busy bee

So, I have discovered this week that the problem with "keeping oneself busy," is that one is always busy.

And thus, tired.

It's actually been an OK week. Certainly full of ups and downs and a daily cry, the intensity of which has been downgraded from Red Alert ("Severe") to Yellow Alert (merely "Elevated"). Early in the week I pretty constantly felt like I was pushing down a giant knot in my stomach, but by today I've actually been able to get so lost in office chaos that I've been able to feel normal for a whole day at a stretch. The hard parts still come when somebody calls and asks how I'm doing -- so if you ask, and I say I'm fine, it just means I don't want to go there right now. I'm sort of reserving it as a topic for conversations that last more than 15 minutes, so that I actually have the chance to get through the knot that comes up, instead of having it get stuck there floating around in my stomach like I swallowed a beehive.

Because the hardest part of the day is still coming home, I've been happy to have plans the last few nights to connect with friends. But today I found myself totally, utterly exhausted (to the point of almost crying when my last client actually showed up, and then again when I ran into her mother in Target and was trying to gently, then firmly, suggest that she call me next week instead of trying to get a session out of my while I was buying shampoo).

Anyhow, I realized how much easier it was to spend time alone when I was in a relationship, because I knew that at the end of the day, I was going to connect with someone who wanted to hear all my stupid stories and trivial thoughts, and would stay on the phone while I brushed my teeth. Before we started dating, Goat asked for my phone number and I told him that I hated talking on the phone (someone, please, teach me how to flirt). Well, it turns out I was wrong, and in the last 2 1/2 years, other than weeks where one of us was really out of town (like, in the woods), I think we barely went a handful of days without saying goodnight, often talking for an hour or more. Now, to get some type of human connection, I have to make plans, go out, initiate. And I forgot how exhausting it is to be always talking about something with people because they're really not interested in the volumes of nothing that you really feel like talking about.