this morning i woke up as i usually do, with my cat leaping up on the bed at around 6:30am, meowing and pawing at me to feed her. and i did what i usually do on weekends–shooed her away to give me another half-hour of respite. sometimes i get up, feed her, then promptly go back to bed. but even on those days, i can never sleep past 10am. the morning is imprinted on me now, i am used to its summer light and chirping birds.
i am reading a collection of short stories by ursula le guin, and they are very good. women authors are fantastic at sharing the experience of being a woman with their audience; their stories are as much emotional encapsulations as they are plot-driven. i laid in bed and read for an hour, a story about a man from a planet where women dominate due to genetic shenanigans centuries ago; most male babies die in childbirth. so it’s all women and a few men, who are raised in “castles” where the play games of sport and then women pay for the men to fuck them so they can have more kids. but the women are all in love with each other, and men are little more than breeding stallions.
anyway this man lived in a time where the men were trying to become free, after researchers from another planet arrive and decide to “interfere” with the people. once the men (the populace in general) see that men from that planet are free and educated and do whatever they want, the men from this planet want that too. and this man in this story gets it, but it’s hard, because now what does he do? the women aren’t used to men not being in castles or “fuckeries” as they put it. (i love that le guin calls them “fuckeries”; the view of sex in this story and in a couple others that i’ve read so far is so free and polyamorous and definitely a stance re: american prudishness.) he eventually goes to hain (a planet colonized or co-inhabited by terrans, apparently) to become educated. it was a good story and a good collection of stories so far (the book’s 800 pages).
it’s nice outside and i opened the blinds and jowers laid in the sun splayed out over my bed as i read, and then she insisted that she lick my hand for a long time, which she does sometimes. she doesn’t like it when i pet her when she wants to clean me; she’ll look back at my hand like, “bring it back here, it is still unclean.”
it’s clear outside and i walked to the corner store to buy some toilet paper, eggs, and a dumb hazelnut starbucks drink. sometimes when i buy weird things together i like to conjure weird stories in my head about why i’m buying these things together. like, what would be the weirdest thing the cashier could think. the starbucks was just coffee (obviously) but the eggs and TP were for some sexually deviant thing i was going to do: hardboil the eggs and stick them up my butt, of course. TP was for cleanup. at 9am, of course. but then i thought about it more. even hardboiled eggs are no match for the cinching power of the sphincter. i would just end up with broken egg bits in my rectum, which was the least sexiest thing i could think of at 9 in the morning.
i drank the starbucks drink and thought about making breakfast, but my pan still had leftover bacon grease and fat in it so i have started the dishwasher and eaten a fiber granola bar thing instead, one of several unusual things i buy at grocery outlet. i am bad at doing dishes, especially when i’m depressed. i have some used tupperware in and around my sink that i’m afraid to open. my sink is full of grossness. it’s embarrassing and i should do my dishes more often but it’s hard to do when the only prevailing thought in your head is “nothing matters, who cares,” etc etc.
i am attempting to write more again, morning pages or 750 words or whatever you wish to call it. to write freely and to not censor myself or delete the words because i don’t think they’re good enough. i feel a sense of serenity this morning that i haven’t felt for a while. i’m okay at home right now. my depression is no more than a feeling of content loneliness, which is something i can capture and care for. nothing in my world right now feels content, usually, so i enjoy the brief respite. i am alone in a full room, i don’t really care about myself currently. about or for myself. i can’t remember things, my productivity at work took a dip because i was in a depressive fog and fell behind on my tasks. i tell my therapist this but leave some of it out, because i view myself (and my depression and anxiety) as a burden on others. even to my therapist, whose job is entirely to be a emotional beast of burden (no offense). there are some secrets i don’t even tell myself.
but i’m listening to classical music (thank you thank you allclassical.org for existing) and the sun is shining through the blinds and my cat is asleep on her cat tree and i’m writing and feeling only very minimally ashamed of it. that’s better.