glub blub blub

drowning

This Is Gonna Sound Terrible But I Don't Care

I am irrationally angry at all the braggarts on Facebook telling me how life is so wonderful for them and how everything is beautiful and how they're going to relax with a glass of wine now and how "naughty" they feel staying in their pajamas until 10 a.m. 10 A.M.! How madcap of them!

I can't fall asleep, and when I do, I wake up about every hour. I force myself out of bed every morning to get my daughter off to school. But it really doesn't matter, because it's not like I'm sleeping, anyways. I don't want to hear about how much energy you have, how you went for a jog this morning, and how much work you got done today, okay?

I know it's not YOUR fault, but I have 25 different things spinning in my head right now and they all terrify me. I can't even get started on anything because I am overwhelmed. It's not that I'm not feeding/dressing/caring for/ my children or cleaning up smelly garbage and dishes; I am doing those things. Don't call DCFS.

But I have waaaaaay more than day to day stuff I need to accomplish and I don't get to it. I don't file paperwork. I don't clean out the office. I don't get the stuff ready for a garage sale. I don't clear out the laundry room. I don't put all the crap away that's on the basement table. I don't take the broken glass painting to be fixed at the hardware store. I don't clean out the pantry. I haven't started packing. I haven't gone through the fall/winter clothes and either donated them or put them away for next year (although since it keeps dropping to 60 degrees around here) and I don't get the summer clothes out of the storage area beneath the stairs.

I am frozen with the enormity of it all. I know that's all my fault, but even when I cheer myself into thinking "I can do it! I'll start today!" I turn on the water for a shower and it never heats up and I have to call the repair guy. And then the imaging center and the surgery center keep calling me up and asking me about my oozing milk duct and telling me about ductograms (YES, I HAD ONE ALREADY! Thanks for making me relive it in glorious detail!) and what I have to do to prepare for surgery, and asking when did I think I was going to Austin??? But -- what about my follow-up? And telling me I might need to postpone going, when going to Austin is the one thing that's making me happy, and the closer it comes to actually happening, the more excrutiating the wait becomes -- and now you want to make it longer???

And speaking of that, I don't know how long we'll be down there. And don't forget to get the house ready for the renters! And after they leave, will we need to line up more? Sell the house? Or go back to us living up here, Rich living down there and only seeing him on weekends?

So please stop telling me how life is good. And how everything is working out for you JUST as you had planned. Don't tell me how organized and smoothly your life is running. Don't tell me how fabulous your life is. Please.

I know you think you're a "positive" person. But you're positively making me sick right now. Not everybody's life works the way you and Oprah seem to think it does -- just envision it, and take the steps necessary, and you can have what you want!

That is utter bullshit for 90 percent of the world. People have ADD, or depression, or anxiety, or schizophrenia, or their brains just don't work the way "normal" people's do. Or they have food allergies. Or they're black or gay or something "other" than the world thinks is "best." Or they have a muscular degenerative disease. Or cancer. Or can't conceive a baby. Or... fill in the blank.

I don't mind hearing about how someone's long hard struggle finally came to fruition. But I can't take hearing about the "perfect" lives of the "perfect" people right now. Tell it to your manicurist, which I'm sure you have.

But I'll tell you one thing I can do: I can order a goddamn motherfucking pizza. But I'm not going to brag about it. Because I know people who are allergic to dairy. Or have Celiac's disease. And they are not as lucky as me.

seriously disturbing medical post

This post is about gross medical procedures, so if that kinda thing upsets you, don't read it.

I am finding it hard to sleep at night due to my upcoming surgery and its accompanying procedures.

Luckily, the earlier biopsy came up negative. After they punctured and bruised and tortured me. But that's okay.

Coming up on the 11th, they will give me another ductogram (battlestar galactogram, redux!) which entails them sticking a fishhook in my nipple at the site of the affected milk duct. Then they will insert a guidewire.

THEN they will put me under for the duct removal surgery. They have to biopsy that, too.

And what will the recovery period be like? I don't know. I'll have 2 days before I get in the car for our trip down to Austin. I hope I get the results quickly.

This is weighing on my mind more than I'd like to admit. It's not like I'm consciously thinking about it, but it's sitting back there. Kinda like when you have a program running in the background on your computer, and it's spinning and spinning away, slowing down your other processes.

I need to keep calm.

Dear World: When I Get To Austin...

I am so fucking getting a job. One without children screaming and clutching at me.

And breaking my artwork. And leaving shit all around.

I am tired of this.

I don't want to go back on anti-depressants

or anti-anxiety meds.

How can you tell if you need to go back on meds, or if you need to change your life? I mean, how can you tell if psych meds are just covering up a problem that should be dealt with, or if they are a cure FOR a problem?

Maybe I shouldn't feel fine, because something's wrong, and the drugs will make me feel as though everything's okay when it's not?

On the other hand, maybe the drugs are necessary for a clear head?

I wish I could take a "see things as they really are uncolored by any pre-existing experience and free of outside influences" pill. Do they make those?

This is Purely Hypothetical, of Course.

Why, if your marriage is already weathering the stresses and strains of constant travel, would someone choose to invite an old flame out to dinner while in this old flame's current city? Away from his loyal spouse? Huh? Hypothetically, why would someone do that?

You know, especially since the wife was warned about this former high school relationship at a wedding by one of the husband's former high school colleagues. Hypothetically.

Why would informing the wife of this "dinner date" make everything ok? Because it would hypothetically put the onus on her of appearing "distrusting" and shrewish if she had a problem with it. So, she just smiles and says "I love you, have a nice trip," as you walk out the door AGAIN for another week of leaving her alone to deal with the mundane day to day details of running a home and raising children. Hey, hypothetically, some people might call that adding insult to injury.

So, hypothetically, this spouse might be pretty fucking pissed off and miserable and full of self-doubts and feeling like an idiot for ever giving up a career and stretching out her body having children and giving up the best years of her life because she stupidly trusted you. Hypothetically.

Because, hypothetically, this high school flame is some unattached Hollywood producer with long blond hair and a non-stretched out body.

So maybe hypothetically the hypothetical wife is just beside herself with rage and pain and can't really talk to anyone about it. And maybe, hypothetically, she hates you for making her feel this way. And maybe, hypothetically, it's going to take a lot to make her trust you.

So I hope that scratching that little itch, whatever that itch was, was worth it.

Hypothetically.

Another Example of How We've Changed

A lot of people are going to disagree with me, but this is my dark side, so what do you expect?

This story enrages me. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, so please understand I am speaking of this event conceptually, not individually.

This man will never see his children get married, let alone meet his grandchildren. He has left his wife without a husband, and his children without a father. For what did this man sacrifice his life? For a noble cause? The betterment of humanity? Or for his own personal "sense of achievement?" Is that really worth it?

I'm trying not to lambast this guy; he's doing what he's been taught to do by various fairy tales like "you can do whatever you put your mind to" and "Just Do It!™". He's trying to feel something in this world full of meaninglessness. But no matter how "young you feel" or how much you train, sometimes you can't do what you want, due to physical restrictions.

And, more to the point of the rest of my post, no matter how many natural formations you climb, it won't make you matter in the world.

If he had not died up there, would the Tribune audience have heard of him? No, because his "success" only mattered to him. How much time and money did he pour into this pursuit? He could've made a difference to the world at large, instead of his own ego.

For instance, he could've donated money and effort into cleaning up a polluted lake or stream. He could've helped send some poor kid(s) to college. He could've invested in a new business to help provide jobs and taxes for the community. All of those things could've been an investment in the future.

Instead, he chose to invest in a dead end -- himself. That's what we're encouraged to do all the time. Self-indulgence, self-glorification and self-idolization are held up as virtues, and it's killing our future.

Even the robber barons of the past who donated to see their names up in lights managed to stroke their egos in a manner more beneficial. More people had access to books because of Carnegie. More people could experience natural history because of Marshall Field. Hospital wings were built. Parks were dedicated. These things live on after a person has died, their effects felt by more than just one person.

I'm not glorifying the robber barons. Nor am I suggesting this guy was incredibly wealthy. But he obviously had spare cash. That spare cash could've been used to invest in the future, in the world.

That's how life grows. That's how a society advances. We're going to collapse inward onto ourselves if people like this guy and those bigger and more influential fish in the pond continue to selfishly and slavishly serve their own selfish needs instead of the needs of others.

I'm not laying the blame of our society's woes at the feet of one poor guy who was only trying to bring a sense of accomplishment to his life. I'm questioning what a "sense of accomplishment" has come to mean.