Allergies…doodling faces…a ramble on “words”
Adventures du jour!
I’ve been sick with a bunch of upper respiratory/ear infections/severe joint pain due to allergies, probably tree allergies, probably live oak allergies.
I think the allergies are more or less in check at this point! My hearing is still a bit muffled on one side, but I’m back to hearing the full range of sounds. I’m taking daily Zyrtec pills, Sudafed, and ibuprofen. (The daily teaspoon of local honey thing didn’t work, possibly because it’s trees and not ragweed that’s my issue.)
Same thing happened last year and I let it get so bad I got bronchitis. Not doing THAT again if I can help it. My joints swelled up so badly that I could barely walk around the block AND I managed to hurt one foot in a way that took like a year to heal. Plus I was constantly convinced I had COVID, despite all the negative tests. This year: okay okay, toughing it out isn’t going to cut it…
But it was a week where I lost most of my ability to write fiction. LURRR. No can brain. I worked on other things, but mostly I rested and spaced out. It was hard to focus on anything.
Coughing, like vomiting, does a number on my brain.
I was able to suppress pain one day when it was spiraling out of control (during the joint swelling stuff). I dislike doing that; it always feels creepy. I paid particular attention to it this time and realized I had no emotions, either. I wasn’t even whiny.
How I do this:
–It’s low-level pain and I do it automatically, and Ray goes, “Are you okay? Are you in pain?” She says she tracks it by my breathing.
–It’s high-level and I do it consciously. I become super-aware of my breathing, then focus on both the pain and the (constant) ringing in my ears. When I feel like the pain and the ringing are the same, I “quiet” the ringing until it’s a light shimmer of sound. I don’t want to turn off all the pain; I’d damage myself very quickly.
So I already have ADD, possibly dyslexia, possibly a small amount of autism, and am an “oversensitive” and “overemotional” type (but not a “super”-sensitive type, a la supertasters). I also have not-a-migraines, where I have all the other symptoms of a migraine but the pain, and when I try to stop the ringing in my ears using other methods I get painful migraine-type headaches. I also do yoga and meditation (more of the former than the latter, and neither particularly well). I don’t think this method is for everyone. I like to think of it as an atavistic skill practiced by the happy-go-lucky goobs and eerily similar psychopaths that were my ancestors on my dad’s side of the family. Buncha freaking cowboys, always breaking a leg or something and needing to crawl home.
Pain is just pain to me, because I have an easy way to stop it if it gets too bad. I stopped birthing contractions that way and they had to talk me into not having a C-section by promising me a limited number of pushes, then pissing me off and making me laugh at the same time. I think my particular nurse had seen it before, although the doctor was much nonplussed.
For the most part, I was in good spirits. I find it much more difficult, generally, not to rip myself to shreds than to deal with physical pain. I’m used to spending a lot of energy telling myself I’m not a terrible person, really, when I’m sick. But no real issues this time.
…
I finished the massive friend project and am now adding some doodles in it as I practice sketching faces. (I’m doing it in pen because doing and redoing things in pencil is how I get stuck in a perfection loop and stop doing things.)
I don’t want to get into what it was about; it’s TMI and then some. But finishing it was like finishing off a craft project involving thread where you fasten off the last thread and cut the excess away.
DONE.
I feel like I got something massive out of it, but I’m still processing. I was trying for “moving out of trauma and into whatever happens after that” and I feel like I got a lot more than that. Too cool.
…
Today’s ramble is on “words.”
Let’s say you know someone who’s particularly good at something. They’re a natural. Ray, for example, is one of life’s natural capybaras. You can put her next to almost *anyone* and they’ll become soothed. This was from literally Day 1. I am 100% used to being around people who like my daughter more than they like me, because she’s soooooooo comfortable to be around.
Teachers used to stick her next to bullies in grade school because of that (GRRRRRR). Everything she is and does contributes to this soothing nature of hers. (Conversely, when she’s in a mood to inflict emotions on someone, it happens VERY quickly, and it’s NOT comfortable.) It’s not empathy. It’s not sympathy. It’s CHILL. Ray? is CHILL.
She can be more CHILL, less CHILL, anti-CHILL, bubbly and CHILL, fast and CHILL, slow and CHILL, spicy and CHILL, annoyed and CHILL, needy and CHILL, funny and CHILL, boring and CHILL. She is 100% mischievous and CHILL. Whether or not it’s good for her, whether or not it’s even safe, she’s CHILL. It’s like her flesh is the embodiment of the concept. (It isn’t, not really.) It’s more than a superpower. She’s never not doing it.
It’s not all she is. Remove it from her, and she’s still an entire, complete person, not lessened in any way. But with it, when she has it fully up and running–wow. When they pulled her out of me, she stopped crying and started looking at everything. The nurses panicked because she was so intent on absorbing everything around her that she forgot to breathe. They did NOT want to give her to me to breast feed. They laughed about it, how they just wanted to hold her. She’s the reason that I’m functional, the person who anchored me and kept me mostly sane through most of my marriage to my ex. She didn’t really have to DO anything other than be like, “That lap. Is mine now. Zonk.”
I mean, CHILL.
Okay, so that’s a “word.” Now imagine that you didn’t have a super-cool parent like me who was utterly enchanted by you. (I know, I know, for a lot of you this isn’t a stretch.) And in fact they were panicked by your word, whatever it was, and constantly punished you for it as a baby, a toddler, a kid, a young adult, etc. “Don’t do that.” “Don’t do it like that.” “You can only do that when I tell you to, to show off for others.” “Why don’t you like doing that anymore? You’re so moody.” “Why won’t you even try?”
You wouldn’t know what your “word” was; in fact a big part of you would be invested in not knowing, because you’d be punished for doing the thing you were best at. Your “word” would be twisted and misused and suppressed. When you could use it, it would tend to serve others and not yourself. It might scare people off or hurt them. You might even feel like you’re superior for being as fucked up about it as you are; being THAT messed up makes you special. (Le siiiigh.)
I feel like my word might have been PLAY.
I feel like I’ve been rebuilding that word for a long time, making it safe, figuring out how to use it without hurting people, realizing that when I set myself up to fail quickly over and over it’s both practice and PLAY, damping it down so it’s soft enough to let the emotions behind it come through, getting people to PLAY together, remembering times where I flipped it over in anger and was anti-PLAY, using PLAY to get around all sorts of limitations, focusing PLAY so I can do the thing when and where I’m supposed to, and not just when I’m alone and unstressed. When I make stuff, it doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be PLAY.
So that’s me. Maybe. Another thought experiment that makes me happy.
What about you?
The excessively labor-intensive hot and sour soup that I made while sick. Delicious.
Stained glass window. I was trying to get an art nouveau style of glass without using the words “art nouveau.” Pretty close!