It's Hard to Keep Floating on a Foundered Dream

Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. Ottoman situation: normal. I haven't even been able to write in days. I just feel heavy. Today was heavy. I suppose that the mess I've made was prone to drag me down. I guess this is the part where I just keep my head up and let the rapids take me where they will, hoping not to get crushed to pulp on the rocks.

Some of the weight isn't mine to put down, so let me just skip that part. I feel it on my heart and I cannot help it. That helpless feeling tears me apart like nothing else really can. I was born into a world where my greatest hope was to be helpmate to something I was taught was better than myself. I've tried to put down the feeling of being less, but I still carry in me that need to be helpful. It's funny the things you had pressed into you so hard they become you. How hard it is to untangle them from your blood vessels and ligaments and draw them out of your bones.

Feels like I might be hitting that wall now. I can't think what else to say next. I am tired. I went to the gym and had to go easy because of this shoulder. Send me all the good you can over this. I know there are so many people with so many worse problems than mine, but mine feel a little insurmountable tonight. This week. This month. All year. But I've made it this far and if nothing else, the sunk cost fallacy keeps me with my claws in it.

I apparently got distressingly plastered Monday night. I was told later that I said I missed my Daddy. I haven't said that often enough lately, though I have felt it so much it hurts to breathe around it sometimes. I could always just sit with him, we didn't have to say much, and no matter how much something hurt, it was okay for a little while. I'm lucky to have known a few others like that in my life. But they won't ever be him. It sure was a relief to have a safe place to lose my ever-loving shit. There just aren't too many safe places for me right now. Of my own doing. I think that's the worst off I've been since that night in New Orleans a decade ago. That one was worse. 

That's two live rock shows in three days. I woke up Tuesday with my ribs sore. I realized later it was from singing all night. My ribs, my lungs, all achy. I loved that feeling. It made me feel grounded and corporeal when I've felt a little gauzy. A little like I might float away entirely. But not like a balloon or a bird or a paper airplane. Just like a smoke ring that fades away and then it's just gone.

I wonder if I'm depressed. I've been sleeping too much. Too much for me, anyway. The regular amount for anyone else. I wonder if it's just my body finally letting go. And that would be a good thing. It doesn't feel like a good thing. It feels like that time my mother went to bed and stayed there for...you know, I can't remember how long. It was a very long time to a very little girl. That time when people told her how good she looked just before. That time she was probably just about exactly the age I am now. I guess maybe we're just not meant to go like this indefinitely. I don't think she was ever really the same after that. In a bad way.

I should probably head towards bed. I'm resisting it. Had a wonderful phone conversation earlier and that really did help. I need to put you all on rotation to hold me down these days. Lift me up. I'm very lucky to have the friends who answer the phone when I need them. Who answer my texts. Those are the people who love you. And I am loved. Oh, I need that again. I am loved. That's so much more comfort than I thought.

Sitting at Nanny's last Friday morning, reading my book, as I always am, she looks up and says "What are you doing, beautiful?" I looked around the mostly empty room to see if she was talking to someone else. She's never called me beautiful. I don't think anyone ever has inside those walls. I'd have given my last dollar to see my face right then. I probably lit up like my bonfire life. It's so strange to me the things that still stick so hard. Of course, I just held up McCarthy and said "reading" because that's what I always do there. What I always did. Where I always go for comfort, to Nanny and to my books. Both are home to me. She smiled. She always loved how much I love books. I know she always loved me in the way she could. The way you can love something you know is a little wild, half-feral, unpredictable, too smart for you. I guess I was always the wolf-dog in that family. Only halfway housebroke.

All of these things in my mind, but I guess some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia.