A turmoil indeed and one I have no control over. It has launched a control over me for years and it now manifests more often than ever before.
Many people watch couples bicker over things from cash to driving and my latest pet bickering took on a new stage on the camino when I had an uncontrollable desire to tell the bus driver how to drive his coach.
It all starts with me and Jackie bickering over which route to take, avoiding traffic lights, going down favourite roads, fuel efficiency, more left turns than right. Its usually "Sat Nag" saying to me why are you going this way or me saying to Jackie, "I thought you would've gone this way", compounded by me saying y"ou can change gear now" as the engine grates on my ears like a snorer on the camino.
I took it to new levels as we left Carrion de Los Condes and my bus driver refused to move out of 3rd gear until he was doing about 70. It didn't help that we were driving through so many small towns or that I was sitting at the front of the bus. My frustration boiled even further when I realised my limited Spanish couldn't say, "you can change gear now, there's not a roundabout in sight."
I resorted to headphones as my inner turmoil had me re-writing Marxist theory on the evolution of the environmentally unfriendly bus driver, the sequel to Zen and the art.....I mean how many gallons of fuel do you consume at that rate.
I was in my spiral and its not a good place to be, yet again helpless to control the disorder and chaos in the world, "Rome is Burning, and so is this driver", I mumbled. I comforted my distressed self that I was about to fly Ryanair out of Santander and perhaps this was me feeling that my colossal burning of fossil fuels was being tipped over the scales by our driver. Not for the first time the wee colonial was trying to say, I need all your resources so sorry pal you cant have those grapes as I need the whole truck load.
I dont know the reason why but I do know its real. This belligerence is an aspect of my autistic self. I cant control that impulse to impose my perceived order on the world and I have to try a bit harder to understand it in my head as its not going away. Its actually got worse in the last few years or perhaps I see it more now.
I remember when I first felt vertigo walking into Santiago in 2007, then again walking into Portomarin in 2011. Now I'm used to it, I think of falling out of a plane and my legs go to jelly. I can watch a movie and suddenly feel myself going. On the plane back I had a window seat, disastrous stuff. I tried the soduko with the Archers, a combo that is like Avocado and Ice Cream. Sadly it didn't work and I started feeling sick. This tightening of every sinew while you mutter words like relax is not a comfortable place to be. You picture happier or sadder images, anything to move the narrative along, evetually you start singing the penny drops as the mushroom rises. A nice apocalyptic image, like a shushie blanket and it stops.
Foolishly, as with dodgy teeth, you check its away and start asking hows my stomach now and is my panic away, ARGGH!, why did you do that , just as the two year old behind me starts up.....
I famously did my 247 times table while getting a vasectomy. Its in these pages somewhere and aptly demonstrates we're in control of our good and bad states of mental contentment but we dont all have the tools all the time to get there.
As I sat in the car yesterday thinking, "just dont say it, just dont say it, just dont say it, just dont say it," I felt pain, anguish, and relief, when I hadn't said a word, until I got out of the car.....
You wouldn't let it lie......
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