It’s Time to face the Metamucil™

Lately I’ve been experiencing health stuff again. A few years ago I went through vertigo type symptoms, lightheaded, dizzy and wonky (which you can read about here if you like) but all of that stuff seemed to just go away on its own after about two years.

That didn’t make me sad but it did make me wonder just what the hell was wrong to begin with.

So I started questioning my habits and making changes. I walk about 3 miles just about every day now. All but eliminated refined sugar, bread carbs, dairy and alcohol from my diet. It does feel pretty good and I actually managed to drop a couple pounds, too.

But no good deed goes unpunished, right?

Back when I first went into the doctor I had a dull ache in my side. The left side at about mid-abdomen. But back during my see-every-doctor-under-the-sun phase they scanned me and there wasn’t anything there. I chalked it up to sitting all day for work. Muscular or stress related; where I hold my stress. I continued seeing a massage therapist to try to relax and it helps but that ache never seemed to go away.

So you can probably understand that since I’m up and moving around now, taking control of my health, it freaks me out to no end that the pain in my side is sticking around. Maybe even getting a bit more pronounced.

Of course it’s right about when I’m finally getting my shit back together that life decides to really bring the hammer down. Fucking Murphy and your stupid Law.

Which has made me start to question what really defines getting “old” anyway?

Does old mean frail, weak, some hunched over wrinkly faced Q-Tip who can barely walk? Or is it a state of mind? Because in my head I should be 27 forever. Spry and goofy. A total nutcase who laughs at and with life. The girl who wants to pull off on the side of the road and have sex in the backseat just because we can. The girl who stays up until 1AM dancing. The girl who doesn’t feel 42.

But lately that side of my personality has been getting tougher to hold onto.

I have grey hair, ailments and complain about the weather. My doctor is sending a referral for a colonoscopy as I type this post. Perimenopause has absolutely started kicking my jiggly ass (seriously, I experience about 25 of these 35 symptoms of perimenopause on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.)

And who goes through perimenopause except old dried up hags, right?

Uh, well, I’m not a dried up old hag so I guess, me.

So does that mean I’m officially “old” or does it just mean I somehow have to find a way to overcome it all when I have a day of hot flashes, preceded by only 3 hours of sleep the night before, followed by a migraine, dizziness, clumsiness, uncontrollable sobbing all day long and incomprehensibly flipping out on my husband for absolutely nothing?

Oh, and let’s not forget the itchy skin, bad breath, fatigue and fact I really need to take 3 showers a day so my pits don’t smell like a men’s locker room.

Yeah, that’s so sexy I can’t even understand why most women lose their sex drive at this time in their life. Really. I mean, who wouldn’t want to get with all that?

When men hit this age they just get a twenty-five year old blonde and a sports car. All better! Lucky fuckers. I wish they had to go through this even for one single day because it would become clear, mid-life crisis divorce has nothing to do with a lack of love. Those men are just afraid for their lives.

And rightfully so. Bitches losing their femaleness be crazy.

Ugh.

But see the issue isn’t all the stuff that’s happening to me. Not really. I mean I don’t like it but it’s bound to happen to some degree, I’m a girl after all. None of us escape it. The real issue is the fact that none of us experience the same thing at the same time so it’s kind of hard to pinpoint if everything going on is related to menopausal hoo-ha or not.

What makes me feel totally freaked out is the colonoscopy/CAT scan of my abdomen finding nothing wrong at all. Because then I pretty much know it’s a symptom of my dying ovaries.

Which means I might have to live with this shit for another ten plus years.

Buckle up, Matt. I’m gonna be so hot you won’t be able to keep your wrinkle-free hands off me.

Those Who Can’t Teach

So a couple days ago I scribbled a note on a teeny notepad. Side note: I love teeny notepads. If you ever want to win over a writer give them a bucket full of teeny notepads.

Anyway, on that 2-1/2” x 1-1/2” piece of paper was the list of crap I needed to buy on Amazon and just enough space to also squeeze in:

What to do if I’m one of those who can’t teach?

Because you know that saying – those who can’t do, teach.

Well, last weekend I said it out loud and my sister, a former teacher, ughed me into oblivion (yes I made the word ugh into a verb, or, more accurately she did when she made the sound that went with the eye roll).

I never thought of it implying anyone is inadequate but the opposite. That there are some people in the world who don’t just do one thing, they train many people in many things. Share their gift with the world. The gift of knowledge.

And maybe that’s why I was intent on being a teacher for a while. I wanted to impart my wisdom on the young and impressionable.

For some reason I kept thinking that’s the way I had to go, that I needed to be the one to tell people how to do stuff. Stuff I can’t seem to figure out how to do.

If you can’t do…

Thing is, I can’t teach either.

I love telling people things but I honestly couldn’t give a shit less if they learn or not. I think I mostly just like the sound of my own voice since I don’t really get to use it all that often anymore.

Which of course left me in a really weird place in my head. Because if I can’t seem to figure out how to “do” the thing and clearly nobody is showing up for me to “teach” them the thing, where the heck does that leave me?

No do, no teach, no purpose or direction.

Truth is, I’m simply exhausted. Spent. I’ve given all I had to give for the past 4 decades and I’m just about finished. Because my body is giving out, my brain can’t handle it anymore. I’m tired of spending every day, alone, cooped up in this self-made prison where I have to work on things I couldn’t give a shit about so I feel that tiny rush of excitement when I sell one book and make a whopping $2.76 next month.

This life, this career I’ve built is a god damn joke. I’m nothing more than a fraud, a shyster, trying to smile and be fucking beautiful so everyone will want to buy what I’m selling.

Even if what I’m peddling is worth nothing.

And even just typing it out makes me crazy because it’s all the same crap I’ve been vomiting into this blog for the past month. Or for the past 8 years as the case may be.

Why? Because I never fucking learn.

I obsess over the same questions all the time, never answer them, or, more accurately, glaze over the fact that they’re the wrong questions in the first place, and still I think I’m actually going to get somewhere. It’s pitiful, that’s what it is.

Maybe it’s finally time to just admit defeat. Give in and leave all of this stupid bullshit behind. Let it all go. Kill her. Kill the dream.

When she disappears nobody will be all that broken up about it because she’s been nothing but a huge drain on everything for so many years – physical, mental, financial – that within months there will be such a noticeable shift out of the current state of affairs that pretty soon all the people who were supposed to be sad about her leaving will secretly be rejoicing inside to be free of the strain. Free of the hassle. Free of her forever.

Going on to live their lives the world will continue to function. Nobody will really be sad. Nobody will miss her.

I sure as fuck won’t miss her.

Who is she?

She’s the part of me I’ve been holding onto since age 19.

The girl who believed in romance and flowers and love and life being able to work out exactly as you want it to just as long as you skip down the street singing a song about unicorns under a rainbow made of roses and just believe that the world is going to work out.

Because the reality is that nothing ever “works out”, things just end and other things begin. Life is a motherfucker. It will kick you and punch you and laugh, pointing, in your face. People who say that everything happens for a reason make me want to hurl. Because the only reason they say that is to justify crap happening.

Free tip? Crap is going to happen. The reason? Because you’re alive.

Welcome to the real world where people don’t care. Where money never stretches like it should. Where hate is so prevalent we have to make up stupid inspirational shit just to make our precious little egos think that there’s still hope.

And oh my god, fuck hope.

Because hope is an illusion. A dangling carrot if you will. The thing we all wake up in the morning and put on our socks for. The most remote of chances that something we wished for, dreamed about, worked our ass off to get might actually happen.

When’s the last time you remember that happening? Oh it might appear at first like it does – you got that new car after saving for a year, finally installed that kitchen, got pregnant, graduated, started a business – but the moment you have it you realize the very nature of the whole thing was built on nothing more than a hope and a dream.

Turns out the dream is never the reality.

Wait, what? Yeah, I know, profound right? Well sadly until about 6 months ago I sort of still believed those two concepts went hand-in-hand.

But then we all wake up to the reality when that car payment is too high, the house burns down a week later, you didn’t want a baby, now student loans are costing you every dime you have, you fail.

No matter how many health problems I give myself stressing out by working really hard, nothing ever fucking works out anyway.

At least not according to the doe-eyed imbecile I’ve been trying to pretend to be for the past couple of decades. The idiot who exudes sugary goodness and actually believes there’s a chance this will “all work out” because doesn’t everything?

The idiot moron who opened her eyes 23 years ago but pretended not to see. The girl who broke her own heart and couldn’t follow through.

So I’m shooting that sorry excuse for a person right between the eyes at point blank range.

That gullible idiot side of me is no longer as dumb as she once appeared, she’s tired of hope. Tired of platitudes. Tired of trying to convince herself that she can have everything she ever wanted.

She needs to die.

Because if I’m going to believe in anything anymore it won’t be based on hope. It won’t be based on dreams.

I’ll keep pulling the trigger until the wannabe teacher is cold, lying on a metal slab in a freezing room in the subbasement morgue.

Here lies hope, dreams, and the girl who once believed in both.

It’s time for the other side of me to rise from the dead, to ask the right questions and to finally start answering them for real.

Image courtesy Serge Bertasius Photography on freedigitalphotos.net