Day Three, Event Three, Headache Three

This is not #$%&ing fair.

I didn't drink last night. I didn't hang out late with my friends. I didn't stay up watching television. I was a good girl. I even went to sleep while my roommates were still talking. AND I STILL WOKE UP WITH A #$%&ING HEADACHE.

It's not fair, it really isn't. I was feeling so good--SO GOOD--on Thursday as I was driving up from Chicago for the tournament this weekend. Even strangers were noticing. I was glowing, I was so happy about finally getting started working on my book again. I had pages written! I had an outline for the rest of the chapter I'm working on! For the first time in over three years, I could see how I was actually going to finish writing this book! I had hope! I had a plan! I had confidence in myself and my work!

I was such an idiot. It never lasts. Eeyore, that's who I am. Give me one good day, one really good day when I feel confident, strong, capable, and--BAM!--I come down with the flu. Or, as this weekend, chronic headaches on waking. My head is pounding, I can feel the pain driving straight from my frontal lobe all the way back to the occipital, like a railway spike pinning me to the bed. The first day I told myself it was the martini I had the night before, but even then it seemed like something more than just a hangover. Yesterday I thought maybe it was that I hadn't had enough caffeine, but I had plenty of coffee to drink over the course of the day. This morning, who the #$%& knows? Maybe I haven't been drinking enough broth? But, no, I remembered to bring my bouillon cubes, and I have been drinking them regularly. And taking Tylenol two or three times a day. And drinking plenty of water, even at the risk of having to go to the restroom yet again. (No small risk given how hard it is to get out of a fencing uniform on the fly.) But can I make this headache go away? Ha. You've got to be kidding. Even my hair looks stupid this morning, and don't get me started about the bags under my eyes.

Why?! Why is this happening to me this weekend? I totally lost it yesterday during my pools. Not the bouts, although I only won 2 out of my 6. Not my Right Focus, although it clearly wasn't working as well as I'd like. But my confidence--shot to #$%&ing hell yet again. I thought Americans were supposed to be suffering from an excess of self-esteem. How was it that Jamie Lee Curtis put it in one of her children's books? "I'm gonna like me." "I'm gonna like me whatever I do, because I'm okay, and so are you." No, I just made that up, I haven't read the book, but our priest quoted from one of Curtis' books once in one of his sermons. Kids these days, he told us, are taught that it doesn't matter what they do, how they behave, what they actually achieve. All that they are taught is that they are great--and so the United States is falling further and further behind the rest of the world in math and science and everything else where discipline and skill actually come into play.

Well, somehow I missed getting that happy pill. What I would give to have one whole day, just one day, during which I didn't have a thought about how crap I was. Self-esteem? I barely know how to spell it, much less feel it. You may be okay, but I suck. And, no, don't try to cheer me up by reminding me of all of the things that I have accomplished. It's all fake. A fluke. Nothing compared to what others have done. Who the #$%& do I think that I am, trying to learn to do anything, never mind my age? I sucked when I was a child, I sucked when I was a teenager, I sucked when I was a young adult, and I suck now at middle age. And I will probably still suck when I am old, if I live that long. I don't even know why I bother getting up in the morning. What's the #$%&ing point? No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I will never be worth anything more than a good horse.* Mediocre, nothing to write home about.

And now I feel sick. I guess it's time to get dressed and go suck on the strip again.

*It's true, it's on my tee-shirt. My wergild as an associate professor: "One good horse."

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