Rooting thru the closet in my head

I woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t go back to sleep.  Allergies are a misery. I adore my dog, but I think I am becoming hyper-sensitive to him, and this is just not good.  I have tons of things I want to get done today, and being exhausted is not going to make getting them done enjoyable.

Well, maybe I can get a few things accomplished if I have to be awake…

I just spent the last hour and a half going thru my Drafts folder.  It’s down to 55 posts, but I’ve still got 2 pages to weed through. With titles like:

• Kinky Underground
• Nice girls finish last?
• Comings and Goings
• “Getting” It
• Pride before the fall
• Additions
• Does it matter?

I haven’t looked at what might be in those posts yet.  It’s like opening presents!  But how many will be empty boxes?  I am both amused and dismayed to see so many posts with only a title with no content at all.  Some of the titles are so obscure or non-descriptive that I couldn’t begin to deduce what they may have originally been about.  Such as:

• More Writing Notes (with not a word in it, how’s that for ironic?)
• Virgo Draft
• Random Effluvium
• My Stupid Mouth (ok, I know it’s stupid sometimes, but why on that particular day?)
• Matchmaker, Matchmaker (for whom was I matchmaking?)

One I especially liked was called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but in it I talked about a conversation my daughter and I had. That had nothing to do with…whatever the movie by that name was about (actually I can’t be sure of that since I never saw the movie.  But I assume a train? Or a car, yeah, that was it. Or was it a flying bed?  Anyway. The conversation had nothing to do with any sort of moving vehicle.)

In another I made note of a funny/sweet thing that Ad said to me, last year at about this time, when my mother had said something thoughtless and unkind:

I shut the front door as my parents left last night and turned to Ad. “What am I, chopped liver?”

He hugged me.  “No, honey, you’re definitely fois gras.” I love how that man can make me laugh, even when I am hurting.

Then there were several that were bitching, whining, poor-pitiful-me posts that I would not want to inflict on anyone, but didn’t want to simply delete; they did, after all, reflect how I was feeling in the moment.  They just didn’t necessarily need to be aired out here in a public forum.

I had a good think about that: is that, then, self-censorship? But I don’t think so, A lot of it is just sputum–garbage I need to get out of my head before I can address the issue in a way that might actually be constructive as opposed to destructive. I was pleased to see that those things were eventually discussed, parsed out, worked though. So I’m not stuffing, which is good.  I kept those posts though, and made them private, since I do use this space not only to share my world with others, but with myself as well.

I also realized, as I read through some of my “feeling sad” posts, that while these feelings seemed so potentially earth-shattering at the time, in reality, and in hindsight, the issue that seemed so huge was no big deal. I got through it and moved on, as well all do.  It was just a moment in time.  But it made me think about a post I saw on Facebook yesterday, talking about Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project.” From the website:

“Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.”

It’s an amazing website with literally thousands of videos that people make and submit to the site intending to show troubled teens that this moment you’re in, this sadness, this despair? It’s not all there is. This too shall pass–and it does get better. You won’t feel this way for the rest of your life. There is more–and better–after “now.”

The project focuses on the LGBT teenager, but all those feelings could be applied to any teenager.  I remember feeling like that.  I remember how huge and awful everything could seem, and feeling like this pain and sadness is all there is.  Yeah, teenage angst, we’ve all had it (although I was no longer a teen when I went through it.) But some teens die from it.  I don’t know if Savage’s project will actually stop anyone from trying to take their life, but if even one person reconsiders?  Then it’s worth it.

There were also the fun/odd little tidbits. One-liners with no title and no reference that mean absolutely nothing to me now but must have at one point. Such as:

• Post on boobs (does that mean specific boobs, boobs in general, or the fact that I hate that term for breasts?)
• Attention whore-FL post
• I got some good news this morning though (What good news?? Inquiring minds want to know.)
• Okay THAT was singularly dissatisfying.
• Seventeen minutes in and we have the standard line “nobody wants to grow up to be a porn star”

I did decide to keep a post about my piercings, as a reminder to myself, whenever I get a wild hair (as I almost did again during this break from W) to get more done. I said:

10 days in.  This morning was the first day since I got the new piercings that I didn’t wake up in pain.  It was the first morning that I was able to wash, and wipe, and touch the rings without pain. It was the first time since all this started that I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and believed that maybe, yes, I wouldn’t be in pain and misery for the rest of my life.  I wasn’t really sure before then.

This process has been grueling.  Seriously grueling, serious, unremitting misery.

Um, yeah. Sometimes it’s good to keep a reminder about things.

I also found last year’s post on my Goals for the upcoming year. Similar to what this year’s goals will be.  And no, I didn’t make them all.  Some I did okay on, others not at all. I’m thinking I need to make a jpg to put on my desktop to remind myself of them every time I open my computer.

Anyway, it was a fun little jaunt down memory lane, and I actually have some good post-prompts. Now I just have to actually flesh them out…

But, now, I have to go back to bed. Because, yanno, I’m supposed to be up in two hours and at the gym.