Paranoidal Activity
Okay, I don’t have much time. I woke up to an abandoned house. (Hubby and sis are at work and visiting mom has taken Silas to Lake Lure to throw “rocks in the wana”.) So, yeah, I should be working on my Boards. But, I’m using the excuse that I’m still waking up even though I’ve finished my coffee. (Yes, the sleeping angels let me sleep until a quarter til eleven! Blessing or sin???)
I started this post last night until an aching stomach just forced me to lay down and watch the Olympics. Oh, the torture.
Still, the post might have been better written in the post-sunshine hours. Who knows? Still, I must post something.
So, yesterday, while working on my Boards… (Yes, that’s a lot of all I do. Remember those vagrants that used to squat here? Yeah, they’re back. Full force.) So, yesterday, while working with a fellow candidate and friend, this other insane woman looking for a 12% pay hike shared with me the story of how she injured her finger.
Apparently, her basement is a scary place.
(Yes, I mean, Boogie, Goblin, Ghoul scary.)
And, she slammed her finger in the door trying to run away from it.
She told me this as if being afraid of her basement was something silly. As if, perhaps, adults shouldn’t be running from their own imaginations.
Now, my sister often says that I take things a might too far. That I cross the line. That I’m a little too often a little too much information.
Anyhow, I think you’ve seen this quality in me before.
Still, when my friend, and I really don’t know her that well as of yet, shared with me her treacherous tale of Basement Boogie, I felt the need, as my mind always races to find personal connections, to talk about my very real fear of psycho-killers. I went as far as to share the time when, after watching a clip of the trials of the BTK killer, I accused my own husband of serial-killing women when he was supposed to be at work.
Thankfully, she had the grace to laugh and smile and hold it together as if I were some kind-of normal.
Thank you!
Still, in the world of running-from-imaginary-things, accusing your husband of psycho-killing seems to be on the real thick edge of abnormal.
But, that has been, in years past, the full extent of my paranoia.
Just yesterday, when complaining to my mom that I couldn’t do all the things I want to do because we’ve got a kid, we don’t have money, and I have to work on this damn project, she told me “well, you can see that band when they come back to town” and “that restaurant will be there next year when you’re more caught up”. I told her that I might be dead by then.
She was displeased with my comment. Maybe even thought I was being whiny. But, it’s true. And that’s where my mind travels. On it’s own little paranoid track.
Still, my paranoia has been better. I haven’t actually heard a serial killer outside on our back deck for months now. I haven’t melted into a lump of shallow breaths and tears over our mortality or the reality of genocide or the violence of war in almost as long.
I guess I’m improving.
Or, am I?
Part of the ease with which I now live my days comes from the price I pay to various Pharmaceutical companies. (Which I am seriously rethinking and is a whole ‘nother post.) Some comes from maturity. Some from the support of people around me who recognize my panic button and, instead of getting irritated with me, lovingly bring me back to a place of logic and clarity.
Still, and I’ve always felt this way, maybe we should all be melting into lumps of shallow breath and tears instead of just walking around like our world is a manageable place.
I mean, the fact that I have panic attacks after movies (remember the beautiful-dark, dark-beautiful film Dogville by Nicole Kidman? If you don’t remember it, rent it. ) maybe just means that I am more tuned in to the ugliness that is real in our world.
You might have noticed that I don’t fear the imaginary (not that fearing the imaginary doesn’t come from some real, deep-seated, honest-to-God fear) but that I fear the possible: killers, rapists, molesters dressed as clowns, plane crashes, death, genocide, exposure to radiation.
I suppose that most would say that it is no way to live letting these demons into your head. And, I agree.
However, I also feel like the me that used to have those real, earth-shattering panic attacks– crippling or no– was more in tune with reality, not less in tune.
The world is a damn, dark place.
So much for looking on the positive side, eh?
So much for a post to brighten your morning or celebrate the sunshine.
So much.
I’m sorry. And, I don’t even have the time to wind this one down or apologize. I just think that, while spending the morning sipping our lattes, we should take a moment to take a deep breath and pray, meditate, think, reflect upon, what-have-you, not only the blessings we have but the dark reality that exists in the world.
Maybe we, un-blinded, can make the difference.
Now, send me your pledge and I’ll be outta here.
