Contemplation
Mar. 9th, 2013 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerSometimes I worry about myself. Not often. But occasionally.
I exploded on Jinya the other morning about the fact that we're still living here in her mom's house, two years later, and how frustrated I am in regards to space and ownership of said space.
Yeah, this is nothing surprising.
Often friends and family have expressed genuine bafflement over my nonchalant acceptance of the situation. And yes, sometimes it does actively bother me.
But this was different.
It came up unexpectedly, like a freak storm system. There was nothing; I was fine...and then suddenly I wasn't. Suddenly, I was ranting and raving and pissed.
But this isn't entirely an uncommon phenomena for me. Sometimes this just happens. I become furious or deeply hurt over something that hadn't even been on my mind up to that point, all within a few moments. I'm reminded of how angry and hurt I became when my mom mentioned that she was teaching my brother to drive. I'd never felt too upset over my lack of a driver's license or my family's noninterest in teaching me to drive when I'd been in high school...until that moment. And then I was furious.
Yeah, I can have a short fuse when the right buttons are punched, or when I'm not rational enough to moderate my emotional responses (read: I'm a bitch in the morning). Yeah, I can go from zero to sixty in seconds. But these aren't hot buttons being pushed, at least not labeled hot buttons. As far as I knew up until that very moment, they weren't buttons at all-- they were non-issues. But non-issues don't provoke that kind of response.
I dislike my own deep-seated issues. I don't like having internal traps that spring shut before I even recognize they are dangerous.
Experiencing increased flashbacks as I get older. It's not deja vu, but similar in tone; more like a hybrid of nostalgia, saudade, and mild dissociation.
I watched the rain this afternoon and could see, very clearly, the verdant emerald green of wet early May foliage at Northland. The rust-colored sidewalks. The lilac bushes by the dark wood ramp on the west side of Memorial.
Not uncommon.
My mind conjures up memories with such detail and gut-punching longing that it's borderline delicious and horrible:
Playing with my toys as a child in my bedroom in Hazelton. The dingy light. The non-color walls. The little shelves and bags I'd gotten from yardsales. My Little Ponies and my record player with the blue cloth case.
The field behind my grandmother's house glowing gold in late summer evenings-- the shadows of the clouds sliding over the ground, the deep forest-green of the lone mountain laurel perched on a far ridge, the vastness of the sky.
The sepultural stillness of the upstairs of my great-grandmother's house. The mournful row of towering black evergreens lining the back end of the yard. The primal-seeming oak forest on the side, its wildness held back by a small hedge-- my child's perspective and imagination imbuing the small wood with superstitious awe. The pink lady's slippers in the ditches; the holly bush in the corner. The calling of crows.
I remember with sublime perfection sitting in the recliner in the corner of Angela and Pam's living room in mid-spring, reading in the clear light.
Various snippets like that-- a single image, a constellation of emotional impressions, a particular sound or smell or sight that brings a shudder of recollection to my very bones. A glimpse of a friend's face: Kris, shaved head and big tits and squeaky voice and all; or skinny, nervous Joe, his tall frame perpetually hunched inward as though he could make himself smaller and less noticeable; or Boo, with her big smile and huge brown eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, her guitar in her lap. Anyone. Everyone. Sooner of later, I feel like I remember everyone I've every cared for at all in any way; I feel like I visit them, or at least their ghosts, in the corner of my mind that's always looking backward.
I love it. I hate it. It's creepy and welcome all at once. Quite often, it's entirely involuntary. It's less a memory and more a flashback. Real life needs trigger warnings.
I exploded on Jinya the other morning about the fact that we're still living here in her mom's house, two years later, and how frustrated I am in regards to space and ownership of said space.
Yeah, this is nothing surprising.
Often friends and family have expressed genuine bafflement over my nonchalant acceptance of the situation. And yes, sometimes it does actively bother me.
But this was different.
It came up unexpectedly, like a freak storm system. There was nothing; I was fine...and then suddenly I wasn't. Suddenly, I was ranting and raving and pissed.
But this isn't entirely an uncommon phenomena for me. Sometimes this just happens. I become furious or deeply hurt over something that hadn't even been on my mind up to that point, all within a few moments. I'm reminded of how angry and hurt I became when my mom mentioned that she was teaching my brother to drive. I'd never felt too upset over my lack of a driver's license or my family's noninterest in teaching me to drive when I'd been in high school...until that moment. And then I was furious.
Yeah, I can have a short fuse when the right buttons are punched, or when I'm not rational enough to moderate my emotional responses (read: I'm a bitch in the morning). Yeah, I can go from zero to sixty in seconds. But these aren't hot buttons being pushed, at least not labeled hot buttons. As far as I knew up until that very moment, they weren't buttons at all-- they were non-issues. But non-issues don't provoke that kind of response.
I dislike my own deep-seated issues. I don't like having internal traps that spring shut before I even recognize they are dangerous.
Experiencing increased flashbacks as I get older. It's not deja vu, but similar in tone; more like a hybrid of nostalgia, saudade, and mild dissociation.
I watched the rain this afternoon and could see, very clearly, the verdant emerald green of wet early May foliage at Northland. The rust-colored sidewalks. The lilac bushes by the dark wood ramp on the west side of Memorial.
Not uncommon.
My mind conjures up memories with such detail and gut-punching longing that it's borderline delicious and horrible:
Playing with my toys as a child in my bedroom in Hazelton. The dingy light. The non-color walls. The little shelves and bags I'd gotten from yardsales. My Little Ponies and my record player with the blue cloth case.
The field behind my grandmother's house glowing gold in late summer evenings-- the shadows of the clouds sliding over the ground, the deep forest-green of the lone mountain laurel perched on a far ridge, the vastness of the sky.
The sepultural stillness of the upstairs of my great-grandmother's house. The mournful row of towering black evergreens lining the back end of the yard. The primal-seeming oak forest on the side, its wildness held back by a small hedge-- my child's perspective and imagination imbuing the small wood with superstitious awe. The pink lady's slippers in the ditches; the holly bush in the corner. The calling of crows.
I remember with sublime perfection sitting in the recliner in the corner of Angela and Pam's living room in mid-spring, reading in the clear light.
Various snippets like that-- a single image, a constellation of emotional impressions, a particular sound or smell or sight that brings a shudder of recollection to my very bones. A glimpse of a friend's face: Kris, shaved head and big tits and squeaky voice and all; or skinny, nervous Joe, his tall frame perpetually hunched inward as though he could make himself smaller and less noticeable; or Boo, with her big smile and huge brown eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, her guitar in her lap. Anyone. Everyone. Sooner of later, I feel like I remember everyone I've every cared for at all in any way; I feel like I visit them, or at least their ghosts, in the corner of my mind that's always looking backward.
I love it. I hate it. It's creepy and welcome all at once. Quite often, it's entirely involuntary. It's less a memory and more a flashback. Real life needs trigger warnings.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-10 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-10 07:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-10 03:31 pm (UTC)Just that 1. This is a thing that happens to other people too sometimes, and 2. A life is made up of vivid, seemingly inconsequential details.
Actually I'm not positive what I meant. I was high on painkillers when I commented. :P
no subject
Date: 2013-03-10 11:30 pm (UTC)Even if you are doped up on painkillers throughout the afterlife. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-03-11 12:05 pm (UTC)