If the weight of the world were to rest on my shoulders, well, let's just say the world would be rolling around underfoot somewhere.
I'm gearing up for some big changes this year and I'm feeling like I may never sleep again. Right now is one of those times when I really do think that drinking alcohol might be great. I always imagine alcohol as some sort of elixir that calms the fire of anxiety. If not alcohol, perhaps some other soothing substance would be nice right about now. I usually turn to food, especially Ben and Jerry's S'mores ice cream, but I'm trying not to do that right now. This leads to me not at all sleeping and experiencing this restlessness that is so powerful that I cannot sit still for more than a few minutes at a time. I cannot focus on any one thing for more than a few fleeting moments. This is not working for me.
If it weren't freezing and the middle of the night, I'd walk. Alas.
So, here I am, past midnight, semi-coherently and very vaguely, pouring my anxieties into the openness of the ether. I've been pretty good about not doing this as much lately, but, ah, my many woes and self-doubts are pressing on me and it's getting hard to breathe.
I'd like to turn to others for thoughts and advice, but when I feel this way, I always feel that my problems are petty and unworthy of others' attention. But, really, I'd like someone to tell me, "Hey, it's all going to work out. Take it a little at a time. Commit yourself for a short time and evaluate where you are this time next year." Actually, this is what I've been telling myself, but, oh wow, I don't deal well with change.
I hate being so vague, so I'll clue you in a bit on a few of the upcoming changes we'll be experiencing this year:
-- Pic will be entering elementary school
-- we're planning a move
-- I'm needing and wanting a job
When I sit here and think about these things, I feel nauseated. But when I type out the list and read it, I can't help but notice how pathetically tiny the list is. I know that many people are dealing with much more excruciating problems, but I'm not living in their heads, I'm trapped in my own.
So, now that I've gushed on for a few minutes here, I'll return to my previous task. In the morning, I'll wake up and think about this post and think, as I always do after these kinds of posts, "Geez, I'm such a drama-monger. Things don't look quite so scary here in the daylight, on the other side of four or five hours of sleep." Geez, I need to get to bed.
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I've always wondered about that Atlas image. What is Atlas standing on? What if Atlas did shrug? (And who is John Galt?) I'm trying to meld the mythical explanation with the scientific one and it's not working for me.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
i am no atlas
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3 comments:
Props for the Ayn Rand reference.
When I was in high school I injured my knee badly enough to need surgery to repair it. I had to stay overnight in hospital to recover. I was in a cast from hip to toe, I was nauseated and throwing up because of an allergy to pain medication and the smallest of movements in my right leg led to an enormous shot of pain that I could feel through the haze of morphine.
In the bed next to me was a woman who was dying of intestinal cancer. She moaned and cried out all night. Her family sat next to her and talked to her and each other in hushed tones. She died at 4:47 that morning.
I still do not know what prompted the hospital to make us roomates. I was a 16-year-old girl with a knee injury, she in the last stages of a terminal illness. I felt very guilty about complaining. I suffered with an allergic reaction to morphine that I did not need too. I did not feel as if I deserved any of the nurses attentions. Finally, a veteran nurse kindly explained to me that I was her patient and that I deserved the care I needed, no matter what anyone else needed. That those things were separate.
And finally, and here I promise to stop hijacking this blog--at least for today-- When I got home (after a 2 hour drive on a curvy country road) I was in my living room still in a hip-to-toe cast, on a pain medication that was just not effective enough but which my body would tolerate, facing a month of recovery and then 6 months of therapy before I could walk again. My friend called, presumably to ask how I was, and she spent 30 minutes telling me about a badly sprained finger she had sustained in volleyball practice. For about minute I was angry at her. How dare she talk about the miniscule pain of her sprain? To me? And all I had been through. I remembered the nurse at the hospital and I told my friend how sorry I was that she was injured. After all, pain is pain.
All that to say, I believe that there is a danger in comparing situations. Pain is pain. Stress is stress. And just because someone else may seem to be in more pain or stress or whatever, it doesn't mean that we should undermine our own distress. We never do this with happiness: Feel like we should not be as happy as we feel because other people are happier.
Okay, preachy blog hijack is over.
I'm going to have to echo Kat, not only on the Rand props, but also on the danger of comparing situations. I always get thoroughly annoyed when people say, "Well, it could always be worse," or, "At least you aren't x, y, or z." Your problems are just that: YOUR problems. Just because someone somewhere else in the world is suffering doesn't make your problems any less important in your own life. Saying "It could be worse" may help with perspective, but it doesn't get shit done.
That being said, life goes on, and you know enough about stress and pressure to know that things work out for the best if you can take them one day at a time. You'll get there, and you can always call on us if you need anything.
Thanks to both of you for your thoughts and words. How can I, with my (probably weird) fascination with rhetoric not take into account context? It totally makes sense that my problems are large and important to me, the person muddling through this life.
Also, Ms J, the "one day at a time" mantra has been a part of my life for my whole life. I just so often ignore it.
And, a general note: a great elixir, of sorts? Sleep. Yes, it helps.
Another great elixir: friends. Thanks for so often talking me off the ledge over the abyss of insanity (or some other meaningful image here).
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