I have so many words just a swirling around in my bean these days. None of them are particularly funny or clever, so please don’t get excited. Although, to be fair, I really only nail funny and clever 3% of the time at the best of times. The amount of silence happening in my office these days is incredibly loud but for once the echoing nothing has helped me get quite a bit of work done. Completing work is so much better than the spinning cyclone of non-accomplishment I occasionally get sucked into.
Let’s see, where to start….
so, I went to training in Illinois last week – I’m pretty sure I had some thoughts about things there, but the cold of walking a Herbert-dog in the icy tundra of death at 5AM every morning forced those thoughts right out of my head. You pretty much devolve right into the thoughts of, “too cold; am dying. go inside”. It looked like the poor wee doggie felt the same way and at one point mid-week I could tell he decided, ‘fuck it–I’m holding it.’ and only wanted out when he absolutely had to go, or saw a woodchuck, or a squirrel, or a bunny, which–bless his tropical puppy heart, he thinks bunnies are squirrels and runs to look up trees to see where they went. Never fails to crack me up.
Besides buying a pair of desperately needed pants, I had me some fancy “social butterfly” time. I could lie to y’all and tell you I don’t know what happened….but I know what happened. See, it all starts out with, “my doctor is not a very good one” and expands into, “even a broken clock is right twice a day”. I’m on medications–quite frankly, I am on a butt-ton of medications, most of which are to treat diabetes. Some of them there medications help to cut down on, how should I say this…an overabundance of emotivity. Of course, that overabundance of emotivity (shut up, I know I made that word up) is where 98% of my creativity, people-fu (like kung-fu, but more about being charming to get my way (sociopathy?)), and general likability comes from. My doctor (bless. his. heart.) always forgets to look at my chart and he ended up giving me the extended release version instead of the instant release kind. In a roundabout way I ended up on a ‘half-dose’ of what I normally take. I just couldn’t be bothered to drag my ass to the doctors (again) to fix the prescription (again). So even though at this 1/2 dose I occasionally have (*shudder*) emotions, I think I like this version of me better. I am less ‘hide from everyone’ and more like the chatty version of me but without the constant over thinking and talking too fast and then freaking out later. Sort of a Me, light? Not sure. I have been able to think in blog posts…so, ya know, more writing for y’all. So, in the midst of me being all ERMAHGERD! we will be best friends forever; how have we never chatted before! to the people in my class that I swear to you I don’t know that I am doing it until someone who actually knows me points it out to me (thanks, V!) I had organized a dinner (shut up, I see your point!) where I ended up driving myself, three people, and a Herbert to a delicious steak-house where we met up with a few more people from class. Fast forward through some boring polite conversation and insert one of the BEST conversation starters I have ever heard emerge from one mouth of one of the coolest people I have ever met, she is all deadly sarcastic truth covered by a sweet southern charm.
Best Conversation Starter of All Time: “So, my friend is going to marry a jackass”.
Ladies and gentlemen, “So, my friend is going to marry a jackass” is the absolute best type of conversation to have in a “out with friendly colleagues” type situation. I say this because, in truth, no-one at the table knows this specific person but we all know a friend who is (unfortunately) with a jackass. (Hell, for a decade I *was* that friend with a jackass.) I will save you the many juicy and riveting details but the jackass was basically a leach who is with the friend so that the friend can support jackass. We, as a table, HATED leachy jackass. This led the table to a rousing discussion as to what makes a good relationship and whoo boy! it was a hell of a conversation. At one point the conversation got to infidelity. I sat quietly for a few moments and then said, “yep, that was me. I completely and utterly cheated on my ex-husband. Mostly because I felt unwanted because we rarely had sex. It was horrible and I am thankful every day that I am not still stuck in that place, but I was the “bad person” in that relationship”. That’s right, I can still stop a conversation dead in its tracks, if my life had a soundtrack, right then you would heard the record scratch to a halt. After a (blessedly short) awkward pause, the stunningly beautiful woman across from me shared that she is in a disturbingly similar relationship and it was the first time, besides herself, that she had heard another woman complain about feeling loved but unwanted. She is in therapy with him and the (horrible) therapist has basically concluded that it is her problem. The (horrible) therapist is wrong. I wanted to grab this smart and beautiful young woman by the shoulders and say GET OUT OF IT NOW. At the same time I also realize that every relationship is different and that maybe hers is salvageable. Because I am much better at the written word than the spoken, I shared my story with her by giving her the link to something I wrote in the past about how it felt to be loved but unwanted in my marriage. It is an insidious type of horror that is hard to explain, but isn’t anything I would wish on anyone. The conversation carried on and more details about leachy jackass surfaced. It as a really good night. The next day the beautiful young woman hugged me and thanked me for sharing what I had written and that she was so sorry I had to go through all of that but that it helped her a lot to read that she wasn’t alone. My need to own my mistakes and be true to who I want to be over-share may have helped someone else and that made me feel all sorts of warm and squishy inside (see???? *shudder* more feelings!!!).
Love y’all!
