生.

Sam is frustrated with me.  He keeps trying to talk to me, then leaves the room, then comes back, then leaves the room again.  I listen to him, and I respond to what he's saying, but I'm not saying the right things, or he wouldn't need to keep talking about the same thing over and over, right?  He wouldn't be so frustrated that he has to stop talking to me... or listening... Listening.

PMDD.  Why would any sane man try to talk to a woman with PMS, let alone PMDD, when she was in the luteal phase?  I mean... We, "the crazy ones," could either just say crazy shit, or nothing at all and look at him like he's a big stupidhead.  He is absolutely a stupidhead at that moment.

Right now, I'm in the numb stage.  I don't really feel anything when he is talking right now.  I feel nothing at all.  I have no emotional reaction. 
I don't even feel like he's a stupidhead.  I can't even give him the, "you're a freaking moron" facial expression.
I can't hear him.  
I'm just not hearing him.  His lips are movin' and I'm not thinking anything.
I'm not even hearing myself.  


I'm on default: 死, most of this time of the month, which doesn't make sense to me, (even though I understand my diagnosis and all the hormone shit) considering the kind of person I am inside.  I'm full of life and love.  I always was...  Yet, half the month I want to die? That's the solution my brain comes up with for all that weighs on me: the stones of misfortune, or poor health, or loss, or confusion, or just life...  To die? 

For goodness sake, how can my brain come to that conclusion, that all is so hopeless or that there is no way to move in any direction.  Life and people don't trap us, we trap ourselves.  We trap ourselves. Yet, I'm entering that place now.  And I do want to sleep things away, instead of facing them.  I want something to happen to me.  I actually think about how I wish someone else would kill me... oh what a relief...  !! I don't feel capable of either living or dying on my own.  I feel nothing except the desire to feel nothing.  And that's the weirdest way to think, I tell you, even when I'm experiencing it.  It's scary.  I am scared of how I think. 

I understand that only we can change ourselves--or only I can change myself--from an intellectual and philosophical standpoint.  I am a fairly rational person!  Yet, my emotional mentality at times moves into such a place, where I can think that's not true at all.  I think, "I need help," "I can't do this alone," and most of the time, "I can't do anything and no one else can help me either.  I'm doomed."  

死.  If you've read any of my blog, you know this to be true, and I'm not just being silly.  It's doomsday for Joanna half of every month.  

I recently read A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, and I won't tell you the entire plot, or anything, but at the end of the book, the girl's great-grandmother writes the Japanese symbol 生, just before she dies.  It's a very moving part of the novel, (which is excellent, by the way), because she writes this important message just for her grandson and great-granddaughter.  "Live."  She tells them to live.:  "For now.  For the time being."  This seems like a simple and obvious statement, but for too many, it's actually an order against what they are feeling and thinking.

Ozeki, p. 362

"Live, damn you!"  People are shaking me, yet I'm flopping like a rag doll in their hands. 

"Sure," I finally spit out in response,  "Sure, I will live.  Thanks." And they seem satisfied.  It's easy to be a rag doll.  It's fairly easy to stay alive, even.  I mean, we can not eat for 21 days, and as long as we drink water, we'll survive.  But, that's different than 生.  Alive.  Living.  Live.  

You see.  Too often when they set me down, I collapse at the joints.  I'm still just cloth and yarn and thread.