Sunday, July 12, 2015

Sunday morning writing therapy

So since the Bakery shut its doors last month, and my income dropped like a medicine ball to the gym floor of life, I had to make a couple of really tough decisions.  The first one was to tell my landlord that I couldn't renew the lease on The Sanctuary, due to financial reasons.  So I have to move out by the end of this month.  Luckily I get to move back into Edgehill House, but still there is the stress of moving to contend with.  I put off packing for a couple of weeks, but it started to get really overwhelming and I had to address it.  My Mom brought me a bunch of moving boxes and a giant roll of Bubble Wrap (the old fashioned kind that you can pop like firecrackers) and several rolls of packing tape.  I still have a room full of boxes from the last move, and what I have to do now is fill them all up.  Becca came up from Virginia a couple weekends ago and took most of her stuff home, so I'm using her old room as a staging area for the packed boxes.  There are 4 in there now, mostly stuff from the hall closet and out of season clothes.

The bathroom sink here started showing signs of a slow drain about a month ago.  It was only annoying at first and required a weekly dosing with drain cleaner.  This past week I started seeing earwigs in my bathroom, and I wondered if they had hitched a ride home with me from my last trip to the river.  Yesterday I found these little black thingies in the sink, they looked a little like pine needles until I noticed they were moving of their own volition.  Took me a minute of horrified wondering to realize they must have come out of the sink overflow drain.  I tried to wash them away but the sink filled up and wouldn't drain, so I employed the toilet plunger.  Disgusting brown sludge (inhabited by more infant earwigs) sloshed out of the sink overflow.  I covered that hole with a folded paper towel and taped it in place with packing tape.  The fix wasn't exactly airtight, but I managed to get the drain flowing enough to pour the last of my drain-o down.  There is a certain amount of horror floating around in my brain, but I keep it from taking root and strangling me by repeating the mantra "bugs are our brothers and sisters."

My yarn stash also suffered in infestation of moths, and that is horrible and disheartening.  The $40 I spent a year ago on enough Ella Rae Lace Merino to knit a killer shawl, well, it's been chewed through by those little bastard moth larvae.  The hanks of yarn practically fell apart in my hands.  So much for that project, but at least I can throw all my yarn away now and not have to worry about moving it.  Let It Go, as the song says.  I haven't knit much this past year anyway.  At least they can't eat the needles.

I'm reading Hard Laughter by Anne Lamott.  It is her first novel. I have read her nonfiction and loved it, and this book is full of the same kind of humanity and humor.  The protagonist is dealing with her father's brain tumor, and the story so far tells about her family relations and how the siblings and friends come together to support each other through the crisis.  I'm thinking a lot about support systems and how important our interpersonal relationships are.  Taking my own measure, I find that I am lacking in strong personal relationships, and I don't know what to do about that.  It kind of sucks.  I know I have friends who care about me but at the same time I feel seriously cut off from them.  Keith told me once that it was my own damn fault, and I'm sure he's right.  I have a hard time felling like I deserve unconditional love, and I'm pretty sure that's what keeps me from forming deep supportive relationships.  I've spent the better part of my life trying to protect the people I care about from whatever nebulous badness makes me feel unworthy, and it has worked, to some extent.  I really only ever opened up to people when I was drinking, when the alcohol let my guard down for me.  Now that I don't want to be drunk anymore, I rarely see my friends.  Even when people call me, I don't know what to say.  On the rare occasions when I do see people, I still feel like there's an invisible wall between us - I have trouble concentrating, and making conversation.  I'm embarrassed by my own misery, it's something I can't even understand myself, let alone talk to other people about. Blah, Blah, Blah.


Plenty of work to do around here, I'm pretty sure I can get lost in it and stop feeling sorry for myself for a little while.  It's just hard to get started.

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