I was going to tell this somewhat amusing story at the end of my post but having reached the end, it didn’t feel appropriate to place it there, so it can go first: I went to the bank to withdraw my weekly shopping funds (generally about $300, and I can’t tell you where it disappears to so quickly, but it does!) While waiting for someone at the automatic teller machine I noticed she was printing a statement before requesting money out. I sighed to myself (being in a cranky, impatient, irritable mood- more below) and thought how annoying it was to wait, and why didn’t people know how much money they had anyway and blah blah blah. Then I thought “Well, I do remember when I was at college and I would have to check my balance every time to see if I could afford to take five dollars out. So maybe, churlish self, you should just feel grateful that now you have so much money you never have to check and there is always enough for you to feel safe that you can just punch a number in and get it out. Not everyone is as lucky as you. So pull your head in.”
Then it was my turn, and I punched in my $300, and the receipt came out first, which is not normal, and no money came out and THAT wasn’t normal, so I looked at the bit of paper and it said “Sorry, you do not have sufficient funds for that transaction” What I had, in fact, was an account that was almost $700 overdrawn.
I laughed out loud. If that wasn’t an immediate slap in the face from the Universe, I don’t know what is!
I felt pleased to have enough change in my wallet to buy the loaf of bread I needed, and happy to know that we would be paid something tomorrow (well usually we are paid something. The practice shares out the weekly profit among the partners, so it varies greatly from week to week, and there have been weeks where we have got nothing at all, but hopefully this won’t be one of them!) The nice chap in the bank said he’d refund me the penalty charge, and I felt privileged to be able to think that this was just a funny story, and not a total nightmare, like it might be for some people. And I pulled my head in.
Sort of.
Today I am having a grump. Actually, to be honest, I have been having a low-grade grump for the best part of a week now. But today I’m really indulging in it. I went to yoga this morning, and felt pleased to have gone. In the meditation I realised I didn’t really want to go and volunteer at the community nursery, which I normally do after class until lunchtime. I also realised that if I didn’t go, no one would berate me. That it was ok to acknowledge my grump and take it home and give it some attention. I think that is the problem- the deep core of me has not had enough attention lately and it is getting pissy. Instead of noticing my feelings, I have been busy keeping things up to date around here, and putting more effort into meeting other people’s needs than my own. I haven’t had a day to myself in longer than I can say. Time where I didn’t have to be somewhere, or organising for an upcoming event, or tending to the garden – stuff that just had to be done right away, or the future would fall in a heap (or so it always seems to the OCD).
So today I went to the post office, returned a book to the library, went to the bank, came home, had a snack and have lay on the sofa reading a book ever since. Then I felt a post forming and thought, well I could just go and write one.
I feel very weepy today. I realise this is partly PMS-ing, as my period is due tomorrow and although the Chinese medical Practitioner has managed to remove the physical (pain, mainly) symptoms of PMS, the moodiness remains entrenched. But I also think it goes deeper than that.
I suspect that my girlfriend’s new baby has something to do with it. That she hasn’t phoned me since the birth and all I’ve had is the bulk email and three separate pictures sent on the phone, and it has been a week. I’m not feeling very special. I didn’t really want the extra two pictures of her kissing the baby, either, to be honest. I’m glad for her, but I don’t need to be reminded of what I am missing out on. I don’t need to SEE it, if you know what I mean? And I feel like she should know that. I wouldn’t have done it to her. I also feel like by the time I have a child, (if I ever do), there won’t be anyone left for me to be sensitive to, so I won’t even be able to say “See, look how I was able to be considerate of these people’s feelings?”
This is linked to the other large factor in my suspected grump, which is that 3 out of 4 of my long term IF (plus recurrent miscarriage) bloggers have recently become pregnant. Again, happy for them. Again, also know that this does not translate to live birth. Again, I know that this time is, for them more than others, a very very tense and anxious time. But still. Almost all of them at once? I feel like I am alone on the island again. My three IRL IFer’s (two recurrent miscarriage) are now all mothers. Three onliners are pregnant (one is already a mother of two). The feeling that comes with this is one of “Why am I always the last in the buddy group?” It feels like I have been forgotten, abandoned.
Which is odd, because the other part of me that is having a grump feels the opposite. Feels more like overwhelmed with people than abandoned by them. I can’t remember the last weekend we had without visitors and I can count the next four out of five coming that are full of them too. The sixth weekend is my birthday and I am going to Hong Kong for a week. Escaping? Then I have the following three weeks with events planned (only one of which involves visitors to my house though). DH is booked up for the two weeks after that, which means we can’t have visitors and I can rest. So I’m looking at June before I get some time to myself. I can’t call that abandoned.
So what’s the problem? I am missing my weekly therapy. My counsellor has been away for a month now, and I’m still not sure when she’ll return to work. Maybe another fortnight or so. This is the kind of thing I like to thrash out with her. When my mind gets all tied up in knots and nothing makes sense, I only know that I feel like shit and something needs to be done.
When I’m running around busying myself, I burn out and get tired and cranky. When I sit still and clear my plate, I feel uncomfortable after a while, like I can’t stand the peace. The hollowness at the centre, where meaning should be, but isn’t. I guess the real answer is that I have to stay there and sit it out, and learn to accept the feeling of meaningless. Because overwork isn’t the answer. And I can’t rely on getting the balance of just-enough-work-and-distraction-but-not-too-much right often enough, it isn’t sustainable, and most of all, it isn’t real anyway. And the work put into the construction of getting it just so is a distraction in itself.
It comes back to feeling uncomfortable just being me. And that is such a long hard road, and it is underfoot anytime I care to take a look. And I can have all the company in the world walking with me or I can walk it alone, but I’m there just the same.
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