Wednesday
Well. That was a day.
I am feeling a bit melancholy, for the usual reason, but nothing too intense or overwhelming. (It’s astonishing what you can get used to.) Neither is it anything too specific, but I recognize the symptoms well enough by now. I seem short of breath, like I can’t get enough air, and am having mild heart palpitations, which I haven’t had for awhile. I’ve got zero attention span, and am constantly distracted. I’m spending a ton of time surfing the web and reading the widow board instead of working and can’t really find it in myself to worry about that. I am writing this post instead of reviewing the data they pay me to review. I am irritable and spoiling for a fight, and my hair trigger surprises even me. Snappish remarks fly out of my mouth, and as they do, I think, "Why did I say that? That was unnecessary and unprovoked." And the cherry on top is that widow-brain is in full force. I have to admit, I’m a little embarrassed about how many times in the last 3 days I’ve spaced what someone said, forgotten a conversation we just had, or had a complete lack of comprehension of what people are saying to me. I see their lips move, but my brain is totally disengaged from my part in the communication process. My ears are on, but my mind is elsewhere and did not leave a forwarding address, even for me. Evidently, my mind is in the witness protection program. Perhaps that’s a more apt description than I’d intended.
I don’t know if the ides of April triggered this particular bout of low-intensity grief, and the more mental aspects thereof. It’s been awhile since the 15th has been anything more than a milepost that reminds me to adjust my count of the months he’s been gone.
Times like these, I wonder at this other life that my mind and soul seem to be living beyond the grasp of my conscious mind, which can merely stand by and observe as I feel things, physically and emotionally, that arise spontaneously as far as my analytical mind can tell. I recently watched this great video of a talk a neuroscientist gave describing her real-time experiencing of a stroke, and how very disparate in approach, job description, and interaction with the universe at large, the two hemispheres of the brain are. Is that what happens when I slip into this place? Is my right brain experiencing what it is to be me on an intuitive, energetic basis, and my left brain is looking on, wondering what the hell the right side is doing?
I haven’t the foggiest. I shrug and go with it, because I’ve given up figuring everything out, and it will pass soon enough.