loose string

"One-way streets and square one, The answers don't come from any one direction"

 

There is not enough therapy to explain this

I have been watching a lot of television lately.  Television provides me with the illusion of human interaction with the option of changing the  channel when I get irritated or bored.  There is no need to feign polite interest with the television box.

I get excited easily.  For instance they have a new series of the PBS program Mystery.  This is one of my long-standing favorites.  It has always relied heavily upon the Agatha Christie cozies for content so I get Poirot and Miss Marple and even Tommy and Tuppence.  It is shot in period style with lots of British accents and British countryside.  Soothing.  And exciting all at the same time. 

The new series features some of the Miss Marple stories.  Old familiar stories that have been done before but, I have to say,  whoever is directing this series (and I cannot be arsed to look it up) has really  done a bang up job.  They are really rich and the color is marvelous and heightens the sense of the absurd inherent in a geriatric sleuthing series.  This is not any damned Murder She Wrote.  This is Miss Jane Marple of St. Mary's Mead: bad ass and crime solver.  Anyway.  It makes me happy.  But, in a strange twist of irony, sometimes I want to punch the little old lady who is playing Miss Marple.  She is too high-pitched and dog whistle-like for my liking.  I want her to take in down an octave and then the whole thing would be just too sublime for words.

Just to show you how very irrational and fickle my irritations can be: I watched War of the Worlds last night and I did not want to punch Tom Cruise.  I was not loving him mind you.  In fact almost any other Hollywood-style actor could have done this role as well or better.  But I did not want to punch him as much as I want to punch Miss Marple.

posted by: loosestring at 10:15 | link | comments (3) |

I woke up in between a memory and a dream

I keep working this concept of explanation over and around in my mind.  Worrying it.  Like a light will come on and suddenly the words will be perfect and I can make an understandable definition of what goes on inside my head.  The truth is that there is no perfect.  It is not easy to make sense of.  But here goes.

I spend a lot of time inside my head.  It's sort of a carnival in there.  Replete with rides that go 'round in circles and never reach a destination, games of chance and skill that have very low odds on paying off in the end and some toothless carnies that travel with the show and set up the rides while recovering from last night's bender.  The metaphor and similes stretch and strain and labor here.  It is a place that seems fun for the first hour or so but loses it's "shiny" rather rapidly.  But , the truth is that it is something that is familiar to me.  Familiar is so easily equated with comfortable.

I spent a lot of years and a lot of time trying to get rid of the noises in my head.  The anxieties and the rapidly cycling moods and emotions.  Because I thought that I needed them to be gone.  That I needed to erase the program I came with and get myself the same one that everyone else seemed to have.  Happy shiny thoughts and no worries.  No blues.  I dumped a lot of medication down my throat.  Pills prescribed by mental health professionals.  Liquid in glasses and bottles of all colors and flavors.  And sometimes the noises stopped.  The buzzing went away.  But never for very long.

About six years ago I gave up all of the medications.  Prescribed and self-prescribed.  All of it.  It was difficult in the beginning.  But I was convinced that it was the right thing for me.  I had allowed everyone else their best shot at fixing me and none of it seemed to stick.  In the end I decided that there had to be some way to work around the "problem".  To adapt and overcome and move through.  And so that is what I have learned to do.  Sometimes I am happy, happy, happy and manic.  I try to channel all of the energy and forward momentum into something productive and positive.  Sometimes I am sad and lethargic and even the thought of conversation is tiring, so tiring.  I hibernate.  I conserve the energy I have and apply it to the necessary functions.  The bare minimum.

This is what works for me.  But it can be a bit difficult to explain to the rest of the world.  And sometimes I don't want to explain.  This is when I disappear.  I don't want to have to edit myself.  Sometimes I am angry or crabby or blue and it is okay with me.  It just is what it is.  I know it is temporary.  I always know that it is going to pass.  There is an ebb and a flow and sometimes it seems stuck in ebb but it will flow.

posted by: loosestring at 11:54 | link | comments (6) |

Crazy, Part 362

I set out yesterday to write a post about how I am "all inside my head" lately.  About how I have set up camp in my head next to my brain so that I can keep repeatedly poking it with a very sharp stick.  How I am in this weird frame of mind lately.  How I have been stuck in a loop of not very pleasant memories.  How I am wearing myself out with all of the fretting and recrimination and anger about a million things that don't really matter anymore. 

The point has come in this relationship when there are decisions to be made about taking things to the next level.  You know.  You meet some new and wonderful friend and you hang out for awhile and you share some laughs and maybe a few tears and everything is wonderful.  Wonderful and happy.  But eventually you have to reveal some more things about yourself.  Uncomfortable things that are a part of the story.  And you have to decide if this new friendship is worth that effort.

It's not that I don't love you all.  It's not you.  It's me.

posted by: loosestring at 11:21 | link | comments |

Kicking

As I have said here many times before: I grew up in the middle of the woods in New Hampshire.  Most of New Hampshire is in the middle of the woods but there are relative degrees of remote-ness and woodsy-ness.  We were in the heart of the woods on the edge of a lake on a dirt road about a mile off the nearest main highway.  Again, highway is a relative term.  Two lanes of blacktop that run through most of the state.  It was remote.

Our house was not a big one.  Someone had built it as a seasonal vacation home.  The main appeals being the lake in the Summer and the proximity to mountains for skiing in the Winter.  For us it was just our home.  The place we lived all year round.  In the Summer we went swimming in the lake or wandered around through the woods making up games.  In the Winter we went skiing sometimes.  It was a nice place to grow up.  It was safe.

Our house looked out over the lake from the top of a fairly steep hill.  The deck hung out to the very edge of the drop off making it seem as though you were in a treehouse high among the treetops.  Sometimes, on warm Summer nights,  we would spend the night on the screened porch.  Sleeping out in the night sounds and catching the breezes off of the lake.  It was the very best kind of camping.  Probably the only kind I have ever enjoyed.

This Summer I want to go back.  I want to sleep on the porch and swim in the lake and read. 

posted by: loosestring at 17:16 | link | comments |

There's a dream I keep having where my mama comes to me

Long weekend.  I guess I am still mentally having my long weekend.

What have I been up to?

1. Friday night we drove up to Milwaukee for Summer Fest.  The drive should have taken about and hour or and hour and a half.  We arrived in Milwaukee three and a half hours after we left our little town.  Every person in Illinois is required by law to flee to Wisconsin for the long weekends.  It's in the State Constitution.  Fortunately for everyone involved I was not the driver.

The reason for the driving was a happy thing.  The annual pilgrimage to see Tom Petty play in an outdoor concert.  I cannot help myself.  I like Tom Petty.  This year we sprung for the good seats.  Worth every penny.  We were not crushed into a humanity sandwich in the bleachers with drunken men offering my son a joint this year.  We had individually assigned seats.  Comfy seats with real backs and arm rests and all of the amenities.  We were, however, surrounded by the Milwaukee Pearl Jam Fan Club. (The opening act)  A group of aging frat boys who pumped their fists into the air and sang along emphatically to every song.  I like Pearl Jam.  Or.  I liked Pearl Jam.  But I am not the biggest Pearl Jam fan in the Universe.  These guys were.  They got their money's worth out of this show.  Good for them.  I just wanted it to end. 

Soon enough we came to the Tom Petty portion of the program and much happiness was mine.  All of the good music was played and the dancing was done.  One of my favorite points in the evening was when the requisite crowd surfing beach ball landed in front of me.  I picked it up and hesitated for a moment.  I guess I looked slightly puzzled.  The younger gentleman to my left advised me to hit it back into the crowd.  So I lofted it up and spiked it right into the head of a guy two rows in front of us.  It was only a ball full of air and therefore quite harmless.  No one was injured.  But I believe I will not be offered the opportunity to partake in the bouncing of the beach ball any time soon.

2. Apparently, the concert was quite taxing on my system.  I spent the next two days alternately napping and reading.  Mostly in a horizontal position.  Clad in pyjamas. 

3.  I recovered sufficiently by the 4th to celebrate with an excess of food and a viewing of the fireworks.  I cooked the feast: fried chicken, potato salad, pesto pasta salad (marking the making of the first batch of pesto from the garden this Summer), devilled eggs, baked beans, a vat of guacamole and various pickles and olives and peppers.  Topped off with Strawberry Shortcake. 

4.  I finished up the weekend with insomnia.  Grrr-rrr-rrr.  I tossed and turned.  I read many chapters.  I decided that my underwear were uncomfortable.  I changed them.  I washed my face again.  Finally, I nodded off at 4:00 am.  The perfect way to start back to work: unrested and irritable.

posted by: loosestring at 12:34 | link | comments |