The chewed nail of a problem

Tears further

ripping into the quick

The pain brings me back to remember

problems cannot be solved by the same head

that created them

What the mind mulls over in anxiety

produces bile and acid

lead on the chest

heavy at best

and unhelpful.

To shift the focus

the weight

take the fingers away from the mouth

lift the eyes

go outside

and begin thinking what a solution

would look like

instead of staring at the barrel of a gun

that will not shift

until I do

When I have to hand control of something to another person, wait on another person, particularly when that person won’t converse directly with me

I suffer

The thing is that we all have a hand in what we suffer, usually, it comes from holding our own (hand) on the hot surface of the mind

Anxiety, hyper focus. I know it is unhelpful at least and harmful at worst.

I’m better than I used to be but it is still a problem

I can stand aside from my suffering, watch it, see it spiral. It’s not that I feel it any less. I have walked around with a lead weight sitting on my chest for a month. Despite my calm exterior, my insides have a bleeper going off somewhere in a box buried at the back of a cupboard.

Government departments are shockingly hard to negotiate with

A piece of paper that I require is being held in the hands of other people who treat it as lightly as a child’s folded toy

It loops and crashes from person to person and I wondered today, as yet again it is tossed to another human

Is this my lesson?

Stupid question – of course it is

And I can stand there and recommend to myself very worthwhile commentary

But

Despite this advice, all good and sane, I feel like all I want to do is sit in a quiet room – wait until it is all over and the outcome that I need occurrs

Alas – this is not so – we live in a world that requires other pieces of us

So, this time I am going to try very hard to shift the gun barrel, that thing that I aim at myself

And look instead of at the problem

At the solution that I desire

Interesting aside

Desire has a surprisingly poignant etymology for such a simple-seeming word. Borrowed in the 1200s from the Old French verb desirrer (meaning “to wish for”), it can be traced to the Latin word desiderare, which could mean “demand” or “express” but had a much prettier literal meaning: “to await what the stars will bring”. Obviously, this etymology is heavily steeped in astrology and the Romans’ beliefs that the heavens influenced all the happenings on Earth. More than wishing for something, they wished that the heavens would give them something. Anyway, desiderare is composed of two parts: the prefix de-, meaning “of” or “from”, and sidus, meaning “star” or “constellation”. De- just comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “of” and sounding about the same, and sidus, most likely through Proto-Italic, comes from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction sweyd, meaning “sweat”. It appears that desire to use the word desire has decreased throughout the ages: it was far more prevalent in seventeenth century English than today.

So

I await what the stars will bring.