Week in Review

It's Friday, and with half an hour to go (6:30) before I get out of here and head for services, all I can say is that Shabbat can't get here fast enough. Technically, I suppose, it's here, as the sun has been down for a couple of hours, but if any kind of sweet relief was supposed to arrive with nightfall, it's not here yet.

What a week. Aside from the rent check debacle, it seems that my AMEX payment was also lost in the mail (took care of that this morning). Additionally: this week I was accused, and thankfully cleared (yay for my good record keeping, for once), of wrongdoing in an article I wrote recently for a print publication; the amazing and miraculous events surrounding yesterday's emergency landing in the Hudson, while truly inspiring and wonderful have nonetheless triggered the 9/11 nightmare code in my brain; and my toilet, in spite of two repairs this week, is still not functioning.

So I don't really know how much Shabbat is going to be able to do for me. I have more faith in xanax, but I have to drive. And yet I am not sure I should be medicating these problems. Granted, there's not much I can do about lost checks, downed planes, or malfunctioning plumbing. But it does seem symptomatic of feeling like things are spinning - make that raging - out of control - and that the Universe has handed me a somewhat justified ass-kicking for not paying attention. Is xanax just a better way of hiding from the problems I'm already not coping with? And yet I am pretty wound up and I would love an escape, even for a couple of hours, from the fallout and the post-traumatic stress. I'm tired. I'm sorry things got so bad, I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention to the lost checks and my bank balance and all that, but plenty of people are just as stupid as I am. Why is it that I feel like I'm really, really being punished?

But am I? Everything worked out, didn't it? I'm not homeless, or sued, or dead, or even cleaning the unspeakable off my bathroom floor. I'm just left with a pile of notes that I'm glad I kept, a pile of mail that I have to go through, and a pile of old traumas that are going to stick around whether I like it or not. And of course, having to lift the cover off the tank and do the manual lift-chain mambo isn't all that bad. It's just annoying.

Hopefully some good music, some good words from Shemot, this week's Torah portion, some good friends, and some good sleep will help me to put this into perspective. If anyone has any low-cost, effective ideas for how to unwind after a week of really bad stress, by all means please share: now's the time.