It’s been a week since my last post. It’s been a rather long, strange week since my last post. Sometimes simply terrifically serene, other times stressful and anxiety-filled on a level that became some sort of unpleasant emotional dessert. That’s ‘dessert’ with two of the letter ‘s’, not ‘desert’ with only one, meaning to say that at some points the stress and anxiety rose to a level of elaborate internal torment so subtle, well-crafted, and painful as to be extraordinary to the point of transcending what it was and becoming almost iconic and representational of something far more archetypical – ‘fancy’, as it were. (Not pleasant or tasty, however, not in the least. ) This has been a week of peculiarly personal time with myself, endlessly interrupted and repeatedly derailed by the incessant demands of real life. I’ve felt on the edge of some sort of really important epiphany or understanding of …something… that I can’t quite ever achieve because the trash needs to go out, or the plants need water, or ‘please pick up milk on your way back…?’, or answering just one quick question, or to take a look at something (it’ll only take a second), or what was that thing I meant to do… I very much want to blame everything outside of myself for it… It wouldn’t be quite ‘fair’ to do that, though, it seems to me, since it is the predictable byproduct of wanting to please, wanting to meet the needs of loved ones, and not really much wanting to deal with the chaos and wreckage at all… so, the anger directed outward, unreasonable, directed inward, damaging. I drift; lost, and frustrated, and feeling ‘unable to finish a thought’.
…finding time to finish a thought isn’t always easy…
I woke this morning … feeling disgruntled and discontent. Aggravated ahead of any aggravating stimulus, and wishing to be in a different place, time, and headspace. I’m fortunate to have a real ‘force of nature’ in the department of emotional support and perspective, in the person of my dear partner…up with me at dawn more often than I expect, and equipped with the will to ensure his love for me is felt and not merely imagined, and the experience not to get sucked into my personal hell; with his help and affection the morning is not wasted, not a loss, not even bad, actually. I feel my challenges, but today they are not calling the shots. 🙂
I feel like I have ‘too much to do’ and that I am struggling to keep track of it all. It is an illusion brought on by a desire to complete something else entirely – that unfinished thought I am trying so very hard to avoid thinking, I suppose. Hormones? Could be. I feel angry in the background.
Words…failing me.
Today the thought of ‘mindfulness’, or at least the feel of the word in my consciousness, has me feeling testy and cross. The demons have taken up arms and the fight is now to the finish. Success for me may mean their doom…we all know it. Now, our uneasy truce is open warfare, and I am fighting for my life. I will use guerrilla warfare, if I must – and attack them with mindful actions, if blocking mindful meditation is their current strategy. So, today: gardening, laundry, the small tasks of modern domesticity that build a chill experience for the week to come.
Still…I want so much to solve the current puzzle, learn the lesson, complete the thought… I am at a place where it is becoming necessary to have a conversation with myself. That 20-something woman I once was, and the woman of 50 I am now don’t exactly see eye to eye on a number of issues. Somehow, she has taken the side of my demon forces, and she’s making it damned difficult to sift through the wreckage and heal, and build order from chaos. We clearly need to talk. She screams at me in my nightmares that there is no forgiveness possible, that there is no honor in healing, that I have no right to be happy, to become whole…to abandon her…and the pain. She is trapped in another time, and has only her limited perspective, and her pain – she does not heal, or grow. She wants vengeance, she wants a voice… I can not give her vengeance, and I do not know how to give her a voice; we do not agree about a number of things.
My voice…if I choose to use it.
Well. Sunday quietly beckons, offering respite from the chaos and warfare within through labor and service to life and love. Is it enough?
Evening Light 