Bad day...

I had a bad day yesterday.  If you are a fan of "Crimes of the Heart," then you know what I mean.  That is sort of a life movie for me.  It is one, too, that I can mention to my mother and my sister and they will mention a scene or a line and we'll chuckle.  I don't know if they would really understand what I mean by having a bad day.  I know it is not something that I can even broach with my mother, but I have tried to be more open with my sister.

I had a bad day yesterday.  I was so very sad.  I could come up with several reasons why, and I voiced them as reasons because I couldn't say why I was sad.  I was just near inconsolable over something I couldn't even pinpoint.  As the day wore on and my sadness overwhelmed me, I called my dear friend Mary, even though I knew she was probably having dinner, and asked her to pray.  And I reached out to my dear friend Becky, hoping we could talk some time in the evening.

Mary had a few moments to spare and I tried to control the shaking in my body and the sadness.  And I told her all the things I had tried to tie to the sadness.  Mary observed that I might be grieving for the world and the terrible dark times we are enmeshed in call for grief.  I love that she talked about the darkness of our world, because I feel like it is being ignored in all the blame flinging.  And I do find great sadness in things in our world, especially my country.

It grieves me, especially, how sexual assault has become such a common weapon of war.  It grieves me deeply that even UN peacekeeping troops use this weapon and little is done.  It grieves me the silence—across the globe—regarding the aftermath of living with sexual assault.  It isn't just adults.  It's children who bear those wounds of war.  The enormity of it all overwhelms me.

I grieve the sexual abuse of children that happens all day every day in our country.  I grieve its silence.  I grieve the lack of help for those victims.  I grieve the adults they grow up to be bearing those wounds.  I grieve the shame that persists, with those who bear the wounds and in our society.

I grieve the egregious perfidy that is the unfathomable backlog of rape kits across our country.  A problem so great that a television actor is devoting her personal time and public platform to fighting to get those kits process.  I grieve the lack of compassion, sense of urgency, and justice that backlog represents.

I grieve the children who do not understand what is happening to them is wrong.  I grieve the adults who've kept silent.  I grieve the parents who find their children having to bear the same wounds, experience the same horror.  I grieve the pain, the doubt, the dismissal, not being believed, the shame, the sorrow, the self-loathing, the self-destructive coping mechanisms, the illnesses, the broken relationships, the suicides.

Mary was right about the darkness.  And she listened as I talked about Las Vegas.

Because I also grieve for those in Las Vegas.  Not just the family and loved ones of those murdered and those wounded.  Not just the first responders.  Not just the survivors, of whom it would be a lie to say they walked away unscathed.  I grieve for an entire city who've learned that it could happen in their back yards.  I remember living with the DC sniper.  I remember the loss of a sense of safety just going out and about.  I remember the before and the after of the lesson.

But I also told her about this movie that I watched, "Hidden Figures."  I know my dad would have loved it.  I know he would have told me stories about his work in the space program.  Things I never knew about him until his funeral, but my sister remembers.  I know he would have watched it with me several times, the way we did with movies we liked in those last years with him.  I didn't realize how the movie deepened his absence in my life.

The burden of my own past being churned up in therapy.  The news of abuse so prevalent but rarely reaches mainstream media.  That movie.  The massacre.  Oh! How very many things to make me sad.

However, I think my bad day was another blasted hormone surge, because I awoke today without the crushing emotions smothering me.  I awoke with all those thoughts still churning in my head, but no sadness overwhelming me and driving me to the despair that feels as if death is its only escape.

It is like there is a damn within me, that occasionally still has its floodgates opened.  When they are that way, I am not aware that something is especially off, that I am in a place of insensibility and inconsolable in my grief or sadness or shame ... or all of the above.  It is only after those gates are closed and I find myself clear of the sudden onslaught of emotion that I realize what most likely took place.

I had a bad day yesterday.  It is probably the best bad day that I have had since the surges started.  It wasn't until I moved to Fort Wayne that I learned that my hormones were low and so ovulation and its surge would fell me emotionally.  That is why I take birth control now and why the plan is for me to continue taking hormones when I move through menopause.

For several years, those hormones made bad days a thing of the past.  Only when I changed brands because of manufacturer discontinuations did I find myself captive to the surge again.  But last February, I had a bad day that frightened me because I am taking my pills and had not missed any.  I learned, afterward, that even on the pills, I could have a surge.

That made me panic.
How am I supposed to get through bad days?

Yesterday was the third bad day since February.  They scare me because I think about how foggy-brained I can get now with dysautonomia and couple that with insensibility and things seem fairly hopeless about my getting through the bad days that lurk within my body.  It is another fear I face when I think about the future.

In the movie, Meg comes home and finds her sister Babe with her head in the oven.  She pulls her out and they talk.  At one point Meg asks Babe about what she's just done.

Meg:  Oh, Babe, why?  Why?
Babe:  Why what?
Meg:  Why did you put your head in the oven?
Babe:  Oh, I don't know, Meg.  I'm having a bad day.  A really bad day.

That line has stuck with me ever since I saw the movie, even though the pursuit of death is not something I battled until ... well ... until the night terrors that featured scenes from my past started ... the same time as I started to become ill.  It just resonated within me in a way I cannot describe.

Meg and Babe talk and Babe tells her sister that her husband was going to have her committed because he said she was insane.  There is this lovely, lovely moment where Meg tells Babe she's not insane at all even as she's pulling the rope Babe used to try to kill herself before then trying again using a knife and then trying with the oven.  You want to laugh and cry at the same time.

"Crimes of the Heart" is a story of a southern family full of secrets and scars and tragedies.  I think you might not really get it unless you live in the South.  I think you might not get it if your family is not full of secrets and scars and tragedies.  I think you might not get it if you've never despaired.  But I do.  I got it before I ever understood that I did.  I got it before I ever looked at the secrets I've kept ... if that makes sense.

Meg eventually tells Babe, "We've got to find a way to get through these really bad days."  That's what I want, if I am honest.  I want a way to get through bad days and a way to get through bad pain flares ... particularly pudendal neuralgia flares.

I want that, but I am not sure I even believe such is possible.
I had a bad day yesterday.