Content Note: There are curse words in this post. If you’d like a version of this post without curse words, well, Sweetie Pie, you is shit outta luck. There is also a reference to a gruesome self-harm fantasy, toward the end of this overlong piece. Plus a book recommendation and a photo of a super cute dog.

I feel the need to apologize. And with it the need to justify my absence. I know this makes for a bad apology, but I’ve also been thoroughly immersed in the belief that an unexcused absence is … well, you know, inexcusable. So, if one checks out, drops the ball, retreats, doesn’t meet expectations and thus disappoints others and feels bad about it and wants to make it all right, then that personage, that disappointing lump of humanity, should just say, sorry, I let you down, I will try not to do it again, though I might because you never know based on this variable and that, meaning there’s context, but this is about you not me, so goes the rule of best amend making, excepting of course my regret and my reparations and my learning from how all this came to be, but you don’t need to know all that, unless you’re my boss or my teacher or the jury service and need a note from my doctor or, somewhat ironically, you’re my doctor and need at least 24 hours notice and a good excuse or a note from another doctor or I’m going to really have to pay!

I do apologize for that extra-super-fuck-long of a runaway sentence. I should edit that stream of consciousness crap, but I don’t have the energy and I guess I’m just not that sorry, truth be told.

Truth be told. Ha!

I am a much better liar than I profess to be. I’ve said more than once that I’m not a good liar, but that’s, of course, a lie. I do usually get caught with the straight-out lie. Historically, the consequences of my getting caught have at been spectacular and coincidental. But lying by omission, keeping secrets, deflecting, minimizing, etc. —I’ve long done all that quite well. And, of course, lying to myself is where I really shine. Maybe you knew that already. Ok, sorry I wasted your time.

Is it actually possible to waste someone’s time? Time is … a phenomenon, a dimension, a construct … Time is hard to define. Time is not something owned, stored, traded, manipulated, used inappropriately. It is relative and unstoppable. It can’t be stolen. Or replaced. There are no time byproducts. No barrels of toxic time waste buried next to vats of gravity sludge.

I’m sorry. I know I lost you all with that last paragraph. It’s just that I was raised thoroughly steeped in the religion of WasteNot and I’m having a hell of a time giving myself some goddamn, ever-loving slack! I know what I want to get done and what I need to get done and I’m getting more and more accepting — if that’s the right word and I’m just very recently not entirely sure it is — of what I can do, but I don’t know what to do about them not syncing up. My ducks are not all in rows ready for the spooning. I am sinning. Wasting resources. Time. Money. Smarts. Food. Energy. The Venial and Mortal Sins of WasteNot.

And my penance is …?

I’m a Jew raised by ex-Catholics, so I’m entrenched in guilt. And the need to punish myself. I’m not a masochist. Not literally. Ain’t no sexual pleasure involved. In fact, I’ve had me a couple of coital headaches and unholy sheeeiiit do those suck ass! (And not in a good way. No, not at all.)

If only I could quantify my energy into discreet utensil units, then all would be well and there would be no waste. Right? Sporks feel more my speed than spoons. I need at least the illusion of some stabbing power, some targeted selectivity. And the spork is my talisman for my time inside — my 8 days in the mental hospital with chair yoga, music therapy games, crosswords, and no psychotherapy whatsoever.

In sorry, but I just don’t get Spoon Theory for myself. In practice.

For example, I had some trouble walking yesterday, but my trusty Rollator got me both to and from my long-awaited Pulmonology appointment, which was a lot of questions and ordering of tests, which was what I expected. My one big thing for the day complete, I didst doth rest and so didst then perform solely duties as needs must of a less taxing variety and verily not requiring myself to be fully upright and locked in.

Yet today, I can barely get out of bed. Last time this happened I started looking at folding wheelchairs. Wanting a wheelchair brings up so much! Fear, sadness, money concerns, flooring issues, questions, more questions, fear …

Damn, woman! Stop! Ok, first I’m sorry about the “didst doth” stuff. I had fun, though. Second, Spoon Theory is great for many. I just can’t make it work for me. Total spork-less loser. Also, I’m getting a lot of internal backlash for revealing I spent 8 days in a mental hospital — and maybe even more for revealing I did not receive promised care while there — but also for having not yet written about all that which I both very much do and do not want to do.

And I lied about having trouble walking today. Actually, that was last week, when I started writing this here thing.

This week it’s trigeminal neuralgia with migraine plus neck pain and immobility that’s got me down. Way down.

Trigeminal neuralgia, aka facial pain, aka suicide disease.

In addition to every other shitty malady I have, I have to have this goddamn, motherfucking, cocksucking nerve pain with the triggering up the ass nickname of “suicide disease” too?!

(Those are the only swear words I know. In English, that is. Entschuldigung. ¡Lo siento!)

I think this post may be about fear. Have I written about fear before? I’m afraid of repeating myself. I’m also afraid I repeat myself a lot. And yet, not nearly as much as I need to. I’m afraid of not making sense. Of not knowing that I’m not making sense. That no one will tell me that I’m not making sense.

Or that they will and I won’t understand.

My mother used to laughingly say that I was a very smart person with no common sense. She was herself a very smart person. I used to believe that statement of hers was more loving than insulting. Reasonable and accurate. Nah. Sorry, Mom. You were laughing off my trust in myself, my ability to learn from my mistakes, and replacing it with fear that I lacked the basic tools most people have in common and take for granted.

I forgive you, Mom. You were raised on fear. People fed off your fear most of your 60 years.

If you are right now thinking of that FDR line, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” please know that I am harboring homicidal feelings for you.

I’m sorry! That’s another lie. Hyperbole-style. That FDR line makes no sense out of context. Look it up. I dare you! However, it has been quoted ad nauseum for decades with no hint to its original context, so that it’s truly no wonder so many jump to it when good old fear comes up for discussion. Or dismissal.

I’m sorry, but autocorrect filled in “God old fear” and that tickled my figurative funny bone.

At one point during my lumbar puncture (aka spinal tap), indescribable nerve pain shot down my left buttock and the full length of my left leg. I alerted the doc, moving only my mouth, eyelids, and all necessary for continued breathing for fear of making it worse. Doc said “tickled” my sciatic nerve. Nope, sorry, tickled is not the appropriate word here!

Fear is useful. Fear keeps people alive. Fright leads to flight or fright. Or freezing. (Sorry, that’s where the rhyme ends in English.) Make a goddamn decision! Now! Do something!

I don’t know what to do and I’m really sorry about that.

Have I chosen to freeze out of fear when it’s really not an f-word situation at all?

I’ve had this here blog for over a year now. Been thinking about it for I don’t know how long before that. I have plans for promoting it. Right after I finish this other task. And then there’s that other stuff I gots to do. Meanwhile, this thing and that thing came up. Far higher priority! Like, obv!

Sorry, but shouldn’t that be ob-v?

Self-promotion is so very hard for me. It’s always been a challenge. Was a easier when I was running an artistic company I started. Then I could promote the rest of the company and share the spotlight with them. I do enjoy receiving recognition for my work. But just me, on my own in the PR spotlight …

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I cannot continue. My internalized mother does not approve of the syntax of that last unfinished sentence of the last paragraph.

Oh, how I do enjoy punishing myself for my perceived transgressions! Probably why my mother has come up in this post, as she was likewise gifted in this realm. And really, truly, that is where I waste my energies the most, convincing myself of my lack of worth as a human being. Hurting myself in various ways — I am a rather creative person, you know (humble brag) — for somehow not deserving what I would not deny those I like the least. I know this sentiment to be true, as I honestly wanted the best, compassionate treatment for he who some might call my worst enemy.

I’m sorry I’m not more prolific with posts. And that I haven’t finished and posted so many others, temporarily lost in the fog of my gray matter. Or maybe lying in wait in a white matter lesion? Sorry, that metaphor doesn’t really work. Or does it? Not demyelinating lesions, by the way. Ruled out MS years ago. Just migraines. Occasionally, reality-bending migraines. Sanity-questioning migraines. Forgot how to tell time migraines. Fantasies of halfway scalping myself and then pulling individual hairs through the gap knowing that wouldn’t stop the migraine probably but it would be one hell of a distraction and might just get close to equaling the agony if only I had the strength and the will to do it migraines.

Oh, and also maybe lupus. Tricky wolf.

I have no excuse. I have every excuse. I tried to read an article or blog post or column or whatever on what brain fog feels like, written by a fellow chronically ill foggy brain-haver while in that unclear cognitive state, but I couldn’t do it. Yup, I was too foggy!

Last week I thought maybe this post would be about burnout, as defined by the most excellent and decidedly feminist book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, and I would disclose some past events in which I have only now realized I have not completed the stress cycle. In part, because of lying to myself. And others. By keeping secrets. Out of fear. Not the useful kind.

Anyway … maybe I’ll start that big PR campaign next month, when the big sale I haven’t written about yet is final.

If you are right now thinking about recommending a handy-dandy webinar or webpage or any such thing that will guide me through “just a few easy steps” and then maybe a follow-up task or three, then please know that I’m feeling a return of those homicidal tendencies, as it seems you have not understood at all what I’ve been writing here.

And, for that, I’m not sorry.