I can't stop thinking about it. It continues to bedevil me. It's disturbed my sleep. I've begun taking Valerian again, to calm down and relax and perhaps sleep better.
I don't know why I'm letting this disturb me so much. I have no doubts -- zero, zip, zilch -- that I was correct on both substance and style. I have no regrets about what I did or how I behaved.
So why do I keep replaying the exchange on a continuous loop? Why do I let this asshole have so much space in my head?
Something is wrong with me these days. Things get me down and keep me down longer than they used to.
I think perhaps it's gravity. What my friends are dealing with, what I'm dealing with, is more serious than the problems of days gone by. Where once we talked about being passed over for a promotion, we're talking about being forced into retirement because we're too old to hire. We used to worry about weight or acne or fertility, now we talk about heart disease, diabetes, brain injury and stroke.
Thinking of strokes ... after visiting his once vital, suddenly incapacitated father in the hospital, John F. Kennedy said to friends, "Old age is a shipwreck." He was so right. And, since none of us is getting any younger, I better buckle up, toughen up and figure out how to deal with this.
It's not just your inner workings, my dear. It's the exterior noise as well, the constant drumbeats of war from the White House, the patriarchal patronizing we see on the TV on the news every morning. If you have any empathy at all, the things going on in this nation now will make you curl up in the fetal position. Try a news break for a few days and see if it gives you a little breathing space. I have to do it every so often or I will give up and be lost.
ReplyDeleteI'm with CountryDew--I cut out the news and it has made a big difference.
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