Talk To Yourself More Kindly, You Stupid Idiot!

On Tuesday, I had a close encounter with a tree. 

A dead tree.

One that had fallen across the path on the dog walk. 

I had negotiated the “duck under” on the way out, but cracked my head open on it the way back, grossly miscalculating the distance between the top of my head and the trunk of the tree:

This was the tree:

This is me successfully recreating the “duck under” today with only one dog instead of two:

I hit that MFer HARD. It stopped me. I lay on the ground and cried a few tears. The dogs showed no empathy whatsoever. As I prepared to get up, I saw a drop of blood hit the ground. Then another and another. Splat, splat, splat, like rain.

I went back today to see if I could find the blood. I found it:

My first thought? FUCK.

I had two tissues in my pocket, pulled them out, and pressed them hard against the place that hurt the most on the top of my head to staunch the bleeding.  That freakin tree got me even through my ball cap. My Paris ball cap

Back at the car, I grabbed my trusty roll of paper towels and wadded up a bunch and pressed them to my head to absorb the blood better. 

I looked at myself in the visor:

It was the blood that freaked me out. My head hurt, sure, but not enough to warrant all that blood.

Back home, I peeled off my clothes, grabbed the shower wand, and sprayed it on my head. I needed to see what the hell was going on, but I couldn’t because the gash was on the top of my head. Despite all my fancy mirrors, I couldn’t get a good look at it, and it was still gushing. I needed a bandage. G was in Corning.

I took myself to Urgent Care with a washcloth on my head to absorb the blood. 

The Nurse Practitioner said she wanted to send me by ambulance to the ER.

“NO! No ambulance!” I said. 

Do you have someone who can drive you? 

I looked at Find Me on my phone. G was rolling into town. 

“I’ll call her” the NP said.

“Oh no,” I said. “I will call her.”

And I did, and she was there in two minutes, looking so cute in her coral shorts and blue printed blouse. They had wrapped my entire head by then, so I looked like a Sikh. 

She paled when she walked in.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.

At the ER, the Nurse Practitioner on duty pulled the curtain, and when she saw G, she lit up! G knew her! She had been to multiple Homecomings at our house! The tension in the room shifted from 90% to 10% in an instant. 

She was great. She numbed my head, stapled my gash together with eight staples, gave me a tetanus shot, and we were out of there in an hour.

Crisis averted. 

Unfortunately, as I was waiting to be discharged, I took a short video of myself and posted it to Instagram stories. Dumb. For many reasons, the primary one being that I don’t know how to write text under an Instagram story, so there was no explanation for how this head gash had happened. 

And frankly, I didn’t want to tell anyone how it happened because it was a moment of inattention.  Sure, I had miscalculated the distance between my head and the tree, but it was my total lack of mindfulness that had caused this accident. 

I felt stupid. I still feel stupid. And when people asked, “What happened???” I told them, “I stupidly hit my head on a tree.”

And it is here that I want to pause this narrative and speak directly to my wise friend Zee.

Zee,

I can hear you as clear as day. Here is what I hear you telling me.

“Do not call yourself names, my dear. Your subconscious listens to you! Don’t call yourself stupid. Don’t speak to yourself like this. Would you speak to a friend like this? To G? To me? Of course not! So don’t ever call yourself Stupid. Give yourself some forgiveness and grace.”

I know Zee would say this because she has said this to me on other occasions when I’ve used self-deprecating language to describe my behavior.  And she is right. And I need to use this incident as a reminder to take it easy, go slower when I’m trying to negotiate two rambunctious corgis under a fallen tree— or in any situation, really. 

Slowing down is what I often tell my students to do in my classes. Slowing down is at the heart of a yoga practice. So it’s especially embarrassing when I’m caught not practicing what I preach. I feel….St____

Like there’s more to learn on this path. 

Next time, duck down lower.