Home again, home again, jiggitty-jig -- and so glad to be here, too!
My surgical strke research trip to Los Angeles was productive, despite a total of only a day and half in the Herrick library: I was able to move through the files I'd had pulled in advance relatively quickly and to arrange to have photocopied (or to have photocopied myself) a whole selection of materials that I didn't have time to read carefully but that looked promising. That's all to the good, and so the trip was worth it right there. Everybody at the library was incredibly helpful, and the next time I go back there, I will see familiar faces, which will be pleasant.
What was less pleasant was having my wallet stolen at the library, which precipitated my early departure from Los Angeles (fortunately, I'd finished going through the files by that point and was pretty much done with what I'd gone down to Los Angeles to do). It was my own fault: I left my wallet on a table, and when I went back to get it ten minutes later, it was gone.
That triggered my first full-fledged anxiety attack in a number of years, complete with tears, panic, hyperventilation, sweating ... the whole nine yards. Not in front of the Academy library folks, I'm glad to say, but when I was alone in the rental car and on the phone with my husband. The theft flashed me back to all the old angst of being in Los Angeles in the old neighborhood in which I had lived, without any money or way to get out (how was I going to pay for gas to drive home?) ... feelings of helplessness and entrapment. God, yuck!
I'd deliberately kept a low social profile during my trip, seeing only J (my former dissertation chair) and C (my former therapist) -- but my husband suggested that I call J -- and when I did, she picked up, understood the situation immediately, and rode to my rescue with cash in hand. Thank god. She's been a good friend to me since I got my Ph.D.
What I'm happy about. however, is that the panic attack lasted only as long as it took to hear J's voice at the other end of the phone -- maybe a total of five minutes on the phone with my husband -- and when a solution was at hand, I instantly calmed down. No valium necessary. In other words, with my husband's help, I was able to think of a solution for the situation, and I found my way back to an unpanicked state without the aid of meds. Twenty years ago? That would not have been possible for me, for so many reasons that I can't even go into here. I was able to check out of my hotel and leave Los Angeles two and a half hours later, and that was such a relief.
And while the theft of my wallet was a drag, the happier news is that the library called me about two hours into my drive home to tell me that it had located my wallet, and it would be FedExing it to me for arrival by Monday. They reported that the contents seemed undisturbed (though I didn't ask specifically about the cash -- some $250 or so, I think). Yay! I mean, I'm assuming the cash is gone and I've cancelled my credit cards, but this way I won't have to do all the other draggy tasks like replace my driver license and other items. Like the wallet itself, which I bought in Venice a couple of years ago and love. Double yay!
It was kind of a surreal end to a fast trip that had already gotten a little weird during the kind of intense two and a half hours that C and I spent together. After eight years or doing therapy with him and 17 years intervening between then and now, we're still in touch and now actively negotiating a friendship. Neither of us has many platonic straight emotionally close friends of the opposite sex, and any maybe that's pretty typical of straight men and women -- I don't know (I have very good, emotionally close, gay male friends, but then, that automatically removes any possibility of sexual dynamics, and perhaps that's why we can be such good friends to each other). What I don't know about straight men would fill volumes, actually, so this is new territory for me. And it sounds like new territory for him as well. Who knows if it will be possible, but so far we each seem to be committed to it, so we shall see. I was both glad to see C and tweaked, and we'll just take it step by step. We agreed to see ach other again when I'm down in Los Angeles at the end of next month, and if that works out, great. If not, that's okay, too.
After all of that, though? I'm very glad to be home again! I'm also very glad that I decided to prep this upcoming week's lectures last weekend so that I don't have to do much class prep this weekend. I'm going to spend a little time organizing the research materials I brought back from Los Angeles ... that will feel good.
And now it's time for another cup of coffee. (When is it not?)
Recent Comments