Limits

Monday, January 11, 2016

An open letter to my beloved siblings:

If you plan a vacation to Japan to intentionally visit the "Suicide Forest", do not anticipate that I will drop what I am doing to come save you when you are trapped as some forlorn ghost.

I love you, but come on.

Baleful Regards,
Your oldest sibling.


lists from 3 a.m.

Monday, January 04, 2016

Did I remember to change the office hours in my syllabus?


I must refill the school lunch account for Em. Those reminders are worse than the cheery "Hey! It's time for your student loan payment to be snatched out of your savings acct!"  You'd think that the .20 we own the school district is what is keeping the god dammed lights on.


Since I am awake, I might was well update my library order list. I've finished all my pleasure reading as of yesterday so it is either re-read the Genome book, or read work  things, which I do not want to read.  Let me order  40 books then obsessively read until I develop bedsores.


Cat. Honest to god.  You must scratch at your litter for like 35 minutes. There are no predators here. I get rid of your poop as soon as you vacate the space.  And do not fuck with the rabbit. He's sleeping. Like I should be.


Should I take more melatonin? Melly tonin. Mellie Tone-in. If I take more then the dreams will be off the fucking planet.  And not in a good way.  If I don't, I may stay awake until 5 or six, then collapse and wake up far too late.


It has now been six days since I've left the house.  I mean yeah, I shower and change clothes. But I don't LEAVE - not even to go get the mail. Fuck the mail. I think Terrence worries, but I am happy in my cave of flannel sheets and books and mugs of mint tea.  It isn't depression.


I will have acupuncture in a few days. I'll leave the house then. That will be good.


I should definitely not look at Korean skin care products. I should also not research when I can use my microdermabrasion tool again. It's bad enough that I own a microdermabrasion tool.


There is something I should remember....but I don't. I can feel it sliding out of my view.


It is not depression. I just need to keep a better schedule so I am not awake in the middle of the night.


I'm lonely, but I don't really want to see anybody. Sometimes this is how I feel about food. I am hungry but nothing appeals so I just wait until the hunger moves on.

I shall move a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer - and start the dishwasher. I like padding through the house at night, deep into the hours of 2 and 3 a.m. It makes me feel like a house-elf who only works when no one is looking.


I just finished a book in which the main character uses cutting to relieve his inner pain and shame to control his outward expressions of rage.  I've not dug at my skin for a long time, but this book woke something back up - I *felt* the urge when I read the descriptions of his cutting.  I think the author wanted to use the cutting as a literary device, or some abuse trope but I felt it.  Then I wondered if the author was a cutter and was whispering out to those of us who understand the appeal of harming ourselves in order to quiet the inner swirl.   I sometimes wonder if my obsession with my skin is a subversion of my desire to pick, pull, tug, rip at my own skin.


I wonder if I can point to the products on my shelf as a healthy foci of this obsession, a "see! I've mastered it" - which is all I ever really want, isn't it. Mastery.  If I focus hard enough, I will master it all. No one will unquiet me. My crumbley mortar will hold and repel.  I will reach across pain and sadness to an untouchable stillness, a zen of imperturbability. Safe.


****


This above is a typical cycle of small-m Mania that sometimes consumes me at night, particularly if I am not sleeping. Night is difficult for me.  I crave the silence, because it feels close, intimate, mine. However, I can spin, whirl, tumble into places in my mind that can exhaust me. Not simple physical exhaustion, but something deeper. Deeper than bone. 

I am all right, truly. I wake from these evenings aware of what has happened - embarrassed and a bit befuddled, but not scarred. 


These are my winter doldrums.







 
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