RantingWomen.com Women’s Blog

My to-do list is overwhelming me. Who created the list? Me. Who’s pushing me to complete it? Me.

Ever since my husband was diagnosed with cancer, I’ve had a demon inside me. It’s a real Type A demon, even worse than all of my natural instincts. It thinks that if I have a long, long, long, impossible list of things to accomplish, nothing bad can happen.

I’ve taken on vegan cooking, started working toward a B.S. in Nutritional Therapy, am still running my business and approaching publication time for my annual directory, the kids start (home)school September 1, and I’ve just decided to write a book. I’ve already completed a chapter and a half, fully edited, in just three days. Surely, this will keep my world from imploding. There is simply no time for a crisis, so we won’t have one. Period.

Last night I got eight hours sleep. This is rare, but the rain was drumming on the roof - a blessed sound! - after a month-long dry spell here in Louisiana. I crawled between the sheets, itching like mad from a case of poison ivy I got working in the yard. I never work in the yard, but Bob’s aneurysm may explode if he does it. So, I work in the yard now, and assure him that I like it a lot. I crawled in, feeling so grateful that it was actually COLD in my bedroom. The rain had cooled the outside temperature to about 95 degrees, allowing the air conditioning to work for a change. I scratched my legs two times, and fell asleep like the dead. I haven’t slept like that for years.

I woke up this morning exhausted, at 8am.

At the office I did all of Friday’s work today. Somehow, the Type A demon has me ahead of myself. I obsessed on the next section of my book, reviewed the pending interviews in my head, scratched my stomach, where the hives have spread… I spent the whole day making new mini-lists of things to do when I got home.

Somehow, around 7pm I just crapped out. That was it. I couldn’t take any more of my own harrassment, and I told my daughter to round us up a chick flick for tonight - I was taking the night off. She just stared at me.

“For real?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I told her. “Anything girly and stupid will do.”

We watched Sweet November, girly and stupid to the core. Naturally, the star of it had cancer and died. I watched it with a numb, floating feeling, like this had nothing to do with me. Cancer. Not my problem. I blocked it, enjoyed the San Francisco scenery, and now I’m done, back at my desk.

It’s important to schedule down time. I have no idea if any of this has been productive or not. I don’t know if writing this blog will save anyone else from killing themselves with deadlines and emotional tundras. I don’t know if anything in my book is really any good, because I’m just going through the motions, in the “zone.”

Now I’m off to take a nice, hot bath. I’ll apply the creme I finally bought for the poison ivy, crawl into bed beside my sleeping husband, and try not to hear his ragged breathing. We are playing a game. I am playing “you can’t catch me,” and he is playing, “I’m still fine.”

I can’t explain how or why, but a healing process is at work here. I’m not being funny. I am observing, somehow, the way we all cope with “these things.” I am really not frozen, but I have realized there is only so much I can take. There is only so much Bob can take. We talk about next year as if he’ll really be here, because you can’t NOT talk about next year. Everyone talks about next year.

My dogs know something is wrong. They are driving Bob to distraction, glued to his side like furry shadows, crunched up against him on the bed, following him around the house, squeezing themselves through the bathroom door, just as he tries to close it. They are relentless in their loyalty, and I’m relentless in my cheerful, positive outlook. Someone has to be cheerful and positive, and that’s me.

Still, even as I write this, I can’t seem to acknowledge out loud that we are headed for a crash. My little rest tonight, away from work, hasn’t changed a thing, but I think I needed it anyway. Stupid, girly movies designed to make me cry simply make me raise an eyebrow at their lack of style. Don’t the writers and actors of these things know that having cancer makes you sit upright and talk about how good you feel? Don’t they know that the ones who love the patient never bend, never cry in public?

I might need one more night of “unplugging” to begin to feel again. I’ll give it a try. So far, it has been ineffective, and the poison ivy is not making any point at all, except that it itches, and I still hate needles enough to keep trying creams. Where’s the miracle? Where’s the last minute moment of hope?

Maybe we find it in tomorrow, if we get just one more day.

Anne Pierson, Editor

Tags: women blogs, feminism, women rants, women authors