Aslaug's Axe Shed

Well, maybe not tragedy, but it’s certainly a difficult situation and one I don’t exactly know how to handle.

It’s been six years since something like this happened to me and frankly, I’m completely out of my element here. Not to mention out of training, out of my mind and out of snappy comebacks and fancy ideas.

I’m just out, get it?

Been out for a while.

*grumbles*

Look, falling in love is something that happens to a lot of people every day all over the world. MOSTLY it’s a reason for joyous celebrations, jumping up and down and having a bloody awesome time.

For me?

I want to bonk my head into the wall until I knock some sense back into myself.

It’s always a complicated thing when something like this happens. Even to those many, many people who think it’s fun and cool and great, but for me? Gahhh …

There’s such a thing as prudence, self control, a basic sense of reality and in the great pokergame of dating, one at least needs a full hand to bluff. I don’t bloody well hold a single card on my hand. Why the HELL did I sit down by this table in the first place??

Trouble is, it’s difficult getting back up although trust me, I’m trying very hard. Trying to tell myself to be realistic. To have a frickin’ sense of my own attractiveness (and I’m not simply talking in physical terms … for goodness sake, I could give Medusa a run for her money … I’m talking generally here) and lack thereoff and to please, please, please … PLEASE not do something this stupid.

And you know what? It doesn’t make a difference. You can’t argue with feelings and frankly, I feel sick to my stomach about it. For years, I’ve been so damned good at controlling this. I’ve kept myself on such a short leash that I really, honestly though I had it all sussed out. I had it fixed, y’know?

Yep … I could waltz through life, my own uglyass self, and have a pretty damned good life out of it because “I’m pretty good at being single!”. And the truth is, I AM! But then this happens. Sneaks up on me like a burglar in the night and clobbers me with a clue-by-four, takes a sap to the back of my skull and douses my face thoroughly in chlorophorm.

So … I’m staggering, I’m punch drunk and I’m not really sure of what is going on around me.

I’m a CONTROL FREAK, DAMMIT!

I HATE it when I lose control. I HATE it when I’m not able to simply whack myself back into line.

“HEY … Earth calling Starship Joan, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE F*CKING COFFEE PLANTATION!”

It used to work, you know. Now I get up in the morning, put my head in my hands and groan because I can’t make this go away. I can’t make this … feeling … simply vanish. How DARE it come back to me unbidden like this, I ask you? HOW DARE IT?

How dare I … ?

I’ve sworn by “Gift er noget man tager for ikke at blive det” for ages. Not everyone here knows what that means. But in Denmark, the word for “Poison” and the word for “Being married” is the same. It’s “Gift”. So that saying means “Poison/marriage is something you take to avoid becoming it”.

Pisspoor translation, so sue me! My head isn’t working right. I want to wash my brain out with lye and get this to go away. I want it gone … away … out of my life again. I don’t need it, I don’t WANT it …

All it’s ever brought me is heartache and pain. Neurosis, anguish, loneliness, inadequacy, discomfort, self-hatred, self-doubt …

I used to laugh at the episode of the classic British television comedy show “Red Dwarf” where the main characters, the ultimate slob Dave Lister and the ultimate tight-arse Arnold Rimmer talk about Rimmer belonging to something they call the “Love celibacy society”

Rimmer: Lister, if you were a love celibate like me you wouldn’t have these problems.
Lister: Come on, Rimmer, the only reason you knocked around with those prats from the Love Celibacy Society was you could never get a date.
Rimmer: No, it wasn’t. I happen to agree with their philosophy that love is a sickness that holds back your career and makes you want to spend all your money.
Lister: You could never get a date because you let your mum buy all your casual clothes.
Rimmer: There is nothing wrong with my casual clothes.
Lister: Oh, come on, Rimmer, your trousers were so short, when you crossed your legs, you could see your knees.
Rimmer: What about Yvonne MacGruder? That was a date.
Lister: She’d been hit on the head by a winch. She had a concussion.
Rimmer: That’s got nothing to do with it. She was crazy about me.
Lister: Oh, yeah? She kept calling you “Norman.”
Rimmer: She still went to bed with me.
Lister: Yeah, because she had wonky vision and she thought you were somebody else.
Rimmer: Serves her right for being concussed, doesn’t it?
Lister: Rimmer! You don’t know what love is.
Rimmer: Yes, I do. Love is a device invented by bank managers to make us overdrawn.

I think that while Rimmer is an absolute arse, he hit the nail on the head in this particular case. Few things make me feel as good inside as seeing a couple in love but guys … I’ve got a set of divorce papers to remind me why I shouldn’t go down that road again.

And yet it’s happening.

Where the hell is that clue-by-four when you really … really need it.

Maybe when I wake up tomorrow it’ll all have gone away.

Maybe I’m being unrealistic.

Maybe I need a damned reality check.

“Que sera, sera … ” doesn’t quite seem to do it anymore.