In the ball pit

I do this thing where I start thinking - really thinking - about something that's important: Have you noticed this about yourself?  Is there a reason why you have to run your mouth like that/act so awkward around new people/ be unbelievably cranky for no good reason?  And as soon as the truth about the thing starts rushing at me - as soon as I'm starting to get to the meat of the issue, or when it starts to sort of click in my head that this is not a unique occurrence, that I sometimes act like this and maybe it is a pattern... well, when the truth starts rushing at me, I start rushing away.  Is there anybody who needs tending or talking to, or playing with?  Isn't there a show on right now that I can escape into, be mindless with?  Isn't there a book I could read that would take me anywhere but here, facing the truth?  It's such an uncomfortable feeling, this realizing things about yourself, and I would do just about anything to avoid it, I think. 

When it does come, and I have seen the whole, frustrating, ill fitting truth about myself, it sticks in my brain: a large scaly burr just big enough and irritating enough to block out anything else.  I have no other qualities except  this uncomfortable truth - I am no longer a good person, a caring sister, a hard worker - I am only an inveterate gossip, a gigantic fraud, a loathsome individual who feels lonely until she's with people and then wants nothing more than to be left alone.  Even though I know that this is not true - that all the good things I am or do are not obliterated by some newfound/newly understood flaw in my character - it is how it feels, and sometimes how it feels is how it is. 

I have recently come to quite a few uncomfortable realizations about myself, and trying to integrate those things - a certain pettiness here, a confounding inability stick to the straight facts there - into my vision of who I am is proving more difficult than I'd have guessed. I have always known that I wasn't perfect ~ contrary to what others may think, I am well aware that my goody-two shoes image is just something other people see me as - I have never seen myself as such, and wouldn't really care to.  But these inconsistencies in my character - the difference between who I want myself to be and who I really am, these are things I want to fix, to change.  And that means recognizing them first, figuring out how deep they run and (maybe) where they come from, and how to stop doing them.  It's a lot of heavy mental lifting, and, for a person who has limited reserves of any kind of energy - physical, mental, emotional - it certainly seems Sisyphean. 

So I keep looking for low energy escapes - can I ever get my Google Reader below a thousand again?  Is Reddit being entertaining or insulting today?  Is there any way I can get my uncle to have a conversation with people so that they don't think he's an ogre? Let me organize every photo you've ever taken in your whole life! - and then condemning myself for needing these escape routes.  It feels like I'm stumbling around kicking at little pebbles, all the while trying to avoid all the heavy boulders I know I have to move if I want to move forward, but just can't even look at yet. 

It feels that way about everything - about all the work I have to do to manage my illnesses (and the question of when I decided that just 'managing' is enough for me), about all the things in my own behavior that I'd like to change; about all the topics in my family that need addressing, and all the ways we find of not addressing them; about not making time for friends and then wondering why they aren't making time for me; about the world as a whole and all the things spinning out of control in it.  It just feels like there's too many important things that should get looked at, poked at, lifted up and examined, fixed, and I don't want to touch a single one of them. 

A perfect example in the physical world is that my space is still not undecorated from Christmas - oh, the actual decorations are down, but the furniture is still all in the wrong places for every day living.  Thus making it more difficult to do things like get towels, because we moved the cart that holds the towels behind the chair, so you have to climb over the chair to get ready to take a shower.  It's little ridiculous things like that, but also huge life changing things like deciding to call the PT again, and see where that takes me, or actually changing my diet enough to prevent this diabetes thing from happening - and I just don't want to face any of it at all. 

And here I write the necessary caveats that "we've all been sick since Christmas! - and I mean sick sick, like the flu that won't die sick" and "I've just spent two months caring for a wonderful lady, whose head is harder than the stairs she fell down!" and "blah blah blah Chronic Illness, you idiot!" but all of that  - while true and real and just so much - doesn't feel like enough of a reason to let everything else pass me by.  I never feel like I am juggling half of the balls I need to juggle, there's just me, standing with maybe the three or four largest, most fragile balls, throwing them up and catching them (sometimes by the skin of my teeth, but still, catching them), and all the while, the floor around me is littered with a million other smaller balls.... It's basically me, standing up to my waist in the ball pit of Chuck E Cheese, trying to catch all these biggest balls, but knowing I've let a thousand more go.   And not knowing which of those thousand was the next most important - the one that needed me now, and I won't get to it for another three weeks.

I don't know what to do about all that - how to climb out of the ball pit, or juggle better, or even begin identifying the colors of all the stupid things I'm standing in.  I know this feeling will pass, or fade, because it has in the past, but it never goes away... I'm always fumbling something, and I wish I knew how to stop. 

In which I morph from Grumpy to Weepy, all in four short paragraphs!

For a large portion of the day, I felt so grumpy that I didn't think I should be allowed around other humans.  I almost typed "grumpy for no good reason", but then I thought about it, and it was more like "grumpy for a thousand good reasons, but none that I can do anything about right this second", which basically amounts to the exact same thing.  I came here, all prepared to write (yet another) endless rant about lord only knows what, but sometime in the last half hour, while sitting at the table with my family eating a very late dinner, the majority of those bad feelings shrunk down to manageable, and I think I'll save the rant for another day.  For tonight, I think I'll tell you how glad I am that I'm just sitting here, wandering around through the internet, while most of the people I love are accounted for. 

It seems, at least to me, that my life - and the lives of the people I am closest to - has become a series of blundering our way through one emergency to another, from one crisis to the next, ricocheting from one hectic gathering to the last, often leaving very little time for essentials of life, such as breathing or eating.  Every day has taken on an urgency that didn't used to be there, and at the same time, leaves me with such a useless, futile feeling: It's as if I'm running as hard as I can, and getting nowhere, not understanding that there's a treadmill beneath my feet as opposed to a street.

Moving all the time - at least mentally - and making no progress.  Even the areas where I can see progress being made, it feels like so little, too little to ultimately matter.  I am that prototypical lone sailor, trying to bail out my boat with a teaspoon, only some days, it seems more like a thimble.  So it's a rare treat when I can stop running for a little while, put down the teaspoon/thimble, and just be.
And even a half hour of just being.  Of just letting a good book take me far away, or sitting with my family at dinner listening to them bitch, or here, in the dark talking to you fine people, is invaluable.  (Literally had to just google invaluable to make sure it meant what I wanted it to mean.  It does: you guys are priceless, google says I say so.)   Back to the bailing, would appreciate larger spoons. 

Game On.

Here it is November First, all over again. And for the first time in five years, I have given very little thought to participating in NaBloPoMo, where you agree to post at least one blog entry for every day of the month. I am seriously doubting my ability to complete the entire challenge, not because of something big and world changing, but because of a million different little things. I talked about it some in this post, already, but I'm still finding it difficult to put words to paper (or, more likely, computer screen) in a way that seems legible and laudable. I mean, I can just say random things for thirty days in a row, I'm sure, but I don't particularly want to do that: I think this blog and I are past the point of just posting to have a post up. (At least, I hope we are.)

No, I want what I say here to matter, and that's half the problem right there - it matters so much that it grows and grows in my mind until I can't write anything, because what can I say that's going to be new or different or interesting or worthwhile? And while I have tons of things I think it'd be great to write about, more often then not, they get all stopped up in my head together, and I spend an entire hour trying to untie them enough to type them out, only to wind up with a mess of nonsense that's definitely not publishable.

So I'm not making any promises on my ability to complete the month, but I am going to commit to sitting my butt down and trying to get the words to come out in a way that makes sense, for three reasons. First, I need to follow through with something - I feel like I'm letting too many bits and pieces of who I am slip through my fingers. Second, we all know that having all of this stuff log-jammed up in my brain is not doing me any good, and it'd be great to get some new perspectives on some of this stuff. And lastly, I always feel such a sense of pride and accomplishment when I complete NaBloPoMo, and I'd hate to either lose that feeling or break my streak.

I could use all the good feelings I can get, at this point. So I'm here to kick of November on the right foot, and cross my fingers that it goes as well as it can. Tomorrow we can talk about all the ways it is sucking so far, but for today, November: let's do this!

You know what I'd like...

oh, about a million and a half things that aren't really things, but more like feelings. A million and a half positive feelings, that's what I'd like.

I'd like to be able to take a deep breath. And trust that the breath is going to go in the way it's supposed to and come out the way it's supposed to. Just to not have to doubt that.

I'd like to be able to leave a room without worrying about all the people I left behind in it. Or to not have to leave the room in the first place because of how uncomfortable I am.

I'd like for the words to flow, not get stuck up in my brain. Sometimes it feels like there's a clot there, a big negative clump, blocking all the good things from getting in, and all the good things from getting out: I know there are good things, but they rarely mean what I want them to mean.

I'd like to just be able to shut off the worry, for one goddamn day. Just all of it - off.

Hope you're having a good weekend - mine has been a little complicated (ugh), but I hope to be back soon!