life experience

Contemplating life outside my control

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

I can’t help it.

I’m a thinker.

I visualize.

I ponder.

I consider the grand ideal.

I mentally investigate the minutia.

Let’s face it, life inside my head is much more fascinating, intricate and possibly agonizing than life outside.

The subject matter makes no difference as to the level of thought traffic speeding recklessly through the pathways of my brain.

If each one of my thought patterns was issued a citation for every time it raced through my head, the stack of tiny tickets given to the quest for the perfect handbag purchase would reach the sky and might very well equal that of the contemplation of my marriage and relationships.

In the past, some, including myself, have referred to this type of thinking as being “selfish and self-centered.”

After award-winning and meticulous mental analysis, I have come to the pedantic pronouncement of, “So what?!”

As a human animal, my primary directive is to survive. Granted, I am not having to elude any ferociously hungry lions, but my DNA is hard coated to out-dash, out-smart and out-live the other creatures surrounding me.

Does this make me heartless and a conceited bitch?

On the latter, sometimes. On the preceding – never.

When my child is sick for a week, like he has been this past one, I will do everything I can to wash my hands constantly, make sure the folks at work are appeased so that I don’t lose my job and pitifully ponder the fact that I am stuck at home because I have to take care of a sick kid.

Does that mean I do not hold his head when he throws up?

No – held it every time and wiped his forehead with a cold cloth.

Does it mean that I do not comfort him while he sits in a tub full of lukewarm water trying to break the fever whilst wearing his bathing suit out of modesty?

Nope – I held his hand and washed his hair and took in every moment of my “grown-up” little nine-year old who still needs his mommy.

Could my selfishness prevent me from apologizing to him when I get overly exasperated at his inability to take medicine without building it up into a psychological frenzy?

Nearly, but not in the end. I walked away for a few minutes, vented my overpowering annoyance outside of his ears and immediately marched back to his side, told him how much I loved him and how sorry I was at letting my frustration get in the way of taking care of him.

How about for my daughter? Is there anything my exceedingly pensive posture can do to prevent or eliminate the attacks of a seriously misinformed little second grade boy who called her “hairy” and the fall-out of attempting to secretly shave her legs with one of my old disposable razors resulting in a nasty cut on her shin?

Not at all. But I took that sense memory rushing back into my body like a tsunami of the same insults incurred when I was her age and used them to not only console her but as an opportunity to teach her about life and it’s strange, sometimes hurtful occurrences that we all live through and come out stronger on the other side.

Last one.

Most recently, what about my husband and my best friend and their singing partnership? Do I allow my fears of being left behind to take care of the kids, not interesting, talented, witty or beautiful enough and singularly separate-from take over and obstruct my happiness at the success of the two people I love most in the world?

Not anymore. I opened the underbelly of my soul and expressed myself wholly and honestly, believing in the trust of our universe which, in turn, has empowered my true joy for their individual and combined gifts to bubble over the shallowness of my funk to be genuinely excited and thrilled for them before and after a great performance.

The conclusion I draw from all of my mindful, occasionally mysterious meditation on my life (and yours) is that we are blessed, bonded by mutual love and admiration and in this tricked-out, souped-up and totally-kickin’ Starship Enterprise-style-RV of life together.

And then I think:

Engage.


Minor Hunter S. Thompson Moment

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With gentle yet precise shove, I am pushed out of a door into the proverbial never-ending hallway filled with more doors than Monsters Inc. I see my shadow tall in front of me. I don’t recognize the shape. Who is that creature relegated to a cliched semi-hallucinatory state after browning out for over a year to the borderline intolerable?

The ceiling immediately opens up and it starts raining bowling balls. I am mesmerized by the vibrant rainbow of colors tumbling from the sky. I cannot feel the devastating impact created as they pummel my body. Blow after blow bounces off my flesh producing a visible mark and audible wince of pain without response from me. I continue to marvel at the large, polished orbs designed to knock down anything in their path. Finally, as I watch its entire descent from the imaginary sky, a psychedelic tye-dye ball painted with a big smiley face hits me smack between the eyes.

The pain is immediate and radiates down through my body to reach my very core. All the while the ball that struck me is laughing wildly through its now demonic smile. I try to run for cover but there is none unless I open one of the endless doors.

I grab the nearest door knob only to be met with purple slime coating the knob and now my hand. It is impossible to turn it. My movements become frantic and breathing is difficult. There is no air in my lungs to produce a scream.

When I look over my shoulder, I see the bowling balls have morphed into the Wicked Witch of the West’s evil, flying monkeys. They are headed straight for me and their creepy Oz theme music blasts my ears.

I pull back and thrust shoulder first into the door and it cracks open. The thought of trying another door without slime all over it never occurs to me.

My successful escape from monkeys borne of bowling balls is met with an involuntary belly flop into a giant pit that resembles the dungeons at ChuckECheese filled with those bacteria-ridden balls. Except this pit isn’t filled with balls, it is filled with millions of over sized pills. There are capsules the size of my foot, round, powdery tablets that could be used for frisbees, and gelcaps that look more like garden globes than medicine.

The more I struggle to find the edge and climb out, the deeper I sink into the morass of pharmaceutical phalluses. A loud, creaking sound emanates from below the infinite quick sand of drugs and the farther I fall, the louder and screeching it gets. I try to turn my head downward to identify what is generating the now piercing vibrations of high pitched metallic squeals.

That’s when I see it.

A massive hypodermic needle with a shiny tip that glints so bright I have to shield my eyes. My attempts to remove myself from this nightmare shift into high gear to avoid being stabbed with a shot bigger than my beat up old station wagon. The more I grab at the capsules and tablets, the closer the needle gets to my ass. I am like the last salmon in the river willing itself against the current, desperately trying to make it across the final rocky rapids to freedom.

Of course, I don’t and am deeply punctured through the junk in my trunk up through my torso until the once shiny tip emerges from inside my skull covered in gray tissue, dripping with blood.

It has not killed me and, as I reach over to take a bite out of one of the football sized gelcaps,  the only thing that comes to what is left of my brain is “Wow. Wonder what would have happened had I tried to fight it out with those damn monkeys?”

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p.s. Can it be a Hunter S. Thompson moment if I reference Monsters Inc.?