A *real* life-as-rollercoaster analogy
First of all, happy birthday to my Mom! Not like she has a computer, but still. I suspect now that she’s reached 49, she will be clinging to it for dear life for the next decade.
I, on the other hand, am looking forward to that age because hopefully I will be so deliriously happy I won’t care how old I am. (I dream. A lot.)
I never know which mood is going to win out anymore — the one that I had all day yesterday told me that life feels right and brighter days are coming but these days have their highlights, too. The feeling that I’ve got great people and opportunities at my fingertips and that all the bullshit (i.e., money problems) aren’t going to last forever.
The mood that makes me feel like I’ve just been seatbelted into the amusement-park ride and I’m starting to hear the clicking noises that mean the ride is going to lurch forward and there’s no looking back — it’s all forward from here.
I love that feeling.
Of course, today brings the feeling that the ride got started and conked out partway up an incline and I either have to sit and wait for help or overcome my nausea and climb down and wait for the damn thing to be serviced.
Sure beats hanging upside-down and knowing you ain’t gettin’ offa that ride for the life of you, unless your harness breaks and *plunk* down you go.
I don’t know. I guess I am not sure where I fit in right now, anywhere. Erica posted something on her blog that made me rejoice and stop in my tracks all at the same time:
“I feel joy because I know who I am. I feel pain because I’m the only one who knows who I am.”
Reading this simple phrase was better than a year of therapy. Several people asked me yesterday how I was. And listened for the answer. And I said nothing. I talked, but said nothing real or true or significant. I wish I would have had those two sentences in my head, because that would have been my heartfelt reply.
At least people would accept that, instead of hearing my usual “Fine” or “Peachy” and knowing that there’s a landslide behind it and understanding that I won’t let the dam break because, really, there’s just not enough time in the world.
September 6th, 2006 at 3:56 PM
It’s so funny, we usually toss off a “fine” or a “hunky dory” just to get on with it, to not have a real conversation, but simply for the social capital of letting someone feel like the showed concern for us. They didn’t really, they were just doing what is culturally acceptable. Doesn’t make us bad people, just people with busy lives who’ve gotten too caught up in said lives.
I love what Erica wrote. I’ve recently come to much the same conclusion. What’s worse is I don’t even feel like anyone would understand “who I am.”
And as a result of that feeling, I’ve become even more introverted than I ever was. I’m okay with that, but I’m finding that people close to me aren’t so okay with it. Sigh.