March 27, 2003

Hiding, if unsuccessfully.

Yesterday I was not at work. Today I had 238 e-mail messages and 6 voicemail messages to contend with - and if that isn't proof positive that people would rather not have to talk to one another...

Okay, wait. I have to bleat about that some more. Because three of the voicemail messages were follow-ups to at least a dozen of the e-mail messages, eleven of the twelve questioning why I hadn't responded yet. And another twenty e-mails were separate threads of conversation about the SAME subject, whose authors were working in individual bubbles and didn't know that other people were working on the same thing. And now I have two meetings back-to-back today, and one tomorrow, chaired by different people, about the same thing, and none of them know what the others are doing.

Can I just say? I hate this place. I sent messages out trying to round everyone up and get them on the same page (it looks like I'm the only common thread aligning each group), but it remains to be seen if it'll work.

Anyway. Out. Yesterday. I had a massive headache, which in and of itself I could have probably beaten back with about twelve ibuprofen and managed to have a quasi-productive day. But along with that headache was a depression so profound that the only thing I could manage to do was pull the covers over my head, squinch my eyes shut, and pretend that no other thing in the world existed but sleep, a gently blowing fan, and happy little birds tweeting outside my window. I drifted in and out of sleep (I just remembered that Calvin came home some time in the morning to check in on me, on his way to a jobsite. What a sweetheart), and each time I half-awoke, I'd just roll over and pull the covers tighter around my shoulders. Worry about the war, and what work I was missing, kept trying to creep in, and I kept forcing it back out again. Sleep - the perfect method of reality-avoidance. I mean, I out and out hid, and I was simultaneously defensive of that fact, in my own mind ("Sometimes you have to hide!") and guilty of it ("I don't know of anyone else hiding right now, you big damned baby.") I finally decided to stay awake at about 1:00, when Calvin came home for a late lunch.

Even now I'm sitting here trying to figure out any specific things that caused my mental shut-down. And I can't. Other than the obvious - war - there's stupid animals (Kye shredded the screen on our bedroom window and as such is relegated to the run until she can learn to behave herself), working too hard (see above), ailing relatives, and a lack of anything starkly shining and good that I can point to and say, "See? At least there's that." (Upcoming sabbatical notwithstanding - it's still more than two months away and earning extra money for it is the source of some of my stress.) A general system-wide overload. It's been a long time since I've been THAT down, and I haven't shaken it yet.

Of course, today's 238 e-mail messages and a plethora of stupid people aren't helping.

Every time I start to hear or see anything having to do with the war, my neck tightens up and I'm constantly twisting and craning it around to try to get it to pop. Yesterday I didn't turn on the TV, or even the computer, in a massive attempt at reality-avoidance. Watching Buffy: Season 2 on DVD was extremely helpful in supporting that endeavor. I suffered through some exposure to CNN in order to visit with Calvin in the living room at lunchtime, but managed for the most part to maintain a numbing blanket over my mind for the majority of the day. Later, I hot-tubbed instead of watching the news with Calvin (he joined me after only a few minutes - I suspect he's starting to feel over-media'd, too), and finished up the evening with That 70's Show and Angel.

Some of you will get why I feel overwhelmed by the war coverage, and some of you will view my active avoidance as a show of non-patriotic non-supportiveness. I care, to a huge degree, but I can't be bombarded with images the media shouldn't be televising and yet do anyway, on-the-spot journalists "entrenched" with the armed forces giving minute by minute updates, conflicting "they-said-we-said" stories about what we bombed vs. what Iraq says we bombed, casualty reports and MIA reports, and in-your-face interviews with grieving families. I just can't - I'd be on the verge of tears every second of every day. So I have to meter my intake. The morning news is not my friend, and I have changed my home page from CNN to Acronymco's website. My news intake is occurring when I'm feeling strong, when my mind prompts me with a need to know. I imagine a lot of other people are doing the same thing.

My life, specifically, is okay. The world itself, though, is fucked the hell up. I eat and I sleep, I work and I play, my family is safe and my marriage is happy. Maybe I should be questioning my "right" to be depressed, when my life is pretty normal and free of tragedy. I'm not going to, though. I feel how I feel.

And here I am, back at work and putting on my Captain Happy face so no one (well, no one who would bother to pause long enough to listen to the real answer) will ask me what is wrong. I can't nutshell the answer to that question.

Everything. Nothing.

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©Laura Charon 2000 - 2003.