“Damn Pants- Poem, Complaint or Journal entry? You decide.”

 

I’m trying to keep my mouth.

I’m trying to bar the gates.

I’m trying to hold back the floodgates.

In other words, I’m trying to stop myself complaining again.

Those who know me know, know that the complaints flow so ready, so steady at the helm. I have a reputation, I’m sure. And not as they say, “I’m mindful. I’m demure” or whatever the hell it is Gen Z are saying. I am if anything, without meaning to be, I am most surely, assuredly, the exact opposite of that. I am at the edge of a ledge we will call justifiably crazy, effortlessly displaced and just this side of frazzled like a Doozer- always building just to have my earnest efforts torn to pieces like a well-served entrée’.

I was overwhelmed again today.

My how I wish I could say that I was overreached with passion. To be subdued with the lust and revelry of a book. A steamy glance interchanging lovely, surprising heat between two objects- objects of affections- out the corner of my eye. Yes, I want that and not this… He- my imaginary, delectable would-be confection of a tart- would have cool blue grey eyes- delicious male work of art. They bore into mine and we could not be confined. Unrestrained, unable to stay contained we had to hurry ourselves to some ratty little hotel. It was the first one we laid eyes on. It rented rooms by the hour. What could we do but let loose the beast between us? To ravage and pillage and rip us down to our sins?  Sounds divine, doesn’t it? A bit raunchy like a dime store romance novel, the kind you can’t put down until it’s done. Yes, I’d rather that than this any day, any time, any life, but sadly, for all my poor alliteration and obvious rhyme- not mine.

No, no, no. That was not, is not, for me.

I am overwhelmed again today.

I was, I am, capsized- the boat has been tossed and dunked under by a much less kind, nay, a bitch of a wave. One not impassioned but emblazoned with catastrophe. Yes, that blasted sea witch, that heartless callus crone saw me in a shadow and desired me. “Hmm…” she thought, licking her lips, rubbing together sharpened fingertips, “how can I light up her life? Perhaps with a cherry bomb to the left eye?”

It was so simple a thing.

It always is. I am that way it seems… simple. It doesn’t take much to take me down. My defenses are shit. My strength is a joke. My courage is a façade and my hope? I suppose a useless, cosmic joke. It was a pair of suit pants- yep, that’s it.

A pair of damned pants.

My youngest son had an engagement to attend at 6 o’clock. Now that he is a man, a young beautiful man and no longer a brash boy on the verge of adulthood, he has ‘engagements’ now. It was ‘business casual’ and he was in search of a pair of black slacks that fit. He just is still at the age where one has to wonder “Will last these from last year still fit?” Even those from prom not so very long ago are on the verge of going in the bag of clothes semester’s past. Taller and a bit leaner now- now that he is no longer ‘technically’ an athlete, though I might not say that to his face. Sidetracked, yes, I’m getting sidetracked... Add that to the list.

(List of self-evaluation that may cause self-esteem devastation)

(ever so) Simple.

(easily) Sidetracked.

After some digging through baskets of clothes, he found a pair of black suit pants. Black pants and a jacket, white button up shirt, no tie. He looked sharp, sleek. Devilish. His girlfriend better watch out, get prepared to beat those other girls off with a stick but then again that’s a mom’s perspective. He hands them to me to wash them off. Ever the dutiful mother/housewife I took them without a second thought. As a side note and a bit of context… before we start in on his ‘toxic masculinity’ I was standing there washing out some clothes at the sink already. I’ve endeavored to train my sons to be hard-working, independent men, who respect women, and yes, they know how to do their own laundry but at the same time he’s my baby boy, soon to fly the coop to college and I want to spoil him just a little…

So, the moment of catastrophe arrives. I saturate a clean cotton cloth with water and a spec of dish soap and wipe them down gathering away all the tiny bits of dog fur and life that dared make its home there, then put them carefully on a tumble dry low to get out the wrinkles. Anticlimactic, isn’t it? If you were hoping for fireworks or a burning bush, I’m sorry to disappoint. My imaginings of torrid hotel hijinks were so much more vivid than this real life still frame. I smelled the beginnings of it as I washed them.

I can do this, I tell myself.

I can handle this, I reassure myself.

Toughen up and tough it out.

These are the pep talks happening in my inner monologues. I was having a good day. When had this happened? When had I begun thinking of my days as good or bad days? By the time I put them in the dryer it was done. I was done. My fate was sealed and forgive me mom for putting it quite this way, but I distinctly heard life say it just like this:

Fuck me.

The scent wafted through the house and my body greeted it with a wave of sick.

Nauseated.

Swallow back the vomit. Hold it in. Remember now, that belongs on the inside. Wait, what’s this? Were my intestines playing Twister? Good on them, they were having more fun than me!

Dizzy. Take a minute and stand still. Feet, where are you? Please hold me up! Now isn’t the time to think you’re funny and fall out from under me!

Inevitability.

You may think that’s not a symptom of migraine or insanity, but I insist it’s a manifestation of both. I fight against the obvious. I refuse to accept reality. I will not give in. I will not give up. I will not be defeated. My inner optimist prevails for a bit longer. Take your precautions, young lady- of which there are many. There is an outdated allergy nose spray no one uses anymore because it has a bitter awful taste. I have a prescription for it, why you ask? So, when an invasive, relentless fragrance sets about destroying my sinuses and crashing the party- rudely and without invitation- I can use it to try and overpower it. Weird, huh? When in battle one is wise to use every weapon in one’s arsenal. Am I, then, at war? Every damned day. The taste, the smell, of the thing began sinking into my teeth and worming around the insides of my nose. A rattle, a warning bell of the massive defeat that was to come.

No!!! I will not be defeated.

Oh, the insufferable optimist, stumbling now, on feet unsure of themselves, skating as if on ice without skates. All wibbly wobbly and cold. I hide a few moments in my room- first saline spray, then the high hopes of smell be gone. That’s what we will call it for a laugh, laughter after all, is curative, yes? I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth. I took an Imitrex (a non-drowsy migraine pill for those lucky enough to not know.) I put a fresh ice pack on my head and clicked the air purifier on.

I will not be defeated!!!

My inner idealist, that small singular voice that thinks me stronger than I am- she’s still cheer leading for the best. She’s still rooting for this mind over matter rhetoric that never works.

I will slay.

I will overcome.

My greatest weapon as of late are my noise-cancelling headphones. They distract me from my pain. They allow me to tune out life with all its unkindness and vain glorious apathy. I put them on as the pain starts to set in, praying for the miracle of music. My positivity will give me clarity. My determination will provide salvation. Nay, that’s not how it works out here in the real honest to God world. The real thing is cutthroat, boys and girls. I knew I was done. I was swinging (and missing) in a useless empty battle just to make myself feel better.

I can do this.

I can make it on my own.

I can handle a little pain.

I don’t need a pill to do this.

When I could bear the unbearable without relying on the ‘heavy stuff’ I was happy. I felt like a success. Why? Such dichotomy that wrestles in me! They prescribe you a solution but don’t want you to use it. They have so many things that might fix it, but you can’t afford them. Deciding what days you want to hurt and what days you don’t? I reveled in a special kind of glory when I face these pains with only determination and headphones as my cure. Anyone who isn’t chronically hurting can’t possibly understand. I wanted to keep up the streak. All hail my one-day streak. The day before I was full of hope. Hope and energy and trust in that inner dreamer. Maybe I’m more than I think I am. Maybe I’m strong and complicated and lovely. Maybe I am more. Within half an hour I find myself laying in the dark, hand pursed over my left eye, crying, in too much pain to bear.

I tip my hat to my utter and complete defeat.

I had to get my son to come get them- these devil pants intent on my demise- and put them in his closet until it was time for him to leave because each time, I tried to walk past the laundry room I wanted to grab my head and crouch down onto the floor as it slowly imploded. Over the next hour I devolved into blinding binding pain that I was obliged to turn into a lulled lovely dullness of pain medicine aura into body forcing sleep.

Thank you pants for screwing up a good day.

I have been taken down, defeated, so effortlessly by a pair of pants. Black magic? A mere word. A token of nothing and all the pins are knocked out into the gutter. I wish I were more. Better, Stronger. Made of sturdier stuff. Stuff that could fight and win. The things of which dreams are made not nightmares and failures on the down low. This pain will stay with me, days, weeks or perhaps even longer. Cooking will make me sick; lights will make me miserable and going out the house will be near impossible. I will whine and complain about it until my voice is hoarse and my soul is tired- until my husband grows sick of my words, though he’d never admit it outright. I’ll cry when I think about it too hard, throwing myself one too many pity parties, upset to the bones of me that I am so frail a creature. I will curse life and heaven and karma and whoever and whatever I can dream up to curse. I will become one with the icepacks in my freezer and be annoyed at the people living in my house for being too noisy or too loud or crowding in on me, as are the walls. I will hide from the glorious sun’s shining rays and hunker down in the dark of my room as a hermit crab in love with the shadows. I will finally conclude that this is but the world of mice and men and nothing can be done but accept it. And just when my body frees me of this curse, and all is right with the world the cycle will begin again. Maybe it will be my husband’s shirt form work. Perhaps a person I pass at the grocery store? I will continue- for what else is there? – to cradle this ‘broken’ in me as though it were some great artistic vision. Then again if the artist didn’t turn their pain into their creation what kind of artist is that?

Damn you, pants.

How little it takes to bring the mighty poet to her knees.