Tea and Sympathy

You know how some weeks you can fly through everyting you have to do and it all seems to flow and you feel energetic and perky and brilliant and successful?

This has not been one of those weeks.I have a ton of deadlines looming because it is the end of the month and my brain has been on autopilot for two weeks.  I can’t concentrate at all.  It seems breathing is a major chore for me right now.

So, I guess, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and we’ll do a stream of conciousness thing.  Ever read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?  I did.  Stream of conciousness and angst. Great for impressing people, “I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce” but there is little or no literary or intellectual value in the entire book.  It is sort of like a bad wine where everyone wants to impress everyone else and says things like “this is a fruity wine” (DUH!).

It seems to me that one of the downsides to becoming popular as a blogger is that you sort of stop being able to say whatever you want.  People from your church, your family, and people you feel responsible for start reading you on a regular basis and you find yourself deleting entire paragraphs because you don’t want to be criticized, corrected, or stared at.  One of the main benefits and joys of blogging, anonymously journaling your innermost thoughts, is suddenly not so anonymous or acceptable.  All of a sudden it becomes strained and work.

I had to give up Marriage Actually.  I so did not want to.  I tried every way i could think of to not have to give it up but there was no way around it…I had to…and I am angry about it.  In fact for the first time in a very long time I am angry about many things.  It might be a good thing and it might be a bad thing..I guess only time will tell.

What I need, I think I need more than anything right now is to get away for a few days and deal with my junk without having to be nice, or make sure I don’t hurt any one’s feelings, or even talk to anyone.  While I am not a *cutter* I can, for the first time since I was a teen, really understand why people cut themselves.  When there is so much pain inside that needs to be released the blood flow would seem almost like a pressure valve.  Understanding is not doing, by the way.  It is understanding.

I am so tired of being asked why I am struggling, what I have to struggle about, why I am angry/hurt/depressed.

A marriage counselor once asked me what would happen if I asked that something get done just because I wanted it…that something was just for me.  He wanted to know what I couldn’t do that.

I told him something terrible would happen.

He asked what terrible thing would happen if I asked that my feelings/desires/needs be honored.  I told him nothing less than complete economic collapse and the end of society as we know it.  He laughed.

Have you looked at the headlines lately?

I am so sorry.  I told him this would happen.

I have created a place where everyone else is right.  I believe that in my head, I live that way.  I live apologetically trying to cause as few problems as possible.

You know, the problem with that is that when you decide you can’t do it anymore you become the problem.  It’s not that i have to find myself, I have been here all along.  It is that I have to remind everyone that myself is as valuable as theirself and that is where the problem seems to come into play.

This has nothing at all to do with coffee except that I am sipping it right now.

I have 8 articles due by midnight tomorrow night, a Daring Bakers Challenge to do before tomorrow, a birthday party to put together, and a house that..well… IF a tornado when through I would open all the exterior doors and allow it to clean the house.

Over exteneded?

Nah…I have coffee.  Lots of it.

And I can get more.

Image:(c) maryeaudet 2009