When Mia Freedman wrote in her Sunday Column the other week about not finding her massage experience relaxing, I not only laughed, I deeply related.
I actually penned a diary entry about my own virginal massage experience (as in, my first ever massage, not a massage of my vagina, just to make that clear) where I agonised and anguished over whether I was the only person in the world to come out of a massage feeling more tense than when I went in.
So I secretly felt that Mia was offering me a ‘big ups sister solidarity’ message about neurotic and anxiety ridden tendencies, even if in her mind she was simply writing entertaining stories for her readers.
But whatever is in her mind is not what matters here, because this is a blog about me.
And I am slowly going certifiable.
Now if I were a mommy blogger from America, I would just pop a few pills. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I love drugs. I was just amused by the fact that when uber blogger The Blogess had a mental moment in the toilets at some mummy fest, she tweeted about it, and before you could say ‘narcotics anonymous’ someone had turned up to her cubicle door with a few barbiturates. Fucking hilarious. Check out any mommy blogs from this virtual clique and you will soon find a reference to popping some kind of pill. God Bless America, land of the free.
(funniest example to date is when another uber blogger posted about her insomnia her loyal follows flooded the comments page, casual as you like, with drug advice)
Sticking to stereotypes, if the same thing happened at a mummy mob here some shelia would bash the door in and tell ya to pull ya fuckin’ head in before she knocks some sense intaya , then she would shove a bruski in your hand and tells ya to smash it down ya gullet and quit ya whingin.
Perhaps I would do well to choose a camp and call it home.
Instead, I am taking a somewhat less conventional path for the dealing with brutal blows of life, whereby I walk in continuous cerebral circles to the point of dizziness and delusion by day, then put an end to it all by hitting the bottle by night.
To give an example: when talking to my Fairy Godmother recently (I don’t want to call her my therapist in case you all think I’ve got The Crazy and that I should be on drugs) we hit upon the all together alarming notion that You Cant Always Get What You Want.
Now I should mention at this point that my Fairy Godmother is a suspected Buddhist. (I say ‘suspect’ in much the same way as how in the 1950s when people believed in equality and freedom they were ‘suspected’ of communism).
So as I agonised over feelings of being wronged, she sprouted head fucking ideas such as “make no judgements” and “you cant expect people to act the way you want them to”, and then suggested the all together crazy notion of ‘letting go’.
My initial, very mature, response was to argue on the first front, ‘why the fuck not?’ and on the second, ‘why the fuck should I’, before settling in to my lax interpretation of ‘letting go’, whereby I let loose a bunch of competing thoughts to run ragged rings around my head.
It goes something like this:
ME: So if people never do what I think they should, only what is rewarding for them, doesn’t that mean people are self-serving assholes?
MYSELF: Well, isn’t it self-serving of me to think they should do what I want?
I: But what if I just want them to be nice to me?
ME: Maybe that just means you cant accept people for how they are?
MYSELF: Who wants to accept people that hurt you?
I: I do
ME: I don’t
MYSELF: Just let it go
I: How?
ME: Just STOP thinking. Look at that tree over there, those colours…
MYSELF: Isnt that just thinking about looking at the tree?
I: Shut the fuck up
ME: I don’t get this
MYSELF: Neither do I
I: Me either
And on it goes ad finitum where I do not just drive myself crazy, but any friends, neighbours, relatives, or random strangers that will listen to me have this dialogue with myself.
But you will be happy to know that when I did see the person who I felt had done me wrong, thus sparking the internal rant, I simply talked about how I felt and asked for an apology (Fairy Godmother guiding principle #8: “I am free to want, but you are free to say no”) and she understood me and happily gave me one, which means I was free to ask, and lucky for her, she said yes.
I mean that’s right, isn’t it?
There’s a reason why they call them “Mother’s Little Helpers”…
Jeepers, everyone’s going a little bit crazy lately, eh?…
I think I know what you’re about. It reminds me of that saying that expecting the world to treat you nicely because you’re a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you’re a vegetarian…
Thats great! I love it. And as it happens, I kinda DO expect that bull to leave me alone, what the hell did I ever do to it? Eat its fucking vegie garden?!
hehehe i like that….. internal rants are always interesting…
Interesting, in that kinda ‘annoying as fuck’ way!
Oh my God, I had the EXACT same conversation with ME, MYSELF, and I… except it was a bird not a tree. And “I” yelled at them about how awesome I am and asked how can people not want to please “me”? At which point MYSELF totally called me self-centred and stormed into a corner. “I” then barrated ME for not being more “sensitive”. I then got very confused and consumed a beer (Canadians also believe in Beer not Barbituates… I’m making a t-shirt that says that).
Love your posts.
I’m buying that t-shirt
Yes, the internal banter can drive you mad. Glad your fairy godmother has helped you find a way to move on. Good on you for asking for an apology and allowing that to move you on.
Yes, but I believe it was the granting of the apology that really did the trick. I’m no monk thats for sure…
Wait. So I *wasn’t* supposed to get my vagina massaged? I knew that masseuse in the back of the van was acting suspicious.
Or it could be that yr easy, I mean, I don’t want to cast harmful aspersions against someone more noble than Mother Teresa, but all I had to do get you ‘come over’ to my blog was show you a bit of link love….
[…] until this point I thought drugs, alcohol and Fairy Godmothers were the only […]
[…] general behaviour continued until I found I was due for my next appointment with my Fairy Godmother who wisely pointed out that most minds greatly enjoy problem solving and were in fact built for such […]