There have been a lot of thoughts rolling around this noggin the past few months.  I’m wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.

When things get rough, I mean when all the things that normally get under your skin get to be so overwhelming that you can’t find an inch of peace anywhere, what do you do?  I guess I’ve got kind of a process that I use to try and relax.  The first mode is sleep. Sleep until you can’t sleep anymore. This usually doesn’t work for more than a couple of days.  The second mode is feeling sorry for myself.  Woe is me.  Why me?  Pity party to the max.  That doesn’t last long either, maybe a week.  Then the questioning creeps in, causing me to make some sort of change.  The easiest things to change are things that you can control.  I’ll clean a closet or a drawer and throw a bunch of stuff out.  Purge.  It’s usually in a way that I feel I kept something for a reason, but the reason seems stupid to me now. Not necessarily not legit, just not legitimate enough at the time.  This step of the process takes the most amount of time.  It’s not because I clean a lot, my friends and family KNOW that’s just not me.  I find no enjoyment in keeping an immaculate home 24/7.  I just don’t.  But this step continues for a while because I do it until I don’t wanna do it anymore.  And not everyday.  Maybe every few days, or once a week.

I’m a person who can’t have a constant diet of the same thing all the time.  I don’t want to run with my child to games and practices every single day of every single week of every single month.  I don’t like cleaning the same carpet of the same rooms and dusting the same furniture that I’ve been dusting for 30 years.  I know I have to do it.  I have to drive to practice and I have to dust my furniture, I just don’t like doing it all the time.

But this particular irritating stall in my brain circuitry is finishing off with some completely new dilemmas.  I get very frustrated with conditions.  Easy things, like applying makeup.  After wearing makeup for some 40 years, I’m sick of it.  I wore only mascara to work the other day.  Back when I was in my 20’s, I wouldn’t have opened my front door without a full face of makeup and hair teased to outer space and back.  I’m embittered about my marriage, but I’ve talked about that before.  No use beating a dead horse.  I’m discontent with my job.  I am paid a few pennies more than some employees with 90% less responsibility than me.  That worked for a while when I assumed that my dedication would be noticed and I would receive a raise/full time employment.  I’ve given it six years, that’s five too many.  I am stymied by my health, the neglect and disregard by the medical profession and all that that encompasses.  Supporters of each of the Presidential candidates and their comments on social media make me wonder how this world survives with such racism and ill will. Truly and honestly quite scary.

All of this and more is utterly draining me.  Sucking the life out of this worn down, bedraggled body and mind.  I know a few of you are thinking, “depression”.  Maybe you’re right.  But maybe, just maybe it’s a lifetime of needing to look a certain way and act in a way that is adequate for the people around me to “put up with”.  Maybe it’s smiling when you just wanna run away.  Listening to the world and it’s noise and commotion and just wanting quiet.  I find myself enjoying quiet more than anything these days.  I’ll drive without music when my brain is so overstimulated that one more conversation or fire whistle or car horn would probably push me over the edge.  I don’t want to cook or bake or create.  I can’t even imagine how the girl I was years ago existed every day without going completely insane.  Being, looking, acting, baking, pretending.

On the outside I might appear like I’ve got this “life” thing down, that I know who I am and what I want and how I want it.  I don’t have a fucking clue.  “Do what makes you happy….”  Seriously?  Can someone please tell me what makes me happy?  I don’t have an inkling.  What do I enjoy?  Well, I enjoy dancing.  Until I get tired (which is pretty quickly) and then I don’t enjoy it.  I enjoy being with my kids, but they have lives.  Hopefully they’re doing what makes them happy.  Hope they know what that is.

So I think this is a “funk”.  I think it’s just a temporary despondency and I’m hopeful that it all gets worked out for the better.  In the meantime, I don’t want to be anything to anyone.  I don’t want to be pulled in a direction, I don’t want to be presented as “pretty”,  I don’t want to hear that I’m nice or that I’m not.  I don’t want to be expected to do the right thing, but I have no plans to do the wrong thing.

I’ll bet most of us have thought of just getting in the car and driving, running out of gas and walking and just getting as far away from the life that we are making and leading and existing in.  Sometimes it sounds so nice to just get away from everyone and everything and be free of all the bullshit that is in our lives.  Live in a cabin in the woods away from society.  I think when you reach that point, you probably DO need a break of some sort. I wish it were as easy as just saying it to make it come true.

I love this song, it makes me happy and I’m not sure why.  This man sings it phenomenally well, with such passion.  I think he’s been where I am before, you can hear it.  Listen closely, it’s just between the ending of one word, and the beginning of another.