Scrabbling Creatures
Tonight is one of those nights I wish I had something to pray to. This is the best I got, so. Here I am.
It's not... I don't feel that crappy. A little, for certain - but I'm not that kind of angry, or sad, or despairing. Just. Kind of crappy. Some of that will be the migraine - the last couple of days have been migraine town, and this one has definitely been one of those that hard shuts down my mental faculties - and its lingering influence; as well as the consequential impact of having not been able to do much the last couple days, and feeling crappy about that too. We went to see Project Hail Mary on a whim last night, and that was nice. But that's been about it. Been too brain-dumb for anything else.
Bodies are wild. I don't generally get cramps - my periods are so insanely light and merciful that it's genuinely beyond believing - and yet. I could tell, last night and today, that laying a heat pack over my abdomen was going to help my migraine go away. Didn't get a chance last night, still had it this morning; held on to one all morning, and lo and behold my migraine faded. All of the tiredness on my right side, and the vague dull aching in my head, and the light sensitivity, and all of it. I'm sure it makes sense on some level, but like. I was joking to Hearthsnail earlier that if I were ever to have a child (*not in the plans, ever - no thank you), maybe they would just spring fully-formed out of a headache like Zeus to Athena; because that's apparently where all my menstrual symptoms reside.
Anyway, the emotional low isn't that. I don't have that one much either, and the little that I do is largely the week before. I suspect it's more to do with the combined being bored and unable to think the last couple of days and also coming down from the high of running Adult League. The drop, or whatever. It was a fantastic event, and I meant to write about it, but I suspect the moment is passed. In any case, it does tend to leave some lowness in its wake sometimes. Perhaps that's all it is.
Hello, I wish you were here. I wish you were here to talk to, and joke with, and take some gentle comfort in companionship from. Comfort, and reassurance. That more than the rest I think. I will not tell you this. It destroys me that I miss you on such ridiculous terms, and that I wish for these things. But I wish it nonetheless.
Dude, sorting out all of the community social tensions and issues last year was a fucking walking nightmare. I was watching a couple of the folks who'd had problems with each other laughing and joking and snipping at each other comfortably at dinner after last event, and it was gratifying to see that. Forcing them to sit down and talk last season was a fucking nightmare. Taking aside the circle of guys to talk was a nightmare too. So many of the one-by-one conversations, their own special nightmares in all sorts of shapes and shadows. The entirety of last season was one long fucking nightmare. I did it - things are so vastly better than they were - but gods, what a series of fucking nightmares. So many of those conversations were hard for the people involved, and rightly so, but I had to have all of them. I had to bear all of them, and the keeping of all the heavy things that came with them. And I bore that weight without protest, because that is my job. Leadership something something, submission to duty something. What a fucking nightmare.
It was well worth it, though. Things are worlds beyond worlds better this season. I meant it, when I said two years; but it is already worlds better in one. Sometimes even nightmares are worth it. Something about walking in darkness, and refusing to turn from the light ahead. If there were ever something I'm made for, there's a good chance it's that.
Good gods, what else. What else do I need to purge from my system tonight. Spiritually, I am scrabbling desperately or restlessly at the walls of myself, like some uncertain animal. Oh joy, it's this song again. Hello again. I miss you, and I will clamp my teeth closed over that.
What a strange thing, to be shared. In the sense of the understandings that lie between others, and being seen in the webbing that ties those things together. What a strange thing to be seen at all - no, what a strange thing to be caught. That's the one that's new. The feeling of being caught. Like an acrobat, and hoisted back onto my feet with a gentle bounce. What a strange thing indeed.
(Maybe I am meant, I think, to be shared. In that the weight of me is so often too much in most contexts and to most people; in that, for as much as that is true of every human - for we are meant to exist in knit communities, to share each others' burdens - it is maybe more so true for me. In more ways than -)
I am perhaps flying too close to the sun with the sleep thing. I got two hours of sleep before last adult league. That part's not the sun - that's all nothing new, and well within hand - it's more that it's come up several times now recently. Describing to others the way that, yeah, I had sleep problems for years; and the scars it has left me mean that I can fall asleep anywhere, at any point, for any amount of time, and wake up and be completely lucid and functional. The way that people who have been in, like, the army learn to do. So yeah, I can roll out of bed after two hours of sleep and GM an absolutely fantastic event - already not easy, by the way - and then drive home afterwards like it's nothing. It's the telling that's the sun. It's the recurrence of the telling that's flying too close - to what, I don't know, but I know better than to tempt fate. We let the telling quiet down, and let the memories simmer quietly.
Some nights, you want to sit quietly outside the gates of hell just to sit. Maybe that's what tonight is about. Why, I don't know, but that sure feels like what I'm doing. Almost like a meditation. Like The Thinker, Dante outside the gates. I suppose it's good to be reminded, sometimes, that for as much as hell is right there we're also not in it right now. There is a threshold between here and there, and we are comfortably on one side of it. Then again, I suppose I do like standing on the threshold. Of everything. Forever. So why not hell, too. Maybe that explains a lot about me, actually.
Well, that's enough about that. I'm just about at the end of April, and that might as well be cue to move on. To bed, and otherwise. Gods help me.