Lately, I don’t know what I am doing.
I am not so much numb as I have been fiercely holding down my mind, pressing it up against my palm to keep it from straying.
I am stopping every other thought… back spacing and deleting it. I am rushing backwards to go over the day, to edit it, and to try to edit tomorrow. I’m awake at 3 a.m., my head racing but nothing is connected to anything else. I might be creating for myself an inorganic case of ADD.
There are steps backwards in the sand and I can see them. I know what they are and I am, I guess, afraid enough of them to stop myself thinking about them or analyzing them with anyone in any depth. Not like the old days, when I spent every Thursday, it seemed, blubbering in Lidia’s office over the physical and emotional spills of the week. And I poured it out in letters to lovers and letters to men who would be lovers and over cocktails to girlfriends.
Now I’ve gotten so quiet. I can’t even write about it in a way that has value. I feel solid cold carbon, where once I was liquid fire. The angst comes out still, but not in passion… in meaningless, whining rants. Like any old person could be guilty of. I never used to think of myself that way.
I am not even ready to admit that I don’t like here… which is always the frame I use. I don’t mind it here. It isn’t bad. It doesn’t hurt. It’s fine. There’s really nothing to complain about. But there it is– the shape of it. Tepidity is seeping into my bones.
Maybe it’s the waiting and the disappointment. Maybe it’s the hormones. But I don’t think so.
I think I’m settling… settling into an idea which is the flip side of Jeannie’s realization: that I am not who I was anymore. And that I have no real interest in the new me at all. The new me isn’t kickin’ it, or flapping her gums, or tossing the cat around … she’s just bored with the dog and pony remnants of a free and wild life, and uninterested in the seemingly end-full possibilities of middle-aged womanhood and the chance to be another who-cares-about-women-anyway IVF statistic.
Jagged Little Pill
You have to wear it out to really wear it out. And once it’s worn and tired, someone’s bound to toss it aside. The joy and the passion have their side effects too.
Wear it out (the way a three-year-old would do)
Melt it down (you’re gonna have to eventually anyway)
The fire trucks are coming up around the bend
You live, you learn.
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