Against the Wind

Linda is calling me out again. “Hey you,” she says, “no disappearing.”

Let me get a photo in here before the ridiculous number of paragraphs of navel gazing.

I love the solid pillars and all the support wires for this bridge. I want to walk across the bridge next time I’m in NYC. I want to get up early and just make a day of it.

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So, what can I say? I refuse to treat unhappiness as if it’s a medical condition. But Prozac may be the order of the day. I think it will pass as all my previous bad patches have. I can blame the obvious… not enjoying teaching, the less obvious, still grieving my mother, or the most likely, feeling useless and rejected. But just because you choose to lose, you don’t have the right to sing the blues. (Janis Ian lyric)

We all have some secret doubts, regrets and places we don’t really want to go. This I believe. But I also believe life is a bit like the movie “Groundhog Day,” in this respect. Whatever it is that you don’t want to know about yourself, it’s just going to come around and stare you down over and over and over again. You learn to outwit it, and it come back next time in some other form, but there it is…haunting you. That doesn’t make much sense without specifics, but here are some specifics.

I know those who have known me would tell me that this is not the case… but I decided I was an invisible child at some point, and nothing I ever did would be good enough. So if my parents wanted to motivate me with shaming, “Don’t be so lazy!” I’d just internalize it and say, “Hey, I’m lazy, what do you expect?” I decided I was not good enough to demand attention, so whatever negatives I could apply to myself, they would be ok on me, because it helps justify the opinion of people who are important.

The facts of my youth and adolecence are not important. This is the part that ate deep in, that I couldn’t face and deal with. Mostly, I have worked out the problem now, but when something happens that makes me feel unworthy, I spiral back to those long days. And stuff happens. Sometimes you get done wrong. Every time I feel somehow rejected, I reel back in remembered pain, and it takes a while to find my balance again.

I have some wonderful friends, a lot of activities I enjoy, a very good life. I’m so blessed, and so thankful, that when I get the blue funks, it seems a really good idea to just shut up, because there are plenty of people with real problems. Then again, maybe my “stoopit, imaginary problems” are real enough that writing through them is an ok idea.

So revisiting the other side of “this I believe.” We have unimaginable blessings, and access to wealth untold, if we just reach out and accept it. But it’s so hard to turn off all the noise and focus on the real, and the important bits of life.

That’s where I’ve been. Suffering a bit of pain. Self medicating with too much caffeine. So I cut the caffeine. Slide into a chemically induced depression. Medicate with overeating. There’s a no brainer.. this is NOT the solution, it’s part of the problem!

Tomorrow, I’ll play bridge AND get some more of the paper piecing done for the SOTC round robin. Got deadlines looming.. midterm grades and the quilt festival. And I’ve not been able to focus well and deal with either of them… some sort of self imposed fail. But I have this weekend and I’m going to get a good bit done. Or not? Not is NOT a good plan.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.