Tag: Complaining

A Little Refresher

In the 60+ posts I made private last year, I often spoke about the “manic episodes” I go through. I’m not sure if that’s what they really are. I just know that for a few short days every month or so (if I’m lucky,) a darkness lifts from my soul. Suddenly I have energy. My mind is clear, and even if I still falter to ADHD brain from time to time, I know what needs to be done, and I do it. I clean, I write, I draw. I become the mother I always wanted and that I know my daughter needs.

It only lasts a couple of days. 5 at most. And for those few short days, I feel like a real person and not the drifting husk of the person I could have been if someone had given a damn about me in my formative years.

I can’t tell which side of me is the real me and which side is the defect in my brain. I’ve lived most of my life in a darkness that I can’t control, but the feeling when that darkness lifts is better than any other sensation I’ve ever felt. It’s like wearing 50 lbs of wool clothes in the dead of summer and then stripping down to my underwear in the shade of an old tree. Total freedom.

The worst part about this “manic episode” is when it starts to slip away and I feel the darkness creeping over me in real time. I can’t describe how much it hurts to go from carefree and mellow to hopeless and painfully aware of the world around me in a matter of minutes.

I’m day 3 today. I hope I don’t crash until after work, when I’m able to thrown on my PJs, wrap up in a blanket, and hold my daughter as she sings to me all those little songs she’s recently learned.

I don’t want it to go away.

Update: It’s the day after I wrote this. I forgot to post it and it sat in my drafts all night. I felt my energy drain some time last night, after I got home from work, made dinner, and was walking on my treadmill. I’m trying very hard to fight it. My daughter wants to go outside and play in the snow. My body says no, but I told her we’d get bundled up and go out as soon as I finished my coffee.

It’s going to be a day.

Friday Morning Word Vomit

It’s funny how, by the time the air starts to chill and the leaves start to fall, I completely forget how badly autumn and winter terrorize my struggling immune system. I always seem to forget the perpetual cold or flu that keeps me down about 80% of the season, remembering instead only the happy parts of the colder months. The hot drinks and warm sweaters, cuddling my husband in front of a fire, holidays, festivals, and markets. Then the first cold hits, and I have to break out my nebulizer because Covid ravaged my once healing lungs and I won’t survive the winter without my albuterol.

I think I’ll be lucky if I see 65 the way things are going.

I got a new job. Part-time. I don’t like it. Yes, it’s true, I don’t like to work. Or, at least, I don’t like to work the jobs society deems appropriate for someone like me. Lately I’ve been focusing more on my writing, and that’s how I want to make my living. I have this fantasy where my husband’s band gets signed, gets big, and I can spend my days raising my child and doing creative things in relative comfort.

It feels wrong to dream about it, mainly because I know that it’s not realistic or statistically likely to happen. Out of the millions of creatives around the world, what gives me the right to think I can make it? Sure, I could have a solid 15 minutes, after which I’d fade back into obscurity, back to retail, back to being chronically sick every winter because my body can’t handle constant human interaction like a normal body can.

I think what bothers me the most about that fantasy is that it feels like it has too much in common with the American individualist fantasy that paints the common blue-collar worker as a temporarily inconvenienced billionaire. If he just works harder, he can join that big club. He’s really one of them, you know. That’s why he doesn’t care about the homeless or the immigrant or the starving child. Their existence only drags him down.

I don’t have that mindset, but having my own fantasy about pulling my family out of poverty almost feels like a betrayal to others like me. Any time I find myself scheming up ways to get my daughter into the best school in the state because I want her to be safe and well educated, I recoil, disgusted with myself for even considering mingling with that lifestyle.

Lately, I’ve been feeling more confident. I’ve gotten it in my mind that maybe I can get all my stories done and published. I could make connections. I’ve found it mind-bogglingly easy to talk to certain people, something I’ve never been able to do before. I prefer friendships over career connections, but I know that’s how the world works, as much as I hate it.

Sometimes I think I’m dying, and I’m terrified I’ll die before I get any of my stories finished. I think about sitting down one day and writing out detailed plots and character sheets, just in case I croak. My family can pull a V.C. Andrews and live comfortably on whatever a ghostwriter pumps out. I’ve been posting finished (albeit rough and unedited) chapters of various stories on my VampFreaks (not, not VampireFreaks) blog before I post/publish them elsewhere. Just in case.

Anyway, I have to get ready for work. Another thing I forget I hate about this season is the emphasis on capitalism. The busier the closer the holidays get, the ruder the customers get. And when you work a retail job that involves big spenders, you’re further reminded why you hate the wealthy.

Eat the rich, y’all.

I put this in my drafts and forgot to publish it. It’s now Monday morning. 🤘🏻🤦🏻‍♀️