Monday, May 26, 2008

Guilt and Cat-Naps

I am tired. My head hurts. My mouth is dry because I have just woken up from one of my inevitable cat-naps. I find it interesting that I can be tired on a day when I have done next to nothing: I made a pie (peach! my favorite), I cleaned the litter box, I worked on a friendship bracelet while watching a black and white movie from the 40's, I tried to sort through my clothes and decide what to get rid of, what to put away for the warm weather, what to wash. Alas, however, I lost momentum very early and I fell asleep on my bed listening to This American Life instead.
My exhaustion, I realize, is the after-effect of staying out late perhaps one too many times last week. Isn't this what summer is all about? Staying out late, sleeping in, doing nothing or anything... Yet I can't help feeling guilty over my lack of activity, my lack of productivity. I feel that I should have something to show for what I've done today. Which is funny, because this was never much of an issue for me before. In the past, the only problem with doing nothing was the threat of boredom. Guilt was never an issue. Now, I feel bad that all I wanted to do today was sleep. I think about doing something - editing some of my writing, maybe. Re-learn guitar. Make a mini-comic. Some kind of project. Yet, I lack the drive for any of those things at the moment... Lately I haven't even had the drive to update this old thing, this online repository for my feelings, my observations, and other self-centered things...
Recently I feel that I keep running into my own shortcomings, like walking into a brick wall you forgot was there. But when you're rubbing your swollen nose you notice how familiar the wall is. I keep running into my own selfishness, my pride, my thoughtlessness. And it feels like I can't get away from any of it - it's like when I'm in a really bad mood: I can tell that I am in an irrational, horrible bad mood, and I know I should not take it out on the people around me in the way that I am, and I know that I am being a total pain in the ass! But for some reason, I cannot stop myself from lashing out, from simmering and festering and feeding my discontent... It's like that. Some mornings I wake up and think, "Gosh, I really don't love me. How on earth can anyone else?"
But then, there is a little, rational voice that pipes up and says, "But wait, that isn't really what love is about, is it?" I certainly don't love others because they are perfect (rather, it isn't that I don't love them because they are imperfect). Why is that so hard to apply to myself?
I'm still working on that one. But I think, I really do think, that love must be some kind of answer to this mess, to the sheer blinding imperfection of... everything. Not always perfect answer (because we never seem to get away from that basic fact), but I don't know what else allows us to live with one another except love (or compassion or forgiveness or grace or what-have-you). I feel like a hippie, or maybe someone who works in a shop that sells incense and healing crystals... but there it is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

dear hippie girl. let me plop my huraches on your orange-crate bookshelf. (that's code for back in the 70s, although i wasn't then or now a hippie, so i am really just a wanna-be, i guess). i think love is what it all boils down to and the hardest one of all is somehow coming to love who you are, bumps and baldspots. the whole deal. it is a beautiful thing about being old old old. (hey, i'm not that old, and i'm not old in spirit). but coming to finally love the hand you're dealt is a big fat kick in the pants. i used to fight who i was, wished and wished i was someone else, looked like someone else. i think the shortcomings along the way are the hard part of molding this ol' blob of clay. we keep rubbing out the knots, and some day we stand back and say, my, oh my, that's kinda beautiful, in its quirky way. i hope you see your beauty soon. and always ever after.........