I'm running out of coping strategies for getting rid of a bad mood. It's like when you get chronic headaches and build up a tolerance to Tylenol.
I'm still not even sure why I'm in this mood, whether it's being ditched for tonight or the argument I had with my friend that's still hanging over my head like a black cloud. Or maybe it's neither in particular, but both serving to reinforce that I have a choice of being alone in my opinion of my self worth or lowering it to the standards which would mean others would be happier being around me.
Work today is like an annoying insect I just want to brush aside.
I was going to go car shopping tomorrow. I still plan to, but I'm afraid that my irritability with thinking about it for so long - "analysis paralysis" as one of you called it - will just lead me to make a decision JUST to have made a decision. That's not what I want to do. Ironically, I was originally hoping to combine it with lunch with the friend I argued with today. That's out of the question so I'll pack a lunch instead.
Is it other people I don't forgive? Or is it myself I don't forgive for letting other people hurt me?
I need A's wise advice and hours of See Her Squirt girl talk. She emailed me briefly today just to let me know the other weekend we'd originally talked about was still open. One of my very generous blog readers offered to donate miles he wasn't going to use anyway and so I was leaning towards switching the weekend of my visit. After 20 years, A knows what's in my head better than I do. The best part is that she can answer my emotional anguish about certain things without me bearing the pain of letting it out. Her only shortcoming is that she doesn't have children and can't counsel me as well there as she can with the divorce and with the prospects of new relationships and taking a chance on a new career.
Unfortunately, A found out just a few days ago that her cousin, who is our age, tested positive for the cancer they thought she had kicked a few years ago. So she's on edge waiting for test results and diagnoses. Her cousin went to high school with us too so she's no stranger to me. That's one more thing I don't want to think about; a 30-something mom dying of cancer.
Do people who live their whole lives alone but who don't compromise their principles end up happier than the ones who have become someone they aren't, surrounded by people who proclaim to love them for reasons that aren't true?
Maybe I should just go home, make my dinner, take my bath and go to bed. I can't handle all the questions my mind is asking me today. I feel like a dry erase board with questions and equations all over it, markers coming ever closer wielded by many, many hands, and no sign of an eraser anywhere.
