Fine. I'm "journaling". Since when did that become a verb? Write it out, says the professional in such things. She also told me to buy a doll with blond hair and pretend that it's me as a child. Then, I'm supposed to 'mother' it with all the care, love and attention I didn't receive when I was wee. My mom did a damn fine job, thank you, so I'm not buying the little blond doll. That's about as ridiculous as beating my ex-husband with a whiffle bat, another gem from couples therapy back in the day. In retrospect, I should have beaten the crap out of him. It was the last chance I had, as it turns out.
So, in the interest of organizing my "journaling", I will divide into categories the things that destabilize my mental health (in no particular order):
1. Discovering that all the comforters and sheets on the beds in my sister's new house are covered in blood and mucous from the meth-fueled contractor they hired, who set himself on fire and ran down the street screaming, recreating a scene in "Apocalypse Now". I threw out those comforters for her, but I almost gagged in the process.
2. Realizing that my amazing and terribly cute nephew will forget me in a few days, since he is in San Francisco and I'm not.
3. Watching my poor kid grieve the loss of her best friend (she didn't die, she moved to Texas . . . although some would say it's kind of the same thing).
4. Realizing that I am essentially trapped in the same routines that sap my energy and my will to do anything important. Thinking that perhaps time speeds up when you wander around in circles, and that there is less and less time the older you get.
5. Lamenting that my husband and I are not always seeing the world the same way; wondering if that means I have to attempt to see the world through his little, round glasses.
6. Facing the fact that when I teach Spanish 3, I am so tense that I wake up at 2:00 AM with the world's most ferocious headache . . . and add to that the most heinous of all indignities . . .
7. Waking up with hot flashes. Yes, I'm effing menopausal. I NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN TO ME. Yet, it's happening. HRT is not even effective against the tidal wave of weird hormonal demons unleashed upon my body and psyche. I'M TOO YOUNG FOR THIS. TOO YOUNG, damn it.
8. Realizing that I'm not too young for this. My body has decided that it's time to move on to a new stage. No more "maybe babies", fantasy twins, or anything else requiring fertility. I haven't even begun to deal with this. I can't even discuss this anymore.
9. Understanding that things are changing: the kid is really growing up, I'm now a cougar, and my family is in as much turmoil now as we were 20 years ago. The things that needed to change, didn't. The things that should have stayed the same, changed.
