Help. I'm feeling.

It's a weird thing to be at a point in your life where you can do anything you want, but you're stuck in squares one and two until the fairy godmother shows up and grants you five wishes. (In my fantasy, it's a godmother, not a genie. And there are five wishes--not three. Because in my own fantasy, I'm the boss and I deserve my bonus wishes, honestly.)

When I am sad, I buy dainty underwear.

When I am really sad, I walk around my apartment in it and try not to bake more chocolate cake. 

I have a few big decisions to make in the next months. Having everything to do with where I'm going to end up and what I'm going to do when I get there. Each decision, I'm learning, will take a lot of heart, but heart's hard when you're ruled by your brain. 

Can't sleep again, so I scrolled old text messages and tried to convince myself that moving across the country wasn't the answer. No small feat, I'm afraid, because I stumbled across this and fell back in like with the city. And its people.

I once wrote this: 

"Thinking about The Jefferson at sunset, Arlington in the pouring rain, the handsome man who collected me at the Pentagon City metro stop, and how in the world I ever got here."

Hard to argue with it, right? 

Help.

May 11, 2014

There was the gravel road, the big, white mansion, your mom in the garden, and there was me.

I didn't want to come inside because I knew it would make me feel things. Things for you, things for the white mansion. For your mother in her gardening gloves and a beige linen dress. I knew I couldn't get away empty if I came inside, which is always a thing I'm trying to get away on, isn't it? I often run on only enough to carry me through. To the next gas station, the next meal. The next time I see you.

That's it with you. I want empty because it's less work. And work is something you're a lot of. And if you're work, then I want empty because it means there's less of you. 

***

I wrote this last year after my first visit to the big, white mansion on the outskirts of Brigham City. The first time I met Jude's mother, she was gardening and warm. A month or two before she'd been diagnosed. She invited me inside, but I declined her invitation. Because I was just too scared.

Last Friday, I went back to the big, white mansion and this time, I went inside. Started writing about the experience tonight and couldn't even get through the thing without choking up.