Grasshopper

Will this grasshopper ever learn? Last night I was starting to feel distinctly better virus-wise. But I felt heavy, bloated, and inflamed.

Over the weekend I'd had bouts of chemically-fueled anxiety...for want of a better way to put it. I'd be sitting there (usually quite literally, in my red chair) and, as if a switch was turned on, a circus would start to rehearse in the cavity of my chest. The swoops and somersaults of trapeze artists, the vibratory thumps and trumpets of elephants, the buzz and din of an excited throng...

I paused and experienced and it would inevitably pass in a few minutes.

I yelled at one of the kids over the weekend and generally had way less patience with them.

My decade-old eczema patch on my scalp flared up big time and was itchy, red and tender-to-the-touch...this weekend.

Yesterday, despite a lovely visit from an old friend of ours the day before which precipitated the putting on of clothes and  socializing and realizing that, indeed, the virus was on its way out, all I wanted to do (and did) was stay in my pajamas and curl into being as alone as I could.

Oh, and last night I had trouble falling asleep for the first time in weeks.

So, in retrospect, there would seem to have been some sort of significance to this weekend.

Last night the old voice(s) came out of the woodwork. Happily, I do not react and struggle anywhere near the levels I used to. But, the message inevitably gets transmitted: this is your fault, do something about it.

This is when I go into "shut it down" mode and begin to concoct "the plan". About going to the gym, about drasticating my diet, about practicing Qigong, etc.  About becoming blameless. About being the paragon I believe I never am.

There is nothing wrong with the impulse to want to transform, to improve self-care...but for me, there is something intrinsically Sisyphusian about having the impulse rear up during a moment of needing a "fix".  (Those pesky backslides.)

I interface better and more productively with ideas of self-care when I am not in the throes of what feels like a crisis in my heart, my brain, my central nervous system.

When I can get to the root of the old emotional stuff that comes up, oh, ONCE A MONTH (perimenopause is fickle and I am suddenly regular again), when I can feel out the edges and sharpen my tool, I can, and will, excise it and let it dissolve into the ether...or primordial ooze.

The old voices are important to recognize so they can be put in their place, at least, until they are dismissed forever.

PMS, get thee back into your corner.

Ad infinitum. I wonder if this process will continue up to the day I die. Or if some day I will achieve the next level of grasshopperdom and step off this particular hamster wheel (to mix my critter metaphors).

I made something yummy yesterday. Baked oatmeal, for the first time. My crazy brain was telling me late last night, as it was keeping me from sleep, that I should not eat this today because of inflammation and going Paleo in between all the celebrations coming up and the weight I'm gaining with all the hibernation eating I've been doing...

Well, I got my period this morning and I am feeling so much better, inside and out. The show's over, there's nothing left to see. 

(Except a shot of yummy.)

Peace.