My mom thinks the Butcher needs counseling. My dad accused him of being on drugs. He accused my dad of being a rape apologist. My mom complained that, since I’ve asked them not to read Tiny Cat Pants, she couldn’t read the October story. My dad scoffed that it was “probably just as bad as everything else she’s written.”
And now I have this twitch in my eye that is rather unpleasant.
But I am relieved to have said tick, because, frankly, I feel fine. All this nonsense and my internal happy-o-meter is set to content. No wire sticking out of my boob? How bad can it be? And I’m starting to feel like maybe it should bother me that things don’t bother me. I mean, that can’t be right or healthy to just be like “Whatever!” about everything.
But here it is! Evidence that some part of my brain, and hence my body, is actually quite stressed out about things. So, normalcy will return.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Around here that “Whatever” stage is a perfectly normal reaction to a prolonged bout of stress. It’s like all the stress builds up and breaks the stress-holding container and suddenly there’s nowhere (mentally) for the stress to go so it just washes away leaving the bottom layers of happy and content exposed and a wonderful feeling of “Go be idiots, I don’t care, I’m gonna be happy over here away from you.” Sadly, you’re right in that everything eventually goes back to normal as soon as the stress container has a chance to rebuild.
That is exactly how I feel. But I admit that I don’t like it. I feel like I’m missing a useful and usual safety guide. I’m glad to hear others experience it, too, though.
The eye twitch is my sign that something’s off. For me, it seems to be triggered by the aggregation of small troubles.
And I’m always surprised by it because the little things creep up on you until-Ta Da!!!-eye twitch.
I’m heart sick your dad thinks you write poorly. You don’t, and it’s obvious to me and others that you have a way with putting words together that is rare and valuable.
Lately I have learned to listen to my twitches and insomnia, because if I don’t I might get shingles again :( I’m sorry about your folks. It’s always hilarious to me when parents pull out the “on drugs” charge in the most unlikely situations, because clearly their kid would never disagree with them unless they were smoking the crack.
Chris, he was just being an asshole. He doesn’t like the things I write about and wishes I would write about more “real” things. Part of the problem is that his family tends to read my writing to confirm whatever they believe about me. “Bone” meant I was a lesbian, but too cowardly to tell them. Weirdly, “Frank” did not seem to convince them that I was secretly a man or secretly wanted to fuck a dead dude. Though I think it convinced them I was deeply fucked up.
So, basically, by “bad” he means “immoral.” Which, frankly, i can live with, since the ways the “moral” people in my family act tend to be pretty destructive.
Some of the things he’s said make me think he actually thinks I’m a really talented writer and is proud of that, even though he’s deeply uncomfortable with what I write about.
But thank you for your kind words about my writing. That really makes my day.
I woke up with a crushing headache and an under-eye twitch this morning. Thought of you. They are still both with me, but at least I know I’m in good company with the body alarm clocks. (ps–you are a fucking amazing writer, gifted and skilled and funny as ten thousand vulture-headed heads of state doing the electric slide)