March in September

I think maybe the reason I've been staring at this blinking cursor for a good half an hour, and checking email every time I hear the "ding" of new mail, and rushing to check the little red box on facebook every time it comes up is that I spent it all on yesterday's blog. It's not easy to dredge that deep into my box of real feelings and display them on black velvet in the sunlight to see if they sparkle and then just go on with the day. I think that's also why Michael caught me operating on auto-pilot with dull eyes and no purpose and suggested that I take a nap, which was in fact a full night's sleep in the middle of the day. 


Add to that the fact that we've been going through the garage, the place where my past and all it's ghosts have kept my skeletons company for so many years and you have the recipe for overload. I have, or shall I say had a box that was locked, that has disintegrated over the years. When it was moved, it all but came apart. A friend who had nothing but good intentions "organized" things in there for me, and though I don't think she read the many, many slips of paper and notebooks in there, they are just not in the order (or disorder) I remember them being in. There are love-letters and cards that should never have been received or kept, and many that were never sent. I would have expected to find them in there. Not. There were items in there that seemed to belong with that collection to my friend, that don't go in that category at all. It's been breached and changed and I don't know what's missing, because it was slowly filled over years and years of that being the only safe place to put things that I wanted no one else to see. Maybe I went into it in a drunken fit and threw all that stuff away? 


So there was the Dottie blog, then the disintegrated hope chest project, and the sense of violation that comes with dredging through either of those two things and I think it's left me feeling numb and with quite a few circuits blown. The mind will do that, you know, blow circuits to protect the integrity of the whole. Michael can find the appropriate cord to any device, and fix anything no matter how broken, even if he can't figure out which end of the gun the staples fire from. My mind and my past however are beyond even his handyman skills. One thing I learned for certain yesterday is that I wrote some truly terrible songs and poetry when I was around eighteen. Abysmal. Embarrassing. 


I came across things that I am sure were just recently in my house, I know that I have seen them in here. I found things that I thought I would never see again. I found things I have never seen before. I was overloaded, and had begun the day with a multi-paragraph essay on the one subject that still haunts me and like the largest and deepest of blackberry hearts has not been rooted out of my being yet.


On the topic of being overloaded, Dr. Gail is my psychiatrist and medication manager who helps to make sure that with multiple prescribers I am not given any combinations that will send me over any edges without soft landings. She says that a lot of personal growth or realization in a short period of time will cause the mind to demand a period of rest. It will start shutting down some systems temporarily in order to process, because no one can do a lifetime's work in a couple of months and just keep on going. Whatever, I've been lazy, can't I use it like vacation time I never took on a job I've been at for years? Apparently not. It may have something to do with my headache, which I don't even pluralize, because it's just one long pain, not a series of events. That may also be because my eyes are coming out again and there is pressure on my brain. It may also stem from the fact that I have been abducted by aliens and they have left probes in my skull, one can never be sure.


My thyroid has been left entirely untreated for over a month to "see what it does on it's own" after being brought from an overactive state to an under-active state with medication. I think there was a minute there where I felt just a little bit normal as I crossed the line, but it went by too fast to be sure. I think it's up again, now that I'm learning to recognize the symptoms of a hyperactive thyroid I think that the little monster is once again a mad butterfly of chaos that has bred with an angry hamster and their offspring are trying to claw their way out of my aging, sagging neck. I have assured Dr. E that if he doesn't take it out I will walk into his office, slit my own throat and take it out myself, because I believe that by law he has to sew me up. He doesn't think that's funny. I do. He doesn't think anything I say is funny. Why is it so important to me that people think I'm funny? Because funny and smart won't fade, wrinkle or sag and the rest of me already is?


Most assuredly, something is very wrong with me. It's probably a combination of all the things I just mentioned. I'm crying at the drop of a hat. Please don't drop your hat. I go on hysterical laughing jags, please don't shoot a staple gun into your own finger. I want to paint, bead write and make political word collages on objects I have first painted and applied strips of this really fantastic paper/cloth I got at the art store. I can't wait to use the spray glue. Every tattoo is taking forever, because it is the most fascinating thing I've ever done, and I am in love with everybody; well everybody who is not wearing a hat. Mad as a March hare, with a pain in my head that can only be likened to small angry animals, power tools or table utensils. If you say the word menopause to me I will feed you your own spleen with my bloody fingers after ripping it out of your... I don't know where your spleen is, but I will hurt you, of that you can be certain.


Maybe it's none of these things at all. Maybe I just woke up that little girl who thought she could make a swing from a rocking chair and a curtain cord, the one who always wanted a mother and never had one, and she's throwing a tantrum? My quandary is that I have no way of knowing.