On Flailing

What happens when someone who should properly be in a looney bin starts to tailspin? 

Excellent question. And one for which I have an answer because my mind is nothing if not currently spinning its tail...

This someone starts flailing.  And flailing is not necessarily a good thing.  Especially for me. 

I am generally a non-violent person.  I don't yell in anger, only in enthusiasm.  I don't hit anything unless it's called for in sport or game (kicking your foot up to love-tap someone in the bum does not, to my mind, count as violence).  I hate dodgeball. 

But then one of those spectacularly dizzying tailspins begin and I find that I want to smash every mirror, break every reflective surface; I want do dig my heels in somewhere, open my mouth and let out a wail to challenge banshee's.  I want to take all of this essential nonviolence and channel it into a vicious, uncomfortable show of rage.  I want to break bones and hearts and become the Fe Fi Fo Fum giant.  I want to lash out at the people who love me and I want to dive headlong into badness because I don't want to be me anymore.  I don't want to see me anymore.

None of this, however, is appropriate when you are staying in someone else's condo.  A word to the wise- it is generally considered impolite to break things that are not yours.

You can't shatter a world that doesn't belong to you.

So you (I) close your (my) eyes when you (I) brush your (my) teeth, you (I) don't look down in the shower because the crisis brought on by that vision is more than you (I) can bear; you (I) grind every inch of yourself (myself) back into place and plaster a smile on your (my) face.  You (I) drink out of plastic cups.

You (I) pray at the end of every day that the next will be better.  That you (I) will be better. 

And then you (I) wait. Because tailspins do not, in fact, go on forever.  They end eventually- either in a spectacularly dizzying crash, or a quiet slowing-down.

Until that happens, though, here's to plastic cups.