Sunday 11 April 2010

Pleasure and pain

Going to bed with one de-haired leg and one full haired leg. Hoping I don't get rushed into hospital. I don't even have any matching underwear right now. What would my mother think. Ugh finding it difficult to post. Feeling heavily laden under a literary guilt trip this last week, surrounded by books of self-improvement, barely able to find the time to read a chapter of Graham Greene. It's quite difficult reading, language-wise, quite stolen and British and puts me in a Brief Encounter frame of mind. Doesn't really fit with the tube.

I was thinking about the pain threshold with the epilating. I was thinking about the pain being on my leg, following this electronic instrument around, rather than beginning in my head, or my gut. It went from my leg, to my brain, to my mouth into yelps with the occasional giggle. The pain expressed as a laugh. It reminded me of what I said to her yesterday, kind of surprising myself, that I tie up emotional feelings with a complete gut reaction. Turning bowels. It happened so much last year, a flicker of memory, a churning in my middle. Now I hold tension when I feel angry and frustrated, I feel it in my stomach. Solar plexus is a real thing remember.

A woman had a go at me in the shop yesterday. I don't know if it was because I was tired and off-guard, but suddenly there was blood in my veins and I wanted to swear and throw and scream and run and I was fizzing angry and wanted to cry with a churning, moving middle. A few sentences, a physical reaction. I didn't cry, I felt like it was bad that I swallowed the motivation, it should've come out, but it was too busy and would've been plain melodrama. I made bad coffees and imagined turning on her good leg. It just echoed this same conversation we keep having about moderating oneself in different places. Out of the shop door, in real life, a battled would've ensued to fire my day, but within the shop I bit my tongue, swallowed the salt, acknowledged and ignored the belly. (When will I get to be myself?)

A couple of times in recent months I have been subject to such warm unexpected kindness from strangers that I have had to go and cry. This worries me. It seems a displaced version of pleasure, like I am unable to distinguish pleasure and pain. Anger and elation. Crying is quite a waste. Remember when the guy smashed into the back of the Mini, and I went absolutely fucking mental, like he had broken my child, and I just felt so goddam free. Elated. The anger came right back through all the stages into almost laughter. I feel like now I need to work out the right directions and intentions of my feelings, and keep them resolutely out of my abdomen. Kind of nice to start with the legs. Seems it was even funny.

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