The reclaimed computer has a virus and I have a cut on the end of my bird finger. No one admits to being the one who clicked on the Wrong Link, and typing is hard. Therefore, the source of my irritation is twofold: I have several hours of work ahead of me while I de-virus the computer, and the bandaid on my hand makes typing awkward which hinders my search for a cure. OK, threefold. We have a slight infestation of cockroaches and the bug guy was here today. Before I could remind him not to use spray in my house, he did, and now there is the smell of chemical bug spray in my house and not that yummy essential oil stuff so I have a headache AND a cut finger AND a long night of computer tending ahead of me.
This is a bad time of the month for me to run into trivial problems, if you know what I mean.
And also, it’s Avery’s birthday today. This post should be a letter about how the sky opened up six years ago and the angels sang a heavenly song of love and light and the mother earth gifted me a package of pure awesomeness that turned into this little thing of beauty that we call Avery. Instead it’s this, a mini-rant about who infected the computer and how I can’t adequately type. Besides, Avery is upstairs right now screeching about how she’s not having a good birthday and today SUCKS because where is her party and why isn’t everyone here to give her ALL THE presents! She’s only six so the logic of our trip to Sea World and Marineland to pet the dolphins and how that WAS her birthday present/party escapes her. She’s ready for the baloons and throne and cake and ice cream and pile of presents, please.
And I’m kind of like yeah, me too.
But now she’s swimming at her grandfather’s house and I’m on round 43 thousand with the computer which is not popping up with fake virus warnings anymore but instead just won’t get on the internet, and really that’s not as bad as it was three hours ago. So, her day and mine have improved tenfold since I started writing this post several hours ago.
I’ll tell you this one thing: I could’ve stood there and watched those dolphins swim back and forth in front of me in the underwater viewing tank at Sea World for hours and hours. I know I’m not supposed to say that because Shamu killed that trainer and really those dolphins are probably thinking something like “fuck you, you ignorant peons, one day we’ll get you all for this!” but for that few minutes watching them with their fake smiles and half open eyes lazily cruising by us (and cruising by is really more like pacing in circles in a circular tank of water when you think about it), when I could tune out that little boy who growled at them every time they came close and before my kids started tugging on my arms and yelling about getting out of there, I was pretty happy and I chose to think they were winking at me.
I really, really like dolphins.
You may be interested in these related posts:Yesterday I cried these huge, body convulsing sobs of ridiculousness, just almost comical in their expression. Almost. I could have turned the music off, I guess. I could have opted out of wandering around the house…doing whatever it was I was doing. In the end I did; I made a Facebook photo caption joke out of the whole thing and went to a place where crying doesn’t work, where tears get in the way and where no one will run over and hug you if you get the sniffles.
I am not a person for whom crying is cathartic. That is not to say you won’t find me curled up on the couch with a stack of DVDs from the rent-at-your-own-risk section of the store when things get rough; the equivalent, I suppose, to those worn out cassettes of years gone by: meticulously crafted for just this sort of occasion. Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t have at least one. Maybe you created it yourself, or perhaps it’s just a mix tape of love songs from a failed affair. You played on repeat though, to the dismay of anyone within earshot of your room, and you wallowed. As adults, we graduate to DVDs. Well and youtube playlists. Mine is called simply, “sad”. From time to time, I’ll add to it. I’m not too proud to admit this to the internet.
When I came home yesterday from my meditation/distraction I was back in the thick of it again, angst ridden, queasy and full of delicate fractures. Walking the razor edge between “I’m ok, I’m all right!” and “I’m going to bed now, see you in a month”.
I’m trying to think about meditation in terms of these little intervals of the day where there’s just nothing in my brain. Or, where maybe I’m doing something but nothing PAINFUL is happening inside my head. Because that’s just not very often, so when sometimes I look up and go “HEY! That was a few seconds where the absence of pain happened, where nothing was in my head!” I like to call that meditation after the fact. I don’t care if you don’t think it’s meditation, fuck you. You’re not the one who gets to decide.
Fuck zazen. Nothing makes me want to think my way out of a situation more than sitting. I know, Brad Warner, I know. That’s when I need it the most. Why don’t we sit down over dinner sometime and hash this all out. In the meantime, here’s when my mind is blank:
re-sighting the gun after I check the first shot and see that it’s in the orange center
loading an AR mag
weeding the garden
building a fire
stapling targets to cardboard
coloring. Inside the lines, though. outside the lines is maddening.
People ask me “well is it working?” What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? Of course it is. Every day the world keeps spinning, doesn’t it? Yesterday I was in pain, and then I wasn’t, and then I was. Like everyone, yeah?
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say Hey how about if today we just stop trying to make it different and just make it through?
Tags: angst, Depression, recovery
You may be interested in these related posts:For now I’ll just leave you with this:
I awoke this morning with these images in my head: me, climbing out of a pool where I’d just ruined Spurgeon’s triathlon swimming win (and he had won, by a large margin) because I’d disqualified him by being in the pool with him while timing his laps, and this older lesbian couple who I was staying with, one of whom was the therapist from Grey’s anatomy, could have warned me that this would happen, but did not. Instead of slinking off in humiliation I confronted them politely. I was still humiliated even though, Lance Armstrong style, Spurgeon, who had won a million trophies already, was gracious. I was sort of mad at the guy who “won” because really. His time was like 40 seconds shorter. He should have come off the 1st place slot. He won off a technicality. Spurgeon for his part wasn’t mad at me. Why not? I didn’t stick around to find out, because I had a much worse nightmare to slip into.
RIGHT before I opened my eyes, a guy was having his clothes torn off with little hooks and in front of a window. He was saying “wait a minute, I thought that question was rhetorical?” and the torturer, who had already done some other heinous shit which now thankfully I cannot remember, said “no. I really meant I wonder what it’s like to have your clothes literally torn off your body”. So he hooked ropes and….something to this dude and put him in front of a huge window with… wind? on the other side. I got the impression the guys clothes were about to be ripped off his body.
That was also my fault, somehow. This scene was preceded by all grades of horror scenes. I mean Hellrasier shit, but mixed in with buildings and images from my past. wtf.
Today’s theme is guilt. What lesson should we take from this morning’s dreams?
Well, let me enlighten you…I learned that my subconscious mind is active.
I learned this sort of answer from Phil Jackson, who last night answered a a reporter this way:
reporter: Phil, last game at the end of the first quarter your team had over 30 points, and tonight your team has 23, what’s different about tonight?
Phil: Last time we had 30, and tonight we have 23.
Tags: "I love phil jackson", angst, dreams
You may be interested in these related posts:Grief is funny. Recently my husband let it slip that for our whole relationship he hasn’t understood my hanging onto this whole “Silas thing” – his exact words were something like “whenever you brought it up I would think’ ‘really? again?’…” and I nodded sagely even as my face grew hot with humiliation because we were talking about his feelings about a friend who died recently and he has no idea what it’s going to be like.
Except maybe it’ll be different for him and that’s where the berating comes in for me. My husband is healthier than I’ll ever be in life. Maybe things will be different for him.
But for me, for now, I’ll keep inexplicably getting sad every year around the first week of May and the last week of June and then suddenly realizing why. I’ll keep telling Silas Happy Birthday on my blog even though that’s stupid and if he were alive he would think I’m pathetic and when he was alive he did think I was pathetic.
Grief is funny. Death is funny. It immortalizes people, turns them into what they are not. Were not.
Once in a restaurant with a dessert bar Silas sang a song called Mommy’s got a Sugar Buzz because it was so funny to him how someone so small could put away so many gummy bears. He said one day our kids would know that song and I’d never live it down.
My kids do know about my dessert bar fascination, that much is true.
You may be interested in these related posts:Earlier this week my old/new friend Joe casually mentioned (threw down a gauntlet) the upcoming 5K race at the HUGE tourist festival in our resort town. We traditionally avoid crossing the bridge onto the island during this whole weekend, and I would have used that as my internal excuse as if I needed another one besides I HAVEN’T BEEN RUNNING and I FUCKING DIDN’T WANT TO but when someone throws down a gauntlet (Joe says “what? All I did was ask if you were running in it.” and to that I say whatever man. you asked me ON MY FACEBOOK WALL) what the hell else are you supposed to do.
Well I don’t know what you guys do, but what I do is register for the damn race. Whatever, it’s a 30 minute race. Okay, 35. OKAY, 37. Ish. They’re just calf muscles. They heal.
To prepare, since I had four days, I did what anyone in my position would have done: Jack shit-well, except abstain from the firebowl/Pandora.com/coconut rum-with-a-shot glass-after-everyone-else-is-asleep late nights. (oh, by the way. could you cut some more firewood, honey?) Nobody wants to be the one runner in the Saturday morning 5K that has to stop and vomit a 1/2 mile in. There’s always somebody, especially in a town famous for a drink called Pirate’s Punch that’s served in a 32 ounce souvenir cup at the local bar called the Palace Saloon. Side note: Once, my friend and I decided to put straws in our Pirate’s Punch cups and race them to the bottom like mind erasers. 1) BRAIN FREEZE. 2) Very early bedtime that evening. So glad I wasn’t a runner back then.
- almost almost almost
Back to the race, which I did run, vomit free. I believe my new custom will be as last time, less sleep is better; more coffee is good. Why break tradition when the formula seems to work so well. I couldn’t sleep, as is my habit, until after 1 a.m. and was awoken rudely by Joe THREE FULL MINUTES before I specified my wakeup call. Had my internal debate about pre-race coffee, looked up the pros and cons on runners world forums again and decided the ritual and the caffeine was worth the risk (again), almost left without breakfast (again) and arrived too early at the race site (again).
Only this time I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t nervous. I knew because I have only run a handful of times lately that my time would be slow that I didn’t care about time and being humiliated by mine(there’s ALWAYS someone slower, even if they are 4), and I had a friend there so whatever. Race cherry popped. It’s all downhill from here; it’s all chasing that first race high. (I’m doing a 10K next. If a 5K is good, a 10K must be better.)
Plus: a 30 minute race, ho hum. (All RIGHT, 35-37 minutes. Fine.) I found my friend from last time and he’s gonna do it barefoot! yay!, fielded eleventy million questions about my weird toe shoes and we got into the pack. Right up front. I love making the high school boys trip over me. Just kidding, I’m back with the strollers, I know my place in the hierarchy.
Joe goes, “It takes me a while to get going. Then I can turn it on”
I go, “It takes me a while to get going. Then I never turn it on. I also don’t sprint. Ever. I don’t know how. So when we start together and you want to speed up, just go.”
Side note: I say I don’t know how to sprint but it’s really that I don’t have any muscles in my legs. I’m not sure what lifts them up and down to run. I think it’s just strings from my brain to the soles of my feet. I’m a big marionette. Little marionette, whatever.
I never saw Joe again. I thought “either he lapped me a long time ago, or he’s hurt” I stopped to walk about 1 mile in when I got a little side cramp and figured “well if he’s back there he’ll pass me right now” and he didn’t.
Blah Blah Blah run run run. I didn’t run with music. The girl next to me for a while had great music. I wish I could have stayed with her bad ass mix, but she was too slow. I can’t believe I just said that, can you? She probably passed me at some point and beat me by 8 minutes. Whatever, at 1.5 miles she was dragging ass and not doing the Dust Brothers justice.
At the finish, I had a decision to make. I knew my time was irrelevant-but I’m 37 years old. I don’t like crowds, new things, or being in front of people. I wouldn’t call what I did a sprint, but I ran hard. Ish. You could say I “finished strong”. And when I ran under a clock with a big 31 on it, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, until Joe called my name and said “did you see your time?” And that’s when I knew I wasn’t hallucinating and their clock wasn’t broken.
It’s not newsworthy, but if every little roll out of bed half nights sleep 5K will net me a couple minute improvement on my time for a while, I might just be as fast I want to be here before too long. I know I didn’t earn this, and I know I could be so much better, and I know all I need to do is weights, and eat better, and supplement, and gain some mass, and blah, and blah and blah and blah.
But thanks universe. For the gimmie. That was a big righteous move and I won’t forget it.
You may be interested in these related posts:
