Caterwauling

I’ve had this post in draft mode for days but I figured the NSA would probably take it for a suicide note. Not that they’d do anything about it … but, you know, I’m sure it would be in a giant file on me somewhere and could bite me in my pudgy pork roast butt when I least expect it.

But anyway, Paris Jackson. My heart breaks for her because I completely get her suicide attempt. She apparently swallowed 20 Motrin and took a meat cleaver to her wrists.

When I was her age, I took half a bottle of Excedrin. I got a really good sleep and had a migraine for the next three days as I came out of it. No one knew. I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone about that. I was just so sick of the bullying and bullshit of high school that I really didn’t see the point of going there every day to be existentially tormented.

If someone had told me that working for a living was the same way, I would have taken the whole bottle and finished the job!

Anyway, the kid got committed to a mental ward. She may still be under her psychiatric hold. I don’t know. I assume it was a cry for help — I think it happened on the four-year anniversary of her dad’s death. Which is still a clusterfuck in all of our minds. I can only imagine being young and confused and publicly tormented simply for being who she is — a beautiful reminder of what was good about her famous dad’s life.

But, institutionalization.

That’s what happens when someone comes out alive when they didn’t mean to — you get the “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” cuffs.

We as a society declare them as absolutely nuts, and brand them for life as mentally ill. The smarter among us pinpoint it as one time in their lives that they experienced mental illness. But I feel bad that the kid is going to have this mark against her for life.

I don’t get that. I think if you are aware enough of what you’re doing … that you understand this life is ephemeral and you want to get back to your Source where everything is perfect and you need/want for nothing … who’s to say you’re not the sane one and the rest of us who keep enduring all this crap aren’t the crazy ones?

I had a hard week. Not suicidally hard. But hard nonetheless. I had a couple of flip-outs and was glad they weren’t witnessed. Yet I just wish somebody would ask sometimes.

By Friday afternoon when everyone was mad that my shit wasn’t done (last I checked, I was the only one who hung out till 8 p.m.), I was so calm, it wasn’t even funny. I just hadn’t been looking at the clock. I was too busy trying to pull everything together. All I can do is shrug and work a tiny bit faster.

Everyone else was trying to get home because of the thunderstorm in progress. Like, didn’t I care enough about myself to get out? (Everyone asks this of me.) As if I really wanted to have four hours’ worth of work ahead of me so that I’d have to make the drive in the dark. As if it’s up to me what can wait and what can’t.

I care about myself. More than everyone on this planet combined. I just … don’t know what to do.

I wish things could wait. I wish having a lunch meeting didn’t add two hours to the end of my day while everyone else frolicked home at 6. But I’ll never work in this town again if I don’t (and I don’t think I’ll work in this town again even if I do; this field is strange like that), so I guess I just wish people wouldn’t remind me that they have plans and care about their lives and I should make plans and care about my life too.

So, Paris. I give ya credit, girl. Maybe things will change for you. I hope they do. But I fear that all cries for help, whether in the form of pills or self-injury or public blog entries, just paint you as a liability when all you want is to make someone give you permission to care about/treat yourself with respect and reverence and love … the way you deserve. The way they don’t hesitate to treat themselves.

Thought for today: Those who can’t, irritate the motherfuck out of the rest of us who not only can, but who also HAVE.

What kills us more is that we can’t do anything about it other than to keep doing it. And to try not to inflict physical harm in the process, on them or on ourselves.

I haven’t been smoking but I’ve started cutting. Not with sharp objects, just with my nails. I wish I were one of those people who got frustrated and decided to, I dunno, exercise.

But at least I’m exfoliating every time someone pisses me off. That counts as self-improvement, right?

So as I was about to leave the house today, I learned that Tropical Storm Andrea was also a tornado about to touch down at the county airport due east from my office. I sat my pudgy pork roast ass on the couch for the next two hours, watching the pregnant meteorologist freaking the fuck out on camera.

No way in hell I was making that commute through four inches of water out to God’s country. And the TV station brought in a calmer meteorologist to relieve her.

We had an armadillo cross our path the other day. Ye Olde Alligator Ranch is now Ye Olde Armadillo Farm. Or, as a friend of mine said, “You guys have pigs and chickens and shit out there … the hell?”

Mom got to hear our 8:30 conference call. She was busy hanging herself about 15 minutes in. Twenty minutes in, I was ready enough to kill myself that I got into the car and started barreling straight toward the eye of the tornado, four alleged inches of rain on the ground and a jacked-up inland neighborhood be damned.

Mom was like, “You have four calls a day? No wonder you never get to come home.” She had a few other fun comments but I will keep those off the record. 🙂

It was such a weird day when I got there. I mean, nothing unusual. Weird is the norm. But it really makes sense for me to arrive at 10 given what time I leave. Wish I could pull that off every day.

Speaking of Whore-nadoes, I see Whorothy changed her profile pic again. The bitch is looking better lately. I still want a tornado to plop her ass into another dimension, but she can HAVE Topo Gigio. Really. When I am over somebody/something, there’s no getting that lovin’ feeling back.

Of course, I admit that I’ve been thinking about all the great guys I left behind, thinking there was someone more-perfect for me out there somewhere (like, say, TG). Maybe there is. I hope there is. But I have those moments lately of, “What if I would have been happy?” I mean, obviously not or else my gut would have told me to stay. Right?

You know what my gut is telling me right now? That peppermint-chocolate anything sounds good. Maybe I should stop trusting said gut … or, at least, start hiring a translator to interpret what it’s really saying that I’ve clearly been missing.

Of course, what if what I’ve been “hearing” has been right all along, and all the good things are about to come flooding like a tropical rainstorm into my arid little life?

I started an entry a week ago and my laptop crashed as I hit the publish button and lost it all. And I’ve not been the slightest bit motivated to rebuild that marvelous piece of prose. Mostly because I believe things happen for a reason and I think the universe didn’t want me to put those words “out there.”

Things are OK right now. I continue to wonder when the proverbial next shoe will come flying at my head. I realize all the things that bug me about work are fixable. Problem is, I can’t fix them. Same goes with home. The problems are beyond fixing but I’m never going to move forward till I do.

The chronic Catch-22 is a killer. So I’m in m shiny happy place in my head. Everything is FIIIINE. LA LA LA if our country and our markets can pretend our problems away, why can’t I?

I got to thinking about one of my boys today. I never recorded it here but I met one of them while I was on contract status at my employer. A big part of me saying yes to the job was the little voice in my head that said, “He’s going to be very important in your life” the moment that we met.

I’m not saying I didn’t have other reasons to take the job. But the idea of getting to know that cute boy sure wasn’t at the bottom of that list!

He’s gone from there now. Five of my friends resigned in the last two weeks. Six if you count the one who went on contractor status. I feel like I’ll be the last one standing, although I’m sure it’ll be more like “curled in a ball in a fetal position under my desk” rather than standing.

Again, my problems are all fixable. I just wish we could hop to it so I could get to the business of fixing my other problems. Maybe they could help matters and hire a hot guy to distract me from everything that’s making me nuts in the meantime? That would bring it all full circle.