Dances with Black Dogs

Monday, February 11, 2008
current mood: exhausted

My Friendly Horde,

All is not well at Duck Towers.
I am lost in the depths of my own navel, again, I'm afraid.
It is a beautiful day and all I mustered was get up, get the Sunday Times and wash the windows – inside and out.
My view is clear now, clean from the recent rains and backsplash from the window boxes. It looks like spring has arrived in the grounds. Snowdrops and daffs are out, the 3legged Cat came for a staggering visit and I also – shock, horror - cleaned up 4 enormous dog turds from the lawn… If I find out who lets their best friend foul here, I will personally deliver it back through their mailbox. Rest assured!!! Maybe I need a bit more of this anti social behaviour; it wakes my inner raging bitch – like the yobby lowlife that nicked my mobile phone off the desk in the Gallery. Rage that makes me feel like I am alive.
Because, my friends, I've been a bit "Dancing with Black Dogs" of late.

First, it was the run up to Christmas, but that was counteracted by a holiday back in the home country. Once back, the "warm and wanted" effect wore and it slowly crept back up on me. The bummed birthday didn't help.
Loneliness is a bit of a drag.
If I didn't have the Gallery weekends, weeks could pass without speaking to a real person (telephone calls excluded, for obvious reasons). I play music very loudly to drown out the sound of silence, moving images on the tele as pretend company, virtual friends as plasters for a battered ego...
When people ask you how you are, they don't really want to hear the truth.
And frankly, who can blame them, nobody wants to hear doom and gloom. I'm sick of it myself. Finding yourself back on the shelf at the tender middle age of 45 is a bitter pill to swallow. But it's not just the rejection thing; it's also my own stupidity of having put me into this vulnerable position in the first place. To have build my life around 1 person for nearly 12 years was asking for trouble, no? Eggs and basket spring to mind.
Excuse me your honour, but isn't that a description of marriage? Well yes, stupid girl... only you were never elevated to marital status, were you?
I rest my case. Result: 12 years and nothing to show for it but scars... magnificent they might be; they won't pay the rent! So I'm stuck at the crossroad of boulevards of broken dreams and quite lost.

And the crossroads I'm facing are daunting, to the extend of complete paralysis: which ever choice I make, it has to be the right one; there's no time left to make more mistakes.
Does that make any sense? Rabbit caught in the headlights to use another cliché.
At this moment there's no energy left more than getting through the day.
Inertia veni vidi et vici.
I want to give myself a kick up the back side but it requests a yoga movement I haven't mastered yet. It might help if I started taking yoga lessons of course.
This complete lack of Va Va Voom in myself pisses me off no end, but even that is not enough to kick start a change. Doctor suggested Happy Pills… they didn't agree with me last time so I'm sticking to the herbal remedy for now, telling myself there's far worse in the world.

The ticking of the clock wakes me up at the impossibly early hours of the morning to dance with the Black Dog. Staving off panic, curling into a ball, rocking.
To go back (to Belgium) or not to go back, to go back or not to go back, to go back... to go back ... to fail, to fail, to fail again... until the blissful oblivion of sleep claims me back.

Needless to say I wake up rather tired from all that dancing.