confronting it

I started physiotherapy for my sore knee a week ago, and found it underwhelming.  The physiotherapist suggested some modifications for the things I do at the gym to make it less likely to hurt my knee further.  And she suggested running a roller over my quad and calf muscles.  And then she squirted gel all over me and did some ultrasound therapy.  None of this stuff seems to have made much of a difference.

Yesterday I went a chiropractor at N's urging.  I did this in the middle of the day, sneaking out of my office and back in.  (Quiet day.  I got away with it.)  The chiropractor seemed far more concerned than the physiotherapist about what is happening in my knee but also seemed more confident in his ability to do something about it.  He had me don a pair of sexy shorts so he could check out my legs while I wandered up and down the hallway of his clinic.  He also had me show him some stretches and postures while he assessed the way I carried myself and moved.  He told me that I am very flexible, but that my over-flexibility was creating some instability; this was an interesting thought.

He did some very bizarre manipulations of my calf, thigh, and hip.  (I was waiting for a kiss on my kneecap but he did not offer one.  Although he sat on the bed with me while he twisted me - which seemed weird at first - I think his treatment was legit.)  He assured me that I do not have a joint problem, which was good news, and suggested that soft tissue manipulation along with an exercise program designed to stabilize my core should resolve the problem.  I felt encouraged by all of this.  But the weird things he did to my thigh and calf were kind of painful.

*

S is shopping for a new car.  We've gone all over a million options and now he has landed on the Tesla where he seems determined to stay.  Whatever.  Cars don't matter to me.  But he is very excited about it.

*

I have made a plan to see A on Saturday and I hope to talk to him then about what the fuck is actually going on with him.  He is making me tired.  It's funny how you're not allowed to be mad at people while they are grieving, even if they are being stupid and a pain in the ass.



*

what the downside could be

In the end I did not go out last night, which was what I preferred.  It's mysterious how desire changes so quickly.  (It could still change back, of course.)

I saw A in the morning instead, at the piercing studio - which I want to describe as strange but he did tell me he would be there.  We made our appointments independently and so it was not strange, not really.  What was strange is that A is the last person one would normally find in a place like that, with his fresh six-week haircut and humming church hymns as he walks.  But the bereaved want tattoos too, don't they?  Even the conservative, church-going kind of bereaved.

Later in the day I complained to him, via text, that I had no wine.  He delivered some to my door, like dial-a-bottle without a bill to pay.  He is a very lovely person.  I don't really know what to do with that.

*

boss

I'm going with T to the piercing studio in a few hours.  It's funny that I have found someone with the same addiction to piercing that I have; maybe it's a thing for kids who came of age in the 90s?  We go there often to add holes to our bodies, and it feels the same as it did at 21; the endorphins are still just as powerful.

I am balancing my teenage nonsense with an appointment with the physiotherapist on Monday to find out why my right knee is hurting.  I anticipate the answer will be that it has something to do with aging because I have not been doing anything that should have hurt it.  Although J and I have been going to the gym pretty regularly, I have not been running (against my instinct); she makes me lift weight instead, and corrects my form like a drill sergeant.

I have never had physiotherapy for anything other than my stupid balance issue, so I don't know what that looks like, but I have this fantasy that it will involve shining magical lasers into my knee that will make it heal instantaneously.  Is that a thing, magical lasers?  I feel like it might be, and I feel like I want it.

*

 Tonight I may go out with A for a short time; this is somewhat up in the air and I have mixed feelings about it.  Part of me wants to stay home with J instead and be lazy.  This obviously reflects some feelings I am having about the whole thing with A and my reluctance to address it.  And my recognition that it moves around too fast for me to be sure what it means.


*

crickets

I talked with A last night, - and it turns out I do not know anything about what other people (besides me) are thinking and feeling.  It isn't the kind of shift I was batoning down for.  Shifts in his health choices, perhaps.  If anything this has shifted me more than it has shifted him, and I find myself strangely and unexpectedly at peace with all of those changes in me.  I have more room inside me than I thought I did.  And more willingness and desire to change than I would have anticipated.

*

I spent the day downtown with C and L.  C was my work momma for a lot of years, including some difficult ones, and seeing her happy and well is always good.  And L, crazy and unpredictable and all over the place... I still enjoy her stories and her ignoramus comments and her kookiness.  But at the end of the day I am tired, mentally.  Tired from listening, tired from absorbing all her energy and chaos.  It is much like being at work.

*

Work will be short this week.  I have taken Thursday off to go to the dentist, and Friday I will be at the union office all day doing mediation training (which is sort of unnecessary but still a nice break break from the routine).

*

The time change is still throwing me off two weeks later.  I have such a hard time feeling like doing anything when it's dark at 5pm.  I am in my pajamas and thinking about my bed.

*

signs of wrong

There is shifting, which was inevitable.  What the shift looks like is yet to be determined; I am mentally preparing to be crushed.  That might be over-preparation, but I prefer that to the opposite.  (It feels strangely like being 23 again, wanting very much to be loved but having no idea how to love anyone properly and unselfishly, including myself.)

*

a lot of dust

The irrational urge to be angry with A and pull away from him in his grief is powerful.  Fortunately I am not nineteen and I have learned to use my pause button, but I feel my insides continuing to pull back, even while I actively force myself to be still and wait.

I cannot remember a lot of the details of how I managed my grief when my sister died.  Of course it was not the same because she had been, effectively, dead for years before she died.  A significant portion of my mourning had already taken place.  A's brother had been alive and an important part of his life.  So it's different - and we are different, he and I.

But I feel a shift, a change in his perspective, and in that new (imagined) picture, I am not where I was.  I may not be in the new picture at all.  And frankly, this would be for the best for me too, for me to fall off the edge and quietly disappear.

I am left with the question about how I can do that without it being an abandonment, without it being wrong.  But I sense it would be right for him too.  I really do.  First death makes everything surreal and blurry and disorienting, and then it drops in a new lens that is incredibly sharp and clear, ushering in a time for changes when one is still numb and it hurts less to make those changes happen.


*

And Jesse's brother.  I have texted with Jesse a bit, and the picture there is not the same, perhaps because Jesse is so practiced at loss and mourning.  He is open to my overtures, he wants to talk, he wants the hugs.  I want to comfort him, but I also want him to comfort me, and that's selfish... but that's how community grieving works, isn't it?  Isn't that why we come together in the first place?

*

When Colleen died, I went to the funeral home alone.  J was too young, I think, and needed someone home with her, so S stayed home.  I talked to the death man (what are those guys called again?) about the disgusting details of cremation, and chose a casket.  And listened to him make some weird jokes about his ex-wife.  And turned down the offer of a visit with my sister's body, because I could not bear to see her any more dead than she had been for the last several years.

Alone, alone, alone.  I feel as though I did most of it alone, while trying to hold up J, who was surprisingly resilient and strong.  Maybe I wasn't as alone as I think I was.  I barely remember my parents being involved, but they must have been.  They must have been.

At work, I told C not to let the stupid "sunshine committee" send me flowers and cards.  I didn't want the house to fill up with dying flowers.  And I read the condolences that people posted online.  They all said they were sorry to my parents.  None of them seemed to remember that I had lost someone too, and that stung, while I simultaneously refused to make any public acknowledgment of my loss.

At the service, my parents both spoke.  J sang.  And I sat in my chair, paralyzed, and refused to participate in the process more than just to be there.  I didn't even want to do that much, and wouldn't have if I could have avoided it without hurting my family.

In retrospect, it wasn't helpful to me.  I could have had some support if I had held open my arms for it.  But I was hurting too much for that to be possible.  That's what I am trying to remember as A shuts down and turns away.  Perhaps he is more like me than I thought.

And most of all, absolutely none of this is about me.


*

I wrote these things this morning - and have come back to edit,  because this afternoon I met with A so we could sit in a parking lot in my car together and cry while watching the video he made for his brother's funeral, and wiping our noses on fast food napkins stored in my console.

A told me his brother had been cheating on his wife with more than one woman.  When he died, there was a collective effort on the part of a couple of friends and family to sanitize the phone before returning it to his wife, to protect her from knowing.  This made me feel ill.



*

useless now

A is still home, and has gone out of contact for the last 24 hours, which is unusual.  (It would certainly be supportive of me to make his tragedy about me and my insecurities.)  It activates my doubts about everything - maybe because of the way tragedy makes me question my own decisions and ways of doing things, and energizes change.  The urge is to make a million assumptions about how he will return, changed, and prepare myself for those.  I won't.  I do not want him to have to contend with anything extra.

*

On Friday I met with D and the new people on his support team.  It is good to see that certain bells I rang two years ago have continued chiming, and it is strange to be on the periphery of caring for this young man when I was once at the centre.  It is a relief to have passed off the responsibility to other professionals, and difficult to trust them.  Yet, they seemed to be doing the right things for him, with the exception of his social worker, who has always seemed to be moving in slow motion.

*

S is away camping again this weekend, and J and I have been left to our own devices.  Neither of us went anywhere or did anything remarkable, other than ordering takeout food.  We really know how to live it up.

*

eggs

A is still home with his family, grieving their loss.  He sends me messages that break my heart open.  I keep comparing his experience with mine in my mind.  He tells me two churches in the community had to collaborate for his brother's service because so many people wanted to attend that they could not all be accommodated in one church.  (I think of my sister, and how no one except my parents' friends were there for her.  She had no people of her own, and this hurts right now for some reason.  Of course I am not telling A these things.  They are private and he does not need to absorb any more emotion from anywhere else.)  I have collected money for his family from my people at work, who were so kind and generous.  I will give this to him when he comes home.

Today is meant to be a day off work, in lieu of an extra day worked in the summer.  And like a chump, I forgot this and booked two meetings today with parents.  (Tracy asks me, "is it a ball or an egg?" as in, it's okay to drop a ball or two...)  I am going to the meetings.  I think they're eggs.



*

pending outcomes

And A's brother died yesterday afternoon.  When he called to tell me I was confused.  How could his brother be dead?  Wasn't it Jesse's brother who died?  Two people I love are going through this at the same time?  Like Jesse's brother, A's brother had young kids.  He was only 40.  A will be going home to his prairies for services; this changes my plans for the weekend, which is totally fine.  I have no place in this grieving process.  I am lingering on the periphery, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, and wishing I had someone to hug.

*

My conversation with the VP turned out to be about M and her incompetence.  It is always reassuring at first to hear that other people see the same thing I see.  But then it always moves to a place of being frustrating that no one is going to do anything about it.  It isn't possible, I suppose, for much to happen in a unionized environment.  She is protected.  So I have satisfy myself with knowing that it took the new VP only about 8 weeks to be troubled enough by it to want to say something.


*

talk to us

Jesse's older brother killed himself yesterday.  The number of directions Jesse's heart has shattered in the years I have known him should make it impossible, by now, to hurt him at all.  (It is not.)  I haven't seen Jesse's brother in more than 25 years; I cannot imagine what has transpired since then.  Unfortunately I can imagine what transpires now for Jesse and for his brother's family.  They are more religious than my family, so perhaps there will be more ceremony to it.

When my sister died, Jesse reminded me how important it would be to hold accurate memories that didn't make believe Colleen was a martyr or an angel, or anything she wasn't in order to protect anyone's feelings about what had happened to her.  He told me it would be important for us to tell true stories, true memories, good and bad, honest and ugly and beautiful and real, because no one would be missing the pretend version of her.  They would be missing the real person, and want to remember her as she was.  This advice has helped me a million times in the years that followed, as Colleen's daughter grew up and became a young woman who doesn't remember what size shoes her mother wore, and wants to know details of who she was.  It has helped me to remember that we can embrace the painful memories as well as the beautiful ones.  It has helped me to keep her closer.

I found myself reminding Jesse of all of that this morning when we spoke.  I hope he can use it too.  I felt the weight of my sister's death behind my words about his brother.  I did not want us to have this in common.


*

forces at play

This afternoon the head of the HR department came out to interview a colleague about an incident, and requested me to witness the interview.  It is bizarre to me that the head of HR even knows who I am, let alone wants me to sit in on his confidential investigation meeting.  I am not sure what I have done to earn his trust in this regard, and not sure I really want to be trusted in this way.  Regardless, I sat in on the interview and tried not to say or do anything to give away the fact that I am secretly clueless.

*

Later in the day, I received an email from the Vice Principal who said she would like to meet with me as the head of the counselling department.  This was also a strange invitation because I see the VP every day and talk to her all the time, which makes me wonder what could possibly be going on that makes her want a more formal meeting with me.  Perhaps it is something as mundane as drawing up an invigilation schedule for exams.  But perhaps something fascinating is about to happen.

*

Tomorrow morning I am attending a workshop on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, which I think will be interesting.  And then Wednesday-Friday I will be at a course, learning about managing clients' anger.  Also interesting.  I love the part of my job that allows me to keep getting more education all the time.

*

This past weekend Shawn went camping with Big J, and I had an adventure of my own, mostly involving Moscow Mules, a drink that I'd never had before (strange).  These adventures leave me elated and bereft.  I do not know how to reconcile that at all.

*

hung parliament

I just reread something I wrote in 2013 about CM's first day of work.  I remember being struck by her sharpness; her sharp clothes, her sharp shoes, her sharp voice and sharp mind.  And I remember feeling soft in my comfortable faded jeans, soft cotton shirt, soft voiced, soft headed.

Six years later I have claimed some of my own sharpness.  If nothing else, I own some collars and some sharp looking shoes.  (I wear them when I am feeling particularly soft.)  But it doesn't come naturally or easily.  It comes from studying people like CM and trying to emulate what it looks like to be an adult, or to have one's own philosophy of life.  But perhaps in my case growing into my adulthood is about owning the fact that I am not a sharp woman.  I am not practical and clear-minded and determined.  I am more drifty than that.  I am someone who looks out the window a lot.  I am someone is happiest on Saturday mornings with nothing to do and no one to see, except puppies and  I am comfortable hanging out in my pajamas at 4:00 in the afternoon.

The union has given me permission to take two courses this year instead of the usual one, so I have signed up for one about managing clients' anger, and a second one on advanced mediation skills.  I hope to eventually acquire full accreditation for all these courses.   I seem to like collecting certifications that I don't use.)


*

cat people

My mother has written a new book.  This time the work is fictional - although I would argue the autobiographical book was largely fictional too - which makes it less emotionally fraught, but it is still a strange experience to read my mother's writing.  I would like, in some ways, not to read it at all, but there is no plausible excuse for that.  And part of me, of course, is curious to hear her written voice and see how it compares with what I know.  (It is much the same.)  There are, of course, phrases I recognize from having heard them all my life, and there are specific anecdotes that belong to us, and have been transposed onto her characters.  I find these things irritating for no defensible reason.  I am reading the book, as a dutiful daughter would, and have been instructed to write an "honest" review when I am done, which is a laughable suggestion.

I sent my mother a link to Cat Person when it was at the height of its popularity, curious in a strange way, to hear what she would think.  I kind of knew already based upon her thoughts about Miriam Toews.  My mother thinks that sparse language is indicative of sparse intelligence.  Simplicity can never leave room for thought, only for boredom.  Her characters bust with complicated vocabulary and busy busy busy thoughts.  My mother thought Cat Person was disgusting.  And boring.  And that Miriam Toews is bleak and overrated.  I defend neither, but I listen.  Because I am also known for sparsity of words and long silences.

*

This week is my last week of vacation, and I am doing some writing myself, writing for which I will not take any credit nor share with my family.  I am writing pornography, which is what I do sometimes in the summer to occupy myself and harness excess energy that I used to spend on painting and tiling, but have run out of projects to complete.  Pornography, in its written form (ie: no photographs) is consumed primarily by women, and created, I also believe, primarily by women.  I write it and sell it to a distributor, who sends me royalties every quarter.  I am not made wealthy, but it helps pay for my addiction to expensive shoes.  Sometimes I wonder if there are people in my real life who have read my writing and do not know it is mine, because of course I do not publish with my real name.  I wonder what my mother would think of that.  (Not really.)


*

gorgeous shots

I think my parents would be surprised if they knew how anxiety-provoking I find their yearly visit.  It took less than an hour from their arrival for my mother to mention that I did not phone them on their anniversary.  (Phoning them on their anniversary is something I struggle to remember every single year because it happens during the last week of June when work is occupying every bit of my energy.)  I had anticipated this, which was probably part of why I was picking my thumb to bits.  I do believe they would be surprised to learn that I spend much of July cleaning up the house and picking my fingers to bleeding stumps in preparation for our time together.

I have also rung in August with a lot of running in the park, crazy sex, and three new piercings... endorphins soothe me.  The family is only here until Sunday and then I will have two weeks before the chaos of work begins again.  It goes so quickly; I will give myself time to relax at some point.

*

July is over

The family is going on a road trip without me, and I am using this time to clean clean clean.  (And then to mess up my conscience.)  There are a number of things I want to have done by tonight and the sun has cooperated by going away and reducing the temptation for me to go lie outside in the backyard instead of vacuuming. The dogs, of course, are also tiny anchors on my lap making it difficult to get up off the couch.  The obsessive compulsive need to make things clean will win in the end.


**

plumes of smoke

Separation mixes my blood, the hot with the cool, and in response I sway back and forth, wondering where I will land, and wondering how that will ripple.  There will eventually be drama.  I will regret my hedonism.

*

Summer has begun to truly feel like summer, even if only for a few days.  The rain, and S's perpetual presence at home, have combined to prevent summer's arrival, but now he has finally returned to work and the sun has begun to shine.  This will only last a few short days according to the news (and according to S).  But meanwhile I know it is summer because I am reading my book outside in the sunshine and because I have begun to worry about getting the house properly cleaned in time for my parents' visit in August.  I have also begun to go to the gym, which is something I have not done in many years.  I am doing it - for now - because J has been interested in going with me, and has a program she wants to follow with me.  I am letting her boss me around and teach me things I do not know.  (This kind of training has changed significantly since I used to do it on my own, and I am learning new things that are more painful -- but maybe that means they are also more effective.)

*

the book of lasts

There has been another transition, precipitated by something I would not really characterize as a "fight" but it was definitely an emotional situation that contained some disagreement.  Or rather, perhaps, different perspectives on the same thing.  In any case, this experience has somehow busted open the shell and left me abruptly defenseless and soft.  And left me wondering how I will ever recover when this inevitably doesn't work anymore.  My blue front door will always, always open into that memory.



*

intervene

We are two days away from the end of the work year; these days are an uphill climb, which is the one of the biggest changes from my former to position to this one.  These last days of June used to be slow paced.  I would clean up my room, organize myself for the next year, and spend time with colleagues.  Now I am chained to my desk until the last minute, trying to make hundreds and hundreds of perfect schedules that leave no students - nor staff - upset and disappointed.  (This is an impossible and thankless task.)

*

Yesterday afternoon was the the golf tournament, and I can't say I particularly enjoyed it.  I actually played the game, which may be why it was less fun.  My teammates were invested in me in a way I didn't want them to be.  Maybe this is how students feel when I am invested in them passing classes they don't care about.  My team wanted me to be good at golf, and I could not have cared less.

Today it's pouring rain, for the first time in months.  This is good.  I want it to be dark and sleepy and quiet while I finish my work.


*

movement

Wednesday afternoon - drinks.
Friday night - beach.

Perspective shift.  (Shift and soften.)

(It softens ahead of Sunday, which always does damage.)


*

more tarriffs

There are two weeks left in my work year, two weeks that will be filled with all the administrative garbage that goes with this job, scheduling and timetabling for next school year, and then undoing the work that has been done because teachers want to make changes, and then undoing that work because students and parents want to make changes, and then doing it all over again.  This is the time of year when the rest of the staff are taking it easy, and sending me invitations to join them for long lunches, sunshine patio beers after work, all of which I don't even have time to answer let alone attend.  It's usually the worst two weeks of the year (aside, perhaps, from the first two weeks of September).  With that said, I am entering these two weeks less frazzled than usual, partly because I have learned the job to a greater degree and know how to do most of the things people are asking me for.  And partly because I have also learned how to say no to some things that I used to answer reflexively in the affirmative.  CC is on mat leave, and has been replaced by someone who is a far more pleasant colleague.  I am trying to just enjoy the new situation - but of course I am already thinking about how awful it will be by comparison when CC returns.

*

I think I have fallen into a new routine that has taken the extreme dips and crests to a more central place.  Even still, navigation is a challenge.  I do not know what I am doing.  I really do not know what I am doing, and it doesn't make sense.  I am drawn to those zen-like things that people say about things happening for a reason, but the reason here is probably not so wonderful (I have something to learn... I have something to teach... ).  Probably the reason is that I am incapable of - or disinterested in - acting like an adult.

*

distractions

The thing about feeling 23 is that it doesn’t just come with the good things; the sexual energy and the awareness of your own vitality. Those feelings crash over you like a wave, and then again, like a wave, recede.  And leave you in brackish water with all the insecurities that also come with being 23; the uncertainty around your own value, the knowing that you couldn’t really be that important to anyone.  The holes in your sense of self.  So when you get feeling superior about the way you outgrew all that shit, congratulations on your homeostatic middle age that doesn’t scare you or challenge you.  (Or you can pull yourself apart instead, if you want to, and find the same things at your core that have always been there.)




*

you'll have to take my word

Last night I went with A to the 48-hour film festival.  Most of the films were terrible (of course) - but that, I believe, is the essence of these things.  It reminded me of the 24-playwriting festival in Winter Prairie.  Today we are quiet, which is typical of the weekends, but is always slightly jarring, or whatever the opposite of jarring would be when one is startled not by something, but the uncharacteristic lack of something.

*

convene

The decision was mine to make - and fortunately none of the worst things were available to me, and so I opted to go out for sangria with Vi, who I see far too infrequently and whose company I appreciate.  She has a different perspective on things and challenges my own worldview in ways that are interesting.  Filled with sangria and confidence at the end of the night I talked on the phone a lot and sorted out some of my confusion.  This, of course, does not mean the confusion will not return.  It will.  (And isn't it something that my confusion is of the variety that becomes more clear when intoxicated?)

*

waiting is not a verb

As I would have at 22, I now vacillate between elation and dismay at my own stupid impulsivity that I almost never opt to contain, even though I have learned it is, in fact, possible, and something I never regret when I actually manage to do it.  The vacillation is the punishment and the reward.  I want both, and deserve only the latter.  But they are a set, at least for the time being.

I would like us to go away again, get away from everything that is pulling me.  But that isn’t likely now, and not for awhile.  I believe I need to refocus.  Tomorrow my family is leaving to go camping overnight, which leaves me inclined to stupidity when left unsupervised.  I could ride the Peloton and drink water and cuddle puppies.  Or I could drink wine and make terrible decisions.  Whatever.  It’s like the decision isn’t really mine to make.


*

Look, how she rubs her hands.

There is a soap or aftershave or cologne or scent-of-something that is sticking to me, not at all unpleasant, but unfamiliar, and has lasted beyond my shower, which makes me wonder if it is only in my mind.  People always walk into my office and tell me it smells good, what it is?, (clove and lavender), but I cannot smell it anymore because I am in it all the time.  The same is true of my tea (Bengal spice) that I can not detect but others often comment upon it.

*

This morning we intended to go for a hike but there was an event happening that made it impossible to park the car where we meant to, so instead we went for coffee and a muffin, which was another pleasant option, but the whole time I was just waiting to come home and have sex.  This is the time in my life when I should be having less sex drive, but the opposite is happening.  I wonder why.  It is terribly distracting.


*

in the works

Everything starts to settle - to some degree.  But some things remain inalterably different in the landscape, and my body responds to the difference reflexively, while my brain moves in slow motion. Sometimes my dogs instinctively hump one another, although they are all male.  And when I intervene to disentangle the victim from the perpetrator, the perpetrator frequently does not notice that the object of his affection is gone and continues to hump the air around him, hips acting independently of all his other senses that should help him realise that there is no point.

This is how I imagine myself now, vaguely humping the air and the legs of furniture as I stumble around blindly wondering what the hell is going on.  My brain is misty and my body is on fire and this makes it impossible to think clearly or behave rationally.  (I am not trying to.  I have chosen to let my body lead.)

*

said gently

I spoke to myself (lightly) about cognitive dissonance in preparation for what was coming; obviously I knew it was coming.  But cognitive dissonance is nothing new or remarkable.  It’s everywhere in my life.  My love for smoking that makes my chest hurt.  My love for red wine that invites migraine headaches.  My love of T.S. Eliot, and fucking in cars, and every other beautiful, fucking self-sabotaging thing that breaks my heart wide open but which I still cannot properly regret because that pain feels like flying.  Because I do not have a proper sense of self-preservation.  Because I never really believe there will be consequences to my decisions.  And maybe that is truer than not, because the consequence most often is simply living  with myself, quietly imagining what it would feel like to tear the flesh off my chest, expose my rib cage, pull out my heart and drop it on the kitchen table amongst the breakfast dishes.  Cognitive dissonance is no big thing.


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posture and posing

I find myself on the edge of a decision, and asking myself if the decision has already been made.  (It has, which does not mean I cannot reverse it with effort.)  I'm asking myself if I want to reverse it.  And asking myself why, at this point in life, I would be reverting back to patterns I enacted as a sixteen year old and have managed to abandon for most of my adult life.  It has everything to do with the feelings that go with risk-taking; someone my age is ideally well past seeking this kind of adrenaline rush.  Risk-taking made sense when I was sixteen because I truly felt I had nothing to lose, and in many ways I did not (except my life, which I did not particularly value).  At eighteen I once climbed out the window of a moving car into the window of another moving car on the highway.

I don't take these kinds of physical risks anymore, but I still crave that feeling, that rush of adrenaline that leaves you shaking and elated.  And I wonder why I do, and why other people do not seem to share that hunger.  And I think about the ways I intentionally feed that hunger that seem safer and more socially acceptable, like heating my coffee until it intentionally burns the tip of my tongue, like running until my heart hurts, like biting my lip until I taste blood.  Like most hungers, it grows when I feed it instead of quieting down.

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this awkward kiss that screams of other people's lips

J and R make me feel like a celebrity, because they tell everyone things that make me sound that way.  Last night they told me (and everyone around us) that I am the funniest, the smartest, the wittiest, the kindest, the best...  I couldn't really have paid them to make me look any better.  Not that I need to.  Not that there's any good reason for me to need to at all.  It's like having a drug slipped into your drink that you didn't even mean to try, and suddenly you're addicted.  But I'm not.  This was a one time thing.  

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home.

I've been home since Friday afternoon.  It is interesting how the more times I make the spring break trip to Europe, the easier it is to manage both the jetlag and the fast emotional shifting. Slovenia/Austria/Liechtenstein/Switzerland/Germany.  12 days, 5 countries.  Reverie and exhaustion and beauty and wonder... ... ... 

(RW's boot camp style was less intense this year, and I spent time mulling over whether this was because of TW being less able to keep up, or whether he is growing up.  In any case, it was appreciated.)

Also:
- I spent significantly too much time with AN, which is a strange feeling I have chosen to go ahead and dive straight into anyway.  (Why?)
- I got my nipples re-pierced instead of having a lunch break in Switzerland.  (Again, why?)
- RW made me reconsider my plan to leave my school and apply for a district level position.  He made a great deal of sense when I was filled with wine.  I will have to test his theories when sober.

Being home was an easier adjustment back than it has sometimes been.  No dreams of the streets of Europe this time (why?).  No significant feelings of jetlag.  I was able to do a hard half hour Peloton ride on Saturday, and we did a five hour hike on Sunday (why???).  I loved Lucerne the most - but I am self-aware enough to recognize that I was bathing in post-piercing endorphins all that afternoon, which will have biased my perceptions.

Home also means back to work.  

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real estate

There are times of day, usually between 5:00 and 5:15 am, that for no good reason my entire family congregates in the same spot.  It's aggravating.  We live in 2000 square foot home, and the fact that all three of us want to stand in the same square foot of space between the toaster and the coffee maker drives me berserk.  Why can we not stagger our morning routines just a little bit so they do not overlap in this way?

The same thing happens at work.  Try as I might to schedule my lunch break to avoid having to listen to M's insipid chatter, somehow she always manages to be there when I go to the staff room, talking about herself.  Me me me me me oh yes, and did I tell you that me me me me me?  Oh me too!  Me me me me me me!  

This morning I had an email argument with some asshat from a non-profit organization that gave a presentation to our students yesterday, and collected confidential information from these students about their mental health.  I insisted that they return the original forms to me, and the manager of this group was firmly opposed, while simultaneously swearing up and down that the information was being kept confidential and only used for statistical purposes.  I'm irritated with the staff members who allowed this to happen in the first place, and even more irritated with the organization itself for doing something that strikes me as underhanded and unethical.  It remains to be seen whether or not I will win this argument.

This afternoon N asked me if I could teach him how to talk to the kids on his caseload about sex.  He said that he has trouble with it because he grew up in a household where he was taught that sex is only meant to exist within the confines of marriage - or at the very least, a committed relationship.  His implication seemed to be that my own lack of morals around sex is what makes it possible for me to have these conversations.  Having been married and monogamous for more years than I can remember offhand, this made me disproportionately happy.



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Return

I went back to work today.  I got there early, but N was there before me, which is what he used to do before I was Department Head.  He said that he wanted to take the Department Head responsibility off my plate until the end of the month to give me time to recover and come back to work slowly.  I appreciated this enormously (while I simultaneously wondered how I could possibly have said no if I really didn't want this to happen).  I do want it, though, I really do.  It was a relief to come back and be given time to manage my own desk instead of having to start managing everyone else right away.

The neurologist said I was having a "complex" migraine, which really sucks, but it's a whole lot better than any of the other terrible things I was afraid of.  The good thing is that I now have some medications that are supposed to prevent me from becoming dysfunctional for 10 day stretches in the future.  I hope they work.  These migraine symptoms, because they are "complex" are not your typical migraine... mostly painless but a still a million times worse.  (Being scared is worse than being in pain.)  And returning to a supportive colleague was good.

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An epic homage to The Great Gatsby

Last night I finished Killing Commendatore; I have read it slowly over a couple of weeks, even though there has been nothing but time.  Today marks my sixth consecutive day off work, tenth consecutive day if you include the weekends, and tomorrow will be the last, if things stay settled.  I plan to return on Wednesday, and I do not particularly look forward to that, although I look forward to the notion of being normal again.  I have never taken this many days off work in my entire career, and there's something about that I am enjoying, dipping into my enormous sick bank and spending it on myself.

For a while I have been telling myself I need to slow down a bit, focus on balance, when abruptly the decision was made for me.  This sort of thing is irritating because I know my colleagues will cast sidelong glances at each other, nod knowingly, because this confirms what they have been thinking all along, that the best way to do this job is to put in the bare minimum, and I'm the stupid one for working so hard.  And it makes me crazy because this is not caused by stress.  I am more than willing to accept that it is exacerbated by stress, but my brain was doing this thing over the holidays too, completely stress-free.

Anyway, Killing Commendatore.  It was satisfying as hell to find myself back at the bottom of a well again, fully immersed in Murakami for several days.  I am always so drawn to this world, the world between worlds, between sleeping and dreaming, a place where nothing is impossible.  Sometimes I read other people's reviews of Murakami and wonder what they're talking about.  I see something, I feel something different when I read it.



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opportunistic big factor

Yesterday the Violent Femmes was playing inside Shoppers Drug Mart, where I had stopped to pick up a prescription.  It created an interesting juxtaposition to the heart rate and blood pressure reader, aisle full of compression socks, and rack of reading glasses.  Myself, with one foot in each world, humming along to Gone, Daddy Gone, while browsing night creams.  (I didn't buy one.)

Last night S spent the night at Big J's place, and as always I was struck by how - although I love him obnoxiously -, much better I sleep when I am alone.  Not that I'm really alone with three dogs up my nose.  But it also made me think about Ray (which is all I have been thinking about lately) and how it must feel to him to be alone in his 2500 square foot house, without his wife, forever.  It makes my heart hurt.

Later this morning I am going downtown to meet them, S and Big J, perhaps for coffee, and more notably to look at shoes.  This holiday I have been attempting to focus my thoughts and set my intentions on the theme of balance; I have also bought three pairs of shoes, which one might argue does not show much respect for balance, but I think it does because none of them has a particularly tall heel.

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ashes again

My sister's ashes are here now, delivered this afternoon by a courier guy.  The man with the too-kind eyes sorted it all out so I wouldn't have to go back a second time to retrieve them.  They arrived in a cardboard shipping box, with bubble wrap.  I removed those, and stopped unwrapping there.  Inside, there is another plastic bag that says "Evidence" on it, and a cloth bag inside that with a sticker on it that says "Human Remains" and "Ashes".  And I can feel the wooden (I think) box inside that.  I will let J decide if she wants to open it further.  For me, that's as close as I would like to be with what is left of my sister.  I prefer my memories (because I can edit them).


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