I lost a brand-new bottle of conditioner.  I’d gone to Target, picked up the conditioner, and somehow lost it in between the car and the bathroom.   I didn’t even realize it was missing until earlier this week.   I’d gotten the bath all ready for the girl, she’d gathered all her pony friends, and I’d prepared myself for a half hour of some heavy-duty detangling.  But I couldn’t find the conditioner.

“How does someone lose a bottle of conditioner??” I lamented to my husband.

“By misplacing it?”

“No, no.  What I mean is, WHO loses a bottle of conditioner?  Who does that?”

“You do?”

He’s very helpful in my times of need.

I was able to squeeze out the last few drops from the old bottle, and the immediate crisis was averted.   We both enjoyed the bath, the girl’s hair was once again fluffy and tangle-free, and all was right with the world.  Except… it wasn’t.  Because I lost the conditioner.  And that conditioner suddenly represented everything that had been going wrong for the past month and a half.  I was that conditioner.   Lost.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been sleepwalking.  I’ve been discouraged and grumpy and far shorter with the people around me than I’d care to admit.  My brain is toast.  I’m forgetting things, and losing things, and as scattered as I’ve ever been in my life.  The house is running about as smoothly as you’d imagine it’d have to be running for someone to lose a bottle of conditioner.  I ran the car out of gas last week, something I haven’t done in probably 20 years.  As I’ve no doubt whined stated in previous posts, I don’t do the patient thing very well.   I’ve been in constant pain with this shoulder thing (which, as it turns out, is further complicated by 4 discs in my neck with varying degrees of protruding and bulging and stenosis and a bunch of other fancy-sounding doctor words).   And I guess I don’t do pain very well either.   Or being physically limited in any way.  Or being told to rest, some more.  The combination of all of the above slid me into a depression before I realized what had happened.  All the extra energy I’ve been able to muster – such that it is – has been going to my yoga training.  Fortunately, there was a lot of learning and studying and testing that didn’t require me actually *doing* yoga.   But there’s been precious little left of me to go around, for the kids, for my husband, for the house… and apparently for keeping track of minor details like what I do with my Target bags when I get back from shopping.

And then I lost the conditioner, and it jolted me from my sleep.   There’s only so much I can do about the pain, and only so much I can do about how quickly my body heals.  I do have to be patient there.  But I don’t have to let it define me, and I don’t have to mentally check out in order to deal with it.  I have a lot of choices, and while I can’t do anything about the choices I’ve made over the past six weeks, I don’t have to continue to make them.

The day after tomorrow, I start the 15-day, 12-hour-a-day yoga retreat that will complete my training for my RYT.    At the end of the retreat, I will have completed my 250 hours, and will be ready to start teaching.   Make no mistake;  I’m excited about that.   But what I’m most excited about really doesn’t have anything to do with yoga at all, and everything to do with getting refreshed, re-focused, and re-centered.  As always, the timing is far, far better than I could have ever planned it myself.   I need this retreat right now, and I’m finding myself actually grateful for the injury that is ultimately going to make me appreciate this two weeks so much more than I otherwise would.  So. Much. More!

I’m grateful that I lost the conditioner too.  I lost the conditioner, but I gained my life.  It’s a pretty small price to pay.