Rage
Today is Day 29 of my quarantine. Mine. Not yours. Not my husband’s. Not my dog’s.
Today I became so irate at a piece of curly bang in the curly bangs that are now too long to officially be considered bangs that I came within seconds of cutting it off with a nail clipper. Can a nail clipper cut hair? I was almost willing to find out because the scissors (kitchen shears) were too far away from the bathroom. The non-bang bang piece needed to be eliminated from my world view immediately. I would have made the nail clipper work or pulled the curly bang piece strand by strand by strand by strand.
But I didn’t. Instead I looked at “myself” in the dirty bathroom mirror (certainly can’t waist a paper towel cleaning it) and said, “Close one Corona c*unt.” Out loud.
I’m not one of those people that delights in reclaiming the c-word. But it turns out none of my own rules apply to me anymore. I am a very strange, very unpredictable version of myself. I might, in one minute, decide to re-learn how to play Fur Elise on the piano. I might, during the back half of that same minute, abandon Fur fucking Elise to go sit on the toilet for an hour - seat down - staring at grout dirt (certainly can’t waist Clorox cleaning it).
I have readied. I have rallied. And now I have arrived at the next phase of this single weirdest experience of our lives (please):
rage.
At least I think it’s rage. I’m not sure because I’d made a previous life decision to ignore my anger. Never learned how to do it right. Don’t like what it does to my face. But the volume of my voice while “saying” I’m just…I don’t know..and I don’t know why…and I don’t want you to fix it over and over to my shell-shocked husband indicates that what my therapists has been suggesting for six plus years might be true: my anger might need to - how does she put it? - get out. I would appreciate its dark sense of humor - this is a most hysterical time to lose all control over oneself - but it’s happening inside my body...which is in my house…with my husband and dog…22/7 (take a one-hour solo walk twice a day).
So, short pandemic long, now I need to write.
