The Pattern of Crappy Feelings
So my endocrinologist is making me take my temperature every day this month, and I’m learning ever so much. One, my temperature never goes up enough to indicate that eggs are in my uterus. Two, I feel especially sickly on days when my temperature dips low.
Like today. Today I was at 96.9 degrees (Is that normal? Am I dead?) and, once again, I have the between-bimonthly-periods feeling of nausea, dizziness, exhaustion. I even managed to fit in a panic attack between breakfast and lunch.
What does it mean? I try to visualize my own insides. It means… My uterus reaches out lovingly to grasp the egg it knows should be there. (Cramp.) There’s no egg. My uterus feels a chill sweep through its bones. (Low temp.) Where is the egg? My uterus is sick at the thought of having no egg to nurture. (Sick.) My uterus sheds bitter tears. (Another period.)
That’s what I think of. Sorry to be so gross. Really, though, there’s nothing gross about it. If you can watch those plastic surgery shows on TLC (which I can’t watch), then you can read about my uterus’ bloody bimonthly episodes. (Or you can skip reading them, too, like I skip the shows on TLC.)
My endocrinologist says that hormones control everything. On the one hand, I believe that he believes that because it makes for his good livelihood. (Cynicism.) On the other hand, I find myself measuring everything in my life along with my temperature. Am I nicer to my boyfriend when I reach 98 degrees? Do I wear more makeup at 79.3? It’ll take another month of record-keeping to know for sure, I think. (Mild sarcasm.) And what hormone dosage will make me perfect? We’ll wait and see what the doctor tells me. If he knows anything at all. (Carefully controlled optimism, disguised as pessimism.)
Depressing books depress me (and yet, I read).
So I’m reading The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro. And I’d like to say that I don’t know why people spend money on drugs, when it’s just as easy to borrow weird books from the library when you’re in the mood to alter your consciousness.
I’m also like to say, “Darn you, Kazuo Ishiguro, for making me rush to figure out what the hell’s going on in your book.” Although I know a lot of people who are always like, “Oh, I figured out The Sixth Sense in the first five minutes of the movie,” and “Oh, I figured out The Village five minutes before the movie started,” and “Oh, I figured out all of Agatha Christie’s mysteries five years before she was born”… I am not one of those people. All you have to do is hold up a sign that says, “This is a mystery,” and I will willfully suspend my disbelief and powers of deduction for weeks on end, until the mystery unfolds.
So don’t tell me what happens at the end of The Unconsoled unless you want me to hate you. But know that I’m reading it so very, very quickly, it’s making my head spin. It’s turning me crazy. I predict several daylight hours in bed, with book in hand, and a wet washcloth across my forehead. Oh my word, what is going to happen? No way to know until I read, read, read.
And then I turn the book over, to examine the blurb for clues, and two times it tells me the story is witty. What? No, it’s very dark and gloomy, you guys. It’s making me sad, but I have to read through.
More Measurements: Marking Time
I realized today that I mark my time with weekends, and that’s not a pleasant way to live when you work five days a week. I live weekend-to-weekend, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way.
A good way to live, I think, is project-to-project. I imagine Mick Jagger and Keith Richards live that way. (Although maybe, for them, it’s overlayed by high-to-high or drink-to-drink?) My weekend marking is overlaid by project marking, fortunately, so I really can’t complain.
Some rich people, I think, live purchase-to-purchase.
So many unrich people live paycheck-to-paycheck, or assistance-to-assistance, or abuse-to-abuse, or high-to-high, overlaid with crime-to-crime-in-order-to-pay-for-the-highs.
How do you live? And do you feel lucky?
