The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Too little or too much?

"Invalid Entry" 

You must take chances. If you do nothing, you reduce the possibilities you have for greater joy.

—Walter Anderson

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

I know it's true, though, because sitting around and thinking isn't really doing much for me. At the moment, I am feeling slightly panicked, woke up with a whirling dervish in my belly, and I tried to talk myself down, tried to tell myself it's nothing I haven't felt before, but each time it happens it feels new. I am a cat clawing to get out of the tepid bathwater. I am a rabbit disappearing into the hole.

The reasons are not mysterious: lack of money, lack of employment, lack of good humour. I was doing fine until I spoke with A. yesterday who decided that it was necessary to scare the bejesus out of me by going on about the ridiculously tough job market, despite knowing I am prone to panic over a hangnail. Not to scare you...she started her tirade, but she did, and I was wrecked for a good bit of last evening. Seems it spilled over to the morning.

So, I am on edge, and I am unhappy as a result. I read the leading entry today and the bitter part of me rolled my eyes at the very thought of coming up with all things I'm grateful for, because frankly, I am feeling vulnerable and angry which does not bode well for happy thoughts. I'm in the sort of mood where a well-intentioned hand would be slapped away without a bit of hesitation. I am snappish and impatient. I am sexless and offended by the sight of food. I want to take the pixie-fairy happy people and rip their wings off. I want to be reasonable, but I'm flooded with the kind of desperation which means business and I want to be sorry about it, but I'm not.

It used to be that I would let the venom fly. When I was like this, full of adrenaline, I'd take it out on whomever was standing the closest. I was so angry to be feeling it, so bent on wailing about the unfairness that it didn't matter to me if I spread it around a little. Misery loves company and all that. Now, though, I'm starting to get it. I'm beginning to understand that this creates a barrier between myself and the people I need on my good days (as much as I don't want to need them, I do). It's all well and good to be defiant and haughty when you're young and foolish but then you round a corner, take on a different decade, and you know, you just know that what really matters is who is pulling for you.

I've been told, by more than one happy person, that panic/anxiety is actually a gift. Obviously, I snorted in contempt when I was told this. What sort of deluded idiot would try to convince me that all the suffering, all the twisted stomach-aches, the cold sweats, the laboured breathing, the bouts of fetal-positioned rocking, the hours of weeping in a dark room, the flashes of yearning for blackness, were all part of an elaborate gift? It was insane, I figured, that anyone would try to make me feel like I was suffering for something which in the end would prove to have been some sort of tool for awakening. No, I decided, they were not only wrong, but they were mean for even suggesting such a thing.

Slowly, though, with heels dragging and head slumped forward in defeat, I have come to understand what they meant. Even now, in my angry, head-ripping kind of mindspace, I know that I am more aware than I ever was before the madness ensued. In the moments when I am calm, and there are moments now and then, I am careful to hold on to every second of it. I am smelling it, feeling it, tasting it. I don't let them go by unnoticed. I sit back and I see all the others who share my affliction and I am eager to stretch my hand out, but of course, being in the throes of it, they tend to look at me like I'm sort of bible-thumping, new aged, tree lover. If only they know I'm not so good. I am so flawed, so prone to thinking dirty thoughts and eye-rolling, that I am in no way a prophet or disciple. I am simply someone who knows. I know the feelings they have, I feel the same bubbling under the skin, and because I'm one of them, I want to pull them up as high as my arms will let me. I have seen calm, I know it's there, and I never take it for granted.

My dream is to one day be free from the obsessive thinking. I have trouble imagining a life in which I do what I want to do without taking a few minutes to work myself up into an anticipatory panic. What's it like to get on a plane and go to explore a different country? What's it like to feel comfortable all alone? What sort of liberation is there in moving forward without ever looking back?

Occasionally, I become one of the happy people, if only for a handful of time. I read the motivational articles and savour each and every word. I breathe in deeply and hold it, letting it out at the moment of my choosing. I pontificate and I sometimes pray, even if I'm not certain anyone's listening. It always feels better than allowing the suspicion to take me over. It's then that I start to believe in myself, maybe for the first time in my life.

So, maybe it is a gift, and if one day I see it as such, I will be grateful. Until then, allow me to hate the wrapping paper and to curse at the awkwardly worded instructions. If I could have returned it, I would have by now, but there is a little bit of me who intuitively senses that there is something worthwhile at the centre of it all.

I'll just whine, cry and curse until I find it.