As some of you may remember, I spent my childhood working hard to be the "little spartan boy," and now, all these years later, he does indeed serve me well. For example:
My elderly senile dog, Jesse, fell into the pond last night and drowned. It was just awful. And then we had to bury him - I couldn't just set him aside for some future time when I was in the mood, or had the energy, the time, or the money to deal with it. And I don't have a real shovel, my shovel handles were either broken or burned earlier in the year when we had a series grass fires, so my son-in-law and I dug a hole with a pitchfork and our bare hands in the dark in wet heavy clay. And all the while, I'm feeling... well... nothing. Nothing at all. Nada.
And I thought to myself, well, that was awful, and it wasn't so bad. At least he's now in a better, happier place.
Today, however, my inner spartan let me down big time. When I get to work, and my boss was pissy and aggravated that I hadn't downloaded and transcribed by hand (my printer is on the fritz) a complete how-to on brewing kombucha tea. It was so much more important (to her) than anything that might have happened to me overnight, that suddenly, I just couldn't take it anymore. I had a meltdown and had to go home... I didn't think I would be able to stop crying, and I hate crying, especially when it's me doing it, but I did, and I got the goddamn kombucha tea recipe, posted it here, and wrote it out by hand on paper - 8 pages, I hope she enjoys her fucking tea!
So, now I have the rest of the day to get over it before I have to be at work in the morning, ready, willing, and able to work my ass off for not enough money to pay my bills, along with the required bowing and scraping, and I'm pretty sure that this is NOT what I had in mind when I planned how my life on earth would be.
And then I found a series of posts on emotions saved as drafts, here on shirleytwofeathers... so... I thought, well... I'm actually FEELING my emotions, might as well post about them, huh? I even found a color wheel, and an alphabetical listing of emotions - I thought I'd go through the list and pick out the ones I'm feeling in the moment:
- Anger
- Bitterness
- Depression
- Frustration
- Grief
- Guilt
- Hate
- Inadequate
- Negativity
- Pain
- Self-pity
- Suffering
- Vulnerable
- Yearning
Whoa Nelly! Sure looks like I'm brewing up quite a stew! Aren't you glad you're not in the room with me right now? You'd probably shrivel up and die from all the negative vibes I'm emanating!! I'll be much easier to be around when I'm back to my normal self - and if you want to know what that looks like - here's a picture.
I have a special place in my heart for senior dogs and it just broke when I read about your baby Jesse. Your boss is an idiot (I don't have room in my soul right now to be new-age compassionate). There's nothing like mixing up grief and anger, as you're discovering. I hope you get all that sorted out soon. In the meantime I'm grieving Jesse too and holding positive space for you.
ReplyDeleteanon in NC
Thank you so much. I need all the positive space I can get!
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