Left to my own devices, I brood and obsess and internalize. I lounge and overthink and become melancholy and wring my hands about what next steps to take. I usually decide to sit and wait for inspiration to hit and take things in and bite back my reactions. This year, I'm mostly about shaking that bad habit.
And it's hard. I think I've cried more since I have when I was a child. Fucking change is hard. Sometimes I don't feel tough enough and I slip and do what I'm trying not to. I've always been a person who does the "right" thing since it's the good thing to do and the mysterious they say if you work hard and rightly enough, you get nothing but good things back. But, what the fuck do they know? Do they have names and can their references be verified?
I've been precariously trying to keep equilibrium. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want. Sometimes I just don't know. Other times it's clear: happiness, success, security, respect, and feeling appreciated. I've ripped up some of my foundations with jackhammers and tried to subvert everything I thought I was about. I've tried to kill the dead weight and be forceful and be me. I know I've been more self-absorbed than usual, but I don't get the same thrills in sharing that with others that I used to. I'm just trying to keep shit together a day at a time, even when it seems like things are falling apart all around me. I quit my old mostly comfortable, but extremely hated job and threw myself into a new scary place that makes me proud and cry and be upset and want to do the best I can and sometimes just want to throw in the towel and start again. It's hard for me to not be my job nowadays especially when it has me for 60 hours a week. The rents think that I am insane and alternately encourage me to walk away and stick it out. I don't know what I'll do. My mind changes daily.
I feel raw this year, all exposed nerves and shaky. Just when I'm putting one foot in front of the other to maintain, weird shit happens and I'm thrown again. There's been death and Mr. Daddy's medical crisis surprise (all better but still weirds me out) and getting a blast from my little girl past and the random thoughts of having screwed up and not being able to fix my trajectory. And the forceful expulsion of people from my life. Sometimes I have random dreams about Farmer and we're still friends or whatever. I miss him sometimes and wonder about him, but mostly think the break had to happen. Sometimes you just care more about people than they do about you and life is better when they're not around. Sad but true. I had the long overdue showdown with the boy the other week. I didn't realize I had so much anger simmering under the surface until I threw a drink in his face. It was a bad quick episode, but also on some slow motion movie shit. That was like the bow to a colossally shitty week. I'm sorry but not especially and I wrote him a vitriolic letter that I buried in my notebook and will never send. It's my nature to try to have a coda and make things tidy, but I'm starting to accept that sometimes endings are jagged and bad.
Thursday night, I revisited a place that had some appeal over the summer and the kid who introduced me to it. I was sitting alone, not really sure if I was waiting or not, feeling aimless and drinking a cider. I'm pretty sure I was frowning and ridiculously far into my head and the problems I'm sorting through. The bartender made minor small talk with me and I responded in monotone capped off with a weak smile. The kid came and we small talked and I resisted the urge to dump the bad at his feet. I killed the work and bad old relationship talk and focused on the moment. A nice little bar, a good cider, a DJ randomly playing the Metro Area album, colorful bar characters, the fun flirtation and the unspoken knowledge that it was leading to more, and a real smile on my face probably for the first time that day. It's just better sometimes to focus on the great little things.
