Taka sip of this water

I'm reading The Invisible Man because it is Jess's favorite book. What I find is that I'm a gigantic nerd. I want to take notes! It's making me think so much and the thinking is so pleasurable that I don't want to forget the thoughts that I'm thinking.

So, today I wrote in my journal, "Now you'll be better and when you git all right you'll know how bad a shape you been in, here, now taka sip of this water." The narrator is ill and Miss Mary comes along, takes him home and takes care of him. It mirrored how I felt this weekend.

You've read how sick I was. Then, two weeks ago was a week of broken things.

The very first thing, I mean the very first thing that I did after Jess loaned me a bunch of movies to watch while I was sick was to drop one on the asphalt as I was opening my car door and smash it. The new one I bought from eBay just arrived.

Then, I learned just how crucial the driver’s side mirror is to city driving after it was sideswiped one night while my car was
parked on the street. I have to wait for the weather to get above freezing so that I can glue it back on. In the meantime, I have to keep reminding myself that the reason my subconscious didn't register a car in the left lane before I changed lanes was not because there wasn't a car in the left lane like usual but before there isn't a sideview mirror to see it in.

Finally, I knocked my laptop off the couch where I had set it down in order to stand up briefly to retrieve something. The friendly Mac guys at the Genius Bar made a sympathetic face when I presented my iBook and told them I dropped it. When I added that it was open at the time, their facial expressions shifted to that look the people who play doctors on TV get when they have to tell families that the cancer has spread to the fingernails. So, I have plunked down the change from my piggy bank for a brand new MacBook with not much hope that they will be able to retrieve any of my files from the old one.

I got a couple of days' reprieve, did some good things at work, got some homework done, and then one of my friends got arrested for something she was doing right under my nose and that she was telling preemptive lies about to misdirect my attention, which felt pretty much exactly like what my ex-husband used to do.

Like Ralph Ellison's narrator, I did not realize how bad that made me feel until I felt better. I knew it sucked and I could verbalize why it sucked but I didn't realize it was making me physically ill. I was (and still am) wrestling with how to continue loving her even though she hurt me. My hurt wanted to shout, "How could you make me believe you were the type of person that wouldn't do that!" But my heart and my head both know that we're all the type of people that would do that, given the right circumstances. There are no good or bad people because we're all both good and bad.

So I went home. On Friday night, I let my mom make me mashed potatoes and hamburger gravy. She said I looked like I thought it was never going to get any better. Now, I know that time soothes all sorrows; I have that engraved on my ring. So, I argued with her about that, but now that the roller skates have been taken off my soul and I can look back on it, I probably did think I was stuck at a bottom.

In that state, I was presented with the manifestation of the new status of my relationship with Jeffrey. And with his mother's wonderful Christmas present and his crappy present, both obviously wrapped by his mother because not only am I not worth telling about his impending marriage, but I'm also not worth the effort of making a few box corners with colored paper.

After I ate, I took a nap. Then, I woke up and went to bed. Then I got up the next morning and judged a tournament, came home, sat by the fire and stared into it for awhile after eating a little dinner. Then, I took a nap. Then, I woke up and wrote a blog post. Then, I went to bed. I woke up in the morning, did a little calculus homework and took a nap. When I woke up from that nap, I felt better. Like Miss Mary said, " when you git all right you'll know how bad a shape you been in". It was like rainbows after rain showers. I had been asking the Lord to take away the weight of the double hurt and he did! Actually, what I had been saying was, "God, you're going to have to take care of this one, because I just can't." I had given up totally at working to fix either situation. I was content just to live there with that exhaustion that pulled at me like the flu as long as I had a couch, a dog and a fireplace.

I am amazed by my own resilience. I hope that I am grateful.