Heavy

            I’ve been a bit blue lately, like off and on for the last few decades.  I still have an ok time a lot of the time and I’m not really worried about it too much.  But recently, like this past week, a couple of people who I know have my best interests at heart have told me, basically, to lighten up.  At least that’s what I heard.  I remember when my tenth grade English teacher told me to lighten up after I asked a question about some text we were reading.  Not my first high school English teacher, who took me in to live with her for a while when bunking at my grandfather’s got too intense, but the new English teacher at my new school in Pacific Palisades.  The one who belittled me instead of teaching us.

            I hate being told to lighten up, especially when I am heavy.  When people tell me to lighten up it has this weird effect of making me want to grab a handful of dirt and smush it in their face and ask if that’s light enough for them while their eyes sting and their throat burns coughing up mud I’ve forced them to eat.  But usually I just say something like thanks for the input and feel really criticized and confused and sad and teary and heavy.  It’s not terrible feeling that way when I’m alone.  It’s when other people are around that it becomes uncomfortable.  Like I gotta get out of public before something irretrievably dire happens.

            So I came home after my friend told me to lighten up, or in this case, to “take it easy,” and I looked at my refrigerator door and saw these two magnets I got for my little sisters a long time ago but somehow kept for myself.  One says, in rainbow lettering, “Do More of What Makes You Happy.”  The other one says, in white-on-black, “Trust Yourself.  You Know More Than You Think You Do.”  I am not a trinkets with sayings kind of person generally, so I’m trying to remember in which era of barely hanging on I bought these and clung to them, hoping they would help.  I scroll through the various battles of ME but can’t remember.

            I am not in the mood for any of this be happy trust yourself stuff right now.  Right now I am looking at those magnets thinking about what makes me happy short term vs. long term and about death and about the fact that I told Ax yesterday to clean up his beads from the floor so I don’t step on them and one of the first things that happened to me today is that I stepped on a bunch of beads.  How am I supposed to be happy when that happens?  How am I supposed to consciously parent my way through beads all over the floor?

            The trust yourself magnet is just straight up baffling.  Which self?  The one who wants to eat a bag of chips and watch TV until this passes?  The one who read a book that meditating will help? Or exercise? Or helping someone else? Or lightening up?

            No.  What helps me is spilling all this crap out onto you and letting you see it.  Here’s what it is, inside here, today.  A bucket of rotting snakes and worms.  That’s what it’s like today.  Maybe tomorrow rainbows and unicorns and caped crusaders but today it’s greenish brown and ooozey, possibly fermenting, and my progress is gonna be enjoying that, loving that.  I don’t need to lighten up, or do more of what makes me happy or trust myself.  I’m just gonna be, bloaty, grouchy, thirsty, grateful I sat down even though I only had forty minutes.  I’m gonna exist, pick my kid up, and maybe make some brown rice pasta with sautéed spinach for dinner.  He and I can clean up the beads together perhaps and if we’re feeling ambitious, string them on this wire I got for him.  Or maybe we’ll leave them on the floor and I’ll put on slippers.

            Thank gd for that boy.  I wish I didn’t feel so sorry for him that I’m as good as he gets.  That’s the work for tomorrow.  Not today.