She-Beast Takes Out the Trash

It’s Friday. My hubs buckles my son into the truck and heads to the curling club to give the little man some time on the ice (he’s only three and can already throw a stone farther than Mommy). I’m settling on the loveseat with my laptop when my hubs calls and asks me to meet him at the street with the key to the curling club that he forgot at home. No biggie…

…Except it’s two in the afternoon and I’m still in my pajamas. No bra, makeup, or shoes. Hair a slept-on mess from the night before.

I don’t normally spend Fridays in my pajamas, but I’m two weeks into a cold so I’m tired, gut-sick from vitamins + elderberry syrup + Mucinex, and have been dragging my phlegmy carcass around the house doing laundry, changing bedding, and—STILL—cleaning up after Christmas. Also, because I have a cough, the pain in my skull from the Chiari malformation is explosive. I have very low expectations of myself on days like this.

I also had no plans to leave my house.

When I step out in my fuzzy socks with the curling club key fob in my hand, my first thought is Here Comes the She Beast.

She Beast.

I cross my arms over my chest to protect the neighbors from my nips and head to the end of the driveway where our garbage cans are waiting to get picked up tomorrow. Hiding somewhat behind them, my mind flashes from She Beast to what of course everyone (if anyone in our neighborhood is actually watching) is thinking:

Oh Look! They’re taking out the trash…

As in…I am the trash.

I uncross my arms and laugh. None of these horrible thoughts are funny except for how absolutely ridiculous they are. And they pop up like that all the time. Horrible, demeaning, garbage little thoughts that follow me around like a ratty mutt biting at my heels for attention.

The worst part is, once upon a time I would’ve listened. Not just listened, but internalized every terrible thing, opening the door for a dozen more insults slung from my own warped brain intended to take me down. And they would. I’d lower my head and hunker down for a good cry, or throw in a pizza and pour myself a glass of wine while surfing Amazon for a shirt or a piece of jewelry or a bottle of night serum that was going to help me be less beastly next time.

Today I wrote this post.

And I’m relieved that I can talk about this without an ounce of fear or shame or shred of belief that any of what I didn’t mean to think about myself is true. I’m not a beast or garbage or worthless or junky or terrible or a waste of life—not even phlegmy and frumpy and in my pajamas at two in the afternoon.

Yes, not even then.