Circus

I don't know where I've been.

I mean, in the physical sense, I've just been traversing the same worn little gerbil trails between home, school, work, and the gym, but over the past months I feel like I've been somewhere else entirely.

These things happened: I fainted in a Starbucks after having fractured (pretty sure it was/is fractured) my foot, wiped out my checking account on bogus dog X-rays and subsequently fired my vet, witnessed a drive-by shooting across the street from my house and didn't sleep for three days, went to Chicago the following week for a writing conference which effectively hit reset on my sleep cycle and state of mind, came back, arranged to move onto the military base and out of my craptastic neighborhood, failed utterly at doing the taxes, am trying to ease my car into a graceful state of decline, and am losing my paternal grandfather. This last is too big to talk about, and doesn't even belong on a list of minor emergencies and to-do items, but there it is. And I can't be there.

This is maybe a lot, but the thing is, the entire world is operating under this amount of stress right now. At least, it certainly seems that way. Everyone around me is imploding. Spectacularly. Publicly. I have two policies immediately in place that seem to be working: no drinking alone, and no looking more than two days ahead in my day planner. Plus, my mom is coming out on a rescue mission. This is the equivalent of those U.N. airlifts where they drop pallets of rice and water and antibiotics. Only this comes with hugs and wine and chocolate chip cookies and enthusiasm for the absolute clusterfuck that is moving.

You know what's weird, though? Out of all of this stuff that's upsetting and unsettling right now, the thing that undid me this morning was being utterly passed over in a review about a reading I'd done recently. How self-centered is that? Everything else I've met with this kind of numb will, this response of "Yes, I see. This is bad. We will commence dealing with it." But not this stupid review. It was shocking, the sudden flare-up of absolutely petty rage-- and it wasn't even that the person said anything negative about me. They gave a glowing account full of alliteration and cutesy phrases to the guy who read first and then said of the three of us that we were "solid in their own respects." Solid? In my own respect? I'd gone out on a limb and read something very close to my heart, and not the easy, funny type of thing I usually like to read, and the experience was wrenching. Solid?

I feel anything but solid today. I feel like when you're standing at the edge of the water line at the beach and each successive wave leaches a little more sand out from under your feet. I feel like I want to be anywhere but here. I feel like I need to be back in Texas because there's really only one thing I care about right now and it's not my taxes or my job or my classes or my poor dying car.