Some Days It Fits Like a Corset

There are days when I rise from slumber, ready to shed loose-fitting, airy bedclothes of the previous night and dawn the garments of life, feeling as if overnight I gained about 300 pounds. Perhaps, I chose the wrong thing to wear---the overtight mini versus the diaphonous caftan, the leather pants as opposed to the oversized tunic. Whatever happens, some days I wake up stuck in the bubble-head of the pupa I am trying to outgrow. Today, unfortunately for me, was ANOTHER one of thooooooose days. Apparently, I selected the corset and then asked to be laced and pulled extra tight so that my perceptions of 'life' for today were just as misguided, over-exaggerated and askew as they were in the past, reminding yet again what an exhausting process this is. Yesterday, I went to a meeting. Last night, I read the book. I read and I listen and I think----OOOOOHHHHHH that's when it happens. Yes...when I think. Will someone puhhhhhleeeez turn off the noise in there! It's as if I need a landlord, a super in my head that I can call when the noise gets too loud and just ask that it please be turned down because I cannot carry on a conversation, I cannot watch T.V., I cannnot read and most of all I cannot think! By thinking, in this sense, I mean about the good things. More and more, I learn the trick of taking that noise and turning it into beautiful music or an affirmation or a pleasant thought about the customer standing in front of me, chewing me out about something I was assumed to have failed in, pushing my 'you're not good enough' button and how their dress is pretty or their jewelry is divine. Making something good out of something bad was perhaps a gift that I once possessed as a child but have lost somewhere along the way. Nevermind the 'gift' reference, I need to remember that it is more a skill that was lost. Defending yourself against those forces in life which really and honestly told you those things---YOU are not good enough, YOU should not have been born, YOU should have earned an 'A' not a 'B+'---perhaps this constant need to defend burns out some portion of your brain that used to reverse those thoughts. The skill is lost, you grow up thinking the same repeated nonsense that someone taught you and one day in a fit of brilliant light remember....someone taught you those things. They are not true. They are thoughts. You ARE good enough. You ARE special. You ARE deserving of life and all of its love, passion and beauty. So, here is where I am---taking a bunch of shitty, old, beaten, crumbling VHS tapes (the ones with the tape actually pulling out of the sides) and erasing them. I find that that the hardest ensemble to wear---is the gaudy one I make out of that garbage in order to record the new stuff. And so it goes....