Homedrinking

I'm learning leaps & bounds about myself lately, far too much to keep up with in journal. I'm banking on most of the developments to be absorbed by osmosis, and show themselves later, like book-learning or memorizing or good moisturizer. Trust.

Naturally not all the learning is good learning, and some of it feels like downright depression, and I just have to keep reminding myself that just cuz it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, and has black cloudy sucking swirling horror blech like a duck, that it is Not Necessarily a big fat greasy Duck of Depression.

Life, I think right now, is hard. It's a lot of work. It's not a lot of payoff. It's swimming upstream. It's full of potholes. Sometimes it's the skids. And the breaks, rare. I try to acknowledge them more when they come, not that I've ever been a taker-of-grantedness, but less than ever. I still don't know what to do with all the anger (much less where it originates), but all in good time (or some time), I suppose. I no longer feel seething with electric waves of anger that holds people in terrified bay, I just feel lumpen and exhausted and swollen with it, like old produce that I don't have the heart to chuck. No wonder I'm so tired all the time, dragging great big bags of shit around after me like a bad habit. It's time to switch to a carry-on, and bypass the check-in line.

In a lighter vein, thanks to the Intranet, I finally was able to self-diagnose ONE of my health issues today. Yippee. Apparently its called ophthalmic migraines, which is "visual disturbances with or without headache pain [mercifully, mine are without]...that accompany migraine processes thought to be related to changes in blood flow in the brain". They manifest in beautiful words like "scotoma" (enlarging blind spots), "metamorphopsia" (shimmering zigzag lines) and "scintillations" (bright flickering lights) that would actually be sort of entertaining if they weren't so damned disturbing and disorienting. But at least its not a tumor, or the onset of cataracts, or anything else that scary. On the downside -- no real treatment. It just passes, usually in 20-30 minutes or so. The relief at having it be SOMETHING is incalculable.

And now its too late to start watching a movie, so its booktime and bedtime. Thank God for fluff 'n' fold, for clean flannel sheets and Willa Cather, in that order.

I am just wrung out (but not so spent as to not post a whiny LJ rant, haha). Tonight, drinks with friends went from restorative to sobering to draining to tears (mine) in the car (mine) on the way home (mine). Exhausted I tell ya. My one lady friend, she's got troubles, but none so large as the trouble of proportion, of which she has none. Its awesome, in the original meaning of the word, her capacity to have no sense of proportion in the way she relates her woes, big and small, long and tall, young and old, and her oblivion to the sense of dark grey cloudiness with which she surrounds herself - and then wonders why, when rifts part in the murk, she sees all of us in tiny sailboats, rowing away as fast as darkness will cover us, toe-stepping back from her swirling abyss. And that's just drama talking, but having been steeped in her vernacular and her spectacular sulks without limit or pause, you begin to speak the language, whether or not it suits. My tongue is a bone stone useless key that fits nothing, so instead I try to deploy my eye, master up vision sense power to communicate, brownstone to brownstone, lit behind with the tenderness of the genuine love I feel for her, hoping transcendental communications will somehow burrow under the bonepiles of woundy words and knock up against some sense, forge a road inward and perhaps, via attrition, get thru the shell to the gooey white underbelly where feeling quiveringly lives. I sense all around me the clinking armor, we all see it and know it and fear it YES we know we don't need it but if we put it all down, What Would Happen?
Struck immense by tenderness, a broken bird at the bottom of the landing, bits of xmastree rubble in the corners of the stairs, sullied by their tattered remnants of a glamorous dream unfulfilled - they still bear glitterpaper magic and endless folds and bolts of silkens feathers cordons roped twining costumey POTENTIAL, dragging past the garage doors into the unlit driveway asphalt, pegged with bits of styrofoam, plucking up used raggedy condoms and mystified by their slimy role in creation - I secretly inhale and tongue their foamy depths seeking a new answer, but brackage leads only back thru oily paths that trickle upwards these same stone steps that encircle towers back to the same squared rooms where promises exist to be mysteries, until the next aftershocks knocks them to the stone floor and forces them out of disguise.
And as for me, I tried & I tried. I tried to play happy medium between a brother & sister, one whom I know, one whom I love, and tuned my radar into their particular psychic frequency -- this is never going to go well. home truth: stay out of this. Even when your presence is a balancing act, no one is listening and so retreat, retreat, and hey is this what I come here for? What about conviviliasm, what about camaraderie, what about art and laughter and meeting and remeeting and what about that cute thick-bodied tall boy looking at me? What about that scruffy faced man in the disheveled suit, what about that asian boy making eye contact lingeringly over the blue glow lozenge of his iPhone?
Sorry lads I'm taking, tonight I'm on family patrol and its not even my own, altho it is in a way, and it certainly trips me back over into my own ungetmutlich sizzle of my sister, my love and my hate, my hero and my nemesis, my twin and my killer, my mirror and my horror, my perfect love and simple kill, we are headed for a crash, Missy Miss and I, not fatal but far from congenial and it will happen, and it will involve hurting, and it will be ok. But its not today, or even tomorrow, but someday, soon - a tiny grey cloud of my own, looming down the horizon like a plane off course, swooping down and skidding to a bumpy sinkery halt on a freezing body of water of its own, and everyone will be saved, but oh - the luggage - thats gone - that's going down down to the belly of the sea, and you ain't getting it back, and one day you'll realize that the gift you got that day was - hey your stuff is gone but you can FLY.

Bing bang boom. Three lovely ladies, three troubled relationships, three ships crashed up on three different rocks and back on-shore, wondering, 'how did I reach this land? what are the laws? where do i sleep? who is in charge?'

Sometimes it seems like so many people in my life have the same problem simultaneously. Then I remember it's because we all have the same problem, every dadgummed one of us.

I get involved in other people's problems because I think I can learn something from them. Something I can put to use in my own life, somehow -- like studying for a test in a class I'm not yet taking, storing up knowledge & experience & wisdom & joy & pain for a long winter ahead, in a rattly empty oak branch.

I know this isn't really how it works, but it's how I work. Likely too late to change the program now. Maybe a few alterations, changes in the lineup, an addendum here and there.

Also the big secret -- I care beyond what I'm willing to admit, even to myself. I'm trying to not be scared off by the broken splintered shipwrecks all around me, shards of jaggedy bits & knots whorling around my ankles in the froth. Shhh stand still. Look down. Step carefully. Go slow. Breathe.

But up here on the beach, everyone is still walking around, murmuring and questioning and waiting for the sun to rise again, waiting for the sky to pinken, then glow, because when the sun comes up the questions vanish, it's not as scary, all you need is a good breakfast and a clean face and you can Start All Over Again.

which rarely results in much...but still.

I realize tonight that I feel like I have lost any semblance of control over my body in the last 18 months. I don't know WHAT is going on, any more. Not that I was ever a radiant, glowing picture of health -- many cigarettes, cocktails, not enough sleep and greens, etc -- but not to the extreme, either. But up until about a year and a half ago, I was fairly comfortable in my container. I'd get sick once in a while -- flu, colds -- and occasionally the more aberrant illness -- mono, gimpy lower back -- but overall, my body was just my body. The container. The bin in which I lugged around my organs, my feelings and my dinners in a jumbled heap, from place to place. I generally knew what my body could take, and what it needed to be set right, and I was never more than a few days away from general good health. Even as I've gotten 'older', and more aware of my body's need for certain things (and inability to process others), I made a habit of being conscious of when I felt good - all over, top to bottom. And it wasn't that infrequent.

Now, tho...

I literally can't remember the last time there wasn't Something Wrong. If it's not a blinding headache, it's blurry vision; if it's not blurry vision, it's intestinal cramping; if it's not that, it's vertiginous dizzy spells, or gurgling innards (and I mean that you can hear 10 feet away), or diarrhea, or constipation, or utter sleeplessness, or muscle spasms (the kind I can see through my clothes), or a rash, or unexplained scratches that take forever to heal, or another sore tooth. More than perhaps any of these things is just a general sense of Un-Wellness, of illness, of generally crap health. I've been to several doctors, had various tests run, and so far nothing to explain the majority of these symptoms. Even with last year's major health news, and the subsequent medication to curb it, hasn't slowed or sped up these symptoms -- they seem to co-exist, side by side but unrelated. Generally, the doctors I've seen have been fairly dismissive (typical of Western medicine) of most of my complaints, essentially telling me that what I've described is 'not enough' to merit serious alarm. It's not a brain tumor, it's not cancer, it's not an ulcer. It's not anxiety per se, although enough of these symptoms in tandem has caused some severe panicky episodes, and made me a more worried, nervous person than I've ever been. I feel less capable, because of all these unpredictable physical ailments -- I became a near-hermit in the last year because my physical self was so dodgy, I never felt I could trust my body to cart it out in public, for fear of -- I don't know what, collapse or vomiting or blacking out.

I'm overfocused on this right now because of this miserable cold, which is actually fairly standard (in and of itself unusual for me -- a miracle it hasn't blossomed into flu or strep or something else equally advanced), and the malaise that accompanies colds. I've less of an appetite, less energy, and yet didn't sleep much today (NyQuil will be on duty this evening).

I've got to find some health, some wellness. I don't even know where to begin looking. I want to find someone -- a doctor, a healer, a medicine man, a shaman, I don't care -- who will 1) be interested in helping solve all this and 2) provide some actual, doable solutions to bring things back on track. I'm not trying to be a perfect physical specimen, but there's no reason, no reason at all, why I shouldn't feel generally as good as I did just 3 years ago.

OK maybe I just needed to say all this out loud(ish), to spew it out. Now it's time for bed, and tomorrow a step closer to normal(ish) again.

Le sigh.

I wish the "Manage Friends" function on LJ could be extrapolated to the real world. Some of my friends could use to be managed more properly.

Because I'm leavin' on a jet plane in about 6 hours, which means less than four hours of sleep, which might as well be about six minutes.

Because of anticipation of not enough sleep, crabby me, crowded airport, senseless bureaucracy, lines of staggering fools, badly packed bags and forgotten items.

Because the last several days have been a whoosh of last-minute errands, cleaning, finals, bill-paying, work argle-bargle, dental appointments, and general junk health.

Because of the dread of cold, and no-indoor-cigarettes for the next two weeks.

Because of unaddressed tensions, inevitable family misunderstandings, worn nerves, and disrupted routine to the point of insanity.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, that's for damned sure.

OK now positive thinking:
- done all this before; it'll go like clockwork; catch up on sleep tomorrow; cozy family moments; being taken care of; sleeping late and no work; mischievous niece-uncle giggles; freedom from want; all the liquor I can drink; consistent internet access; only seeing relatives I love; reunion with old mates; clean sheets; plenty of accoutrements; did i mention liquor.

Honestly I love my family. I'm lucky beyond words that they're as wonderful, loving and supportive as they are, and most importantly I can be utterly, entirely myself with them and there's no judgment, no criticism, and no nagging. Mostly we get along splendidly and when we don't, it's only as bad as it ever is with anyone I spend too much time with all at once. It's rarely personal.

By this time tomorrow, all the crappy stuff (well, most of it) will be behind me, and the rest of the time I can just enjoy. My goal is the same as always: stay present, stay appreciative, stay me.

is the enemy of sleep.

is all about the healing power of heat.

Amazing that sometimes heat is all you need. Human bodycontainer, you never cease to confound me. Altho I often curse you, in fact I do admire you, and secretly I sort of love you.

I promise.

Altho not too much tonight - inexplicably headached now (could it be the bag of pfeffeneusen cookies? damned Germans and their tasty treats).

Making concerted efforts at:
- taking chances (albeit teensy, calculated ones, but still)
- calling out my own bullshit at least half as often as I do everyone else's (seems fair, no?)
- sprucing up the outside to trick the inside into coming out for a little more air

The other night someone asked me if I wanted to go out, and the first answer that jumped into my head was a whiny, "I've BEEN out."

This is not good.

Once when I was about 17, someone was asked to describe me in one word, and the word they used was "world-weary". I was horrified -- it's not like I was exactly Marlene Dietrich, hauling my battle-scarred carcass back into the sequinned spotlight for one more overdone round -- but I could, even then, sort of see their point. Still, I dinna like it then nor do I like it now. The question is, how do I make myself fresh?

2009 is going to be a lot more social, whether I like it or not. It simply has to be. 2008, you bad wicked thing, take your angry wounds and bag of pus and filthy mind-chewing fuckbot self elsewhere and be gone. In just a few weeks there's gonna be a new sheriff in town, a shiny-skinned rosy baby sheriff with tousled curls and a dapper top hat, with a garish sass and a zing in his step, and he's gonna stomp the crap of you right into the past, history books, dust.

Anyone know any good New Year's rituals? I'm looking for something fiery, jumping thru rings but not in an Evel Knievel way. Throw me your ideas, all.

Still headachy, but I cannot in good conscience take one more freaking pill of any kind today. I'm gonna try to override this one.

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