Quelling the Grel

“I’m not myself today.” We hear people say that and sometimes say it ourselves. We have a plethora of hackneyed phrases to kinda sorta define what it means: we’re “off our game”, “out of sorts”, “feeling off-kilter”, “out of whack”. What exactly does it mean?

In Michael Gruber’s Tropic of Night, it means your grel is in command. A grel is like a gremlin, but instead of creating mechanical failures, a grel is the demon spirit that resides within each of us, feeding on our emotional scars and advancing its own destructive agenda. When we are healthy and whole, the grel sleeps. Dormant, passive, unknown. But with any injury, real or perceived, to our psyche, the grel is suddenly wide awake and in the driver’s seat.

I picture the morgue scene in Men in Black, where the dead guy’s head peels back to reveal a tiny alien critter sitting in a “command central” seat.



The other day, I gave it up to my grel. Someone said something that brought up an old hurt and with it, negative thoughts about myself. I tried to let it go. It’s in the past, right? But those thoughts just clung to me like barnacles. Or like the stink of dead fish because pretty soon flies started buzzing in my head, depositing packets of animosity and rage like maggots in my brain. I am the victim here! How dare they? Why am I always the one who gets treated this way? People suck. My life sucks. I am unloved. That grel was up there pulling levers and pushing buttons like a mad fiend.

Eventually, I ran out of room in my head for these kinds of thoughts and they started spilling out onto other people. On the way to work, the grel slid into the aggressive driver cruise control mode, directing my un-loved-ness out into the world complete with hand gestures and tire squealing. I was not myself. At my desk, I barked orders, slammed phones, scattered papers and threw my weight around the room if anyone dared approach. I’ll give them unloved! Co-workers gaped. And ran. I was not myself.

At lunch time, I had moved from white hot anger to a woeful blue haze. The old wounds were fully seeping with the pus of insecurity and isolation as the grel moved into self-pity mode. Being angry takes energy and I was worn out, hungry and alone. I got back in my car in search of food. Oh yes, I was well aware of the grel run amok, but knowing it’s there doesn’t mean you can stop it. I was too busy crying over my renewed victim-hood to give more than a half-hearted attempt to wrest the controls out of his greedy clutches. In Tropic of Night, exorcizing the grel required a voodoo witch doctor performing an elaborate Santeria ritual involving chickens, fire and sacrificial bloodletting. Mumbling “Get outta my head you damn grel” hardly qualified.

Up ahead was Wawa and I contemplated the seething mass of cars cramming in and shooting out of the parking lot. The last time I had gotten a sandwich there, I watched the harried overweight woman behind the deli-counter throw the contents of my lunch together. She slapped on the tomatoes, crammed in the lettuce, jabbed the knife down, squashing and squeezing the contents of the roll, and bundled the whole thing into a greasy bullet shaped wad. Maybe she wasn’t herself that day…

I remembered wolfing that sandwich down at my desk, trying to keep the contents from slithering out with each bite. By the time I finished, I was bloated and more worn out than fed. The negative energy of the deli-counter woman had made its way directly into my gut. I had vowed I was done with Wawa and that I would eat at more wholesome local venues. We are what we eat, right? The intimate act of nourishing my body deserved better than some haphazard assemblage of an overworked production line. Is that even food or just bad mojo?

It was this remembered promise that veered my car left instead of right and I found myself in the empty parking lot in front of Livin on the Veg.
“That’s a stupid name for a restaurant,” said the grel. “It doesn’t even look open. You’re going to be the only one in there, which is going to make you even more self-conscious. It’s probably expensive.”
“Shut up, grel,” I barked. I wavered, secretly contemplating crossing the street to Wawa…
“This is going to take too long,” the grel whined.
“I brought my book. I can read while I wait.” The grel went silent and I gave myself a mental pat on the back for being prepared to wait patiently. Before the grel could think up any more excuses for NOT following through on my earlier vow, I marched into Livin on the Veg.

It wasn’t nearly this dramatic, but I recently read a commencement address given by author Paul Hawkins in 2009 at the University of Portland where he quotes my favorite poet:

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though
the voices around you kept shouting bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s
description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense
of connectedness to the living world.

Looking back, I think that’s what I was doing in that moment, sitting at that empty counter, reading my book while the Livin on the Veg crew created an avocado club on whole wheat toast, neatly wrapped in crisp white parchment paper with a side of zucchini rice salad. I was moving away from the profane. It’s a quiet kind of power. None of the anonymous frenzy of the Wawa action happening on the other side of the boulevard. In fact, it was so quiet, I could hear the grel settling into a snoozy little nap. Aw! He’s actually kinda cute when he’s asleep.

“Laura?” I looked up from my book and the girl smiled as she handed me the paper sack with my lunch in it. “Have a nice day!”
I smiled back and dropped a dollar into her tip jar. “Thanks. You have a nice day too - ” I glanced at her shirt for a name so I could reply in the same personal manner in which she had addressed me. She didn’t have a name tag, but the logo on the front of her shirt read: LOV