I've been fighting not so much to be up and happy, but to stay even-keeled. Thus the knocking of bad news and the soothe of better news, I try to handle each as process driven, expectable--but then again, it's been mostly negative news so far--I'm fairly early into the process proper.
My mother always had a very cheerful facade, but just a fingernail underneath, she was as tensile as the best sword steel. As cancer walked through her life, over and over, she worked her hardest at keeping that facade up and bright. Had you seen a traveling circus from the 19th century she could have been in the sideshow, "The Happiest Cancer Patient in America." But of course she wasn't.
I saw very little of the cracked side of the facade, though--I can only testify as someone who grew up around her--I simply know it was there. It was angry, and a bit manipulative, and always stunned that this crap kept happening to HER! I wish I would have seen more of it because I agreed with its methods, and its conclusions.
Sometimes anger is so wonderful. It shrinks the entirety of the universe down to a simple narcissistic formula that begs no computation. You already know your own math.
After my big day out, I've come home so tired and wiped out that I'm scared, and angry--is this what my life is to be? will small routine events become too big for ME? If so, then what the hell am I doing? Give up, and face the music...
Oh, that flute of self indulgence! the sweet lotus honey, the song that lures people like me onto rocks that--given we can't do laundry--we are destined to snag and flail upon.
The Ancient and Classical Civilizations of the Peloponnese are not my favorite models for self-governance and moderation, but they observed so finely, and keenly the actions of irrationality or exhuberance, moodiness or civic engagement--the emotions that motivated the action of people in similar situations, the early psychology of society. If Aeschylus were reading this, he'd instantly recognize a character in my mother.
He would recognize it in me too--very likely the same one. The competent and fear-checked voyager about to quail at the graping maws of the sea monster. He doesn't want to crack, but he must--that's a tragic flaw we all have.
Why did I yell at the dogs when they started begging dinner at 4 (they are seniors)? A simple view of the white shaft of the monster's incredible tooth, a vision of what I'm expected to fight. Why did I give up on remaking the bed correctly? a lassitude that excused me from form, a matched set being a social nicety that I could not possibly require!
I know my mother now. I'm sorry I didn't see the larger veins of the fight she was waging.
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