I managed to go to bed at an almost reasonable hour last night, after a few nights of 1:30-2 AM bedtimes (which really doesn’t work when you have to be up at 6:30)…but then spent the next hour NOT sleeping, but crying instead. I tried meditative breathing…it must have eventually worked (or pure exhaustion did…who knows), but I don’t even really know what set me off…some sense of futility. All’s not right with the world. No real sense of purpose to the days. That plodding feeling. Get through this day? Then there’s another. And another. And another. And they are all largely the same. Getting through. Getting by. Making stuff, but none of it feels that good to make…I can’t iron fabrics for 18 hours a day. And the ironing never made me feel GOOD…it was at the end of the ironing, when you would see what you achieved and THAT would feel good. That only happens once a quilt. It’s not enough.
I don’t know how to BE…be happy with what I have and not want more. I want more but I don’t see it ever happening. I don’t even know what I want more of. I don’t hold out much hope for more. This might be it. It seems a very empty life. There are too many Have-To’s and not enough Want-To’s…mostly because I don’t have many wants any more. And then my brain kicks in and tells me I really should be cleaning house. Fuck you, Brain. If I wanted to clean house, I would. When I am already unhappy, why make me do something that makes me more unhappy?
I say that, but there were two floors today that needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. That’s how my cleaning works. It’s not obsessive. It happens in small spurts…out of necessity.
Today. Back to school. I’m thinking I need to make a voodoo doll. I got to a point with this one school issue where if I didn’t meditate, I would have to kill small furry things (not really, but that’s how it feels). The anger, the work stress, the unhappy…I just needed to focus and get it out of my system, so I used the meditation for that, and again, it asked the one question that upset me so much yesterday, and today I tried to change the answer…my brain tossed in another answer, a perfectly reasonable answer…honestly a BETTER answer, because yesterday’s answer was just plain stupid. And yeah. Crying again, because my brain and I don’t agree.
Who am I if I am not my brain?
Healing is such a fucking slow process. I can’t hurry it. I just have to go with it, move what I can, change what I can, do the things that make the day more bearable.
So I ironed…
I did not make the voodoo doll (or five)…yet. Give me time. Those are heart pieces and arteries. I managed to do those and some fire and a spider and web and a uterus and two tattoos and three thunderbolts…I stopped right before the lungs because I realized that even though I was not in the least bit tired (strange that), it was getting late. That was the problem last night…I went to bed and I wasn’t tired yet. I mean, I was sort of tired, but not tired enough to just fall asleep and not have to work at it. So my brain got itself tied in knots and took me underwater into the murk of melancholia. Fucking stupid brain.
I need more exercise I think. Traveling messed with my exercise plan.
So the stuff in color is what I got done…it’s not much, actually…
An eyeball.
It’s kind of pitiful. Oh well. I’m at 12 hours now…at least one more to go, maybe more.
Part of the evening got tied up with work prep and cooking and picking the girlchild up from soccer…
Pretty skies, every year. I stopped to appreciate the sky. Tomorrow, hopefully I will appreciate the sky from home, because girlchild is supposed to finally get her license (I will believe it when I see it). She’s been in a mood lately…stress from soccer and life and everything…so she snaps at me for just about anything, and I try not to react…because when I react now, it’s usually with tears, and that upsets her. Then again, she needs to learn not to always snap. She needs to see that her mood causes other people pain. Or maybe I am just super sensitive. I am.
One part of the meditation question that makes me cry is the reminder that her brother will be gone in less than a year to college, and she follows the year after. And then there is just me. And this little psycho…
Yup. There she is, on the ironing board. Pulled her off another 4 times tonight.
Then she landed on my lap (three times tonight, once during meditation, claws kneading my thighs the entire time, try concentrating with that going on…I have a mind of steel, really).
And finally she tried the back end approach to the ironing board while I was working…she eventually ended up on the back of the chair with front legs on the purple fabric until I jiggled the board a few too many times and she gave up.
Mr. Meditation wants me to appreciate things, be grateful. I’m grateful to my ex for putting up my Xmas lights, even though we have been divorced for a million years now. He knows it scares the crap out of me, so he just does it. Thanks to my coworker who sent me a tiny, live Christmas tree for my classroom…it even has sparkles. Thanks to the kids who remembered their homework from before break and brought it today…and to those who didn’t and still showed up to detention to serve their time. I appreciated the sky this evening. Thanks to climate change and pollution for that. Oops. I didn’t mean that to be negative…but sometimes the ugly is indeed beautiful. Thanks to the kids for continuing to watch stupid TV series with their mom every night they’re here, connecting with me on some lame level that centers me at night and makes it easier to get through the rest of the day. Thanks to meditation for helping me be calmer about the stupid shit that swirls around me both externally and internally. Thanks to the two girls I had as students a million years ago who still remember my name, even though I’ve forgotten theirs (sigh).
And thanks to the part of my brain that pushes past all the sad and yuck and depression and makes up drawings and colors them in and finds the fabrics. I know it was some sort of genetic mutation that caused that part of my brain to exist…most don’t have that talent…and it was sheer stubbornness and willpower that made it as strong as it is today…and that, people, was all me. That’s mine. May tonight be full of sleep and empty of tears…for enough tears have fallen for today…hell, for this year. I don’t have any left to give.
Damn, I wish that were true.
Kathy Nida 