Why can't I be you?

Envy is thin because it bites but never eats.   - Spanish Proverb

My husband puts up with a lot. Chaos usually follows in my wake, because I tend to make and ignore messes, distracted endlessly by the many shiny things in the world. I am disorganized and frivolous while he keeps the bills paid and the accounts balanced. He sees work to be done and I see books to be read. I hope I’m amusing enough to make up for what I lack. I try his patience in many ways, but right now I think Benedict Cumberbatch may top the list. 

I am obsessed with BC. If his name appears in the credits, I’m there. Now whenever I mention a movie I want to see, Dear Husband responds with wary suspicion. My Pinterest account has been overtaken by photos and videos of Benedict. I await the return of Sherlock with an intense anticipation that most people probably reserve for the birth of their children. I’m nowhere near the worst or wackiest out there. Thanks to fans far more obsessed than I, there is an ecstatic proliferation of Tumblr accounts offering an endless supply of photos and gifs capturing every performance, public appearance, change of hair color, and shift of expression. This is the standard by which I measure my sanity - at least I have not opened a Tumblr account and started creating my own screen caps. I have, however, considered creating a Sherlock themed Christmas tree.

Dear Husband  probably thinks this is my ultimate fantasy: 

source: http://imsooochangeable.tumblr.com/post/28980471547

 

Yeah, well, someone who went on and on and on and on and ON about Amanda Tapping really shouldn’t be so judgey.

I think celebrity obsessions originate in a part of the building you don’t usually visit, but if you give any thought to the matter you’ll probably discover something unexpected and possibly unwelcome about yourself, and it often has less to do with sex than with other desires.

So yeah, he definitely has 1000 watt sex appeal - beautiful eyes, tousleable auburn/blond/black curls, swoony voice -  but there is another side to this.

Really.

And if it wasn’t a teensy bit of a downer, would I even bother telling you?

So here goes, I have a silly fantasy of a long, meandering conversation in which I ask him endless questions about acting and writing, and what’s his take on the NSA/GCHQ business, and who are his favorite poets and how the hell does anyone get into character anyway (something I’ve never understood, as I can barely get into my own character). Just me and my imaginary friend chatting about creativity and art and, I suppose, the meaning of it all, over tea at a nice little bohemian cafe on some London side street. I wouldn’t even care if he smoked, but he wouldn’t, because that’s the sort of gentleman he is.

He’s so very clever. I like clever people. Clever people make me happy. I get high on clever. In interviews Benedict comes across as intelligent and eloquent. He navigates his ocean of crazed admirers with grace, poise and humor. He does charity work (check out this blog by a young girl with Cystic Fibrosis and tell me he isn’t a sweetie). He did a series of videos with the pianist James Rhodes and what’s that - he can play piano, too? He survived a car jacking in South Africa. He taught English in a Tibetan Monastery. He can go from elegant to charming, to dorky in seconds without any apparent embarrassment. He’s adventurous. He’s athletic. He’s humble. He’s exotic.

And his acting - I think he may be channeling the gods. He delivers, as one writer put it “ a level of acting almost messianic in its quality.” Oh yes. He so completely embodies Sherlock that I’m convinced the character now exists as a real person in an alternate reality. Imagine the level of talent and dedication it would take to get to that point, so it seems to flow from you as naturally as sunshine falling over water.  

And then when I thought he couldn’t get any more amazing, he does this: Benedict Cumberbatch Sends A Message To The Government Through The Paparazzi

And this.

And then he gives an interview like this, and I think I may cry from the sheer joy of witnessing someone talk using polysyllabic words.

I’m in awe, with a side of hero worship.

And I’m so very jealous.

I wish I could go back to my 15 year old self and say - this, this is the person you should take as your role model. Keep to this and you might get somewhere and be somebody. You might be something more than the chaotic, chronically distracted person who has never created anything admirable, or noble, or beautiful, who instead stumbles from day to day in a state of existential confusion with the vague sense of having missed the point.

So, at the end of that long conversation in the fictional cafe, I imagine him saying: “So what have you done with your life lately? Hmm. I’m just going to take this BAFTA now and go help some disadvantaged youth. Laters." ‘Course he would never say that. He’s too much of a gentleman.

It's better when it's just about sex.

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd.

I wonder if I’m doing okay? Sometimes I’m not sure. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m that in touch with myself. Maybe I could send myself an email. My thoughts have been soggy. When we passed the anniversary marker for Firecracker’s surgery, and when I remember it, my stomach clenches its fist and looks balefully at me. What were you thinking? To put your child through that? And for what? Nothing!

I feel death wafting around me. Perhaps I will die this year. I don’t want to die. I’m really opposed to it. My nephew, my friend. My friend. Is it easier to meet death deliberately instead of waiting for it to snare you? Why did she feel that dying was better than living? I miss her. And what about me? I think of estrogen. Perhaps I should have gone on tomoxifin. Maybe estrogen is the enemy. I’m overweight, so I’m even producing more of it. I’m practically swimming in it. Perhaps it’s wreaking havoc even as I sit here so indecisive. Perhaps I’ll die from indecisiveness. And then there’s Dear Husband. Whenever he has a flair up I wish I could peek into his bladder and make sure all the cells are behaving, no proliferation. Everyone’s health panics me. What is going on that I cannot see? Death and his demons, where are the creeping?

It’s amazing what plastic surgeons can do with reconstruction, it really is. But my new breast will always be a…a… construction. It is better than cancer, but it is still this alien sculpture perching on my chest. How I wish they could have done the TRAM. I’m still sad about that. I’ve never intended to have another child, but the knowledge that I could never nurse one if I did makes me cry. Isn’t that weird?

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not doing what I was intended to do. The problem is that I have no idea what I was intended to do. You know, that idea that God has a plan with a place for everything and everything in its place. Do I even believe that? What do I believe? How can I believe? When I think of death, it seems the most preposterous suggestion that we would go somewhere after. It pretty much looks like a blank wall: bye bye. But there are these stories, this scripture that says otherwise. I find it hard to swallow.

I find it hard to chew on most things Christian these days. The claims, the glib prayers, the churchy stuff, the inspirational books, the enthusiasm, the dull dull tumbling of words. The bright shininess and maudlin spectacle of it all. The music. Oh god the awful sameness and bouncy bouncy of it. Sometimes it seems that if I jumped in the river it would come up to my ankles, so shallow the water is full of silt.

And then there are these longings that I don’t believe in: to home school my children, or at least to be a SAHM there when school is over, when the bus drops them off. The mom who can visit the class with the cupcakes and a story to read, who may actually someday meet the other mothers whose children my daughters spend more time with than with me. It seems so out of balance, but who am I kidding? My salary is essential and always will be, even after we pay off the cars and the student loan. Besides, I can’t organize my own time. I’m useless at it. How can I organize anyone else’s?

There, I’ve written it out of me for now. Tomorrow Firecracker is having a birthday party. I’m afraid no one will come. That happened one year, or nearly. Only one child showed up. I’ve tried calling, and the moms either don’t speak English or act as if they are reluctant to admit that the live in this universe, the universe with the invitation, my child, their child, and their common classroom.

More on my adventures in dyspepsia later. The title of this post, btw, is from Black Adder, and it gave me the day's first laugh. If you aren't familiar with Black Adder, you need to correct that deficiency right away before it becomes a way of life.

No Need to Panic: Let Me Do It for You

You know the saying "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? I guess it’s supposed to be inspiring, but today it came to mind during a wash of anxiety. We have plenty of good reasons to be anxious—we still have medical expenses to pay off after insurance, Dear Husband needs a deviated septum fixed, I still need to find a new psych to check my apparently not functioning too well meds, I need new glasses and dental work, Dear Husband needs to pass his teacher certification test and find a new job. And I’m, well, wherever. Standing in the limbo of 40something looking back at what looks like 40 years wandering the desert and looking forward to what may be more of the same. That gives me plenty of anxiety. I think it’s supposed to be a symptom of ADD that you tend to drift, all your goals ephemeral or gauzy and indistinct. It’s not as if you can just shake yourself and say, “Well, what do you really want?” I don’t know—a happy family, fulfilling work, meaning, world peace and the end of suffering. What do those look like broken down into actual goals? Sheesh. A million different decisions every day. I start to hyperventilate just thinking about it. It’s one thing to say “One step at a time.” Yeah, right. One step. Oh, what’s that over there? Wait, where was I? Another step. This doesn’t look right. Was I supposed to go right or left? Another step. Oh for pete’s sake I forgot to bingety bing. Another step. Jeepers, I’m tired already. The only thing I can be certain about is that I won’t miss the exit.

I always wanted to be somebody

I'm having one of those "What have I done with my life?" interludes. And then I ask myself, "What will I be when I grow up?" Oh damn, I am grown up.

As I mentioned before, it kind of freaks me out that I can now say "twenty-five years ago" and know that I was fully sentient at that date. "A quarter of a century ago, when I was in high school, before the advent of ATMs, DVDs and personal computers . . . when the woolly mammoth still roamed the earth. I've spent a lot of time trying to grow up, and I'm not so sure about the results.

I've never had a lot of ambition. I didn't so much navigate as float along wherever the current took me. Well, let me qualify that, I tended to buck the current, but that just meant that eventually I drifted off in some other, less mainstream direction for a while. Still, I had some ideas about who I was and what kind of life I would have. It turns out they were all off base.

For instance, I thought I was gay. I was pretty certain about that for a while. I also loathed the very idea of marriage, which seemed like such an outmoded institution. I couldn't figure out why that needed to be imported into homosexual unions. I was agnostic. Sure, I loved beautiful cathedrals and Christian art and so on, but if anything could destroy my faith, it was your average Christian. So, of course, I hated organized religion, which seemed to have organized for the sole purpose of putting republicans in office and ranting about abortion and sodomy. I was certain, beyond certain, that I would never have children. I didn't like them. I didn't get all moony when someone showed up with a baby. I didn't think they were cute, or the epitome of innocence, or any of that. I didn't understand people got all woolly-brained over them. I was fairly certain that I would always live in New York City, maybe Chicago or San Francisco at a stretch. I wasn't provincial enough to think that the world outside of NYC was not worth noticing--I just couldn't imagine living without the brownstones and Central Park, the theater and opera and the Village.

And here I am, straight, married with children, a Christian living in the same state where I grew up.

My previous self is practically a stranger. She doesn't really feel like home, but the current self feels like a default, a garment I happened across and it fit, but it isn't my style and it doesn't do a thing for me. Sadly, I am not myself around, well, pretty much anyone here outside of Dear Husband. I'm always being careful what I say at work, pretending that I'm just as pious and conservative and Reformed as they are. I don't know many other people here, so I tend to assume the mask of parenthood appropriate to my environment. Just your neighborhood mom here, listening to the local Christian radio station and standing behind good old fashioned family values. I'm not sure what happened to my more brash and defiant self. The protester. The one who dressed exactly as she wished, who liked to shock, to provoke, to push the envelope. I guess I still question everything. I just keep it on the down-low. I'm still restless. And you know, 42 years of being restless is kind of exhausting.