It started with a chair.
Well, two chairs if I am being honest, but if you get the reference above then we are automatically better friends than we were before you opened this post. More on that, later.
Two years ago, just after we closed on our new home, I went with my parents to the Rago Arts Auction in Lambertville, New Jersey, for their unreserved auction of modern pieces. I had my eye on a pair of white leather Barcelona chairs, and I cannot even tell you how exciting it was when my dad raised the panel for that final time and the auctioneer banged his gavel. “We won!” I exclaimed. My dad laughed. “You didn’t ‘win’,” he said. “But you are buying the chairs.”
And oh how I love my Barcelona chairs. This is a very old photo of my living room, as the decor has changed, but you can see the cool white leather chairs named after my sweet city.
Last year, my parents went back to the auction for us, as I was home with a new baby, and probably slightly out of my mind by that point.
We had seen a few items that we were outbid on, but found an incredible settee with beautiful upholstering and it found a new home in our living room. I “won” again.
Two years in a row, I was lucky enough to get fabulous, unique and special seating pieces from the Rago Auction.
What does this have to do with anything, you might ask?
Well, this past weekend was the auction, once again. My parents went up to check out the pieces, and I spent a good (embarrassingly long) time watching the live feed of the auction, all 700 lots. And I had my eye on one of the very last lots, 1192, a pair of Hollywood Regency silver chairs. Amazing.
I placed an absentee bid, refreshed my browser and held my breath.
And I was outbid by $50.
I was disappointed. “But every year I get a chair from Rago,” I complained.
And then it hit me; perhaps this is a good sign, in fact. The past two years I started off my Januaries by buying seating at this auction, and the past two years have been supremely awful. So, in an effort to make lemonade, I decided that my “loss” was, in fact, a good sign. That no Rago chair=better year.
This is what it is like to be a superstitious person.
I have written time and time again about my incredibly superstitious nature; I come by it honestly, as it was passed on to me by my dad, who got it from his mom. I have written on here about the obvious things, like my thing for feathers, and lucky pennies, salt, purple underwear…
but I don’t think that I really share how much these “superstitions” actually control my life.
To me, superstitions are equated with some sense of control, and therefore, are also equated with anxiety.
I am extremely ritualistic about some things. I have weird habits. And when someone last week asked me if I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder I told them that I did not, but then started to wonder. So I looked it up.
According to a Health.com article on OCD I do have some obsessive compulsive traits, but I do not think that I have OCD.
For instance, I do not engage in obsessive hand-washing, nor overzealous cleaning. I do, however, count things (like steps) and I am obsessed with numbers. I am not a perfectionist or particularly organized, but I do have a disproportionate and abnormal fear of violence. As the article states, “Everybody has fleeting thoughts about the possibility of being affected by violence or other misfortunes. The more we try to avoid thoughts like this, the more they pop into our heads.”
This is how my brain works (and I cannot believe I am telling you this) in normal, day to day situations. I will give you a recent example:
My family and I took a recent two day trip to Hershey, PA to experience the holidays at the park. Hershey is a very happy, clean place with wonderful hospitality. During our first meal there, lunch at a nice Italian restaurant at our beautiful hotel, I saw two college-aged kids walk into the restaurant. They were clean cut, dressed the way my college-aged cousins dressed, and, frankly, could have been my cousins. But I noticed that one of the guys didn’t take off his coat upon sitting down. This scared me. My mind began swirling with elaborate fantasies of their plan to hold up the restaurant, with no intention of actually eating there. My husband saw me look obsessively, and saw the fear in my eyes, and he tried to calm me, but I was legitimately scared. And do you know what assuaged my anxiety (besides the glass of Prosecco that I decided to order)? When I saw the guy in the jacket pour olive oil onto his plate so that he could use it to dip his bread. I reasoned that if he were planning on holding us hostage inside this restaurant, inside this hotel, in “The Sweetest Place on Earth”, he probably wouldn’t be focused on his foccacia. That, I realize, is insane. But is it OCD? I don’t think so. I think it is anxiety.
I also looked it up on The National Institute of Mental Health, and while there are some overlaps between the behaviors they describe and my own anxious ones, again, I don’t think I could be officially diagnosed.
So, in the spirit of my quest for a better new year, I have decided to try to let go of some of my rituals, paranoid thoughts and idiosyncrasies.
For example, when I microwave things, I do not just press the 1 or 2 minute quick heat buttons. Oh no. I have a number for everything. Milk, depending on the size of the bottle, gets microwaved in a mug for either 44 or 1 minute and 11 seconds.
Hot chocolate gets microwaved for 2:36.
When the box of chicken nuggets instructs me to microwave four of them for a minute, I microwave them for a 1:01 second.
So, this week, as silly or inane or insane as it may sound, I microwaved milk for 52 and 55 and 58 seconds.
This is my way of trying to let go of my anxieties; to relinquish some control.
The idea of this post actually came about last night as I was getting into bed and noticed that the bed had been made wrong; the duvet cover was upside-down, so that the buttons were up, close to our faces, as opposed to our feet. And this made me anxious. I felt all of those superstitious feelings and longings for control, but I also felt extremely tired; too tired to get up and remake my entire bed at 11:00pm. So I decided to leave it. Consciously.
For my entire life, I have been ruled by phobias, apprehension, and a desire for some control over a world that is, whether I like it or not, out of my control.
So I used my rational brain last night as I sat in bed, contemplating the buttons and the duvet and the prayer-type-wishes that I say every single night and the fact that I have to check on my daughter in her bedroom at least once before I go to sleep, and I waited for my husband to come up so that he could talk me down, and tell me that we would be okay, despite the fact that the buttons were facing up. As it turns out, he had fallen asleep reading by the fire, so I went to bed by myself, and I woke up to my baby crying, my daughter clinging to me, just like every other morning. Even though the buttons were facing up.
Do you know what a relief it would be if I could let go of these ridiculous things? If I did not have to carry them anymore?
And I am sure I am not the only one.
So, as I said, it started with a chair, which is a nod to one of my favorite movies, Juno.
And back in 2007, when my sister was sleeping over with us at our townhouse, we decided to make a Juno cake. It looked like this:
Now, for someone who is in no way an artist, I think this cake is, as they say, “totally boss”. But really, it is quite imperfect, something that did not bother me then, nor does it now.
So instead of focusing on giving myself a diagnoses, I am going to try to focus on finding little moments in which I can let my superstitions (which are really just anxieties, hiding in a more legit sounding word) go.
There are some things that will always be with me, and that is OK. Some things are family traditions, and they weave the customs of the old into the present, like throwing salt over our shoulders, and for those things I am grateful. I am grateful that I can write my dad an email about something that I really want and he will reply with “Salt”. I am grateful for the bond that the salt throwing gives to us.
But I am going to use Sunday’s lost auction chairs as a fresh start. Because honestly, if I had gotten the chairs, I don’t think it would have made this coming year any different than it will be. Lord knows, for the past two years I have tried to abide by every trick I know, yet it didn’t make a difference at all. Because while there are some things that are in our hands
there are some things that we will never be able to control, as hard as that may be to accept.
So now, I really want to make hot cocoa (I am very lucky to have a friend who picked up a new box for me at the grocery store today so that I can get it at pre-school pick up, as I am fresh out) and I will microwave it for 2 minutes and see how the water feels, and then, maybe, if I have time later tonight, watch Juno and/or eat cake.
It ended with a chair.
Leave a Reply