Crap-Ass result case study #1-- Elliot's 5th Birthday Cake 

 

 

(it's awesomely funny, just not very pretty)

I've been stricken, yet again, with a kind of melancholia that is not only caused by but can only be cured by time.  It happens. And then it sort of un-happens.  It makes me anxious in between.

The boys are leaving the school they've known and (largely) loved for the past 2 and a half years. I've loved meeting the folks there as well.  As with any scholastic experience, there have been challenges, not the least of which was the damn driveway getting in the place.  The ones involving the kids we took all too seriously, I think.  We feared our kids were going to be scarred for life by things that, when asked about now, they barely--if at all--remember, at least consciously.

It's just more the passage of time.  My 30 year high school reunion is this summer.  We just celebrated 20 a few minutes ago, it seems.

Anyway, I find when my mind is not busy creating something new and beautiful, like a baby or a garden or a collage or a new room or something constructive, it wanders off into the minefield of the past.

The past is probably pretty benign when taken objectively.  It's all the meaning that I've assigned things that gets me into trouble.

I was thinking while cleaning up the crap in the garage just now, that I'd like to have no enemies and I would like to regard the past as just a really long school year with a lot of great lessons.  I made that decision, in fact.  So today, I have no enemies and I have made no "mistakes." I'm not saying that I haven't produced some pretty crap-ass results on things I've attempted.  I've also produced NO results on things I NEVER attempted, which, let's face it, is far less forgivable.

I weighed myself this morning. I was so sad and so lost I just went and did it.  I didn't smoke and I contemplated not saying anything about it. But the name of this blog sort of compels me to the truth. If I can't be truthful to 2000 of my closest friends, then to whom can I be? Yep. Equal parts humiliation, frustration, sadness. melancholia.  Sounds like a recipe for salad dressing, doesn't it?

Shame. Guilt, too.  Probably more of the latter for letting you all down.

I have neither gained nor lost any weight as I knew I wouldn't (gain)and wouldn't (lose)----ever. I am the same weight I have been within about not 3 or 4 pounds but like 3 or 4 ounces since 5 years before I got pregnant. This is why my insanity with the scale is beyond understanding.

I don't really know where I am going with it.  Am I trying NOT to lose? Am I trying to maintain? A lot of what happens between the ears has to do with a sense of control.  Not weighing myself for five whole weeks forced me to rely on my higher power for sustenance, support, condolences, feedback, encouragement.  It forced me to not necessarily go-it-alone but go-it-unseen.  I guess that means that I couldn't see how I felt in a metric.  I had to feel how I felt in my skin.  And that was not very comfortable yesterday. It was certainly less comfortable this morning.

Relying on a power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, as the second step puts it,  is difficult.  I don't always have access to that power.  I get weak and then forget the source of my true power. I confuse myself for that which ultimately strengthens me.  So now where do I begin?  I guess I begin again.  A bit dejected and bottomed-out but I am beginning again.  I can't give up.  Did I really think it would be easy to give my life over to an unseen presence?  A therapist friend of mine once said that anger cuts off our connection to God immediately.  I don't feel mad.  I just feel sad.  But it's certainly something to explore.  Anger disaffects and disconnects us.  Huh. Have to meditate on that one.

As I said, time is the only cure for the melancholia but perhaps it'll unhappen  a bit faster this time if I can turn it over to my higher power.

Hell, at least I didn't smoke.

Maybe I should rename the blog: Smoke Not Now.

Doesn't really have the same ring, does it?