Category: Words

It’s been a topsy turvy kind of a week. Great days over the weekend through to my birthday followed by a couple of days that were more difficult for various reasons.

More good days ahead, of course, as I finish out my week of birthday celebrations.

I had lunch with one of my favorite men on Thursday, and for some reason the minute we walked back into work something about the lighting hit me the wrong way. I remember saying “doesn’t the light look pink?” and then I was hit with instant migraine aura.

For those of you with normal brains, what that means in my case is an arc of flashing zigzags across to top of my field of vision, a loss of peripheral vision, something sort of like pixels missing on a screen and I have trouble finding words. It also means I have about 30 minutes until a crushing headache unless I get some medication into me.

It makes reading and driving both bad options. Once the word loss kicks in, it makes talking interesting, too. I suspect it’s like a baby stroke. I suppose some people around me probably enjoy the quiet.

So I downed some medication with a cup of coffee and waited. Usually that is all I need to, but not this time. I had to take another dose of medication when the headache still tried to come on. That improved things to a point where I could see well enough to drive home. I could talk again, kind of. I had one more dose of the medication before the last of the headache died down, but I think between the headache, the medication and the emotional roller coaster I was in a perfect set up for a meltdown. So melt down I did.

Thank you to my sweet GingerBelle for trying to talk some sense into me when I was in no shape to be logical, and staying on the line with me until I was a human being again. Thanks to Paddy for knowing that being as matter of fact as possible is the best way to deal with someone who is temporarily insane. Thanks to all the other people who sent messages not even knowing that I was having a migraine induced meltdown.

If there is a silver lining in this, and there always is, it’s that my friends demonstrated yet again why they are the best people in the world. I say it all the time, I will keep on saying it because it will always be true: I am surrounded by people who totally kick ass.

People who take care of me. People who don’t let me get away with being a bitch to myself. People who love me and I love back. People who would brave sub-zero temperatures with me to make snow angels. People who play Mexican Train with me. People who get condos at Eagle Crest in the snow. People who share their favorite bar with me on Friday nights before Duck games. People who make me laugh. People who trust me enough to cry on my shoulder. People who bake me pies. People who let me and my crazy friends tailgate with them. People who bring Jell-O shots.

So at the end of the day, even though I feel a bit like an African elephant stepped on my skull I still am left feeling mostly grateful. No, it was not an Asian elephant. It was definitely an African elephant. With huge floppy ears.

The type of elephant isn’t the point.

The point is that even a headache the size of an African elephant has a silver lining. Just like everything else.

What I need is
A good defense
‘Cause I’m feelin’
Like a criminal
And I need
To be redeemed
To the one
I’ve sinned against
Because he’s all
I ever knew of love
–Fiona Apple/Criminal

Lately it seems like I tend to spend time being angry with myself for not being angry with other people. Anger isn’t one of the states I spend a lot of time in, so I am a little out of practice being angry in general. I don’t really know what to do with anger.

Melancholy? Bittersweet? Happy? Peaceful? Content? Sad?
All feelings I am good at. I am very experienced in all of them. I can deal with them. I can live with them.

Anger, though?
I try to avoid it. Oh, I get irritated. Annoyed. Angry? Not very often. It’s bad when I am. I feel like it’s bad. Sometimes it definitely is not something I should act on. Other times? If someone does something shitty? Why can’t I let myself be mad at them? Why do I feel like I should be mad at myself for what they chose to do?

Oh, right. Because I let them.

Maybe I have what seem to me to be good reasons for it, but still. If I let someone take advantage of me or if I let them repeatedly do something that I don’t like then who should I be angry with–them or me?

And then all of the shoulds and shouldn’ts about being responsible for your own reactions vs other people owning the shit that they do jumble all up and it confuses me. Because if I am really angry with someone, it’s going to be directly proportional to how strong my feelings are about them. I’m not going to ever bother getting really angry with someone I am indifferent to.

Which means that any anger that deflects back on me will potentially be a really big ball of a really strong emotion.

Then there’s also the C word. No, not that one. The other one: confrontation. I am bad at confronting other people. I avoid it. Actively. If I do confront someone, I will run away inside before they even have a chance to respond. Because my natural inclination is to cut and run, I will second guess myself and give someone second, third, eightieth chances. And then hate myself for it if they don’t seem like they deserve it. Or if it feels like they are using those chances as an opportunity to hurt me again.

And if I feel guilty for being justifiably angry with someone because I don’t want to hurt their feelings in spite of them not seeming to have much regard for mine?

Well. I am smart enough to know that it is fucked up. On both sides.

I just suck sometimes.

Fuck it. I am just going to hang up and sing.

I’ll work on giving myself permission to be angry another day.

I used to know a family who had a retriever. They had a contraption on the deck to launch balls into the back yard. She would gladly chase a ball until her heart exploded. She was totally in love with chasing and retrieving a ball. It was her purpose in life.

I always wanted to have something like that.

There are things I love to do. A lot of things. Things with words. Things with singing. Things with yarn. Nothing that consumes me like that, though.

On second thought, I wake up to write at 4 am. Maybe I am wrong about not being passionate about anything. I wouldn’t write until my heart exploded though.

Perhaps that’s for the best.

Plus, if my heart was going to explode from writing, I’d want to have written something a whole lot better.