Caterwauling

Sometimes, my emotions get the better of me. I try so hard to prevent inappropriate displays of emotion that I theoretically “shove a cork in it” when I feel myself wanting to react to anything with 100 percent authenticity. Because, really, who wants to hear what I think of anything?

Emoting through road rage
Other times, my emotions become volatile within my widdle head to the point that I overreact to stupid things so as to at least contain my reactions to real events. Like, I was a holy terror on the highways this morning — I won’t go into detail about the number of multi-car collisions I nearly caused, but I will tell you about the soccer mom who thought she was too good to wait in line like I (and dozens others) had to because there was construction at the exit we needed. Bitch ripped up the empty right lane and tried to merge left in front of me.

Hah. Bloody fuckin’ HAH.

I had coffee in one hand, a CD case in the other and a fit waiting to be pitched. She was literally going to kill us both to get in front of me. And I was perfectly willing to keep flooring it and to rear-end the Volkswagon in front of me if necessary to prevent the snotty bitch from letting her pinched-face, minivan-driving ass get to work any sooner than the rest of us who saw the “lane ending” sign and merged accordingly.

She tried quite a few times to merge, but I wasn’t having it. But when she gave up trying to assault me and got behind me, I totally remembered where my brake was. LOL.

Anyway, I say this to say that I’m tired of always losing seemingly every little battle. I’ve gotta start scoring some victories, or I’m never going to have the strength to win the war.

Regeneration
Do you ever get the feeling that the universe is never going to be done testing you? The universe and I have a deal — I will tolerate the random series of annoyances (like today — accidentally spraying/staining my pale shirt with cologne, breaking an earring, slamming my fingernail in a drawer, spilling coffee through the car, stepping in a pile of cat droppings, just to name a few) if it means I don’t have to deal with Bigger Problems. You know what I mean — be glad all our appendages work, we’re not homeless, blah blah blah.

But once we’ve had one or two Big Problems rattle us to the core, I think we have every right to inquire of the universe just when we’re going to start living Happily Ever After. Maybe we need to stop reading kids fairy tales, if all we’re going to get is Marginally Tolerable Till You Die.

Alas, though, I know inspiration and hope come from the strangest places, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up hope on actually getting it — even from people and places of which we happen to have high expectations.

I’m tired of expecting the worst and being pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t come to that. I see no reason to NOT expect the best and to expect it to keep getting BETTER.

Like me — I function best within expectations. Because then I have a measure to SURPASS. Perhaps the same is true of expectations themselves, then. …

And today’s grab bag emotion is …
Sadness.

Yup, I’m wishing I were able to crawl under a rock today, but how do you call into work for being sad? And lord knows we’re all entirely too accustomed to having to function not just through a day — but rather a LIFETIME — feeling icky.

And that, in and of itself, blows goats.

Here’s the deal, it’s been a year since I left the old job. And while I do NOT miss it, there are certain elements that I miss. My incredible team, my ridiculously fantastic office, my four-hour lunch hours (hey, I worked 72 hours a week — I deserved my shopping trips!) and a couple of other people. But many of those people have gone, too, or just haven’t evolved in the same direction as I have. But I kept as friends the ones I needed, and I am also surrounded by another amazing team now, too, so life goes on. The things I miss are replaceable, for the most part, and those are quite few in comparison to the reasons it was time to throw in the towel.

I think the reason for my sadness is that it seems like so many people have Plan Bs and places to land, while my own safety net was so flimsy that my fat ass fell straight through it when I needed it. Rock bottom hurts, friends. Don’t try it at home.

But while my abrupt resignation was scary, it was needed. And I felt less scared than relieved, even though I didn’t even have a Plan A, for crying out loud. I wish we could all have the security to wake up one day and say, “NO MORE!” in whatever aspect of our life needs an exorcism.

Just like it would be nice to say, “DAMN IT — I NEED A CARIBBEAN VACATION” and thus, it is granted. Long live Jambi. Meaning, the exact amount of vacation time and fundage magically appears because you deserve it. Wouldn’t that be DIVINE? Although I’d much sooner want to go to the French Riviera and anywhere in Italy, but still.

But alas, the world doesn’t work that way. Like, don’t you wish you could just go one full stinkin’ year without some calamity occuring to disrupt the fragile balance you have tried so hard to achieve and to cling to?

Yes, I did have a point to all of this
I had an ugly revelation the other day, of the “be careful what you wish for” variety.

I was one of those dipshit feminist types as a teen — I wanted to immerse myself in a career. I didn’t want kids. I wanted to prove that I could survive just fine without being married — that I could take care of myself, damn it. I wanted to live in a big city with a Big Important Job and grow old with cats and buzzy toys. And I hated female friends and wanted none of that bullcrap.

Seriously, Jambi? You shouldn’t listen to hormonal teenage girls. Because we totally talk out of our asses. Not that I’d want to give up what I do have, but there’s a hell of a lot more out there that doesn’t sound so bad anymore. And maybe it never did sound so bad, but you know me — I’d rebel against anything just for the sake of rebellion itself.

So, in sum (yes, she IS capable of shutting up), I am grateful for all the opportunities life has presented to me to help me to advance or grow in every way — even those miserable experiences because I totally kicked ass and surmounted quite a few obstacles. But I’d totally dig an opportunity to throw it in cruise control and regenerate some of my spirit, because I am emotionally burned the hell out and want something, anything to just change for the better.

Don’t get me wrong, though — I appreciate that my calamities have happened successively and NOT concurrently. I would just like my happiness to kick in sometime soon and to follow a similar, successive pattern. …

On iTunes: Hooverphonic f/Depeche Mode, “Shake the Disease”

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2005 at 7:44 PM and is filed under Existential Meanderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.