This evening...my brother-in-law called..... I was chatty and light...asking him how he was doing and making a few jokes about our family reunion next week.
My father-in-law recently broke his hip but since my hub's sister phones on health status, I thought this was a social call....instead....... he wanted to tell my hub that his Dad...had taken a turn for the worse and may not live through the night.
I felt like such an asshole....I wanted to crumple up into a ball and have someone kick me out the front door and down the street.
Yeah...Ms Chit Chat...perking her way through the beginning of a serious phone call about her father's in-laws health.
Strange....but throughout the evening before the call I was thinking about outward behavior....MASKS........how we wear them....how we look to other people.......how we hide our feelings and concerns behind them.
Today I had a chat with someone....who for the second or third time this week.... told me how 98% of the time I seem happy and perky and positive.
I wanted to turn around and see who the hell he was talking about.....
At work, I battle to hold my tongue........I feel my arteries pulse with stress......I feel inadequate and bad when I say things poorly to my fellow workers or customers.... I feel rushed and aloof and insensitive to the people around me.....I see my bad habits....my desire to go completely negative at times.....I'm carrying all kinds of sorrow inside me......my mother's oscillating dementia...my poor relationship with her....trying to readjust to a partial empty nest......
...........and here's this guy telling me that to the world....... I'm happy and perky and positive.
Am I the biggest fake that ever lived or is everyone in the same boat?
And yet....when I think of myself at work today......I see...what he saw.... there's me joking and laughing with an employee..... putting on the full Gina comedy stick.
So am I .....Ms. Perky or Ms. Fucked up?
I haven't got a clue.
Wait....I'll check my driver's license.....damn.....I'm not a teenager.....does that mean....till the time I'm a dust ball....I'm going to juggle.....happy mask......private mask....social mask.....work mask.....covering a core of ........what?
Did I miss something?
Was I absent when they discussed this in Life 101.??
Don't tell me we are all gobs of emotional jello poured daily into cute little molds....round on one day...fluted on another....and packed with fruit cocktail and cool whip on special occasions.
God I wish I was my cat.....who's sleeping soundly on my desk ....without a trace of existential angst.
Wake up damn cat and feel my pain ......
............................or you ain't getting any fucking happy cat tuna with sauce tonight.
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