Monday, September 30, 2013

VENT

My heart feels so high up my throat it must be peeping through my nose holes. I’ve got a stupid, persistent sadness that I’m struggling to shake these last few days. Last night I told myself I was being silly and that I should just sleep and that all would be well in the morning. But as I recovered from deactivating my morning alarm, there it was, sitting like one of my dogs waiting to be fed, that horrible feeling back again. “Think positive thoughts!” I yell inside my head, “focus on what you do want and less on what you don’t want”, “Be a light of positive energy!” “Think of all the amazing things you’ve been blessed with!” But the red-faced-tantrum-child within me will have none of it. I look in the mirror and almost growl a low “voetsek.” I’m just not buying it anymore. All this “positivity” and “optimism” has become strained like a small closet packed to the brim before the guests arrive, packed with feelings of rejection, fear, abandonment, frustration, anger and disappointment. “I’m bigger than this!”, “It’s no big deal.” Or “Something better will come along!”, can only be heard so many times before they begin to sting your ears like hot air inflated bluebottles on a barefoot beach. I’m sore inside. I want more than what I have and more than what life is offering me and I am choking on the guilt I feel instead of the gratitude I know I should. I’m struggling to keep my bile at bay. Where is my boyfriend? Why am I so repulsive and so easily repulsed? Where is the love? Why am I so superficial? Why do I feel invisible? Too fat and now too thin! What do they want from me? What on earth do I want? WHERE THE HELL IS THE MONEY YOU OWE ME! Am I not worth it? Am I undeserving? Does it all come too easy for me? Do I enjoy what I do so much that I no longer deserve to be paid for it? Why is it so hard for me to fight for the money I have earned? Injustice pulls at my trouser leg again. Every corner of my local mall has Dead Sea cosmetics salespeople lying in wait to harass me. Murphy dictates I must go past all of them to buy what I need. They do not understand the word “no”. I get this crazy urge to throw their Dead Sea salt in their eyes and run, but I just keep declining their “free samples” politely and walk. I pay ten bucks for parking in the shopping centre and then a car guard appears with a passive aggressive hand out too. I put on the radio to calm my nerves and there is a knock at my window. A man with bad teeth and a printed card tries to con me into believing he is deaf so I will give him money for Meth. Can you blame me for wanting to throw my Minions out of my Happymeal? I know that there are hundreds of people in the world literally starving, I know that at this moment around the globe, someone is dying of a terrible disease or being victimised and/or tortured. Yet still, I cannot shake this unease and discord. I cannot settle. I refuse to be satisfied, and I will not be satisfied until I love and am loved by the right person and I am getting the respect and livelihood that I feel in my gut I deserve. I’m not blind to all the good things. I’m just tired of trying to shove all the bad things that have happened into a hopelessly overcrowded space that is threatening to burst open and crash down on me. Admittedly, just writing this tirade has made me feel so much better and vented a zeppelin of my anger-steam. Maybe that’s all that I needed to do. Maybe my shadows merely wanted me to tip my hat at them before they shuttled off into twilight. One thing’s for sure, I feel a lot less shame than I did 695 words ago.