It's confusing. And water over the feet

I wrote a post yesterday about a huge three-way fight between me, Rob and Fiona. Almost deleted it, then locked it to a small subgroup. It was an ugly stupid fight that had me shaking with nerves when I came to work, and to my stressed out mind, totally indicative of the way things seem to be sliding into the abyss. The odd thing was that we were talking about it at dinner because we were describing to Delia what happened. How could I go from being absolutely shattered about an ugly fight in the morning to laughing about it at night? As we described what happened, the words we said (expletives deleted), the actions taken, we were doubled over with giggles. Why?

"The only explanation I can come up with," I said, "is that we love each other."

Dunno why that makes a difference. But apparently it does.

( A disturbing parable )

I feel somewhat disturbingly imbalanced today.

Catatonia versus the twitch

I was seriously bent out of shape by the time I got home from work. It wasn't anything that happened at work. Nothing too strenuous was asked of me. Well, the rain didn't help. I was descending into one of those unhelpful moods where I just wanted to crawl into bed and shut the world out. Didn't want to cook, didn't want to eat, didn't want to interact with anybody. I felt tense, as if hunched in a permanent worried crouch. With some difficulty, I talked about it with Rob. Sometimes I get in these states where we know it's important to shake me out of it. This one felt like, well, catatonia.

"You know what you have to do," Rob said. "You need to go to karate."

"I don't want to," I said. I didn't want to do anything.

"It's not a sparring class, so you don't have to deal with people hitting you," Rob said. (That's really hard for me to cope with when I start sliding into bad depression. I've been avoiding sparring classes lately.) "But it'll get you up and moving, and you don't have to think. You just have to follow orders."

"I don't want to go," I said stubbornly. Which just goes to show how bad I was feeling. I love karate class. Me not wanting to go to karate means that my system is seriously in disarray.

"I'll cook dinner AND clean up. You just lie down in bed for awhile, and I'll send the girls up to cuddle with you. But you're going to karate."

Rob can be really bossy sometimes. Fortunately, this was one time I needed him to be.

So the girls came up and cuddled and it was lovely. I ate dinner, and read and watched the clock and sulked a bit. But I put on my gi and went to karate.

I realized afterwards that we were working on exactly the right thing, physically, to snap me out of the catatonia. Sensei worked with us on exercises emphasizing the twitch -- the type of muscular action which goes from total relaxation to explosive lunge: like when you are lounging around and suddenly have to spring up and lunge with your arms outstretched to reach for a falling vase. We started with combinations, and then moved on to short sections of the red belt form, Zhang du Moon.

The catatonia makes me want to curl in a ball, muscles tense. Working on the twitch response means relaxing and then exploding and then relaxing again. Just the perfect way to get my inner hedgehog to uncurl itself and start moving again.

I do feel better. It was the right thing for me, to go.

(All right, Rob. No need to be so smug.)

I think I will go make some Bengal Spice Tea. That will help, too.