Trauma Drama At The Rez

For the last couple of days, I have had a really stressful experience what with my air conditioner breaking down, and me having the idea that I can't afford to have it fixed and then running around like a crazy person trying to find a window unit so that my dogs don't cook while I'm at work, and being really tired, and sweaty, and freaked out... you get the picture... and it's not a pretty one... Oh, and did I mention the heavy duty sinus headache that accompanied all of this?

So, here's the story. I came home from a long afternoon of helping a friend of mine get ready for a garage sale, I'm tired, I'm sweaty, and I'm wishing I didn't have to go to work the next day. I get home, and the house is warm and sweaty too. Finally, I figured out that my central air just up and quit on me. So, here I am irritated as hell, washing my clothes in the sink because I don't have a washer or a dryer, and now I'm fucking HOT! I said to myself, a normal person would be crying right about now. But my little spartan boy wasn't going to tolerate any of that pitiful weakness shit, so I was pissy instead...

Three hours of sleep later, I hauled my still sweaty self out of bed and made some histrionic phone calls which resulted in a little window air conditioning unit that had seen better days, but was still functional. I did some more bitching, and got my son-in-law James to come over and help me get it out of the car. We wrestled it into place (sweating and cursing) and I turned it on and wham... that deliciously cool air felt so good ... for about 3 seconds ... and then wham again... the left side of my face exploded as my sinuses started screaming YIKES! MOLD!!

So now I can't breathe out of the left side of my nose, and my eye feels like it's going to fall out, and I really REALLY really didn't want to go to work all sweaty and hot and sinus compacted, but it didn't make sense to stay home when I need money and that's one way to get it. So, I was driving to work, and I just really wanted to cry and scream and rage and bash my head against the wall... maybe even set my hair on fire...

But I didn't do any of those things! I drove quietly to work... and spent the rest of the day sullen and quiet instead of raging and screaming which is what I really wanted to do but it didn't seem appropriate at my workplace. Mean time, my sinuses are just throbbing and sore. It hurts to blink!

Now, I work in a place where "negativity" is discouraged, frowned upon, and generally regarded as a "sin" and I'm in probably the most negative frame of mind I've been for quite a while. So, I'm feeling a certain amount of peer pressure to give my bad mood a positive spin. And it occurs to me that maybe if I would have just let myself have a little breakdown complete with crying jag that maybe my sinuses wouldn't be totally stopped up, and maybe I'd be feeling a little bit better in my body.



So, that was yesterday, and today I'm still hurting. The little medicine man I visited with this morning poked his finger at my cheekbone and said, "You need to let those evil spirits out of there!" And I did try... then, when I was posting for The Prosperity Project, I came across this:

Cutting off the Feelings:

Firmly planted in his loved or despised mind, our man is unaware that he is deliberately controlling his body. It is his body, with which he has certain external contacts, but it is not he; he does not feel himself.

Assume now, that he has many things to cry about. Every time he is stirred to the point of tears, he nevertheless does not "feel like crying," and he does not cry; this is because he has long habituated himself not to be aware of how he is muscularly inhibiting this function and cutting off the feeling - for long ago it led to being shamed and even beaten.

Instead, he now suffers headaches, shortness of breath, even sinusitis. (These are now more things to cry about.) The eye muscles, the throat, the diaphragm are immobilized to prevent the expression and awareness of the coming crying. But this self-twisting and self-choking in turn arouse excitations (of pain, irritation, or flight) that must in turn be blotted out, for a man has more important arts and sciences for his mind to be busy with than the art of life and the Delphic self-knowledge.

~Paul Goodman

Yowsers!!!
Does that guy have me figured out? or what??