Energy Reassignment Surgery

I swear, y'all, I'm an ass kicker trapped inside a Hashimoto's having body. So, I need the energy equivalent of a plastic surgeon, I guess. (Have recently become addicted to Nip/ Tuck on DVD and need Season 2 stat!) "Alright, H+P, what don't you like about yourself?" the kind doc will say. And I'll speak my truth. That's with a capital T, of course. And I'll hear about the procedure, the risks, the recovery time and I'll say this is really what I want. I won't be myself until I change what I've got going on right now. And the staff psychologist will say, "I think she's a good candidate because she was living as an ass kicker for most of her life until recently." And I'll think damn straight.

And somewhere along the way, someone will want me to understand that it's easier to dig a hole than it is to build a pole. And I'll scrunch my eyebrows together and try to figure out how that belongs in the analogy I'm running with. (Don't poke your eye out running with that thing.) Anyway, this is how I envision it- going under anesthesia, waking up to a somewhat "uncomfortable recovery" (that's doc speak for hurts like hell), and then going on my merry way despite the shocked looks and rude whispers of those around me who just don't understand who I really am. Who I really have been this whole time. That I'm only doing this to make things right. To make my outside match my inside.

Ah, well. I spoke to a friend today who pointed out that when I speak of the future, I sound a little afraid, I guess, and much more passive probably about my possibilities than I ever did before. I explain that I am and I amn't afraid, really. Hashimoto's has ruined my good time. Or at least the good time I thought was mine by rights. Now, I have to adjust my thinking to a much more zen kind of thing where sometimes I'm great and sometimes I'm dragging. Gonna have to wrap my head around "success" as an uneven or patchy proposition- or shall I say a fluid idea? Gonna have to figure out what I'll do for work that won't bore me to tears when I've got energy or kill me when I don't.

Hmmmmm. Romance novel writer, perhaps. It would make me laugh and could make me wealthier than I might reasonably deserve to be for exhausting a long list of euphemisms. I think about the make me laugh part and I like it. Plus, it would allow me to work wherever I am. I could travel a lot, which would make moi happy. Longmire can do my covers. Yep, I've solved my problems in a doctorless fashion.

And that'll do, pig.

It's Better In Hell...

... if you know. If I didn't thank you for that, I should have. (Hate to make the same mistake twice.)

Kinsey

Saw this film tonight and wow was it ever dull (inane editing choices, threadbare acting, the most obvious of choices on plot and foreshadowing. And wonder of wonders- it managed to make sex boring.) I studied Kinsey when I was- what?- sixteen, I guess, or seventeen, working on my psych major. (Ok, the first run at my psych major. After completing my literature major, I dropped psychology and college a total of three times before I finally wrapped the whole thing up nine years later. So much for the boy wonder I was supposed to be.)

And Kinsey, he's still a fascinating fella. Mistaken and right at the same time. While this movie didn't shy away from the contributions made to his research by note-taking pedophiles or from the confusion and hurt that loads of casual sex create, it did in the end insist on making the man a missionary (which is an ironic position for him to find himself in- smack my paw. Harder!) Or a preacher. Or a hero, saving us all from our prudish selves.

The biggest moment of truth onscreen, though, was when one of his research assistants told him off for trying to reduce sex to simple statistics and neutral science. As if it could ever really be less than a whole lot of everything between human beings who can't help but communicate much more than desire or disease when they touch each other.

Complete freedom can put so many holes in your heart that it can become difficult to carry even a dream of love. And sometimes, the restrictions we place on ourselves in terms of "social obligations" exist to protect the greatest freedom of all. Who gets it right, though? Or more to the point, human beings are almost always incapable of balance on any of our big issues of sex, money, power, the infinite and where to spend Christmas this year.

I have such faith in us. Five times today already and it's not even noon.

Fairy Tale Ending

Some days, when I am feeling grim and grimmer, I speak to you. And I expect you think you are your very own person with your very own life and reactions to me and everything around you. But you're not. Not here. Because on days like this one, I have turned you into a little, black stove. And I will tell you what I can't tell anyone else. And I know- I just know- there is no one there to hear me say it. So it won't matter. It won't matter to anybody but me. There's no one on the other side listening in.

I am as sure of that as she was.

And it won't matter how high I put that picture. How I tore it. How I pinned it. How I memorize it. Or how the boards are rearranged. Or what I start. Or what I stop. My efforts aren't lacking. They're useless. There is just so little use for them. So little use for me.

Everybody wants what they don't have. The bird on her shoulder reminds me of this. All the heat of the sun is what he wears. Everything else reminds me of that. (As if I could forget.)

I kneel like this over destiny. Stretch out one arm. Look down with one heart. There is no answer for my faith. No answer for desire. Nothing is returned.

What have I done?

Little, black stove, I can tell you that tearing and pinning and hoping do not fix this. I don't think I can stand to be alive for all of ever after.