AM I A DITZ?

I seem scattered a lot of times, especially when I am at choir or choir rehearsal. (That is the main place I go where people know me and where my behavior is the most obvious.) I do not help the situation by using that as a reason for why I misplaced my music, or am not sure where to stand when we change the usual way of progressing to the choir loft. "Scattered is my middle name." I sometimes say as a way of explanation/joking my way out of my embarrassment.

The other night the choir director gave me some one one-on-one time.

I use a hearing aid, in one ear, mainly for church service and choir rehearsal. As a result I am very unaccustomed to it.

I wore it while working with him but took it out at one point.

When we finished I put my music away. Then I put my hand in my pocket to make sure the aid was there. It was not. I kept checking my pockets and turning the music scores and hymnal upside down. Nothing. I figured I should explain my behavior. "Oh no, I can't find the hearing aid."

I bent down, looking under the piano, checking under my seat, getting more and more agitated and worried. Then something made me check my ear. There it was. Absently I must have put it back in while I was singing. I felt the fool when I said "Oops. It's in my ear."

I was mortified. But was that scattered? I do not feel it in my ear after a while so I was unware it was there. I was happily distracted by our work when I must have put it back in. I looked ditzy searching for it.

At servive and rehearsal am I scattered?

Sometimes. I have to admit that. I had been out of the world for a long time. I never developed the habits of orderliness and organization that I might have had I been working or had a family. Old Habits carry over too. I remember, in school, oh so many years (decades) ago, messy notebooks, scrambling to find the right notes.

But when I think about when it happens or what I did that seemed ditzy, I realize many of the incidents happen when I am drugged or in a high level of pain. My concentration goes, I go, 'away'.

It happened in a special choir rehearsal this past week. I had to ask where we were in the music, realizing I had not heard anything that was said for what seemed like minutes, but probably only seconds.

Where had I been? Away, in that place where your mind is emptied, that place the drugs sometimes take you but sometimes too the pain. It is not active distraction; it is a blankness where you don't think or feel anything. A fraction of time when you don't feel the pain.

So the answer is "Yes". And "No".

Sometimes I am ditzy.

The other night at choir someone made a joke about me. "Does Carol have her music?" Everyone laughed, including me. I said "Yes. At least tonight." And they laughed again. It was nice. It was the first time that a joke was made, outloud, to the group, about me. It made me feel I was truly a member of the choir. The joke almost a group hug, we accept you and your scatteredness.

That time I enjoyed the ditz. It gave me an identity within the group. Most of the time I do not. Not because it is an insult. It is not. Rather because it means that the pain is really bad, I had to take extra narcotic, or both. It is in those moments of being 'gone' that I feel most the weight of the pain and what it does to me.

I think, maybe, I would rather be merely a ditz.