street to my loft, enjoyed some chocolate with our port and talked some more. Sitting with these women I so enjoy, I felt everything in the day coming together somehow, and a thought occurred to me: I have been referring to a certain part of my genogram and to the fallout from my breakup as The New World -- although one can argue reasonably that this started in August and that the breakup was after-the-fact -- and I had been thinking of my past as I described it here: My Former World.

Neither of these terms is accurate. In the accumulation of all that makes me what I am, there is no clear deliniation between the past and the present. So going forward, I'll call my life what it is: The Known World.