My mouth suddenly felt uncommonly soupy. My dental hygienist, Debbie, often praises me on the amount of saliva I manage to generate, so it could be I was feeling overly energetic in the saliva department. Should I surreptitiously attempt to wipe the spit off my lip with my mittened hand? No, that would be gross. Like anyone is watching... is anyone watching?
In a split second, my brain had split in three: one part was reading, one part was observing me reading, and the third part was wondering if I was going to burst into hysterical laughter at any moment. I managed to make it through the reading with a semblance of a Mona Lisa smile. Finally, it was someone else's turn to read. I settled back in my chair and bent my head to my notebook. I started sketching furiously. A face, a drooping mouth...What the heck was going on?Sometimes I stammer when I get self-conscious. It sometimes occurs when I listen to myself reading out loud. My level of self-awareness rises to such a pitch, I begin to pay excruciatingly close attention to my voice. The usual ticker tape of self-judgment begins to roll through the screen at the bottom of my mind: Do I sound like an idiot? I hate my voice. Am I mumbling? My lips are falling off! I can't breathe! Invariably, when I get to that point, I fumble the reading because I'm turning blue from lack of oxygen.
This rant reminds me of the time I entered a Toastmaster's contest during finals week in college. In front of 100 people, I bungled my speech. It was without a doubt the most humiliating moment of my life, still guaranteed to break me out in a cold sweat if I think too deeply about it.
I'm beginning to see a common thread here. It's my old enemy, self. Not the good guy self, as in self-care and self-realization, but the bad guy self, as in self-obsession, self-recrimination, and self-centeredness. Oh, those pesky selves. Wherever you go, there they are. There's no escaping them! I picture them as fleabitten little monkeys, wearing ratty red vests and fezzes, bashing cymbals in my eardrums at all hours. Hey, maybe that's where this vertigo is coming from. (I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary of the first time I felt the vertigo, in case you are tracking. Which I'm not.)
Speaking of things there is no escaping: The ants are back. After a relatively ant-free winter, the hordes have returned. Luckily, I am not unprepared, thanks to the advice of my good friend, Carlita. I laid down my defenses some weeks ago (anti-ant spray). The desiccated carcasses of dead ant soldiers litter the counter under the window. Ha ha. But the scouts are somehow finding a way through my defenses and onto my shirt, where they make a run for the top of the hill (my head). They rarely get further than the back of my neck. Although last night one spent a few minutes speeding round the rim of my eyeglasses before I caught him and flung him in the brig.
Hey, I wonder if there is a spray to eliminate the overwhelming sense of self I'm sometimes feeling? Some kind of anti-self spray. Guaranteed to relieve you of the bondage of self. Wow, if I could bottle that, I bet I could make a fortune. Hey, you heard it here first!
