So I am a woman prone to panic. Case in point. I arrived in Cordoba to Senses and Colours Hostel on Calle de Barrosso http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Senses-and-Colours-Anil-Hostel/Cordoba/19143. I had already checked in so I only had to use my electronic key on the outside door, as reception had gone all siesta on the day. I try the lock and push on the door…and it doesn’t open. I try again and push…no luck. Here is my internal dialogue:
“Oh shit. I could knock on the door but no one will hear me. Oh no. What if I have to sleep outside tonight? What would I do if someone mugged me? What can I live on and live without? I can walk around but at some point I will have to sleep. SLEEP, Fonda?! When you are lying in the street?” I keep trying the door with more and more dire thoughts of survival under the worst conditions. And then I pull. And the door opens. So simple.
The same thing happened when I left my power cord in the Cat’s Hostel—a party stop for 22-year old English teachers in Spain http://www.catshostel.com/. “I’ll just ship my computer home and live off of internet cafés and Kodak discs. Maybe I’ll just go home and save the money.” When I just stopped to realize that Spaniards ALSO use computers, I felt a bit more like I could find a power cord. And I did, quite easily in fact. It was the last one in the store.
I don’t know why I immediately go to the extreme. I don’t know how I can stop it. But I recognize that it is a part of me, and sometimes it is really funny, after the moment of panic that is. So I am reconciling myself to being this way AND to knowing that I am probably not going to have to resort to extremes. I can panic, but I can also slow down, take a minute and figure out what I am NOT looking at, what I am missing. If I just keep trying, I will find the right way, having usually gone the long way around. It’s who I am.
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