We are made up of what we feed ourselves.
I have lost my mojo. Misplaced my mojo. OK, to be honest, my mojo has been devoured by zombies this week.
There’s a marathon of The Walking Dead on AMC so I’ve been catching up on the first two seasons of this awesome show. Now I finally understand why Carol is so quiet and how Maggie and Glen met and when Carl learned to shoot and why everyone hated Lori and just how much, how very much, I love Daryl. So much that I want to give him a long hot bath and cut his forelock. Mmm, mmm, MMM. I do love a man with a crossbow and a steady moral compass.
Fifteen hours of zombie dystopia packed into three days may have been a tad too much. I have been sad, paranoid and unfocused for days. Granted, some of it has to do with staying up past midnight too many times in a row. I’m lethargic from sitting on the couch. The house is going to pot and the refrigerator is empty. I haven’t been writing like I was. I worry that I don’t have the skills to protect myself and my children in the event of an outbreak of zombie fever. I can shoot, but only if they stand still. I can forage, but mostly in Kroger. I can survive in the wild, as long as I have a car charger and wi-fi. I would be as vulnerable as T-Dog in a red Star Trek shirt. This knowledge is BRINGING ME DOWN.
The fatigue is eating my brain from the inside. So when a lady flipped me off after I had let her into traffic, I let it get to me for a whole day. When my daughter complains about dinner, it hurts my feelings. If the cat delivers a mole to the doorstep, I futz and futz and futz instead of just slinging it into the neighbors’ yard (they’ve moved…and not because we pelt them with carrion). Normally, negative things roll off me, but not this week. They are eating into my flesh!
It reminds me of a science lesson on cell structure. (Actual scientists or science teachers should probably stop here…SPOILER ALERT…I’m not very good at science). We are made up of cells that are contained within semipermeable membranes. Everything in us is in the process of exchanging, absorbing, passing through. I think this applies on the grand scale, too. Even though we are solid enough to keep the insides in and the outsides out, we are permeable–we let things through.
Have you ever done the experiment where you stick a daisy or carnation in a vase filled with dyed water? Within the hour, the daisy will take on the color in which it is immersed. Or have you dyed eggs this week? We absorb, too, just like the flower or the eggshell. If I immerse myself in a world of fear and desperation, guess what starts to show on my petals?
Last night, I sat down to watch more of The Walking Dead. At the end of the first hour, Dale was dispatched by Daryl with a violently generous act…and then some dumb show about taxidermy came on. WHAAAAAT??? Only one hour of zombies??? I checked the cable guide and discovered that it was true…no more walkers for me. I flipped over to “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and enjoyed two hours of pleasantly delightful British pensioners opening themselves to life in Jaipur. Ahhhhhhhh.
Permeability has its good side, too. If Carlos gets the giggles, I am likely to get the giggles. When the birds sing outside my window in the morning, my heart lifts up. A woman humming at the salad bar puts a song in my head and hours later I am whistling the same tune.
So today I am going to soak up some sun, laugh with my friends, read a book. I can clean my crossbow another day.
Have you experienced permeability this week? Was it positive or negative? What did you do to shake the negative?
What a time for you to ask this question! 🙂 Today is Good Friday in Holy Week. Today Christians like me go to the grave with Jesus Christ and accept culpability for what happened to him – meaning we believe this is not just a historic event, it’s our guilt too – and then, in the wonder of Easter, we experience the profound grace of being forgiven and raised up to a new future and brilliant hope for life, for love, for each other and for the world around us. The intensity of it is so strong it actually DISCOURAGES permeability, in a way, because it’s just SO MUCH to process. Trying to stay open, to experience ALL of it (even the painful parts, maybe ESPECIALLY the painful parts) makes all the rest so much more real, more valid, more true. So am I permeable this week? I’m trying. Is it positive? It’s exhausting, painful, wonderful, glorious, awe-ful (full of awe!), and majestic. On Sunday I will be tired. And very, very, very, very grateful. And then begins the real task, which is to take the compassionate, loving energy of Easter and move it with me out into the rest of the year.
I was snarled at by a newly minted PhD at work because I’d advanced his samples – but he TOLD my co-worker what to do, to which I replied “telling her is not telling me. And you didn’t write those instructions down on your sample submission sheet.”
So, I left town, came to Habersham and am hanging out with family. And learning a shiny new phone. Or trying – it’s fun. 😀
My boys also enjoy watching the Walking Dead. They invite friends over for every episode and we order lots of pizza to go around as the zombies are simultaneously devouring their prey. (It’s pretty gross at times). The local pizza parlor expects me now as a regular returning customer for a butt load of pizza. This last time as I was waiting for our order, the young man working there enlightened me that he Is actually preparing for the zombie apocalypse! He is stockpiling ammunition and gas masks and blah, blah, blah; my mind froze into numb shock. This is just one example of why I have a social wall built up and don’t often let myself be permeable or open to others. Choose carefully what you let in.