I’m having one of those days. One of those days where despite my best efforts to get up, just get up, get dressed – despite it all. I just can’t get up.
I am paralyzed by fear. Fear of death and earthquakes, children and cancer and nothingness. And everything. The everythingness of it has me trapped in this bedroom i call home.
I have run so far this week. I have stomped and shuffled until i can’t take another step. And it’s not working. I can’t shake this feeling that everything disappoints me. Makes me sad. I want so much for my children, for my family, for you. There is so much to lose.
I picture myself in a car madly, desperately trying to drive faster than a tsunami. I watched that on the news last night. I should have known better than to turn on the news after work. Dog tired, emotionally empty, the devastation and terror in Japan consumed and overwhelmed me. Pushed me over that proverbial edge. So surreal this world is to me now. Watching people die in real time. How am i supposed to deal with that? How can you ask me to comprehend that and then go about my life. Reading tweets that are, at best, in poor taste. Seeing people use righteousness as an excuse to spew hate. There is so much awful in the world right now.
I feel like a fragile soul borne to feel the pain of a million deaths.
Melodramatic melodrama played out in a bedroom over-looking a lake on a little island in the Pacific ocean. A woman in the middle of her life prone to quiet sitting and tearful running. Both of which equal out the screaming mind and fluttering heart.
It’s all so fucked up. I just don’t know on a day like today how to stay positive. How to protect my children. To entertain and to care for. I can mindlessly wander while they are at school. In and out of each of their rooms picking up discarded laundry and tidbits from their lives. Friends numbers scribbled on desks and candy wrappers. Hold their clothing to my face and breathe them in. Straighten and tidy. Domestic duties done efficiently, robot like. Fourteen years of parenting and homemaking have made me an efficient little robot. Is that the sum of my life?
Is this how it will be then? Taking care of but never feeling taken care of. Working so hard in an effort to hide the fact that i can’t really take care of anything. I have no control over what happens in my world, in this world. I just have to live it with my children. Hope for the best. Maybe, like my nightmare last night, a pack of cougars and lions and mighty cats will hunt us down and i won’t be able to do a damn thing to protect them.
Such a dramatic thing today.
This morning in a misery pool i googled photos of dysplasia in the mouth. Just to make myself feel a little bit worse. My next appointment at the cancer clinic is coming up and i always start to obsess. Nervously flossing and rinsing and checking in the mirror. Mentally comparing this horrible thing in my mouth to where it was at the last appointment. Micro changes smacking me. And i turn away, close that door. Ignore.
“You have no idea what i think in my head.” that’s what i told the handsome young chef as he tried, once again, to make some crack that was meant to make me laugh, but really was an inside joke amongst kitchen staff to poke fun at us floor staff. He stopped for a moment. Took pause. That made me smile, giggle silently.
Are we married? I’m not really sure. We were married for a long time. And then we weren’t. And i filled out a bunch of paperwork and had us legally separated. Now we are together, but it seems that to be married there should have been some kind of formality. Some signing of things in front of witnesses and friends. And it’s been hard. When it’s good, it’s so good. And when it’s bad, like today and yesterday and maybe the day before that too, i feel disjointed. He says he doesn’t believe in true love, that we are not destined to be together. He explained it to me and it made no sense. When we are not walking side by side everything else feels heavier. My chest is in constant struggle. I reach for asthma puffers for relief. But the weight doesn’t dissipate. I wait for our circling of each other to fall back in rhythm.
You should hear inside my head today. Earthquakes and children, sex and marriage, lions and tigers and bears. A million people screaming. One woman in a bedroom high above the pacific ocean screaming soft, quiet, loud.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
i hear you and i’m listening… while my brain feels overloaded and foggy in similar ways.
i hear you.
Random anonymous stranger from twitter. Don’t know you but I’m pulling for you and yours. Try to keep your chin up :)
thanks nice random stranger. that’s kind of cool.
That sounds a terrible, terrible chaos.
Hoping – for whatever it’s worth – that quieter times, gentler dreams, lie ahead. Somewhere.
Wow. You put it in perspective for me. In a weird way it’s not so horrible, it is what it is. Make sense?
I get you. I hear you.
I think it is the month of March. It’s that transitional moment when winter (the long, long winter) is nearly over and done with, and we are left with this glistening hope for spring which is almost but not yet here. A dead zone. And clinging onto the notion that it does get better (you think), but then you look at the world in chaos, and the turmoil which spreads like wildfire from person to person and moment to moment. And all you can think is why. I woke today and felt that dead weight of darkness, and I don’t know why or where it came from (or why after so many months of not having it, it has decided to show up). It just is. So I am here reframing thoughts that spiral into darkness…turning them into some sort of positive light. And just breathing mostly. Because it just is. And all the why’s in the world won’t make it comprehensible.
I hope your tomorrow is a day when all the weight and screaming is replaced with freedom and light. A day without questions, and the knowledge that it’s okay.
Jess! I was just thinking about you…. Where have you been?
If you mean in terms of the internets…I haven’t been reading or writing very much (and when I do read, not really commenting). I took a bit of a hiatus and hibernated the vast majority of the winter. If you mean physically…well I decided in November to pack up all my stuff and drive to Nova Scotia. Had a few plans that never really came to fruition. I miss the island like you wouldn’t believe. Nova Scotia is hauntingly beautiful…but it is not home. I’m hoping in time to make my way back to the island. Hopefully sooner than later (although I think there will be a short layover in Ontario, where I am hoping to go back to school, and be with family for awhile). I’ll be here in your little nook of blogland more often, even if I don’t leave a comment, still nice to keep up with you and hear about your running and the rest of your adventures.
I feel for you. Am wondering if a change of diet could help you? Less caffeine or sugar? More B vitamins? More protein? You have a tender heart and it’s understandable that you’re affected by all the sadness in our world. Just hoping that diet might give you the armor to not be so deeply wounded by all that’s happening. Hugs!
Thank you Janet, my diet is pretty good. I think it’s just an ebb and flow kind of thing.
I haven’t been around to ‘see’ you lately, Jess. I popped in today, read and said, Oh, God, that’s my life. Nearly every single word. I run less these days but when I do I always send a smile and loving thoughts out into the universe for you. You are so much awesome!
Cindy
Cindy, that makes me feel really happy!
my dear jesss, I am trying to send good thoughts your way. Seventyfive years have taught me that it is what it is, sometimes the horror and loneliness and sadness is too much to bear – and sometimes spring is achingly beautiful and the photo of a dog in Japan leading its rescuers to another hurt dog just makes you cry and cry and cry for all the thousands of tragedies. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other and live!
your friend in minnesota
Your words echo so many of my own, mostly unwritten. All I can say is, you’re not alone. At all.
that was beautiful. Exactly and painfully true. Nicely done. Keep running,