Sunday Serenity - Sads & Hugs - LOLcat Therapy - ROW80 Check-in

 

Yooz doing it alls wrong
visit and vote it up :)

So, I used to illustrate my posts with LOLcats.  Some made by others but mostly made by me.  I would spend hours on the cheezeburger.com site choosing pics and captioning them.  The antics of kittens and babies were my secret joys.  I treated them like mood medicine.  Then our Merlin crossed the rainbow bridge in 2014 and it just made me too sad to hang out there.  I just recently started dabbling on the site again and made this LOLcat for a post I had in mind but before I got that post ready, I got an email from cheezeburger.com informing me that my creation had been voted up to the front page. 

I was almost embarrassed at what a silly delight I took in that news.  But I so needed a dose of delight as for the first time in many months my mood had been tanking.  I was in the middle of trying to figure out if this was just something I needed to ride out or did I need to consult with my Rx nurse about going back on the meds.  I was pretty sure it was the former.  I was pretty sure it was partly related to all the #metoo dreck I was digging up while journaling and partly related to passing the second month-a-versary of the day I broke up with my husband and having never yet cried about it.

Then there was the fact I had been fudging on my sleep requirements big time every since Mom got home from the hospital. So until I'd tried putting that right again and finding it didn't set things back on an even keel I would not resort to putting my feelings back in a chemical straitjacket.  

The real problem was that in one way or another since infancy my feelings and I were divorced from one another.  Some of it due to the way autism made it difficult to identify emotions.  If you can't name them you can't claim them. If you don't own them they will own you.  But a great deal of it was due to the rules about emotions created by my parents' parenting style and that was all mixed up with the strictures on expressive behaviors created by the churchcult I was raised in.

I'd reached these insights in the process of journaling and was hanging on in anticipation of my weekly phone appointment with my counselor.  But then the Internet and some of the phone systems in our area went down for twelve hours Thursday and I not only lost the emotional anchor of my fifty minute phone chat with my counselor but I lost access to the ROW80 support community, missing my midweek checkin rounds because I'd been sick on Wednesday and was in the middle of prepping my checkin post Thursday morning when we lost the Inernet.

Then Thursday night during my part of Mom's bedtime routine as I was about to shut out the light and take her water bottle back to the bathroom, she started trying to say something.  'You need.....You need...You need...... Awwwwrgh!'  She said.  And repeated a version of it three more times before I asked if there was something I forgot to do as I went over in my mind : set the bed position, start the bed vibrator, supervise drink of water, speak the goodnight ritual.  Everything accounted for.  

In order to ask my question I'd taken several steps back towards her as we'd already taken her hearing aides so I couldn't just stand in the door to converse with her.  Suddenly I found my right wrist gripped by her strong left hand and my arm being pulled inexorably toward her face.

What the...

And then she said 'Hug....Hug...Hug...'  funny how her speech efforts tend to come in threes when she is struggling to get a stubborn word past the aphasia bulwark.

'Oh!'  I exclaimed.  'You need a hug!'

'No.'  she said emphatically.  'You need...You need.  You need...'

'Oh.  You think I need a hug?'

'Yes!  Yes!.  You need....hug.'

I let her pull me in and found my face pressed between her face and shoulder as she reached her left arm over my back and pulled me all the way down.  That's when my eyes first started stinging.  But I got through the rest of the lights out ritual before they did any more than shine a bit.  I got all the way back to my desk before tears started falling.and my face started feeling like melted wax.

Now the hug has become part of the lights out ritual and so has the tearing up. And melted wax face.

Until today though the associated emotions were relegated to Mom's bedtime routine and for fifteen to thirty minutes after.  But today they started up over my morning coffee and had nothing to do with thoughts about Mom or bedtime.  I think the mood came from whatever I was dreaming about when my alarm went off but I can't remember anything about it.  I also think it has happened fairly frequently of late that I wake up in a mood rooted in a dream I can't remember but usually I"m able to deflect my attention on to one of the many distracting activities--crochet, reading, research, sorting projects both virtual and physical, social media, writing, videos, video games, podcasts, audio books, music.  

The thing about that list is there are few things on it that don't depend on vision to at least get it started and with my eyes tearing up uncontrollably I can't see well enough to unlock my screens to access the aps where even the audio only activities reside.  I do have video and audio books on non-computer devices but if I don't already have a DVD, CD or talking book cassette locked and loaded and the device plugged in or otherwise set up so that I don't need my eyes to prepare it for use... Well I'm afloat on a mood sea with nothing to deflect the crashing waves.

The moodiness this morning was accompanied by restlessness and I had no safe way to discharge that.  Besides I'd woken with a deep ache in my right hip that had me limping and I was hoping that there was nothing more to it than having slept wrong on it.  If so it would dissipate if I could 'walk' it off.  But as I said there was no safe place for that.  

Except my mini-tramp.  But altho I'd finally cleared it off during the big sort while Mom was away for three weeks in July, I'd begun setting things 'out of the way' on it again within a week of her homecoming.

I realized that having been 'sheltering in place' since mid March I'd not been out of the house but twice since (once to retrieve my stuff from my husband's apartment and once to fetch a Joann.com order) I knew I was at as much risk as my Mom post-stroke of loosing muscle mass and joint lubrication if I didn't establish a better exercise routine.  I decided that clearing my mini-tramp off again, decluttering my desk and craft table and setting up my LOC talking book machine and my DVD/CD player within easy reach of one or more of those locations would be my project this morning.

I finished in time to spend five or so minutes swaying and gently bouncing with one hand on the wall for balance before time to fix Mom's lunch.  I discovered that there is something about that activity that is going to encourage not deflect the tears.  I had a difficult time getting Mom's tray ready.  I had to keep leaving the kitchen to go in the hallway or bathroom to wipe my eyes or face and neck and get control back.

The whole time I'm wondering.  Is this simply too long repressed sadness?  Or am I just feeling sorry for myself.  The answer is important because apparently sad is an legit human emotion and naming and claiming it is necessary for emotional health.  But 'feeling sorry for myself' well that is loaded with shaming messages.  

How is one to tell the difference?

Well it's about time to start dinner so I better post this as I won't get another chance until Mom's in bed between nine and ten.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

2020 Round 3 ROW80 goals check-in:

* Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Unsatisfactory effort

* Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Satisfactory effort

* Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily Minimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream. -- Unsatisfactory

* Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  --  Above and beyond

* 30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  Unsatisfactory

* To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged. --   Unsatisfactory

* Personal Journaling 45 min or 1000 words whichever come first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  --  Unsatisfactory

For an explanation and links to backstory see the ROW80/Camp NaNo Goals post.