Like a Phoenix

6/10/19

I’m feeling angry and resentful.

Not my best moment.

My phone keeps buzzing. My thoughts are as messy as my kitchen table scattered with books, notes, to-do lists, random crap that needs to get put away. It’s beautiful outside but I’m in here. There’re dishes in the sink and laundry that needs washing for the weekend. Not to mention the camping trip I’m excited to take but NOT excited to pack for. My dog wants attention and has devised all manner of annoying efforts to get it. I don’t have a blog post ready for the week. I don’t even know which one I’ll use, and it seems too exhausting to choose right now. The thought of logging into my email makes me angry. Where is this tightness coming from? Why do I want to banish my dog to the backyard, smash the dirty plates on the ground, delete my website, and chuck my phone across the room?

Why is there suddenly so much to do that I’d rather just give it all up?

Light yourself on fire…

…rise out of the ashes like a phoenix as a new person

Fall 2019

I didn’t know I was so angry.

I honestly didn’t. 

Since turning 36 at the end of July, all the “garbage” I need to deal with has been floating to the surface of my inner lake where it had been locked in airtight barrels for the past umpteen years.

Now it’s out. And it’s all gross. 

The first piece of floating trash I found was the F word: FAILURE. 

I wasn’t a good enough wife, partner, pupp mom, sister, daughter, friend. My house wasn’t clean enough. My writing would never be good enough. I was still fat. A big, fat FAILURE. 

As every “good” reason for questioning my self-worth (I mean, how could I ever feel good as a person if my floors were never clean, or I actually cried when my hubs wanted me to make supper because he was working late?) ran rampant through my head, something else was happening. From a crumpled, weepy ball on my bedroom floor, with my flabbergasted hubs looking on from the doorway as  I unleashed a stream of guilt-ridden nonsense, I was able to step outside of myself--exit the hysterical body of a woman in her mid-thirties absolutely losing her shit--and watch from the sidelines like the impartial observer I’ve heard so much about in books and documentaries. From this unattached stance, I knew that everything I was spewing was self-piteous bullshit and none of it--not a single snot-nosed word--was actually true or real. 

Whoa.

After squeezing the last tear from my bleary eyes, I felt as if I had been thoroughly cleansed of that bad energy. NONE of that crap felt true, even to the “me” still crumpled on the floor. The poisons had left the building. 

After a short hiatus and the best birthday spa experience of my life, the next piece of garbage I found floating in my otherwise mildly-choppy inner lake was anger. 

This has been somewhat more difficult to work through, and is still ongoing.

I get the impression that I MUST take these pieces of proverbial garbage and pull them apart to experience what they mean in order to release them forever. A friend of mine said I’m like a filing cabinet, going through one file (issue) at a time until I finish—which is likely never. Now that I’m onto anger, in the heat of bottled rage I’ve crafted dozens of posts that may or may not ever make it to MiC but that blasted through my fingertips at breakneck speed in the past few weeks (sorry keyboard). The anger MUST get out, and pouring it onto a page is safer than letting is shoot from my mouth to assault unsuspecting friends, or the cats under my feet that are just trying to live.

Yes, this is when you start pitying my poor hubs, if you haven’t already. And if you can, you should probably take him out for a beer. 

In the meantime, I think I’ll take my husband’s advice. My hubs, who has been a very patient, understanding partner through more than just this, said I’m like a phoenix (we just watched Harry Potter, so that may have sparked his imagination). He said, “Light yourself on fire--hypothetically speaking--and burn to ashes to rise out of the ashes like a phoenix as a new person…That’s what I think you need to do.”

You got it, honey. Commencing the burn…