Bleh

Sick. Cough. Cold. Flu. Not Swine Flu. (Probably not, anyway.) Headaches. Fever. Laying still for hours at a time in hopes of minimizing bodily aches. Fever evaporates. Headache disappears. Cough still irritable. Nose chronically blocked. (Is my nose a metaphor for my life?) I realise I am a control freak. I can’t threaten the cold. It won’t ‘negotiate’ with me. Trying to be healthier gives me a kind of purpose. But I am so impatient. This is why my life is so stressful. I try to micromanage everything. (Even things that are outside of my control. Especially things that are outside my control.) But somehow I also fail to follow through on things I want. Gripped by fear, jealousy.

And when I’m angry, I lash out.

I am confused. I don’t understand this ‘stuff.’ I used to write about it. It made me sad, it made me mad (and it had other apparently even more Dr. Seuss-esque consequences). It is like this huge barrier that separates us and I spend so much time pretending it doesn’t exist, the ‘elephant in the room’ as John Safran might say. I don’t understand how people reconcile any of it. And I much less care, for the most part. But its the parts that have implications for me that are difficult to ignore. I thought I could negotiate around it. I figured we didn’t have to agree on everything. Maybe it doesn’t work like that.

Writing. Morning Pages. A memoir, of sorts. 140 character brain explosions. There’s even a song or two in the pipes, remarkably enough. I really like writing. I particularly like writing blog entries. But lately I’ve loved playing the keyboard. Writing things for that instrument, improvising, playing along with songs. I appreciate how dynamic it is. How the piano presets can be both delicate and violently percussive within the same bar. I guess I’ve always played in a very percussive way. Playing is a form of stress relief. It doesn’t even really matter what notes I play, what chords form beneath my fingers… in most moments it is entirely about rhythms and dynamics. And if I am angry I can slam my hands against it, and it doesn’t care in the slightest. Indeed I think it appreciates the attention. (I’ve personified my Roland keyboard, thereby adding an disturbing ‘domestic violence’ vibe to the earlier description. Perhaps it is time to go to bed?)

Anyway I need to relax. And exercise. And sleep. And eat better.

If I don’t care about myself, nobody else will. Though most days I struggle to see the incentive of actually doing that.

Tagged as: illness, music, sick, writing