I realize I have been very food oriented lately in my posts, which might seem a little odd. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, I have this thyroid thingy (thank you pregnancy) and when it acts up my appetite does strange things. It also makes me mood swing (I mean the thyroid, not the appetite). Well… that’s not quite right. I don’t become a roller-coaster of emotion, crying and then happy or anything like that. It’s more like it zaps my energy in a combination of lethargy and potential melancholy.
Second, I have been debating and debating a post on the earthquake in Pakistan and India. Not that I’ve been debating a political post. I just am having a hard time with the earthquake’s devastation. Every time I try to watch the news or read the paper, because I DO want to know what’s going on, there is another clip about a school and the children who didn’t survive.
Now I’ve heard a lot of mothers talk about how they can’t watch news programs about kids without crying or even see movies with sick children in them after they became mothers because all the fears just hit too close to home. I, however, was already like that before I had children (I had brothers to take care of, you see, and I think the worry gene just kicked in early). And now I have a son.
It’s not as if I am a wildly emotionally woman on a day to day basis, having outbursts that I can’t control or breaking down in public, though I have been known to act like a goof without regret (and Keen says I’m emotional, but that’s only in comparison to himself. And he shouldn’t talk). I just am very aware of my emotionally state and it is certainly accessible.
And this is what happens when I watch anything about Pakistan: first gut-clenching, visceral horror almost immediately followed by a tiny internal wall being thrown up. A shield, a distance. This same thing happened to me with Katrina, but Pakistan is worse. I’m at odds with the wall because I do not want to become numb, numb, numb. I don’t like the fear that if I keep allowing the wall to be built even a little that I will eventually become cold-hearted or callous to the world. That’s not a person I want to be and it’s not a person I want my child to learn from.
And yet… and yet… I still need to get up every day and feed my son and provide for his well-being and make sure he is (relatively) happy. If you let it sink in… potential melancholy can turn into nagging sorrow and depression.
So what I am doing right now is chipping away at it all. I’m focusing on food and how much I like to eat, while sorting through clothes for Red Cross. I am approaching writing in bits and pieces and concentrating a lot on work. I am waiting for my stupid thyroid to even out. I am keeping my loved ones close and thinking about them a lot even as I skirt around my own feelings. Most of all, I am hoping someday for an answer, an alternative to the wall. – the weirdgirl
Without the wall, how will you function? Some people allow themselves to fully feel everything, and they just can’t get through one day without medication.
It’s a tough balancing act, that’s for sure. I think that you just writing about it is a way to get in touch with those feelings, yet still keep them from interfering with your everyday life.
True (about functioning). I’m normally a pretty optimistic person. But sometimes I feel guilty about being trivial in the face of global disasters (it’s a knee-jerk “get my head out of my ass” reaction). But the truth is I love silly, fun things and I know in the long run I won’t be giving any of that up.
Thanks for the words of encouragement. And the writing does help; that’s usually where the extreme emotions end up landing.
P.S. I totally have a ghost story for you… I just have to write it down.
It’s a good thing we’re not news anchors. I could never go from the story of a brutal slaying of an unsuspecting child to the perky-face smile that comes with the triumph at the creation of a new computer gadget. Talk about detatchment from reality.
I sometimes go through periods where I’ll stop following the news to get a break from reality and just sing to the radio. I guess you could say the walls are already up and I’m trying to process some emotions to just get through to the other side to keep going.
I’m sure we’re all there with you, lady. It’s devastating just to be on the sidelines thinking about what could be if it happened here. But since we must go on, pick a good tune and start dancing through some of that emotion.