Her Daily Meds

When I started playing around with art, in my mid-twenties, I used those bottles of acrylic paint that you buy at a crafts store. I bought the cheapest brushes possible, the kind meant for children, with glittery plastic handles. I bought small canvases, used the school's photocopier to grab great images for collages, and probably used Elmer's Glue to stick things into place. I had no money, so I spent as little money as possible. Looking back, I find this absolutely fascinating. To think - once upon a time, I just made art, and didn't know what the hell I was doing, and was doing everything "wrong," and - oh my god - it didn't matter . Everything I made over ten years ago has held up just fine. The colors are great, the collages have not yellowed. The art itself, well, a bit maudlin, but from an infrastructure point my ignorance of the art world presented zero problems. This is important to remember because in my advanced age, because I have become a gear...

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...

Overwhelmament is my new noun/pet/state of existence, and It has so much mass that Its floppy ass is wrapped around both of my shoulders. I imagine this butt to be the blue of a cloudy October sky, and that tiny legs and feet are likewise slung around me. Overwhelmament has tiny arms that are  clinging to me by my temples, which explains the pervasive headache. I have no idea where Its head is because it is mostly looming behind me, but I assume it is somewhere up Its ass. It occasionally giggles, maliciously and at a grating high pitch. I think when It looks up - to share a laugh with the Universe at my expense - it has a banana-shaped face, pink eyes, and three scraggly cartoon hairs. I think Overwhelmament lives at my desk, waiting for me to check my email. I wish I knew a better way to deal with Overwhelmament, which I never really had a problem with in any other workplace. I like my workplace, but it has some issues. One of them is that Overwhelmament comes with the packag...

I can't wait for menopause. I don't really know what it is, but I believe it means my uterus* will stop spitting out eggs, and along with them my sense of emotional balance. Thanks to the mysterious science of hormones, I become somewhat unhinged around one week per month, albeit in quiet ways. You can tell if you find me, eyes brimming with tears, as I watch the news, read the news, or am told about any news. Which, yes, qualifies every fucking day since November 11, 2016. But it gets a lot worse for a few days before my monthly bleed-out. I regularly cry. I regularly suffer from a short temper. Even though I am close to 40 and have a single strand of silver hair, I get a case of the goddamned pimples. It is not fun for me, or my partner. The only upside is that I also feel very creative, which sort of pairs nicely with the horrific insomnia I also endure during my body's pre-funk. Assuming I choose to get out of bed. I usually do not. Which brings me to the intense ...

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...