Emotional upheaval abound a.k.a just another 19th nervous breakdown

I was cooking breakfast, a daily balancing act; I had just cracked my last egg into the frying pan, when I heard a smash behind me. I turned around and saw my whole 18-egg carton (minus the three I had just started cooking) upside down with whites and yokes oozing out from under it. I looked at it, took a deep breath, and started laughing. I just knew they were all broken. (That was Ed’s worst case scenario as well).
It’s hard to talk about all my anxieties when I’m feeling momentarily happy. As I am now, thanks to some sunshine and some scotch. But last night and the hours and days before then… here’s come the sun, little darling. And I have to believe that Ed and I will get through our current situation and it’ll be alright.
To start, and thank you for indulging me because it’ll be good to type about it, I’m lonely. I’m used to a city full of people, always movement around me, interaction with colleagues and clients. Now it’s just me, and Ed and Grant and Carol. The animals don’t count, that’s not human interaction. I’ve turned increasingly to the internet, but nothing goes on there either, so hit the refresh button and wait while the page reloads. I’m finding it difficult to focus my energies in any particular direction. I’ve had friends suggest knitting, or needlepoint, any type of handcraft. I walked around Michael's for an hour, looking at all the possibilities there. But nothing caught my eye. I left feeling more purposeless than before.
That’s what it is, I have no purpose here, at least I have not found it. And it’s been such a struggle just to survive, mentally, here in this cocoon. I told Ed once that I would live in a cave with him, but maybe I couldn’t live in a cave with myself. Not having a home when we first got here, and then living in the trailer now which is only marginally workable because of the limited space. And then having the handyman over everyday, with banging, clacking and tearing everything apart and then putting it back together again. It needed to be done and it needs to be done. But your home, such as it were, should be your sanctuary, and to have it invaded on a constant basis, just as you are trying to settle in and start to feel at home there. It’s hard not to have that place that feels like home. Cause there is no place like it. That’s what I don’t have here yet.
A little bird, or a wise owl, sat me down the other day and gave me some words of wisdom. I think we are related, if only in spirit. More on that later, but she said to me: what is it that men need in their relationships? They need to feel like they are taking care of their family. It’s biological, as much as I like to think that I, as the female am as equal in every sense of the word, we are not, we are two complimentary beings, we are the yin and the yang, and both are needed.
I thought about this, and two thoughts came to my head. One, through the biological and cultural evolution of the human species, it was the males, who for obvious physical reasons, were the primary provider. They went hunting and brought home food, they went to war, protecting their home, they took care of their group. (Due to the nature of hunting, men had to develop a quiet communication style with each other, which carries on to this day. While women, who generally stayed close to home tending the crop and the children, were able to sit and talk and work as long as the day. That’s why women are more talkative than men (this explanation is my anthropological generalization, to which there are, of course, deviations and contradictions). More on that later.
So Ed, who, god love him, just wants to take care of me, and provide for me, and as much as this might sometimes aggravate my independent side, I can’t blame him for his biological coding.
Though also, I can’t deny that I am a female with just as much biological and hormonal coding as men have. You know, I bleed once a month, as does every other adult female on this planet. And when I was younger I used to say, “PMS? HA!” Because I never experienced that many monthly symptoms. But this past year or two I’ve began to notice that some months I’m a little crampy, and very tired, and slightly more emotional than I used to be. Not that I become a raging bitch, and I don’t think it’s acceptable for any women to use bleeding as an excuse to become one. The point is, I can’t deny my “womeness” anymore than Ed can deny his “maness.”
So Ed is already feeling vulnerable and insecure due to his lost ability to provide for me, and every minute of my unhappiness is driving that nail deeper into his psyche. I’m not very happy here, yet. I think I could be, but I haven’t found it. I think that by nature I’m a fairly happy person. And I know Lincoln said “most folk are as happy as they make their minds up to be” or something like that, but how much power does the mind have over outside circumstances? Not that I’m comparing my situation with them, but how much could people in concentration camps, or refugee camps, or war-torn Sarajevo, say to themselves, “I’m going to be a happy person” regardless of the hardship around them? So I have to try to be happy, despite my suffering and anguish, even if that suffering is only in my mind, because that’s the worst place for it to be.
Other demons reside here now, I mentioned the noise of Los Angeles, here there is only silence. We are experiencing withdrawals. And the silence is loud, like the frogs and the crickets and my thoughts. My thoughts are really loud, and not always nice. Also it’s a culture shock, I’m used to things needing to be done yesterday, and fast-paced Beverly Hills. Here people move slow. Ed and I were walking around the grocery store the other day, and I looked around and said “We are walking four times as fast as anyone else in here.” Maybe I should slow down. Maybe I’m afraid if I slow down, I’ll just stop. Stop.