Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Ritual

Ian, sweetheart, texted me to make sure I'd eaten dinner. I had, but it was, as I told him, some utterly unsatisfying (though filling) leftovers. And I kind of wondered about that. What made them so terrible? They tasted fine. But I pulled them out of the fridge, scooped them out of their plastic containers, microwaved them for forty-five seconds. And then I ate them alone, hunched over my bowl on the sofa in the dim living room, watching a computer screen. And there's no joy in that. There's no life or satisfaction in that. After a night like this one, where the things I eat are nothing but necessary sustenance, I find I can better understand those people who find no pleasure in food. I can see how a life of microwaved and/or prepackaged dinners might do that to a person. I was raised on homemade lunches and dinners, because my mom is awesome and found the time to make them--and thus these days my most satisfying, most pleasurable meals are those that I cook with Ian or my roommate, and those that I eat with my loved ones. The food is second to the ritual of brainstorming, prep, cooking, talking, cleaning, and second to the community it fosters. After experiencing that kind of richness, eating alone in an empty house makes everything seem very grey.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Spring forward

Things have been better and things have been worse, in general, and in turns. Lately and always I guess. I have come to that place where everything rankles: my living situation, whatever it may be, my job, whatever that may be, my character flaws. Change as I may, those flaws are hard to shake.

I haven't been sleeping well or enough lately, but the weather has been growing nicer. I've seen a few more sunrises lately, thanks to daylight savings time. I took Ian to DC for his birthday and we spent Friday night and Saturday with his best friend Yuriy, and we all had a really nice time, despite my exhaustion, and the weather was nice. The weather was incredible, to me at least, given that every time I've been up there in the past decade or so it's been freezing, snowing, windblown, somewhat miserable.

We've been watching Walking Dead, and I've been reading the first volume of Game of Thrones, and I have zombies on the brain. Last night I watched a little video from Ian's birthday breakfast Friday, and I thought to myself, "it will be so nice to have this, to be able to show it to my children and help them understand how carefree things were before everyone had to be constantly worried about being eaten by the undead."  And then I laughed at myself, and told Ian, and he said, "Marie, batteries will be long gone by then." "yeah. it's a shame. clearly that is the single biggest problem with this scenario."

Then I went to bed and despite two benadryl I took hours to fall asleep again. It wasn't too bad though; I got up and worked until 9:30 am and went to try to nap just like I did yesterday, but this time I succeeded. And REM sleep after (or, as it may turn out to be, during) a bout of insomnia is the most delicious thing. I just don't know any other word to describe it, which is okay I guess, because "delicious" is probably the perfect word.


Regarding the anxiety in my feet: have I mentioned this? I write here so seldom that I can't remember what I've mentioned. I have this anxiety issue that I think everyone close to me knew about, and naturally they assumed that I knew too, but I didn't, because I also have a denial thing. Incidentally I have also had this tingling issue in my feet since 2008 or so, which, as it turns out, is anxiety related. And this happens way more often at night when I try to go to bed, because, as you may understand, insomnia leads to fatigue, fatigue leads to increased anxiety (read: unbearable, unstoppable tingling), anxiety (tingling) leads to increased insomnia, and so on, forever. Go figure. So I've been trying to figure out ways to break that cycle, and while bedtime is still tied to God-knows-how-vast amounts of repressed anxiety, I have been making some progress on the wacky physical symptoms. Lately the most successful tactic has been to point out that there isn't anything the matter, foot, so calm down and shut up. Cessation of the tingling doesn't necessarily mean I can fall asleep, but it does make lying in bed for hours significantly less miserable.


I didn't mean to be so negative. Lately a lot of the things I write seem to come out that way though, regardless of my intent. Ian's been very sweet though, and patient with it. Probably more so than I would be. I think there is a lot more kindness in him than I sometimes realize. The other day he said that we should go to the park so I could sit and be outside and write poems, because he thought that might make me feel better. And it probably would. I felt like it was one of the most thoughtful things anyone had ever said to me.