Yesterday evening, I cleaned my bedroom – but THORoughly! I lifted the mattress off the bed, so as to turn it; having done that, I lifted the bedsprings, thinking to turn them around. While they were upended, both mattress and springs, I took the small vacuum cleaner and thoroughly vacuumed under the bed. I hadn’t done this in the three years I’ve lived here. So one can only imagine the black cat hair, the dust, the ponytail bands that I culled from there. The bedroom was hot, almost unbearably so, but I was absolutely possessed and obsessed! The sweat dropped from my forehead in big splotches onto the increasingly-clean carpet. While considering the possibilities of turning the bedsprings, and before that, wondering if I could turn the mattress over, I remembered a session with my therapist in New York. This is a good story and I don’t know where to start.
I lived in NYC for 22 years. While there, like many a good inhabitant of the city, I saw a therapist. Actually, I went into analysis at the Karen Horney clinic. For two-and-a-half years, I saw the shrink three times a week; saw myself coming and going. And saw her away from the clinic for another two-and-a-half. Hard to lie to yourself under these circumstances, but of course I did for as long as I could. Eventually, though, the process caught hold of me, and I began to heal and to change my way of being and perceiving.
So. First, I considered the mattress, and how I might maneuver it so as to turn it over and around, both. I actually accomplished turning it over and around without having to lift it up. Then, I walked it to the floor off the foot of the bedframe so that it stood upright at a slight angle against the wall, and began the same weighing of consequences with respect to the bedsprings; they are heavier and more unwieldy than the mattress, so I spent more time on the issue of turning the bedsprings. While I was doing this, I remembered a particular session with my analyst some years ago, and I laughed out loud, cheered by another memory of life in Manhattan while making do in Iowa.
One day, as we (my therapist and I) were discussing a particular dilemma (and I have no memory of the dilemma itself), she suggested using a little ‘leverage’ (her term) to impact the situation. I must have looked surprised.
She said, ‘what, you never thought of using leverage?’
I replied that such a thought had never occurred to me in my life.
“Well,” she said, “suppose you encountered a 2,000-pound block of granite on your path. Now, clearly, you can’t lift it to move it; and it blocks your way. If you use some leverage to kind of, you know, move it a bit this way and that, eventually, you could maneuver it out of your way.”
“I just never thought of leverage,” I said.
“Well, what would you do?” she queried.
“Bomb the fucker,” I replied without hesitation.
I thought of this session and my remark and her very instructive example while I, indeed, used leverage, both mental and physical, to ‘maneuver’ the mattress and then the bedsprings.
All of this cleaning occurred to make a fitting home for the brand new down comforter and duvet cover that I bought recently. Sage green, they looked fantastic on the bed! I then stripped, showered to cool off and clean up, and leisurely ate a bowl of cereal before curling up under the down comforter on clean sheets to sleep and dream.
I learned in analysis to step back and appreciate the processing of feelings that occurs when events bring them forth in us for our various uses. I think this fact has saved my life and enriched my creative energy. Thanks, Jill, for everything!
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