Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2003 - 10:59 a.m.
Spots & Pieces

Finally starting to feel a bit better. In other words, I’m horny—always a good sign, eh?

I don’t think I’ve ever been that sick before. I highly recommend getting the chicken pox when you’re a wee tot, rather than waiting around for so-called adulthood. Blech. I still look grotesquely spotty—it’ll be several days yet before I can safely run a comb through my hair, or shave—and there are other unpleasant corporeal manifestations the details of which I’ll mercifully spare you. But I am slowly on the mend.

This too has happened for a reason, I guess. One side effect that’s rather positive is that I’ve been so sick that those fears seem to have been displaced for now. I’ve been too ill to be anxious about anything. Last night was the first night I spent alone in my apartment in about ten days, and that went well. I’m starting to feel like reading, again; and now here I am writing after a long pause too. These are all good signs.

But I’m exhausted. Daily life seems intimidating, overwhelming.

Anyway, so Truman and Becca stayed with me until yesterday. My designs on luscious Truman were thwarted yet again: I was simply too sick—never mind, unattractive—to enact any of my fantasies. But he made a damned fine nurse!

Now I’m drawing a blank. I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes, wordless. I don’t know what to write. What is it I’m not saying?

Ah, my mind’s just flashed to a great quote from Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions, “The Five Rules of the World (and how to break them)”:

1. You must not have anything wrong with you or anything different.

2. If you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible.

3. If you can’t get over it, you must pretend that you have.

4. If you can’t even pretend that you have, you shouldn’t show up. You should stay home, because it’s hard for everyone else to have you around.

5. If you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.

The most subversive, revolutionary thing you can do is to show up for your life and not be ashamed.

Wow, that’s precisely it. I get blocked when I pressure myself to “get over it”, to pretend that nothing’s wrong. I am naturally an optimistic person, but that optimism degenerates into empty cliché when I’m not being true to what’s really going on inside.

Of course I don’t want to merely whine about stuff, but I don’t have to pretend everything’s A-OK. It’s not. I’m dealing with some majorly stressful stuff, and I’m only going to make it worse if I fake unflappability.

I am not unflappable.

My life is in pieces, and however I might eventually put it back together, it’s certainly not going to help, pretending everything’s okay.

So here’s to showing up, piece of self by confusing piece. I am horny, I am sick, I am spotty and I am tired. I don’t know which way is up right now, but I need not puzzle on alone.