The e-mail was simple. It asked "How are you?"

This week, out of concern, someone I cherish sent me a simple e-mail.  It asked "How are you?"  When I read that line, I stopped.  It took me a few minutes to consider the answer.  The easy answer was that I was not "fine".

 

I provide to you how I answered, with limited editing.  I wonder whether, when we ask the question "How are you?" what value we are seeking in the response?  And, how much time we are willing to reserve for the answer.  The letter was written at 9pm, July 21, 2012.  I have provided the start in quotes.

 

"Thank you for being someone who cares about me. 

 

Carleton has recovered 20 lbs since he entered the emergency room.  He may be released from the hospital on Tuesday.

 

I certainly have had some people reach out to me out of concern the impact of caring for Carleton may have when he is released from the hospital.  I cannot even begin to determine what his return from the hospital will require.  While he has recovered some weight, the health issues and a quick reversal weigh in the back of my mind.

 

I have stayed home, doing laundry (I hate that more than you know) that has been backed up for two months, with a brain scrambled by the many big decisions that will impact my personal and professional future that need to happen in a very short period of time.  It is ironic to me that I create plans all the time for others and implement planning for people and organizations creatively and effectively.  Yet, the variables on my current tragectory are quite voluminous, impactful, and blinding in their volatility making it quite challenging for me to be the one to create that particular plan.  Too close to the craziness, I guess.

 

I know that ultimately, if I keep focused on what I need to do professionally, I will be fine financially.  Yet, many years ago, I also found it incredibly important to stay emotionally available, vibrant, and accessible for my clients, my family and my friends.  I know that the choice to stay emotionally open creates vulnerability to the great emotional impacts in life.  Grief, loss, and sorrow can tear apart perfect plans, directions for the future, and trigger a myriad of other emotions that take energy.  Sometimes, it might have been a wiser course to have chosen to be more clinical, minimizing the emotional connectiveness that I cherish.  More CPA than money therapist.  I chose many years ago, after so many friends died, that I would not choose to become one of the walking wounded.  I privately chose to be the emotional base to some who had no one else to turn, not just a friend or client relationship.

 

For years, I have teased my mother that our family is deeply Egyptian and that she is our Pharoah.  It is in this last week that I recognize more completely that I have an amazing ability to live near DeNial.  I have found my brain on "pause" several times in the last week, unable to make even the most basic decisions, much less write a basic monthly check.  Yet, surprisingly efficient when it comes to processing paperwork for client needs at the office.  No distractions from my brain about a show tune or what else should I be asking that person.  In fact, at this rate, I will have all of Lorelei's duties melded into my own within the next two weeks. 

 

It has been quite a wild week.  At the beginning of the week, I was considering how someone would do to purchase an urn then whether someone through my connections in GSDBA would even come to Carleton's memorial service, if it occured, to be there for me.  And, at the end of the week, I am now contemplating whether I will be personally capable of addressing Carleton's health, if I have so badly managed it for the last 6 months.  His stubborness, fear of possible pain, and passion for privacy greatly contributes to that less than admirable health spiral, but I was distracted by my professional and volunteer focuses or I could have been more the effective advocate for him that I have been in so many other areas.

 

I am generally someone who plans the future.  I tend to evaluate alternatives rather than to analyze choices.  While I tend to process vast amounts of emotions, data points, and the matrix of values life can throw at someone, only a few times a year - if that - do I become reflective, consider what will happen, what I could have done differently, the more depressive critical review in life.  Two weeks ago was a critical "earthquake" for me.  The impact in my life of Carleton's health has been relatively constant for 16 months.  I just did not realize how impactful it has been to my reserves.  It was a significant enough event to my close friends this last week that several people called me to threaten to fly down and take over my life.  But, honestly, the events of the last month had been developing for the last 6 months.  There was simply several large issues that I had been "managing" rather than "solving".  So, those issues I had been managing apparently met, without me, and all those issues agreed to explode at once and I certainly have come to resent it.

 

I tend to rely on vision and confidence as attributes that rule my personality.  Vision I have cultivated by listening, pursuing wisdom principles, and creating resources for the future for myself and others.  Confidence comes from past successes and the belief that my resources and my faith will be enough to address any crisis.  Yet, in the last month, what became clear is that the resources I had developed were the very resources being destroyed or eliminated while demands on me personally were being increased exponentially.

 

My Denial DNA probably protected me this last week from overwhelming fright, complete immobilization, and a nervous breakdown.  The silver lining in Carleton's residency at Hotel De Sharp has been the hours of relative silence at home, with me required to do menial chores that are necessary, but that I tend to ignore when someone else might be doing those activities.  That mundane activity and silence allowed my brain to go into overactive processing modes that would more likely give most people headaches, but with me caused me to lose massive hours of sleep.

 

What all this processing in the e-mail helps to create in an easy summation is this:  I haven't slept much.  I have worried a lot.  I have felt an sizeable increase in stress followed by an increase of those who are concerned about me.  Yet, I am confident that ultimately, I will continue on whether Carleton survives or not.  And, I will continue to function in what I have chosen to be for decades - a financial advisor and a community volunteer.

 

Unfortunately, something started threatening that vision and confidence on which I have come to rely.  I have always been fiercely independent and have been the one who felt would be the foundation when everyone else might crumble, whether emotionally, financially, or in another area.  I have been wrestling with the incredulous realization that the amount of stress currently and lack of sleep has left me uninterested in going to the grocery store.  Yet, that creates a cunnundrum of how do you eat something healthy when there is nothing in the fridge?  And, the resulting value is that I had this one feeling - I just don't care.  And, that became the most worrisome vaue I fear. 

 

This one emotion I have feared for 25 years while working for others, worrying for others, fighting for others, striving for others, grieving for others, loving others and the community, and advancing the position of others and the communities I love has arrived.  How do I face the one value in me, when I detest it when I see it in others?  I understand that I chose long ago to feel every emotion, spend time vibrantly with those I love, desperately work at being relevant while alive to others and my community, and when that relationship and those efforts are completed, I would then rest in the full emotions of those relationships.  I do not encourage guilt or "might have beens" in my relationships, I focus on those moments of intimacy, efforts of joint venture, thoughts of being cherished, and shared gems of memories.  And, the idea that "I don't care" never should be a part of that life.  In fact, I practically could say that eliminating "I don't care" could be one of my commandments.  Yet, that feeling has become an answer for me, at times, in the last week.  It causes other parts of me great worry.  And, frankly, it is that tiny feeling, the one concept everyone that might benefit from what I have done or might do, should fear. 

 

Thank you for providing a question that allowed me to process its answer valuably.  You asked how I am.  And, true to character, I provided a play by play process that culminated in this response.  Perhaps when I visit a therapist, I will simply present this e-mail, rather than have him listen to the million other things on my mind at that time. 

 

Don't send me an invoice.  Consider it the highest compliment that you have just watched my inner processes.  While some have watched pieces of it, rarely am I allowed to write or voice the expanse of my processing to answer such a simple question:  How are you?  Laughable...  Certainly not FINE.  I would say LIVING.  Maybe not quite as fabulous as usual.

 

Thank you, my friend."

 

And, with the culmination of my response to my friend, I turn to you and ask you to contemplate "How are you?"