I’ve been having even more fatigue than usual this week. I think the release of stress after submitting the Anthropocene article, finishing Fairytale Salon III plus submitting a grant application all within the same week was too much for me, on top of my health issues. Today, I checked my blood pressure and it was terrifyingly high. Which made me wonder what happened that day when I’d forgotten to take my blood pressure meds. Could it have been a precursor to a mini-stroke? Who knows.
I thought about it earlier, about how, “I could have died, and all these people would have left of me are all of these lies I can’t refute because I’m not clever enough to play that game, and unlike those people — I keep to myself. I’m quiet until I talk too much and when I talk, I overshare. And so it’s so easy to paint a target on me.”
So I sat down, and I started again to write a “set the record straight” piece. Halfway through, I deleted the entire word doc. You have no idea how many times this has happened over the past two years. The injustice, it sits in my craw. The realisation that these mean persons will outlive me and will go on maligning me and my reputation.
And then I thought to myself, “I don’t want to spend what life I have left fighting this war. It’s not good for me, it’s not good for my blood pressure, obvs.”
So instead, I work on revising my chapters and remember that writing is also a valid method for channeling that pain. I can’t do anything about people’s opinions of me, whether valid or not. I know some of it I probably royally deserve (I am not sweet-tempered, and that’s a fact) — but many of which, I do not. There’s a lot of bad faith distortion out there from people who think both SFF and academia are zero sum games. A lot of people telling stories to cover up the wrong and inequity they have been complicit in. Yes, there’s a lot of complicity here and exaggeration plus…dare I say it? Profiling. Yes. I thought about that today during class when I was talking about racial profiling and complicity. It’s easy to get people to believe what you tell them about a person through a distorted lens when that person has always been an outsider, isn’t it.
But still, the point is moot. And it’s not a war I want to fight.
Within our lifetimes we don’t know what will happen to this planet as the climate emergency accelerates — as this pandemic shows no sign of letting up no matter how self-deluded people may be about it. Why waste what time we have holding on to grudges? But these things that I could write entire articles about, have had an impact on my writing and my careers. As well as my health. Is there any justice in the world? Is there any justice for me?
Probably not. So, what else to do? Keep on writing. Keep on keeping on because I have to keep on living. So maybe I actually am letting the bastards win this time because I’m too old and too tired to fight. Besides, if what happened to me two weeks ago was what I think nearly happened to me. It was a wake-up call. I need to let some things go, for my own health — not even mental health, my physical health.
addendum: just checked my bp again and it is now at slightly more sane levels. Either rest did it or maybe I got used to the new bp set. Still going to monitor like a hawk.