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THERE’S A LOT of talk about finding inner peace. All sorts of gurus and therapists and yogis and people who wear long flowing robes and burn incense are always yammering about it. But what should you do if instead of inner peace you have only inner turmoil? Can you change your turmoil into peace?
The answer is it’s really difficult, especially if you live in Maine and it’s the second week in April and it’s effing snowing, a lot. That’s where I live and what it’s doing right now, and I don’t like it one bit.
On my constant search for inner peace I have finally come up with the only thing that sort of works, or at least gets you started towards it. You’ve got to realize and accept that once your birth mother is gone, nobody else will care about you to that degree except yourself. That’s a fact you can take to the bank.
I have long suspected this but found out for sure this morning when my blood pressure soared to 192/102, and my visiting friend who is a nurse practitioner nevertheless climbed into a waiting Uber in order to arrive at the local airport a full five hours before her scheduled flight just in case the snow got worse, leaving me simmering in my pre-stroke BP anxiety. As she left me teetering on the edge of freaking out, she said, “I love you.” Two hours earlier, my “in sickness and in health” husband had flown the coop to attend a business meeting halfway across the country.
You are all you’ve got. Once you fully grasp that nobody is coming to save you, devising a plan is easy. Until then you just lie there in your crib waiting for Mommy. But there’s only one Mommy, and when she’s gone, you’re it. (I hope my son reads this.)
—Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.