This is now offically the diary of a mad housewife. Or bad housewife. In my case, one and the same.
I came out of my PBJ and E! Channel-induced coma long enough today to look at myself in the mirror. It was not a pretty sight. I’ve been wearing the same sweats for a couple of days now, I haven’t combed my hair in even longer — much less washed or cut it — and I not only drove my son to school wearing my blue moon flannel pajamas and purple house slippers, I went into the store wearing them and stared down the nervous girl at the counter, daring her to laugh.
I wasn’t just doing the best post-Halloween bag lady impersonation you’ve ever seen, I was doing the best crazy bag lady impersonation.
Only, I wondered as I stared at this strange, wild, and yet weirdly emotionless woman in my mirror — is it really an impersonation? Am I just two cats away from a hoarders episode? Are my in-laws having quiet interventions with my hubby behind my back? Is my hubby really working late, or is he sitting in a parking lot, afraid to come home to find me wheeling a shopping cart down the street and picking up old jack-o-lanterns.
You think I’m kidding, don’t you?
But I think I’m that close …..
Oh, damn, I hate being unemployed. It has nothing to do with the paycheck — although that would certainly be nice — and everything to do with the purpose.
I have no more purpose in my life.
I know, I know, I’m wringing out a romance novel for NaNoWriMo, but it just seems like more work than it’s worth. I can’t really write the great Crappy Boss expose I want to write because I’m still in the middle of that story myself and I’m waiting to see how it ends. When I try to write it, I end up staring at the screen and wondering how my former friend and so-called “editor” sleeps at night and I start crying again.
I am becoming invisible, just fading away. I watch so much bad TV, especially Animal Cops and Top Chef, that I actually dreamed the other night that Marcel served up a dish made out of the dogs and cats they rescued in Houston.
I woke up hungry.
I’ve got to get out of this house and this slump before I completely disappear. When my husband comes home and night and asks me what I did during the day, I’ve got to find something to say besidea “Laundry” and “Trying to fight invisibility and worthlessness while stuffing my face with PBJs and Paxil.”
The thing about working in the newsroom,and on the newsroom budget, is that you throw out instant stories — and got instant feedback. The day my column would come out, I’d have three or four people stop me in a store, or call me, or email me and, being the shallow, need-driven, pathetic beggar for approval and attention that I am (and as are most writers), I ate it up.
And now .. nothing. The crashing echo of silence. My bat senses aren’t tingling, reshaping my existence out of echoed feedback. I am nothing and no one.
Just working my way up to BSC, a clinical term I fuound myself using a lot when I was enjoying the ambience of Rolling Hills.
Bat shit crazy.
marymothermayhem 