*Hey, You!!

How dooooooooooooo you do it? Another friend of mine wrote something that reminded me how those words almost always leave me feeling like I’ve brushed up against a soft cactus. It’s a fine irritation that lies just under the skin, anchoring itself on tiny hooks, countersunk into my flesh with every tedious detail that I manage to get through in a day without complaint. So why does it bother me so much? It’s the breezy dismissiveness of it, I suppose. It’s a question usually put to me by someone who does at least half the work for twice the pay, or someone who does no work but sees fit to fill me in on every excruciating detail of why their life is so difficult. I’m one of those old school girls who still believes that “How do you do?” or "How are you today?" should not be met with a litany of how groggy you are from the fucking Ambien you took the night before, or how you’re suffering from another terrible bout of **insomnia again, how you can't figure out whether to shave your pubes this month, or how you can’t believe that you only have fifty dollars to last you to next week. Whiners and complainers get on my nerves. Headache? Carpal tunnel? Feeling lethargic for no good reason? Maybe you should get your bleary-eyed ass up from the latest online porn/game/IM/whatever and take your lobster-clawed mousegrabbers out for some fresh air. Your life sucks? I bet I can name twenty people just off the top of my head whose lives make yours look like a trip to the day spa. Some days I might be in the twenty, some days I’d be far from it. But my point is this: you don’t really want to know how I do it. It would scare you, because some days I’m a horrible ugly mess. Some days, for a few short self-indulgent minutes, I’m such a near-lethal combination of tears, panic, fear, anger, and weariness that you wouldn’t even recognize me if I stood in your face screaming my name. That’s how I do it, and I do it without talking about it much because talking takes energy away from moving---and the point is to move, even if you have to crawl.

Of course the irony is that I’m going to feel that even writing this is some sort of complaint that I shouldn’t be making. I’m grateful and life is good. So there’s no need to ask me how I do it. Asking me how assumes that I have a choice. I do it because I don’t have a choice. I do it however I fucking have to in order to get through the day. I find the joy in every tiny little space I can while I’m at it. And if you don’t or can’t do the same, that’s your business; but don’t expect me to listen to these enduring laundry lists of "Why The World Must Pity Me Above All Others" without wanting to take a claw hammer to your head.

*I’m tired. And this has nothing to do with anyone who might read it. Excuse my bitchiness, but people who spew nothing but sour words but take no action toward change and then practically pat me on the head while giving me the “Why, how ever do you do it?” treatment make me crazy crazy.



** And while I’m on the subject:

Main Entry: in·som·nia
Pronunciation: in-'säm-nE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from insomnis sleepless, from in- + somnus sleep -- more at SOMNOLENT
Date: circa 1623
: prolonged and usually abnormal inability to obtain adequate sleep

In other words, you simpering twit, staying up all night long and then sleeping all day is NOT insomnia.