What Am I Doing Here

OMG! I really screwed up my lungs in 2012 when I drilled a hole in a piece of asbestos siding. I really don't know what I was thinking. I knew better than that but I am Obsessive Compulsive and I wanted to get this last nail back in above a window I had replaced. I was in a hurry so I didn't even bother to go and get a mask. I just started drilling with a dull drill bit. I ground away and a voice said to me, you had better stop or you are going to get really harm yourself. I stopped and looked around and continued drilling and I have gotten really sick. It was my guide trying to protect me and I just ignored him. Hopefully I have learned my lesson. That is the first time I ever remember receiving instructions from him, but I am sure it has happened before and like then I ignored him.

Since I harmed my lungs my practice has slowly deteriorated. To the point that right now all's that I can do are 7 Suryanamakara A's & 7 Suryanamaskara B's, Padangustasana and Padahastasana and the seated closing postures. This is very frustrating to me. I drilled the hole on June 8th 2012. The next morning it felt like a thousand ants were trying to crawl out of my throat. I was completely freaked out. It gradually got better and I was relived when I was able to sing in a harmonium class I was teaching. I drove truck at harvest that year and I was acutely aware that the dust from the machinery was affecting my lungs and that I was bothered by the heat like I hadn't been before. Driving home from harvest I was aware of the dust coming up out of my lungs and the process made it very difficult to breathe.

That fall we had an intense wildfire season and the air was very bad. By September 15rh the air was as bad as the air in Beijing or Delhi. My lungs filled up with the smoke and that day I drove over to Helena to meet a friend for lunch from Great Falls. My lungs were so full it was affecting my whole body and I felt like a smoked fish.

I realized when I drilled the hole in the siding that gossip had gotten started that I had been trying to solicit young boys. I had gone to the police when my travelers checks and paper airline ticket had been stolen. The police immediately started treating me like a suspect. I went out of my body and realized that the auto rickshaw drivers had taken them. They must have freaked out when I had them take me to the police station and returned them the next day while I was out. Shortly after that I was walking past the shala with the woman I played kirtan with and someone ran by and shouted that a yoga student had been trying to solicit young boys. A chill went up my spine and I realized that I would be a chief suspect because I was older and single. Then a young boy started showing up at my door at night trying to get me to let him in. I knew immediately that I was being set up and that his father a detective was waiting out there for me to let him in and he would arrest me. I told the woman that I had been walking with the next day at lunch that the police were trying to frame me. She just giggled and we dropped the subject.

That day in Helena I told the woman I had met for lunch what had happened and she was supportive. I needed to clear my lungs and she suggested that I go to Boulder Hot Springs for the night. I tried to get her to go with me but she went back to Great Falls to take care of her mother who had recently suffered a stroke.

My lungs cleared somewhat and the air cleared. I was fine but then around the first of October a weather pattern was moving in and I knew that the air was going to get funky again. I freaked out and packed a bag and went to the emergency room at the hospital and to get admitted to the hospital because I knew my lungs would fill up with smoke again. There I told them my story and they assured me I would be fine and gave me a prescription to Lorazepam which is an antianxiety medication. I took the prescription and left. That weekend the air gradually began to get worse. I went to the pharmacy and got the prescription filled, but I did not taking the medication until a few days later when the air began to get much worse. The medication shielded the symptoms of the smoke on my body and it was not long until I was addicted to them and had started taking four or five a day.