10.12.2006

i am fluctuating day-to-day, at times hour-by-hour between being fine and being empty. i am tired, it's true. i have small children who sleep less than i'd like them to, i nurse half the night, i go out too much, and i am always trying to do too much. maybe it has caught up with me. maybe i really am just sad. i am broken out, perhaps hormonal. i am not currently on speaking terms with the moon to know the whys or hows of that, however. maybe it's just too much. maybe i rush around my whole life flinging things into the great hole in my heart, the inferno that eats everything, uses everything, burns it up into smoke and ashes. perhaps that is a little dramatic. i am yelling at aleks. i am punishing, threatening. i don't want to, but at this moment it's all i have. it is not so entirely bad, but it is terribly far from ideal. that's everyday though. i long ago finished with guilt over it. all i can do is recognize what is happening, think on what i'd prefer to do, wonder why it happened to begin with, and move forward, hoping to perhaps short-circuit a causal relationship here and there, reminding myself in the moment what is happening. i can only move forward. with my children at least for now, i seem to have learned that lesson. one down. eight hundred fifty-eight million more to go. eh, maybe i'm low-balling that figure.

it got cold overnight. jon is away. i turned the heat on again. now we're all bespeckled in slippers and long-sleeved jammies, moving about in our laid-back morning routine. i am sneezing a bit and blowing my nose. i don't feel sick, but i don't feel good. i feel lonely. empty. it's the only word for it. trying to root out the causes is like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. i wish my feelings came with wikipedia entries so they might be catalogued and numbered and cross-referenced. perhaps then it could all be sorted. maybe i could make sense to myself. i have felt intermittently empty for so long now that it hardly seems unusual or unique. it seems almost normal. but just now i am tired and do not wish to do all the things i need to do. i just haven't the inertia. if i just keep going all the time, i don't notice the hole. i can ignore it, even as it nags at me from out the corner of my eye. go away, hole. leave me alone.

i am trying to have a life here. i am trying always always always to realize and to know, to walk around with the knowledge that this is my life, that my life is occurring right now. always. i am filling my life up with halloween decorations, trips to and volunteering at the food co-op, the planning of vegan meals, baking, re-learning how to knit, attempting the study of midwifery, particularly fertility, drinking wine, figuring the proper manufacture of bath bombs, coming up with an idea for nanowrimo, cleaning and re-cleaning and re-cleaning my house, trips to the library, strange dreams that look not like the texture of dreams that belong to me, picking up, picking up, picking up, coming up with new ideas for new projects to fill up my time and make this look and feel like a life. i want to read nothing but things written by women for a year. i want to undo my scarf and start over, make it skinnier. i want to notice the moon. i want to paint something new for the bathroom. i want to finish the quilt. i want to crochet amy a plant sweater and sew bonnie her bag. i want to get the stupid bath bombs right - especially since i ordered a pound of citric acid that will be here tuesday. i want to mend the quilts. mostly i want to want all those things. or maybe i just want to gain the sense that this is anything other than needing something to do to fill the time.

i have this problem where i think of all the things in the world, the horrible happenings everywhere, the great big things that people do, the simple things that gain any sort of recognition at all, and i feel so small, so invalid in all my crises. i feel as though my emotions are minor irritations, unimportant, dwarfed by the enormity of infinity. it's a battle, ultimately, as i give so much voice and thought and time to the miniscule tragedies that unfold in my heart and mind. i am an emotional bulimic, gorging on self-absorption and total obsession with each tiny nuance of my existence before denying it all as unimportant and insignificant. yet i know and will be the first to advise others that realities do not negate one another, that varying perspectives are equally valid (if not equally valuable - i'm not into moral relativism, here). i know that my perspective is what gives me these challenges, that makes my experiences difficult or easy. my perspective and my history, my collection of experiences, inform this life and shape this heart and mind, rendering these varying reactions and struggles unique and valid. i am what i am. if only i could figure it and pinpoint what it is that is making me feel so empty. why do i necessitate constant motion to distract me from myself and from my emotions? there is nothing here to figure, i suppose. i have children. it is difficult. i alternate moment-to-moment with doing an okay job of it and fucking it up. it is how it is and how it will, in all likelihood, continue to be.

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