The Beautiful, The Bizarre and The Awful

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for.
~ John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

"But, umm, I don't know, you know, something's, like, crossed over in me and I can't go back, I mean I just couldn't live."
~ Thelma, from the movie "Thelma & Louise"

Life is such a strange combination of beautiful, bizarre and awful that it seems to have forced me awake at 5am on a Sunday morning and I can't figure out what else to do but write about it, so here I am.

It's bizarre to be living in a house with no furniture. It's beautiful to be up early to see the summer sun rise, but bizarre how I can't sleep lately and also am not eating properly. Quitting my job appears to have been a great diet plan, because I finally hit my Weight Watchers "Goal Weight" (hey, I am BMI-compliant for the first time in years! see hyperlink below), will now do 6 weeks of "Maintenance" and then become a "Lifetime Member," at which time I can finally stop paying the monthly fee, which will be great cuz we really can't afford it any longer.
http://www.findmybmi.com/

And I don't get much out of Weight Watchers meetings anymore anyway, since so many attendees apparently eat the highly-processed plastic Weight Watchers "food" that I just can't do, and seem to not know much about organic/natural options. But it was a little bizarre, after years of being overweight, to go to lunch on Friday with a friend who weighs about 80 pounds and be lectured about eating more, as I picked at my chicken ceasar salad.

It's awful to be giving up my cat, but beautiful to feel all this love for him, rising up even more as I let go. It's awful that an ex-boyfriend appeared in my dream last night but I refuse to feel guilty, since I didn't have any control over it! He was actually in a bit part of a play that was being put on in a park in Portland, Oregon which is somewhat bizarre because he is not an actor (so far as I know), and lives in Seattle (again, so far as I know). But it was scary and awful to worry that my husband would see him, realize who the bit-part actor was (still in the dream), and it would trigger feelings of insecurity in him and we'd fight (again). Brings to mind a great song by the LemonHeads - http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/l/lemonheads/bit_part.html

But I think I know why I dreamt it, which is kind of beautiful, how the mind can piece things together, synthesize random thoughts we have during the day into some whole new story we didn't even realize we were capable of telling: the bizarre insight I had about the "work world" while meeting my friend downtown for lunch, that all the people rushing off to their important meetings, and taking themselves and the work so seriously were really just actors on a stage in the most ridiculous and boring play ever. (No offense to any old co-workers reading this, but I just found most of it really boring.) I probably also dreamt it cuz I've had the song "Endless Love" on a loop in my head ever since my last post, and that's a song I associate with my beautiful-and-awful first love.

It's beautiful that I get to go to Seattle in August and all the siblings will be in town at the same time, to celebrate my mother's 65th birthday. But it's awful that David and I have about five business days to set up a whole new relationship with a property management company IF we don't go with renting to a friend who can only take the place in September if she can sub-lease her current apartment, an iffy prospect in what looks like a bad rental market.

And it's a bit bizarre and awful how this has changed our friendship already, is causing tensions I should have foreseen but didn't or thought we could rise above, if they happened. But to be more honest, there's tensions also because I've been giving her and her boyfriend WAY too much advice about their relationship, because I think I "know" something, because David and I did so much couples-counseling in the past.

I think there's a quote that I, of course, can't locate now, about how that's one of the most dangerous things: someone who thinks they know something. Someone who is so sure, and therefore a little bit blinded to those pieces of information she is missing for a decent view of the "whole picture." (See my other post "Robert S. McNamara's Death and The Evil of War" and maybe I should take my own advice huh?)

When I get too excited about sharing my "widsom" I sometimes cross boundaries and step on toes and this is maybe also why I'm up with anxiety at 5am, because I have to fix things with her today, as well as give away my cat. Oh my god, this is hard, have I mentioned that yet?

But David and I are still full-steam ahead with this project and we will get there, one way or another. Because in fact, when asked the question would I really turn this ship around now (if I even could), my reply was that it feels like there is no "there" to return to, it's been obliterated for me somehow. And so I keep thinking of that Thelma & Louise quote, which doesn't mean we are driving off a cliff, don't worry! Although it certainly feels like we are some days, and with weightier decisions like who the hell is going to rent from us in September, and how we'll manage the property long-distance.

I just have to believe that something is going to work out for us, but it's so awful not knowing what that will be exactly...and so I'm dwelling on the beautiful, the bizarre and the awful and it's still not even 7am, too early to wake my husband for him to distract me from my crazy thoughts, this monkey-mind that is acting up a lot lately. So maybe it's OK for me to stop being all intense and angst-ridden and go do something mundane like make a pot of coffee and sit on our balcony to listen to the birds' cacophony. Which is kind of beautiful actually. :)