writing through my feelings

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Wednesday Randomosity: Only In Dreams Edition

I woke up crying this morning, the dream I’d been immersed in was so awful. It involved my husband being horrible to me, which is not in any way true to life, and yet which felt so incredibly real in the dream I am carrying it with me into the day. Stupid dreams and their stupid tendency to hang like a fog of despair around my head.rea Let’s try some Randomosity to see if we can shake the bad feelings loose.

  • For me, bad dreams come from stress, I think; I am stressed about the upcoming volunteer event I am chairing. Back when I worked full time, I had stress dreams much more frequently. And the stress took really horrific and violent forms in the dreams – car chases, people running after me, gun violence, driving off high bridges, gruesome death. My brain is a super fun place. So I suppose it’s an improvement, that now my dreams have turned toward making me feel like my husband no longer loves me? I don’t know. Neither type of dream is enjoyable, and they always stick with me. I feel shaky and sullen and hurt. I’m sure my husband wondered why I was being kind of cold to him this morning. I know it’s a dream, and yet it was so REAL, I cannot help but feel a little unkindly toward Waking World Husband. 
  • Perhaps even worse – or, at least, terrible in their own way – are dreams that involve casual acquaintances. Especially when they are of an erotic nature. There is nothing more embarrassing than seeing a coworker/friend’s spouse/boss/teacher in person after they have graced your dreams. 
  • Why must our brains DO this to us?! I have read some theories that dreams are our brains trying to make sense of the day. But why must they do so in the way that they do? Why can’t they translate stresses and worries and encounters into soothing images that float in gentle rhythm to the calming sounds of babbling brooks and soft harp music?
  • Speaking of music and dreams, I have “Only in Dreams” by Weezer stuck in my head. There are far worse songs to have stuck in one’s head. I love that song, and the entire album from which it comes. Probably one of my favorite albums of all time, the Blue Album. 
  • My husband was playing Weezer songs this weekend. I was sitting on the couch, reading an Agatha Christie novel on my Kindle, and he was sitting next to me, idly scrolling through Weezer songs on his phone and picking them out on his guitar. It was quite pleasant, that gentle serenade of some of my favorite songs. 
  • When I was growing up, and learning how to play the piano, I was very skeptical when my mother said she liked listening to me practice. But now that my husband is teaching himself guitar, and Carla is learning both guitar and clarinet, I have discovered that she wasn’t lying. Even when they make mistakes, even when they play certain measures over and over to get them right, I really enjoy the sound of the two of them practicing. I thought I would HATE the squawk of a poorly played clarinet, but there is much less squawking than I anticipated, and it has a really pleasant sound. Especially, perhaps, when Carla is practicing upstairs and the products of her work are floating down to me through a closed door and a stairwell. 
  • Stephany posted a link to an Ask Me Anything form the other day, and so I blatantly copied it. If you have any burning questions for me, fill out the form and I would love to try to answer them. 
  • Copying Stephany’s idea was not only a chance to engage in a little light plagiarism, but also an opportunity for me to learn a new skill. I had no idea you could use Google to create forms! Best of all, it was very easy (that is, unless you are unable to USE the form, in which case I am a hopeless Luddite). I think I forget that it’s often fun, if a little scary, to try new things. 
  • The desire to keep myself sharp and engaged by trying new things is part of the reason that I volunteered for this event in the first place. This is my second time doing it, and it will be my last. The juice, as they say, isn’t worth the squeeze. The squeeze being the stress and the resulting bad dreams. 
  • Sometimes I contemplate volunteering elsewhere. My paying work is fairly minimal and easy to manage, so I feel as though I could devote more regular time to a volunteer position. But it is so hard to find The Right Thing. Probably what it is, is that I’m scared. Do you volunteer for anything, or have you volunteered for anything in the past? I would love to know about your experiences. 
  • It’s only the second day of November, but I feel like I’m already putting in a covert effort to be part of NaBloPoMo (see San’s post if you want to learn more or join). I have every expectation of failing spectacularly; November just isn’t my month. But it’s fun to read everyone’s posts and to try, even a little, to join in. 
  • NGS is doing NaBloPoMo, but she is also doing a daily noun challenge with her good friend, and I think that’s so fun. I can’t wait to see how she addresses each noun on her list. I imagine that if I run into a post block this month, I may sneak on over to her blog to find that day’s noun and join in. 
  • How do you decide when and what to post? Some of the bloggers I read have an editorial calendar. Some seem to post regular features. I have always been what they refer to in the writing world as a “pantser.” I just… write. Posts either occur to me, or I have a compulsion to sit down and blather a bunch of nonsense into the ether, or I am curious to discuss a certain topic. But there’s really no rhyme or reason about anything I write. I write to write. To get things off my chest. To distract myself from stress. I suppose the only “regular” feature is my weekly (sometimes) Dinners This Week post, but even that falls off a cliff now and again.

Well, today writing has done the trick. The dream sadness has lifted. The sun is shining, the world is covered with a layer of leaves, and I have work to do. I hope you have a wonderful day, Internet. Thank you for reading, and in doing so, dispelling the stress.

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Dental Work and Negative Self-Talk

I need a root canal. Deciding that the tooth pain was bad enough to warrant a dental appointment wasn’t super fun. Confirming that I needed a root canal – first at my dentist’s office, then at the endodontist – was agony. 

The dentist kept saying he was sorry for causing me pain, even though the whole point of the tests he was doing was to elicit pain. It was kind, but I have that reflex where I say, “that’s okay” or “it’s not that bad” in response to someone apologizing, which felt a) silly and b) untrue. 

The endodontist did not apologize; not in a sadist-y way; he was kind, but just sort of stood there watching me clutch at my jaw as tears leaked from my eyes. He also offered me an Advil. His tests – which were very similar to the ones my dentist had done, just 30 minutes earlier – elicited a MUCH higher pain response. One test – he put liquid nitrogen or something on a swab and swabbed my tooth – hurt so bad that I cried. And then I felt ridiculous for crying. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that I couldn’t be the ONLY person to ever cry in that office; that must be why the assistant had tissues at the ready for me to dry my tears.

My dentist thinks, based on how nervous I get for dental work, that I need some sort of extra medication. Either something like V@lium or @tivan prior to the appointment, or conscious sedation during the procedure. He said, kindly, “That’s what I would recommend for my wife; she gets nervous about dental work. But I’m just telling you the options – you don’t need it. I wouldn’t do it, myself. Dental work doesn’t bother me.” Which made me wonder: ARE there people who are unbothered by dental work??????? This was a wholly novel concept to me. I figured that there was a spectrum, of course, from moderately nervous to requiring sedation just for a simple cleaning. But I never once imagined that there exist human beings who don’t mind dental work. 

(As for my spot on the spectrum: I get nervous for a simple dental cleaning; I clench my hands into fists, my arms and legs are rigid the entire time, I have to do anti-anxiety breathing while I’m in the chair, waiting for the exam to begin. I did a LOT of focused breathing today, let me tell you. And then cried in my car all the way home.)

The thing is, for me to do any sort of pre-medication, I need someone to drive me to and from the appointment. And my husband is unlikely to be able to do that anytime in the near future, if at all. And I don’t know that I have any friends who I would feel comfortable asking. So I am feeling very sorry for myself indeed. I suppose there is always Uber, but I have never once used Uber so that’s another hurdle to surmount.

Part of the reason I cried in the car (aside from the lingering tooth pain following the swab) was that I felt so ridiculous about crying. The crying was bad enough on its own. But then I couldn’t stop crying. And even when I finally got the actual tears under control, I still had Wobbly Voice. Ugh. I couldn’t stop thinking of that awful anesthesiologist who commented on my ability to withstand pain when I was in labor. Maybe I have a very low pain threshold, and other people are going around dealing with similar or worse pain without being fazed one bit. And maybe everyone thinks I am a huge baby who is making a mountain out of a molar pain. And I am FORTY YEARS OLD for floss sake, why can I not just GET IT TOGETHER like the adult I supposedly am instead of acting like a whiny child? 

This is just the latest in a run of negative self-talk that I can’t seem to squash. It started with my writing and has since spilled over into every other aspect of my life. 

I am suspecting – and hoping – that it has at least something to do with the calendar: both the monthly calendar, which has spun right around to canker sores and chocolate cravings, and the annual calendar, which has turned once again to the anniversary of my friend’s death. Not to mention, we are now sliding down the dark slope of fewer hours of sunshine each day and facing the looming pressures of the holiday season. 

While I do my focused breathing and wait for the calendar to flip a few pages forward, if you have any advice for how you pull yourself out of this kind of self-talk tailspin, I would greatly appreciate it. For now, I have self-medicated with Trader Joe’s macaroni and cheese and some of my only-on-the-weekends good tea. And, of course, I am blabbering it all to you. (Thank you for listening.)

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At Sea

Carla has begun third grade and by all reports, it is going swimmingly so far. While I miss having her sunshiny presence in the house, I have been eager to get my days back. I have writing to do and edits to make and housework to complete. 

But I haven’t quite been able to get my sea legs yet. I feel a little directionless, drifting on an ocean of possibility, but not finding anywhere to drop my metaphorical anchor. 

Part of my aimlessness, I think, is that the house is a mess. It’s cluttered with all the flotsam and jetsam a busy eight-year-old produces. So, I think, start there: clear the house of clutter and you’ll feel accomplished and free to sit down and work on all the other items on the to-do list. I did a first pass, pulling things off the walls (Carla’s long-abandoned reading tracker, an old poster from second grade, a few pictures she’d taped to her door) and wiping down the whiteboards that held our summer schedules and to-dos. I did a bunch of laundry and folded much of it. My husband, without being asked, went through the towering pile of mail that clings barnacle-like to the little sideboard near the garage door. 

Somehow, this did very little to free the house of its cluttery, oppressiveness. And even though I have settled in my writing chair, with a good idea about what to write, my brain feels unsettled and overcrowded. I keep thinking of things I could do that I don’t want to do: put the new fall schedule up on the whiteboards, finish folding the laundry, clean out the bucket that Carla filled with exploded water balloon fragments after last week’s playdate, tidy my desk or my bathroom, paint my toenails, take out the trash, get dinner started in the crockpot, finish unpacking the suitcases from our trip of two weeks ago, implement the edits I painstakingly made to my manuscript, exercise. 

I am fretting about a work thing, a family thing, a friend thing. The news is, once again, still, endlessly, terrible and disheartening. I am dreading Carla’s first soccer practice, during which I will surely be expected to talk to strangers. I keep trying to listen for the air conditioner, which decided to stop working yesterday for several hours, until our house was 82 degrees inside. (It came back on just in time for my husband to come home, ask why it was so hot inside, and then squint at me uncomprehendingly when I told him the air conditioner was broken.) I have a head cold, or a sinus infection, or something that makes me feel foggy and drippy and cranky all at once. I have a giant, inflamed mosquito bite smack in the middle of my forehead. Everything feels rumpled, troubled; ill-tempered waves lashing at me from all sides.

I think what I need to do is make an old-fashioned To Do List and start crossing things off. But the prospect of doing such a simple thing makes me feel limp with I don’t wanna. 

Surely you have felt adrift in this way before. What do you do to restart your engine and coax your ship forward, in any direction at all?