Hark? What’s that I hear outside my whistling window? Who whispers such words? Angsty? Who dareth speak angsty to an ailing writer who possesseth not a Victorian fainting couch?
Hear ye!
I am not angsty for effect. I moved from the old shiny pretty breed ‘em and weep (now the Archives Museum, free admission, do take the tour, some good stuff if I do say so myself, and cookies and cider if you make it to the end) down the block to this drafty shack because I am seeking more authenticity in my life.
Disclaimer: My authenticity will be no more or less authentic than Thoreau’s authenticity—my dear Thoreau, who ate lunch every day at his mother’s house before trekking one easy mile back to his own drafty shack by the pond to craft meaningful words about soulful solitude.
Who of ye speaketh the language of melancholy? Who of ye knoweth the terrible inner tides of which I speak? Who of ye hath a Victorian fainting couch up for auction on eBay? I seek answers here. I seek truth. I seek a good dermatologist to look at the mole that seems to have doubled in size overnight and now resembles one of the more petite former USSR republics.
My family nursed me back to upright during the past four days of my foul virus, and yet, I snark and snip and snipe at the hands that fed me Rocky Road ice cream last night at midnight. I don’t know where my wallet is, I howl from my shack (read: our master bedroom). Give them our checkbook! A piggy bank! I do not care! The world is a suffering-ridden nonsensical jumble and I VANT TO BE LEFT ALONE!
I dropped my fluffy pink robe in the toilet during one of my unpleasant pilgrimages. My mother washed it and dried it for me, unasked. She also washed and dried my gray cashmere-blend sweater, for which I had paid full-price. I raged, I railed at the universe, a spoiled, unshowered mess! A SHRUNKEN FULL-PRICE SWEATER! WHY O WHY DO WE KEEP GOING IN THE FACE OF SUCH POINTLESS AND REPETITIVE SPIRITUAL SELF-DEFEAT?
My children are healthy and occasionally kind and charming and photogenic. My husband makes apple-cottage-cheese pancakes with loving hands. My dear dog has had a long, fulfilling life. I have parents who care. I have a brother who has forgiven me for the Jawa action-figure incident of 1980. I have a warm-hearted extended family, wonderful friends, a good job, great books to read, just waiting on my nightstand, and a roof (gutterless, but gutterless is the new guttered) over my head.
But there is always too much to do, too much to want, too much to make sense of, too much, too much, too much.
I am talking to God, I am. Don’t worry, God-talkers. I am one of you, although I may not seem it. I am just a little snarky with him right now. I could use a little more explanation. I need God to spell out a few things.
You have seen the 6:30 news like I have. I don’t understand why my gutterless house and a broken refrigerator and painful pointy plastic toys underfoot and dog poo on the welcome mat should trouble me when there are people on the 6:30 news who would be happy to have any of these things, my mini-Achilles kitten heels. Fashionable Achilles heels!
What do you do when so little makes sense? Besides the obvious, besides sending back the envelopes with some guilty checks inside, besides holding your children close, besides sponsoring a fly-covered strange child like the fly-covered strange child you saw on Fox TV in between Jerry Springer and Maury? What do you do to make sense of it all? To make a difference?
Many of us have chosen lives that keep us grounded—not spiritually, which would be the ideal—but lives that require vet appointments and eye appointments and work obligations and school obligations (Oh my God! We forgot to buy her ice skates! OH MY GOD! She’ll be a pariah on used skates!). These are lives that require calendars nailed to solid wall. These are lives that require a certain measure of steadiness, if not for our sake, but for the sakes of our charges—animal, vegetable, incorrigible.
How then, to make a difference, to reach out to a world away, to let your kids know they are part of and connected to a world away, when you’re only marginally convinced of it yourself?
I am seeking answers. I really am. And a fainting couch. I will trade you a terribly large Ikea desk and two large Ikea bookcases for the answers to the universe and a Victorian fainting couch.
Aren’t you glad you had Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/TomKatukkah at your house this year? I am a real treat right now. I really am.
I hurt. But I am not angsty. There is a difference.
I am going to practice my fainting on a heating pad on the floor. And then I am going to iron my horsehair shirt. An eBay find.
Then I am going to box up all the old toys they don’t use, before they get home from playdates and daycare. Two hours. Gotta hustle.
{ 17 comments }
I know honey, I know……You are experiencing Overwhelm. My very old nemesis who plagues me unerringly.(I can do it too!)
Occasionally I can beat the bastard with some very focused staying present in the moment of Here and Now and also simplifying everything down as close to managable as I can get it. I read inspirational things like Anne LaMott’s Traveling Mercies. Dh and I juggle according to who is doing better at handling things, so he does more sometimes and I do more most of the time LOL
wishing you peace and serenity as you work through this.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You put it all down so perfectly. I always feel slightly more sane (an a bit less odd for being so bitchy!) after I read your thoughts.
Thank you.
Though I only have my own experiences and what my friends tell me to compare your experiences to, I put your reactions in the “Perfectly Normal” file. You are just admitting it is all one huge mess–which still stuns me each morning…
*sigh* I’d like a couch too. Is it quiet after fainting? I could use some quiet…
My oh my… you are not an Aquarius are you? Are you a Libra because you often sound so much like my wife.
There really is nothing to figure out. Life is not a question, life is the answer so go ahead a live it. There is no secret on how to live life hidden in the corner, no ultimate higher truth (if the truth lies anywhere its under our feet).
The thing is, life sometimes sucks and sometimes doesn’t and yet is goes on… the struggle it seems, is how to let go, how to ignore our thoughts, our yearnings, our need for answers and let the silence the falls when our minds grow dark be the closest to an answer any of us can find….
Oh yeah, and my grandmother has a fainting couch. It is baby blue. However, I think she is still using it. Anyways shipping cost from MN to MA could be prohibitive, despite the relative proximity of MN to MA when viewing a listing of USPS state abbreviations.
there are fainting couches? oooooh!
oh sometimes i am so overwhelmed it’s frightening and then there are the good days when it’s still all the same really but i’ve just somehow embraced all of the small things that delight me. recent things that have helped me: forgiving an old old emotional wound and really truly letting go of the hurt, (like previously I told myself that I had but really I held onto the whole thing!) deep breathing a few times a day, not beating myself up for sleeping a lot (other people can get so much done and so could you …yadda yadda blah blah) taking photos of random things, writing in a journal that only I will see.
these things may or may not help you but they have helped me in 2006. i consider myself FAR from OKAY. hahahahah i am a work in progress. you sound like you are so hard on yourself my dear girl. just like i always have been. you have to learn how to stop that.
i’m so glad you came over and read my desperately awfully gross christmas eve story and laughed over it. pathetic but oh yeah funny and it will get more and more funny as time goes by. when i picture it in my head it’s like a scene from a movie….in slow motion…..with words coming out in that groaning slow motion voice sound they use….sheeeeeesssssss puuuuuuukkkkkinnnnnnnggggggggg….heeehhheheheheh
love you…
i really do need a fainting couch. my humours are out of whack- perhaps my uterus is floating about in my brain (they really did use to think a detached and floating around uterus was the cause of hysteria).
Oh Jenn, we all know your angsty melancholy comes straight from your tortured and bruised soul.
When I read your grim anecdotes, your life reminds me of another Thoreau quote… something about marrow and the bones of life. What’s the word I’m looking for?????
Aren’t “marrow and the bones of life” the main ingredients for chicken soup for the soul?!
Are you really seeking answers, even from lurkers like me?
I wasted several years of my life on anxiety and catastrophic thinking — I expected the worst, I thought I was dying all the time, I was in a constant cold sweat of fear that my loved ones were in danger. Everything was pointless, difficult, terrifying. And I felt stupid and crazy, to boot!
You know what helped? A few months of weekly cognitive-behavioral therapy. Best money I ever spent. It really did teach me how to think differently. It was hard work, and it was sometimes uncomfortable to challenge my old ways of thinking, but it was fast and effective — it’s therapy for the practical and pragmatic. I highly recommend it for anxiety and distorted thoughts.
Good luck and hang in there!
I thought chicken soup for the soul was sugar and spice and everything nice. I’m sure I’ve never seen anything as real as marrow and the bones of life in it.
people should call you angsty more often.
not that I think you are angsty, but that I liked the entry. I should really proofread my comments before I post them.
hahahaha I just went back and read your post again and saw TomKatukkah! hahahahahah OH MAN YOU KILL ME>…..doubling over …..hahahahahahah
what is a fainting couch? i never heard of them. that sounds whimsical. are you angsty? thank goodness your cold is on the way out. being stick BITES, especially when you get those hack coughs that kick up whenever you try to go to sleep, though the puking in public places has its own qualities to qualify it as a worse cold i suppose. (i’m reacting to your other blog entry it seems). i have no life answers so i can’t respond to this one, other than it was entertaining
Maria Rainer Rilke advises us all to “live the questions”.
I know exactly what you are talking about. I wish I had the answers. If I did, well, wouldn’t I be wise? Rat Race, Merry Go Round, Roller Coaster – whatever you want to call it – it is all so very much sometimes.
Solutions? Well, I can tell you what we did this year about the “stuff” and to teach a little lesson to our 5 year old about privilege. We do a gift exchange with our closest friends (just the children). This year, we did the gift exchange but we asked that each child choose a gently used toy of their to give to charity. Then, we asked each child to bring a dollar or more from their piggy banks and we used the money to donate to Heifer International. It was hard but they all did it and felt good about it. We are still thinking of other ideas…
I tend to take the Scarlett O’Hare approach… “Well, I just won’t think about that today.”
After all, tomorrow IS another day.
Well, I certainly don’t have the answers; I’m just a fellow sufferer (if someone who has a life like mine can be called such). But I did give up tv a number of years ago, which helped. And I have since given up any news sites that seem to revel in others’ pain (read CNN here, for one). Oh, and lots of therapy. And you know what my therapist said? She said, “Most of us sort of ignorantly go about our lives naively believing we’re safe; bad things won’t happen to us. Unfortunately for you, you know better. Of course you’re afraid.” It wasn’t much comfort, but at least I don’t feel so neurotic now. Still, I think I’m going to ask her next time about that cognitive therapy thing Nicole suggested – it worked on my fear of flying!
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