A Fall Tells It All

I’m gonna be real with ya.

I go in and out of periods of wellness like it’s going out of style.

And while I’ve never much cared for the hobby of sprinting after hot fashion trends, I’m like a police dog chasing after a scent when it comes to trying to figure out my own damn trends.

This sister’s mood is not the timeless black cocktail dress hanging central in the closet. Nor the reliable beige cardigan, wearing potential ceaseless.

I’d liken my wellness more to the wacky floral print that retires after a go or two, more the unconventional clearance buy that wisps in and out of the closet faster than you can say: "GOODWILL."

Wellness in my world, despite my tenuous efforts aimed to groom and maintain and guarantee it, shows up in aggravatingly finite stints.

(to peak in on one of my homegrown gimmicks to do just this, see my Tiered Support Plan here),

I’ve just exited a particular rough spell (called Summer 2018) and out of it came a new Litmus test I’d like to share.

It has to do with tripping and falling.

I’m staying literal here, so don’t go using your figurative imagination. Literal as in: actually physically tripping.

But first, I’ll convey with brevity my particular wellness-gone-south pattern:


**Level/Centered**

Stressed/Overwhelmed

Stressed/Overwhelmed + Anxious/Nervous

Stressed/Overwhelmed + Anxious/Nervous + Insecure/Inner Doubt

These are the layers of my swirls. Your swhirl patten looks different, no doubt. Swirls aren’t supposed to have twins. My guess, despite this, is that you might repeatedly fall into yours the way I repeatedly fall into mine: without knowledge. Slippery, Sweepy, Off-Guard-Catching things, those swirls!!! They incrementally and slowly strike. Assholes.

My second guess is that, regardless of your swirl stages, you might be able to use the same Litmus test.

Back to that:

Tripping and falling.

Do you ever do it?

Early summer I tripped on the walk from the grocery store to my van. I caught myself - thank goodness no pavement contact. For a couple tenths of a second, though, it looked like I was going down. And my reaction was this: "Dang. I almost went down. Ha! I'm glad I didn't. Whoopsie!" Within a couple additional tenths of a second I most immediately got back to humming. I even caught the eye of someone approaching and said, "That was a close one, heh?"

End of summer - as the tripping gods would have it - I tripped in that same cockadoodee parking lot in the same cockadoodee spot. Nothing was more or less severe about this one than the inaugural trip two months previous. This time, however: "SON OF A BITCH. WHY AM I SUCH A KLUTZ? I AM AN IDIOT. WHO SAW THIS DISPLAY OF NON-GRACE? HOW COME EVERYONE ELSE ISN'T SCREWING UP NEARLY AS MUCH AS I AM? STUPID! I'VE GOT TO BE BETTER." Insert an embarrassed blush, eyes averting from any passerby, a heart rate increase that extended well beyond what the momentary panic warranted, and an attitude of self-criticism that underpinned the whole thing and was supported by the whole thing.

I don't have to draw a line from my parking lot trip experiences to which swirl stage I was in each of these times.

I think you know.

One says, "Whoopsie" and one basically says "Son of a Bitch, you Stupid Klutz." Who knew a simple, benign act of physical imperfection could do such different things to my inner psyche?

Oh, but dear Tricia... it's the other way around. The trip wasn't the problem, of course.

My inner psyche, at the August juncture, was already to its final stage in the swirl pattern: overwhelmed, anxious, and fully insecure.

And it took a near fall for me to see it so plainly. Damn you, asshole swirl!!!

The trip was the revealer, the measuring stick, that which yanked the curtain back from the wizard’s control center,

the Litmus Test.

Too bad we can’t manufacture periodical near-falls to serve as mirrors reflecting our inner wellness. What we can do, I'd say, is to use our imagination to conduct the test. Here's the question that I've decided to ask myself from time to time in my quiet moments: "If I were to make a mistake right now - big or small - what would my inner dialogue say about it? What would my body say about it? How would it ruffle my feathers? How would it not?

Because tripping on this trip of a life is a built-in guarantee. How I translate the trips has to do with the type of relationship I have with myself and that's where my own magic enters... it's not up to the uneven curb.

It's up to me.