Take cover! Metaphor coming!
My meeting a couple Saturdays ago pulled me out of my funk very nicely, if temporarily. I felt pretty normal for the better part of a week, and I got plaudits for my handling of Mother's Day activities. But now it's sneaking back in around the edges.
During hurricane season, storms form along the west coast of Africa. They travel slowly across the Atlantic, building strength, taking shape. Some never become much of anything, losing steam, veering off into the North Atlantic to die. Others, though, thrive in the warm waters, soaking up water and thermal energy, and then slam into nice towns like Wilmington, North Carolina, or Fort Pierce, Florida. They wreak havoc. The whole east coast watches the weather updates obsessively, knowing this could be the one that takes out their town.
This is my hurricane season. I get periodic inklings, I track their progress, I hope this one will pass. I see the ocean swells and tidal surges, and wonder if this is the one that makes landfall. The storm a couple weeks ago came close, but only skirted the coast. I feel another one coming now, and I am on high alert.
When I started writing this blog, gender thoughts were a constant companion. I thought of little else, and I had to write to release the pressure. That pressure has been absent for a couple years, and I really believed that it might be over. Nope, I can feel it building in me again. This post is a relative rarity now, one that I felt I needed to get out.
Honestly, I don't want to be in this situation again. The first time around, it nearly killed me. The unrelenting urge to change, the dysphoria, the terrible drive to take risks, all that stuff made me miserable, largely because I felt powerless to follow through fully and in a healthy way.
I want a waist. I want curves.
I want the pink fog to dissipate.
I want bare skin, from my cheekbones to my toes.
I want a life that I could celebrate.
I want to write passionately about something
Without it being a complaint.
A wood and two roads
11 hours ago
I have curves, sadly they are convex! I really want to waste way to a waist too. Now that I find I do have a life to celebrate rather than ease wallowing in misery that waist may not wait too much longer.
ReplyDeleteThere is sadly no definitive cartographic reference
to lead us out of the land of pink fog into the clear sunny post T lands. I thought I would end my days lost in circles in that fog but finally after six decades stumbled out.
I used to think that the suffering of dealing with my problem would too painful to bear and instead suffered countless times more misery and pain by not dealing with my own needs which will be a bitter regret for the remaining years I have. Hindsight is sadly of little use!
There is always hope and one day perhaps you will stumble upon your map to the promised land...
So write! I'll send you an email this week to give you an excuse to write back.
ReplyDeleteNot at all making light of this. I hear what you're saying and I'm feeling your pain.
Btw, in my many years living on the East Coast, the Tropical Update on The Weather Channel was something I was addicted to. Now, I'm not even sure if The Weather Channel is still there.
Write it all out girl! We are here for you!!! HUGS!!
ReplyDeleteAnd then the writing might speed up your life again.
ReplyDeleteMind your limits and go safely.
The first thing that jumps out is your poetic flourish, which is very well done and really works.
ReplyDeleteTo write well you need to sit at the page and bleed, perhaps that can help the pressure elsewhere like taking an aspirin, there's a reason the Four Humours remained in use for so long...
Good luck!
My delight in rediscovering just how well you gather thoughts and merchandise them in words is tempered by a slight shudder of concern for the storm.
ReplyDeleteI have to tell you though that your lyric could have been written by Leonard Cohen, honestly.
If my envy for your skill helps bar the door and batten the hatches, I have a good pile of the stuff to spare.
Head up, shoulders back, the season passes.
Yours,