My friend Erica said to me last night, “You’re brave, writing all that stuff on your blog.”
Certainly not brave. Foolish, yes. Not brave. Not foolish, I guess, either. Just me. I need to express myself, pretty much all the time. I can’t help it. I usually don’t wonder if anybody is really reading. I mean, it’d be nice if people were reading, but just being able to write this is something I have to do. I mean, I write anyway, so I might as well write it on the web. It’s sort of like my journal, except I have to post it. I have so many journals, in notebooks scattered all over the place. Years and years of them. The only difference between the journals and this site is that (1) this is legible, and (2) I don’t go on and on in here about how much I weigh/how much I want to weigh/how I need to lose weight. Because I know that’s very very boring (well, it did work for the that Fielding woman who wrote “bridget jones,” though, didn’t it?), and I don’t want everybody to know the full extent of what a nutcase I am. I must say, thought, that right now I’m exactly 3 ½ pounds heavier than my weight in high school, which is pretty good, and if I lost (when I lose) 9 pounds, I’d be at my perfect weight ever, and I’m sure my life would suddenly be perfect.
Ok, here’s the thing – is it this painful in everybody’s head? I know it’s much, much more painful in many people’s heads. Horrible, unspeakably bad things have happened to them, and their heads are filled with all kinds of dark thoughts and feelings. I don’t see how they cope.
But for most people, is it painful inside there? Because sometimes I find it to be quite unbearable, myself. And the worst part is, the worst part, I feel bad about something, and that makes me think even worse things, and pretty soon I’m just making the shit up, all the horrible, awful things that I can think of, and they spin out of control and suddenly whatever is troubling me is at least a million times worse than it really is, because I imagine so many awful things.
Except, of course, when things are worse than they appear, and then I find out, and then things really crumble. This has happened more times that necessary, certainly.
I’m staying at Amy and Jim’s house this weekend, watching their many animals. One of the dogs is lying on my leg as I type this, as a matter of fact. He’s a fairly spastic Italian greyhound (Italian greyhounds are fairly small), but at the moment he’s very mellow.
Yesterday afternoon, my mind was really spinning out of control. Not a good day, not at all. Too many conflicting emotions going on. So I came over to Amy and Jim’s, and I started cleaning. The more I cleaned, the more I kept cleaning, the more I cleaned. It was such a good thing to do at the time, all that frantic cleaning. When I came back last night after rehearsal, the place looked great. I didn’t even notice when I left in the afternoon, I just felt satisfied that I cleaned. Plus, I realize that a clean house doesn’t matter the slightest bit when you’re going through the kind of hell that Jim is, but at least it makes me feel like I’m doing something for them. I know that all that really matters is that their pets are well taken care of, and I am doing a good job of that, inasmuch as they don’t need lots of care, really. I give them a few extra treats, and they feel that their lives are perfect. They never, ever have to worry about being their perfect weight, they have no idea of the misery around them, they don’t let things in their head spin out of control so that they want to just run away. They’re perfectly content, chewing on rawhide bones, and on each other.
The play, “You Can’t Take it With You,” is going well, by the way. You should come see it. It opens next Frday night, February 11th, for two weekend at the Hoogland Center. Mom came to see one scene tonight, and she was impressed. That says a lot, believe me. If she doesn’t like something, she’s not afraid to say it. I grilled her about things I thought weren’t so good, but she was pleasantly surprised by how good she thought it was. Whew. This makes me happy. If the play was terrible, it wouldn’t be such a crushing blow to me, I’m just grateful to have someplace to go and be silly and get out of this head for a few hours every night. So it being good will be a bonus, icing on the cake.
Oh boy. I keep saying to myself, tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be better.
Let’s hope.
Ok then,
Grace