we don't get insurance anymore
january 4th, 2001

Hello. I'm moody.

It's the sort of thing I should get used to. Being a woman, certain sessions 
of the month are colored red for temporary insanity. Everything makes you cry, 
everything makes you feel terrible, you read the most horrible things between 
the lines of every journal entry you read, of every email you get. You wonder 
why certain people haven't written you yet - you wonder why certain people 
have suddenly randomly decided to. The motions of everyday life are magically 
transformed for a short few days to some part of an elaborate dramatic game 
that no one has let you in on yet.

Which would be fine, for these short few days, if they weren't dispersed 
throughout moments of complete and total bliss, when you smile because you 
can't imagine anything more perfect in the world than being where you are now, 
where you accomplish things, and go somewhere, and feel good about yourself. 
It's this juxtapostion which makes you feel as if you are losing your mind, 
that makes you want to shove it all of on hormones but you can't help but 
wonder, "what if"? And then opening one door to that 'what-if' realm opens an 
onterage of other doors and all of the random possibilities flow through your 
life with their flags waving high and you wonder if you were deluding yourself 
then or if you are deluding yourself now.

And then you figure, it all has to be hormones.

Still, you feel too big for yourself. None of your clothes fit right. You wake 
up in the morning and forget who you are. And you scribble down renderings of 
Lao Tzu in your notebook and tell yourself that there *is* no difference 
between light and dark, and try to find a balance within your dualities, but 
it just isn't working, not tonight.

You don't really have a whole lot of time to think about it, though. There's 
just too much to do. There's a house to clean, school to ready for. And when 
you take a minute to breathe, there's your princess of a daughter, who gives 
you a huge hug, or climbs in your lab, or gives you baby kisses, and you 
smile, and your heart feels as if it's sleeping next to the warmest fire in 
the universe, and you give her a horsey-ride around your house until your 
knees ache.

I just feel...disappointed in myself, somehow. As if no matter how much work I 
do on myself, I'm always going to be stuck in my old patterns. And while I may 
be a wonderful mother and give my daughter all of the love and affection in 
the world, as a friend/lover/sister/daughter/wife I'm always going to fail. 
It's never going to be enough. I'll be neglectful/vicious/paranoid/strange for 
the rest of my life.

I pretend to be honest, and leave everything unsaid. I pretend to be a good 
friend, and yet where have I been, what is everyone doing, where has everyone 
gone? I pretend to be carefree, brave, and humble; instead, I'm constantly 
looking over my shoulder, hide in quiet places, and paint myself a bigger 
picture of who I really am. I pretend to be a good signifigant other, and then 
I fill the quiet places with little verbal jabs so subtle that only I really 
notice them. I pretend to be able to put up with everything; in reality, 
everything annoys me. I feel as if the person I pretend to be - the person I 
*want* to be - is nowhere close to the person I really am.

And of course, there's this. Things are never as bad as I make them out to be. 
I'll forget about all of this by tomorrow.

It's just, at moments, sometimes the problems loom like big mountains 
threatening to crush you beneath their immensity. And you just want to throw 
your hands, say, 'I give up,' and be blissfully ignorant of yourself for the 
rest of your life.

Except, you can't, because your daughter needs a bath.