Sitting here, about to work on editing my chapter. I’m just hoping my headache will go away a little more. Today, I feel bad. Headache. I slept poorly last night. Sadness is swamping me. It feels better than the emotional void, the sense that I have on some days that nothing can touch me anymore. Giving up caffeine this summer has helped enormously with a lot of my physical and emotional symptoms, but some days are still rough. In a sense, the way I feel now is the way PMS symptoms are described as happening for most women. I never had them before the last few years. So, in a sense I’m grateful that my body is functioning as expected, even if I feel more emotionally up and down nowadays.
I’m sitting with the bed desk with the backrest pillow, invalid style, I call it. It’s a comfort on my days in-between teaching, after class prep, to treat myself like an invalid, because I feel like one. This is the roughest time of the semester. I happened to scroll through emails, and this day last semester. Oh, my goodness. This is where things fall apart. Relatively speaking, there has been very little drama so far this semester. So, if a little recalcitrance and some new teaching techniques outside of my comfort zone are what I’m confronting this semester, I’m pretty lucky. It’s an opportunity to grow, and it’s not as painful as growing experiences other semesters at this point, about 2/3 through.
I like it when it gets to this point in my cycle and I can feel my feelings again, even though they’re sad feelings. I also get this languid feeling in my body that compels me to relax. It’s the only time I ever really feel I have permission to just rest my body.
I have been thinking about whether I’m going to get the booster shot. I would like to, as soon as school is done, if the booster for my vaccine is locally available. Once classes are finished for the semester, I will be just a little after my six-month mark.
Earlier this week I fixed a problem in WordPress, and I was so happy. Every time something breaks I get scared that’s going to be it. Updates change things, the plugins make things break. Not only did I fix my widget areas, but I added a new one for my archives at the bottom of every page. It makes me so happy to see it. Not all my entries are public yet, only about a third of them, but I see my history in one journal, and it gives me a sense of peace. Since 2003.
I have written all kinds of things in this journal. Complaints about people at work. Things that were fine to do when no one was on the Internet 18 years ago, but are not good at all now. So, that’s why so many entries are still private. That, and I have tons of one-shot photo entries where the photos are missing. Those are so frustrating to see. It’s a matter of just finding the photo and plugging it back in, though.
I have that Must it be? feeling right now. Especially when I look down the years back to 2003, to when I first watched Possession, thought about what it would be like to be a literature graduate student. I tell myself it just wouldn’t have worked back then. I wasn’t emotionally ready. But I just hate that. I really do. I feel grief about it. I could have made things work. If I had just spent a couple of hours on the Internet, I could have figured out that I could have gotten a job at Sam Houston or become a barista like I always wanted anyway, stayed at the apartment with Henry. But I never even tried to look. Nathan and I could have had a little more space to work things out before we got married. Must it have been? I call what I feel for the past nostalgia, but it’s not, it’s this. I guess it’s regret, just waves of regret. If I had started on that journey back then, I could be established in my career now. I tell myself that the fifteen years doing science were a span to see another part of the world, develop other skills. But I don’t know that that’s the case.
I’m sitting here with Gertrude and a cup of warm Earl Grey tea with milk and lavender syrup. My girl reminds me of Korea. She reminds me of studying for comps.
Last night while I couldn’t sleep I researched traveling to Shanghai. I have been really afraid that because of the pandemic I will never be able to travel to China in my lifetime. But I realized that’s not a reasonable fear. China has a big tourism business like Europe and anywhere else developed, and as soon as things are under control, they’re going to want to open their borders again. I tried to console myself with that thought. I mean, honestly, there’s probably literally nowhere you can travel outside of the country right now without some complications. China is at the same place everyone else is about it.
Sunlight-Colored Roses 