Liquor, Sugar and Hormones

There are many times that I love being a woman. There are other times that I do not enjoy it quite so much. I speak, of course, of the interesting (damn, I've grown to hate that word in the last month or so, standing in as it does for so many other more specific, clear or direct word choices - but I'm writing, so I get to use it with impunity and y'all just have to deal w/it) interplay of hormones and mood. Hormones, those invisible chemical strands traveling my blood and inciting tiny riots in my various organs. I imagine them like Pan, little teeny-tiny specks of perfectly-natural-just-a-part-of-femininity wandering freely, urging me to eat just one more handful of salty wasabi/soy almonds at just the moment when my tissues most want to grip tightly to every molecule of water, apparently fearing some massive internal drought, or waking me at 2 AM to remind me that there is stashed organic chocolate in the cabinet where I keep my liquor, or making me impatient with every aspect of my life at once.

It is this last thing that bothers me most. I can stumble back to bed at 2:15 AM, mouth smeared with chocolate, smelling sweetly of cocoa and cognac, and be asleep again in a few minutes. I can pay someone to hide the salty snacks, or just wear bigger clothes and marvel at the puffy places where my cheekbones sometimes appear, like phantoms. But the urge to change everything - sometimes I trust it, and I think that maybe this urge is the only time I really see clearly, and I could easily, and have actually, made big decisions and taken big actions while caught up in what may be a simple hormonally-induced fugue state.

Here is my dilemma: what if this really IS the only time I truly see clearly, when the nicey-niceness of my spirit is laced with a bit of Tabasco-hot "gimmesomeofthat" clarity? Because what I want becomes very clear when I allow myself to think about it. I have a friend who thinks we are all, the entire nation, even the entire world, becoming too self centered. In theory, this works for me, but in practice. Hmm...I don't know. It seems to me that the self centered become ever more so, while normal people often forget to get their needs met at all, busy as they are with mortgages, children, careers, obligations, a thinner waist and attaining a weed-free lawn. Normal people figure out how to not want what they need - that's my experience. They, or we for this one, excuse the hurtful behavior of others because "they didn't intend to hurt me." We pile on obligations to make meaning of our days. They imagine that they don't need to be loved and cherished and passionately sought by their lovers or spouses, that any one of those is enough. Or they decide that really-really-liked with shared parenting responsibilities is enough. I'm pretty sure these are not enough, not really, but there sure are a lot of us settling for a piece of any of it.

I think maybe I'll start to listen to the hormonal me's list of "this ain't working for me and let me tell you why" items. Maybe write them down. Peruse at my leisure, maybe when I'm back to eating the they-almost-have-flavor rice cakes. I'll smear the rice cakes with Nutella, cause hey, everyone needs a little nuttychocolatey goodness in their life.

I'm big on letting people who love me know that I'm hurting by saying that I'm putting on my big girl panties. It's official, folks. Today is a full-on Nutella-with-a-spoon and big-girl panty day. Stand clear unless you're part of the solution.

Smiles all around.

~ patti