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Monday, September 25, 2006

Losing it

For a while there, every Friday night I managed to lose something - a shoe, a sweater, whatever. It got to the point that I expected it. Lately, though, it's gotten worse. I don't forget my keys or glasses, and I worked out a system for the Metrocard, but everything else . . . forget about it, it's gone. I try to make these systems to organize and remember and I still look like a hunchback hobbling along in the least attractive way. I do now balance the two bags but even so, there's those moments of sheer panic where I sometimes want to curl up on the floor of wherever I am - the subway, the street, the Williamsburg bridge - and just cry. It's not just the crap I'm carting around, the actual things that seem so important individually but taken en masse feel so ridiculously unnecessary, I could burn it for all I care, it's what it represents. I'm a mess, deep inside, and outside, apparently. I feel like I sortof muddle through the days and act like I'm managing and sometimes even am managing but am always waiting for disaster to strike, even now with so many good things happening all around me. And I want to pare down but it's so hard. When I'm forced to, I can, when things go missing or misplaced accidentally or ruined, I can part with them. But otherwise, it's my security blanket, my way to know that I'll be okay.

And let's not even talk about my mind. I've taken to bypassing the to do list and delving into full-on denial. I try to be fully present, and this weekend I was, trekking all over the city because I live on the "we hate you, you fucking losers" train that's never running, and it was actually kindof fun until last night when it took two hours to get back from watching Weeds and I was too tired to figure out which trains were running and which weren't. But it's not traveling that's making me forget every detail I need to remember. It's me. I know it, and I'm working on it. I know I need a vacation and yet part of me is petrified to take one. While I'm dipping my feet into a pool in Sherman Oaks and hugging my aunt and getting to spend time with the one person I know at this point who can, at least temporarily, maybe, kiss me and make it all better, I feel like I'll be missing out on something essential and yet if I stay, I know I'll lack a real vacation. I think it's just all coming to a head, and I'm still getting over the cold I managed to give myself in the stress of the book deal-ing. Old habits die very, very hard and since I was a teenager I've always waited till beyond the last minute, and, well, it always worked, so it's hard to stop that and force myself away from whatever indulgence I'm partaking in to, oh my goodness, write?? What? Why do that now when you can do it later? But then I realize that there IS NO LATER. There is only now and while there are plenty of board games and comedy shows and whatever else going on, I'm the only one who really cares whether I get off my lazy ass and send something to an anthology or whatever. I'm trying to sortof hold on to the last shreds of memory and responsibility I have. Sometimes I think all I'm good for is bringing people cupcakes and presents and smiles, and you know what? If that's true, I'll do it proudly. I love that, and it's so simple, and it made this weekend a lot of fun to just be with people who I could talk to all day or night.

But I guess when I'm not feeling like I can't do whatever the ever-changing "it" is, I feel like I want to BUT... There is always some simple excuse I have and I manage to make my fuckups somehow make sense, but really they don't. So I'm trying not so much to make amends as to be present and do/remember as much as I can and figure out how to keep myself on track and not overcommit and not freak out and not make things bigger than they are. Better to turn in something crappy than nothing at all, which I've learned the hard way from sheer inertia when I hit a wall and just walked in the other direction because I couldn't face the seemingly impossible.

I have this card up with a Lewis Carroll quote from Alice in Wonderland (which again reminds me of things I haven't done, like read the copy I bought when I was reading Rejuvenile, which I also put down, "and you know what I fool I am/with my short attention span" as Billy Bragg's "Ontario Quebec and Me" goes):

Alice laughed, "There's no use trying," she said, "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."


I know I'll get through it, or I won't, and I know I need to if I ever want to dig myself out of debt and into some kind of real life where I'm free from all that, but sometimes in the midst of it I just want to give up. It would be so much easier and I sometimes can't see the harm in it, and then I realize that I'd feel so dead inside to have nothing to do, nothing to work on, nothing to keep me going. I guess the irony is that instead of that feeling like a dream come true it too often feels like hell. "Face It," indeed.

Also my long-winded way of saying if I can't answer email or phone calls or just make really dumb mistakes of late, it's cause my brain is not really working right lately. I am just happy if I can figure out what day it is and where I'm supposed to go at night. Maybe it's time to think about leaving New York, or maybe I just need some downtime and a major change of scenery. My one saving grace has been walking, although I bought these awful Nike sneakers I'm probably gonna have to get rid of. They felt fine in the store but after a few miles just killed the back of my ankle and had the opposite effect I'd intended; my walking felt heavier and more difficult in them, like I was clomping along in snow boots or something. $100 for a week's worth of use and my feet are in so much pain that I dug up my old Skechers and they work fine. I'm gonna try the New Balance store and it's a lesson to me that I really didn't need new sneakers in the first place. But my point is that this walking kick I've been on is really saving me from a complete and total meltdown. So now it's just mini meltdown time as I try to power through the next few weeks before I get to escape to sun and pools and cupcakes and cuteness.

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