Unwell

I was feeling drained and poorly after training with my new trainer, who emphasizes intensity and metabolic burn. One day I could barely stand in the shower after our session and was worried I might faint and they'd find me there, with a bump on my head.

I've been weepy. Last weekend I went to see a really slight and sort of dumb movie, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", and it was raining while I was driving home down College Ave, and tears just streamed uncontrollably out of my eyes, the same effect that the movies on the plane used to have when I used to take international flights for work.

I lost my temper at work. There's a difficult situation - restructure, plus new planning process, we all know we're getting new jobs but don't know what they'll be, the power structure is getting challenged and rearranged, there's paranoia and insecurity in all directions. But after saying "Yeah, yeah, whatever" to angsty colleagues all week, then an agency stepped on my own professional toes by presenting a web plan, and I just lost it. All over someone who is on my list of performance reviewers and could very well end up my new boss. Haven't had the chance to talk to her again to apologize and explain a bit more articulately what made me angry.

Friday I was late to work and while in a meeting noticed that when I turned my head to the side the room was spinning. I went down to the health service, she looked in my ears and exclaimed at how red they were inside. She said allergies. But my ears were blocked, and lymph nodes in neck working really hard.

I talked to my sister yesterday about the ear thing. She has this wonderful and hilarious book called "You Can Heal Your Life" that has a table of all the body parts that might be ailing and what that means, spiritually, plus some mantras to say to get better. The whole ear thing is so unusual, and has come on so suddenly, that I wondered what the book my say about it. Guess what it is? "Don't want to hear your parents arguing." That fits scarily well. All the senior managers at work are at war about 2009 plans. Plus, the election is hotting up and the candidates and all their advisors and the media, and then also all my Facebook friends, are yelling at each other and starting to get very emotional and scathing. Plus, my new trainer told me all his problems with the management at my gym and how he might leave. But it's all a secret so I'm not allowed to go to the manager to tell him. Everyone who's an authority figure in my Appleton life right now is fighting - emotions are high and it's getting a bit nasty. No wonder my ears hurt. My mantra is supposed to be "I listen to pleasant sounds with love." Okay, will do my best.

So, I've had another completely blank, disappointing and frustrating weekend. Haven't been out of the house, or even gotten dressed, since Friday evening. Trying to get house stuff done, the long list of ridiculous torment that never gets dented - weekend after weekend gets set aside and I just can't do any of it. Boxes, sure, but also recycling cardboard and plastic bags, taking old clothes to Goodwill, updating my iPod with new stuff, vacuuming (might help my allergies), cleaning the bathtub. Long list, tormenting me, but I keep lying down on the couch and watching renovation shows, or my parents argue with each other on CNN.

Had a plan to go on a lovely recreational drive to see the leaves, shop, have a nice lunch, take photos. Woke up too late to make it there by lunchtime. Feel too sick and dizzy to get ready and drive a long way. Plus, the house stuff. Plus the work stuff, didn't even mention that - the stuff that gets pushed off to do on the weekend, which I never do on the weekend.

My life is no fun. I don't have anyone to do anything with on weekends. I really need to put some effort into fixing that situation, but I'm ground down farther and farther by the stress of not having it - vicious downward spiral. And I'm unwell. If it's allergies, that really sucks, because that means this is more or less a permanent unwell feeling - until it snows, anyway. If it's the cold that's been going around at work, I wish it would just be the cold, so I could call in sick and be done with it.

I need about a week off work, maybe two weeks. Don't have enough vacation days. Wonder if I could get stress leave? Wonder what you have to do to get it. And then a whole week's worth of stuff would be undone when I got back, so I'd be that many more days behind.

This is a bad situation. All the books say you have to have hope to live, you have to have something to look forward to. You also need human contact and companionship, and you have to have some time off when you can just enjoy leisure activities, not on the clock, not doing a "to do" list or a pile of "shoulds". It's amazing I'm surviving at all. But how am I going to dig myself out of this hole?

What I do is just crawl in bed and take a long nap. And when the alarm goes off at 5 on Monday morning, get up and sleepwalk through it all again. One day a crisis will come, or else I will put things in place to gradually get better. But right now, this Sunday afternoon, this weekend, I am stuck.