Dealing With It

Sometimes, when I am feeling a little off, I just sort of let myself wallow in the sheer unfavorable-ness of what ever is bothering me (I say unfavorable and not bad because, if I'm being frank, I find bad to be kind of a useless term. It's lost it's punch. It makes everything sound like an exaggeration. With unfavorable, there's no pretension. No expectation that what you are going through is fundamentally worse than everyone else.).

It should be obvious, of course, that wallowing doesn't actually accomplish much, unless you consider the frantic introspective ravings of a 20 something who is way too self-reflective for her own good and the tragic loss of a half dozen cookies or so to be "much". But, somehow I've got it in my head and in my heart that wallowing is something I need, nay, deserve to do every now and then. I guess that makes sense in a weird twisted way. For someone who is consitently know as being icy, tightly woud, and uncomunicative, submitting totally to self-sorrow kind of helps me remember that I'm life. It's almost as if hating my life reminds me that I have a life - at least a life beyond a single dimension of "somewhat satisfied can't complain" - ness.

But the biggest problem I have with wallowing (despite the fact that I find it to be a very vain practice. Think about it, what could be more selfish than preoccupying your consciousness with how bad your life is.) is the fact that it only breeds more wallowing. Once you allow it passage through your mind, it is almost impossible to stop. trust me, I know.

I've only managed to find one other way of dealing with myself when things go bad. It doesn't solve any problems, it accomplishes even less than the first, but some how i always find it the most satisfying of the two. In short, I trivialize my problems. I make them the requisit tragic scene of some woefully hopeful movie that I apparently have been starring in my whole life. I turn them into laundry. I turn them into marathons of painfully bad tv shows. I turn them into the necessary "dark period" of my life, the suffering that all the greats go through, and will likewise spurn my rise to stardom as the next great American novelist. And today, I turned them into Otis Redding and Solomon Burke.

Because if they can sound so happy singing about heart break, why can't I?