You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry...

Seriously, I'm starting to worry that I'm going completely mental. The amount of anger I seem to be able to conjure at a moment's notice, which wrongly implies that I have some modicum of control over the situation, is quite extraordinary. I switched from being amused to being irate within about two minutes last night. I get annoyed at people - on the phone with people asking stupid questions at work, I snap from patience to irritation as soon as someone asks me the same question twice - and there are a couple of things that are in the process of making my blood really boil outside of work. These are things that I am backing away from because I am not the best person to deal with them and am trying to be all grown up but this makes me feel all ineffectual and instead of doing something about it, I get annoyed in private which is not good for the Anger, which wants to make itself heard. But, as annoyed as all this gets me, the main reason I suddenly flipped last night was that the idea of making conversation made me want to run for the hills, which I then did. I was quite glad I wore my trainers but I've got to get a new bag as mine flaps about a bit once I put on "speed". You know, when I "run". Anyway, so running away from a large group of people consisting of family, friends and people I know (I was quite amused that Murray in Flight of the Conchords has a friendship chart. I do think of people as categories - acquaintance, friend etc but mine tends to be based on a) whether I like them and b) if I do like them, whether they have made it obvious that they like me and, preferably, call me their friend. Maybe even write it down somewhere, like a legal document. I am terrified of assuming friendship where someone else sees only "someone I know". This goes hand in hand with the way that I will spot someone I know, possibly even a friend, in public and will then pretend I haven't so that I don't have to be the one that says hello just in case I'm ignored or they really didn't want to talk to me. Have I mentioned that I have issues?) is quite an odd thing to do. Maybe the problem I'm having is that I am naturally someone who wants to talk about everything as I feel it and the fact that there are many things I am currently stifling makes it really hard to sustain normal conversations so I'm avoiding it. Jeez, that actually makes sense. So what do I do about it now? Answers on a postcard.

Here Be Mingers

So my general sense of frustration and run-downedness has decided to give itself a physical form by appearing on my upper lip in the form of impetigo. I got it twice last year so this seems karmically unfair. Seriously, what did I do to deserve this? It's normally around for about two or three weeks during which time it hurts, itches, throbs and, worst of all, makes me feel hideous. I feel like I should have a leper's bell. I know that to other people it probably doesn't look like the horrific scabrous mass it feels like to me but they should try wearing it on their face for a while and see how they feel about it then. But this one is particularly evil. I'm considering a) cultivating facial hair, b) wearing a mask and/or burkha until it goes or c) hibernation. There's another annoying element, which is the fact that I know the entire process now. I am aware that it will become scabby, then take a while to piss off before leaving an attractive red mark that will stay for months. Months! I will probably have to wear make-up and everything. Ugh. And there appears to be no way of preventing it. I use an anti-bacterial spray thingy and anti-bacterial cleanser and toner - do they work? Nope. Annoying. Also, one final word of complaint for this paragraph, the antibiotics make me feel nauseous. That is all.

Play Hangover

Ems described it thus. That fug that colours everything post-play. When it's something that grips me as much as Closer did, it's a longer hangover and I'm not sure whether I'm really out of it. I really made myself vulnerable and open during the run and I don't seem to have regrown my armour again yet. I feel very emotionally exposed and all the things that I'm normally able to ignore - sense of general frustration and penned-in-ness - are there all of the time. I feel like a caged animal, just prowling around my boundaries and trying to find a point of escape but don't seem able to do it. I just watched Road, the next production, in my capacity as lighting designer (I don't know what I'm doing, ssh, don't tell anyone) and was shocked by how much of what the younger characters were expressing felt relevant to me. There should be more. More possibility. More magic.

This sense of feeling penned-in was one of the factors that broke up ToyBoy and me. I love him to bits but needed to be alone again and he felt the same and we'd got to a point where we were being irritable, which went against everything that had brought us together in the first place. It's made me think about what I really want. It all depends on who or what happens to me but I really don't feel, at the moment, like I want anything conventional at all. Not marriage, not domesticity, not children. At the moment I just want freedom. I want to live somewhere different for a while, a new city maybe. I want a new job, something that I maybe don't have to go to every day and which doesn't make it so easy for me to just sit there and let my thighs accumulate fat. I'd like to see new things and force myself out of my fear of change. I feel like I'm on the edge of something. I just need to wait until my responsibilities are sorted. And then I will wait and settle back into my comfortable rut and never do anything.

This is a pretty shapeless post, sorry. I guess the inside of my head is just feeling quite fragmented at the moment. Caged tigers lack concentration.