Her Daily Meds

In the grand scheme of things, I realize my job is not my be-all end-all of existence. Or maybe it is. I don't know; there seems to be a lot of conflicting cultural perspectives on it, which have all carved out unrelenting but endlessly confusing channels in my brain - much like water dripping over stalactites over time, it's a drippy, bumpy mess up there. I am carved to believe that jobs don't matter. I am carved to believe that you are a fool to believe that jobs really don't matter. I am also a lady, which means that both sides are true and are accompanied by intense lady-pressure.  Sometimes from actual ladies (the kind who exist in the world outside my brain, saying and doing things), sometimes from pretend ladies (the ideal kind I constantly fret I'm supposed to be like, because they are much smarter, cooler, prettier, classier, more emotionally and mentally resilient than I, etc.). If my brain could talk, which I suppose it does if we can consider writing s...

I am discarding the notion that I must begin this writing by justifying the act of this writing. That is the usual weight around my neck; that sad and guilty and womanish feeling, suspecting that surely there is something more important I ought to be doing. I am not sure where I absorbed as Truth that everything - literally, everything in the world, howsoever intangible yet existent - mysteriously supersedes my own well being and interests. I usually blame my mother. This is probably unfair. She was once one of 14 children on a farm in Iowa. Only twelve survived. The oldest died of something historical and dramatic like cholera in 1920fucking whenever, never crossing paths with my WWII-era mom. But as a child, she swept up the remains of her youngest sibling - a toddler - after the little one was run over by a truck: my drunk grandfather didn't see her crawling in the driveway. Yes, there are many questions raised by this story. But its real point is, she is a magically stoic wo...