Day Forty Five: Spin Cycle

My own personal centrifuge.

Does anyone remember high school physics and centrifugal force? 

Maybe the imagery is verging on commonplace, but that doesn't mean it rings any less true. Life--or at least mine with a lowercase "l"--is on a constant spin cycle. Sometimes I'm physically in it, pushed up against the outer edges while the floor collapses like that ubiquitous carnival ride, and I can't move. And sometimes its the people in my life caught in this centrifuge, rising and falling all around, disappointing and occasionally surprising me. But for the most part, the spinning is in my head.

Complacency is the divine right of all middle class suburban housewives. Happiness is defined by what doesn't upset the apple cart. As a card carrying member of this group of women, the most stressful parts of my everyday life were juggling car pooling duties and figuring out what's for dinner. But when my Mom died, all the things that made life good became superficial or ancillary, trifles to what true happiness should be. The bigger problem here is that I have no idea what constitutes true happiness anymore because the definition changed to something I just can't grasp.

Finding true happiness is a personal journey that no one can go on but me. And if I do figure it out, it'll be like that tree falling in the forest conundrum. If I find it and no one really cares that I did, will I really be happy? I spin this idea around in my head all the time.

Grief is a tricky thing. It makes you want things that you cannot have, it makes you selfish, it makes you delusional. Most of all, it makes you feel trapped in a life that you are not sure was really the one you wanted in the first place. It's the crack in the veneer, the self-doubt that hurts more than if someone actually punched you in the face.

These are my most confusing thoughts today. They whirl 'round and 'round and 'round.