I’m beyond help. Every turn is a dead end, and I’m screaming at the idiocracy, the tailspinning, the too-muchness I feel. I think what I need is space.
I don’t watch the news, barely skim the headlines, and yet I still feel bombarded. At dinner, the crawl across the restaurant’s TV hooked me like a baby to a pacifier. And yet—I wasn’t pacified. I felt angry and bitter, spinning in circles, unsure who to blame.
When I get like this, the twister arrow spins—tick, tick, tick—past yellow, blue, red, and lands back on me. I’m the problem. If I weren’t me, things would be better.
Where is all this pressure coming from? How did it build to the point where even pan-frying English muffins on medium-low became a disaster?
I just can’t win. And honestly, I’m not even sure what winning means. I think it’s interpersonal. The closing-in feeling reminds me of how a client felt earlier—no space, no safe corner to retreat to. Every direction pushed them closer to collapse.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about alphas—the dominant one in a group. Perhaps it’s from reading The Righteous Mind, where Haidt explains why some people are drawn to dominant leaders, while others are repulsed. It all depends on which moral foundations you prioritize.
I’m repulsed. That’s just true for me.
I’m more of a libertarian—let me do what I want, you do you. But even saying that feels a little dirty, like I’m admitting I don’t care about the oppressed.
It’s not that I don’t. It’s that I have only so many cares, and my deepest cares are for those in my sphere. Those in my own community. Yet I experience expectations of how I should think and feel, and have adhered to those in ways I feel like unwinding them is where I’m at now.
Where does that lead me? Who the heck knows.
Maybe this is just the part of the story where I name the knots but don’t untangle them. Where I tell the truth—not the polished kind, but the kind that breathes a little.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 