Seriously? Are you frikken kidding me? What else? I cannot deal with this today. I don’t have time for this. What else is going to go wrong this year? I can’t wait until this year is over. Do YOU know what I mean? Are you feeling it? That unease? A moment of complete overwhelm? Frustration?
I have plenty of other words to express my frustration about my glasses, this is not the first time they have fallen apart this year. It is the third. And my backup pair, well let’s just say they have a scratch across them that just skews everything I see. Just like all my feelings and what foul curse words I want to really say, they all are related to the overwhelm I am feeling today about everything else going on in my life and this crazy world.
I can see far away in the distance almost perfectly with little correction, I can see the big picture, the horizon. The things close up, right in front of me that I need to focus on, I need extra help. Each eye has their own focus and needs. I cannot see what is in front of me without them, one eye focuses much differently than the other. Which means the use a regular, “normal” pair of store-bought reading glasses, just are not the right fit. Not the right vision. Not the right perspective.
Today is first day in weeks I have had the news for very long in the morning while I am working, I usually catch the local new and daily forecast, now I remember why I turned it off! I get frustrated, grumpy, pissy feeling, dumbfounded, yet I do get a random smile or laugh when they show the fun little up-lifting segments, but then it goes back to analysis, science, debunking myths, vaccines, markets, results, counting, rumors, and well, you know all that stuff.
Now do not get me wrong, I like to be informed and see all the perspectives, do my own research, examining and forming my own views. But there just some days you are just at your end. Or so it feels. Like these glasses breaking AGAIN. Notice, that the bows do not even match anymore! I am at my end of these and so ready for the new pair. But I cannot have those for weeks, I cannot access them, it is out of my control of when I receive them.
I will have to find a way to make this work, to use the one-armed glasses sitting halfcocked on my nose like they are now, or maybe trying super glue, but I know how things roll with super glue and I would have the frames stuck to my fingers for a few days, not being able to see close enough to figure out how to get them off!! The thing that helps me gain my focus back is creativity, music, release, and renewal. Sounds corny, yep, I know, and if you know me well, you’d say something like “you’re so creative, that is easy for you” or “I can’t draw a straight line, it’s so easy for you” or you might be thinking what good does it do or why bother?
I get it. I hear ya. I feel ya. I have been there. I get in those slumps of not thinking I cannot make or do anything worth anything to anyone, why bother?
My art is stupid, no one will buy this, no one understand it, it’s terrible, I’m not going to show anyone this crap, why bother?
Lift is stupid, I hate everyone, I just want to binge on Netflix, wine, food and not talk to anyone anymore, why bother?
I don’t want to get out of bed, life is stupid, I’m fat, I’m stupid, I’m worthless to anyone, why bother?
Why bother? Because you matter, that is why. Life may not feel like it, may not look like it, you may not think trauma, grief, illness, sadness, and the crappy days will ever end. You may just be acting normal, faking it to get through. Like my glasses, I’m just trying to see things normally, through a broken, loop-sided view until someone helps me see things a different way through a new lens.
Do you cover up your feelings to appear normal or do you face the feelings and uncover them? What is normal? Do you cover up a subject to cover it or should you uncover it and reveal it to others?
I am sick of acting normal, most people will explain me as quirky, a bit weird, and other things. Never “normal” and I am good with that. But normal, break that mold! I have found ways to work through these broken glasses’ moments (or days) of mine. Right now, too many times (as my kids would say) music helps me, and it is one single artist, over and over and over and over since 2008. I do not know if it is the rhythm and primal beats, the lyrics, the sound of his voice, the messages in the songs, the power behind some songs, the raunchiness of others, the sadness in some or just that I plain o’ like the musician. I got to see only one concert, friends back out because of the weather, but dammit, I drove 5 hours through a blizzard to get there! That once performance added so much recharging energy to my soul that why by NORMAL when you can find something, one thing, that helps you recharge and renew?
I CRANK IT!
When I have broken glasses moments, when I’m overwhelmed and all that others stuff that comes up, I turn on the music, 95% of the time it’s Kid Rock, 5% is Paul Thorn. And I mean I crank it, and I am sure if you were to walk by my house at times you would wonder what the heck is going on in there! A good friend even gave me every Kid Rock CD for a gift a few years back, BEST GIFT EVER! (all well-loved & scratched up now, but I will never throw them, we’ve been through too much together).
That is how I interrupt “normal” and the mask and the broken. I crank Kid Rock, I mean CRANK and JAM. My creative juices, my brain and amygdala light up and releases renewal into my life. Sometimes I write, like right now, this blog took less than twenty minutes to spew out. I was having a pissy thought about my broken glasses, needed music, cranked it up and started an Instagram post about it. Then it got longer, and I thought wait, let’s turn this moment into a blog post! And here it is.
Sometimes, it is cranked, and I am doing homework at my highest levels, or working on pivoting my art business plans; other times I am creating crazily weird, wonderful, emotionally charged artwork. I have it cranked, and I function at MY level, MY normal, feeling MY renewed views through the beat of music.
Again, I ask. Do you cover up your feelings to appear normal or do you face the feelings and uncover them? What is normal? Do you cover up a subject to cover it or should you uncover it and reveal it to others?
