A Voice from Afar

Hello.

I'm still here.

Promise.

Posts are a-brewin'.

April showers will bring May flowers.

Miss y'all.

FAIL

* Blogging

* Reading the novels sent to me by Kim Shable and Susan

* Leaving the bar at Smartini

* Seeing Reese and Dillon

* Contact with the outside world

* House-hunting

* Being productive at work

* Writing (in a way that uses that MFA thing I've got)

* Finances - surprise - $270 for car servicing! Taxes not back yet. Yelch.

* Sending back the merchandise that Amazon sent me incorrectly

* March project for volunteer group (although, I will have to partially blame it on the rain that is falling, falling.)

* Putting a picture of The Barrister on my desk at work

* Life, generally speaking

Crowded

When I was little, we used to sing a chant about bears in a bed. It was a counting game of sorts...and it went "Five bears in the bed and the little one said, 'I'm crowded! Roll over!' So they all rolled over and one fell out - four bears in the bed and the little one said..." You get the picture, right?

That's how life feels these days. Only no matter how many times things roll over, nothing falls out of the bed. It only grows more crowded. And I feel like the sheet, stretched as tight as possible to cover everything.

And yet, try as I might to stretch and reshape to get it all covered, I fail. Little bits and pieces start to slide out from under me, followed by bigger more substantial parts. Slowly, life drifts apart and I'm hustling to and fro trying to recover those things that have escaped my grasp.

It is this sense of lost control that pervades my mind. Even my dreams are fragmented, disjointed snatches of lost moments or anxious reenactments. I am starring in The Actor's Nightmare. Forgetting tests. Getting lost.

I am an overpromising underdelivering machine these days. I am late for work and lethargic and foggy when I get there. I forget to make calls. I can't find time for emails. The blog languishes. Family waits impatiently for me to join. Friends send out S.O.S. signals in the wake of my disappearance. I don't write. I don't read. Nothing is organized. Everything is frantic. I am everywhere and nowhere. I am responding but never enough.

It is like being lost in a crowd...taking up space, cognizant of yourself as existing. But so easily lost, discounted, nearly invisble. There but not. Taking up space but not really mattering.

Facing the Negativo

The last couple of weeks, I seem to have fallen prey to The Negativo. Suddenly, my first reaction to everything is negative. Anger, irritation, impatience, anxiety, dread. It's seething just underneath my skin, and it's provoked at the least infraction. And then it's like the worst version of me just jumps down the nearest person's throat. For example,

* The Dirty Film Boys are back, smelling up the common area. Every time I walk to the bathroom, the one closest to the door turns and stares at me. I am SORRY if the click-clack of my heels on the concrete annoys you, but get over it.

* On the way back from J. Island last week, my Garmin lost its ever-loving mind and directed me into the least populated corridors of the state. And when I turned around for the second time that day using the interstate median out of frustration, I promptly found myself sidelined by the state patrol. I had never ever cried on a cop until that day. "Happy belated birthday," he said. "I'm just going to give you warning."

* The Fam is experiencing too much togetherness. Patience is fraying; tempers are flaring. We're all slightly sick of the sight of each other but are quite at a loss how to avoid the suffocating conditions. Anna, though doing remarkably well, just isn't quite ready for abandonment and so we go and we sit together and we try not to kill each other.

* Work has me tense and knotted. I love my job, but right now, it just feels like everything is on level ten. There are too many balls in the air and I'm distracted...by...what, I don't know. By the shift in the office environs because of the Rockstar's impending departure. And the potential replacement's frightening Type-A over-achieving ways.

* I'm totally annoyed by people who do things better than me. How ridiculous is that? But it's like, I want the universe to give me a break, to give me some arena where I'm a winner free and clear. But instead, I'm on the insecurity train and riding shotgun.

* Another wave of grief seems to have washed over us all, and at times, it makes me resent every spark of happiness in the world. I want to tell other people not to smile. Because every time I think we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, it fades into the distance, and all I can hear is the echo of our voices in a long dark cavern that never seems to end.

* I hate waiting. I'm so mad at waiting. Waiting for the next thing. Waiting for it to be the right time to buy a house. Waiting for the time when I'll feel like writing a book. Waiting for friends to blossom out of acquaintances. Waiting for a time when I don't stand in a room full of people and feel like the loneliest person in the world. Waiting for a time when my whole life isn't hijacked by mourning.

* I resent practicality. I want to throw caution to the wind and plan trips and be carefree. I have 80 percent of my vacation left. I have no idea when or how to take it. And sometimes, when I think about it, I just feel more tired trying to think of how to use it. I just sort of want it to go away.

* I worry about us all...all of us with our respective heart conditions. Anna's broken into a million tiny pieces. Dad's grown tired and stressed. Mom's heavy with her worry for us all. And mine empty and lonely and guilty and sad for feeling all that it feels.

Failing

Tomorrow's Friday. I have to go to a meeting in Atlanta tomorrow at 3 - the world's worst possible time to try to get into the city (and subsequently out of it afterward). It's a meeting I'm not so jazzed about - one where I think I'll be slightly out of my depth and with an Atlanta associate I don't know so well to boot. I'm not looking forward to it.

Tomorrow's Friday, so the question comes up, what are we going to do this weekend? Anna says she can be flexible, about whether we come there or not. Dad has to get a haircut, mow the lawn. Mama tries to determine from all sorts of context clues and tone of voice what Anna really wants us to do. We all try to pass the buck to each other saying, "Whatever you want to do."

I finally spoke up and said that I'd leave from the Atlanta office and travel on north to Anna's. Dad and Mama will join us Saturday after the lawn and Dad's hair get a trim.

When I called Anna to tell her, it came out in a rush. In trying to be funny, I told her that it took a flow chart to figure out this weekend's plans. And I immediately wished I could take it back. Because I know it made her feel like a burden. And she's not. But I'm tired, and tired plus frustrated sometimes leaks into your voice if you're not careful.

I want to do whatever I can to help her right now, but sometimes, it's hard. It's hard knowing that "tomorrow's Friday" always means that arrangements must be made. I feel so selfish and guilty to resent that even the tiniest bit after what Anna's gone through - with what she's still going through. And so there's this cataclysmic struggle between the rising resentment and the guilt that pushes it back down and the sadness that engulfs them both and culminates in a shuddering, "When will this end?"

When will it? I don't know. For Anna...maybe never? And for me, even the slightest moments of moving on feel wrong. When I talk to her and know she doesn't want to get off the phone because the silence will be deafening after we hang up, I feel so guilty for every second I had that day that Ronnie's death wasn't weighing on me like a ton of bricks. I know that's not realistic; in a way, I know I'm not even being fair to myself. I'm only human after all.

But there's no guidebook. There's no instruction manual for dealing with death. Each of us deals with it in our own way. Meaning that, as if the circumstances weren't bad enough, you find yourself trapped in an emotional mine field worrying that your next step might be in the wrong direction. There's a sense, however off-base, that you could be missing the right way to handle it. And when you don't handle it with the appropriate sensitivity, when being tired overcomes your sense of compassion, when your frustration with having to pack one more bag, when you can't help the little selfish corner of your heart that just wants to stay at home and do nothing, when all that bleeds through into your voice, you know you've detonated one of those things. And it splinters into a million shards of guilt.

The truth is, it's messy and painful and ugly. I don't get to walk away gracefully. I just have to blindly free-fall my way through it...trust that gravity and faith will pull me in the right direction...and that eventually I will make a landing that will be less than disastrous. And for all those times along the way that I fail, I hope that Anna knows that I'm doing the very best I can in a situation she knows better than any of us has no "best" - and that's she'll forgive me of my shortcomings.

Things on My Mind Other Than That

* Am three days behind putting my time in at work.

* Volunteered to help with a non-profit fundraising event, and I am doing waaaay more than I planned. Daily I'm getting e-mails asking, "Can you handle this too?"

* A Client has asked to meet with my boss. Instead of me. Behind my back. Am now getting an ulcer because I know this is The Client Who Does Not Love Me So Much. (Am I fired?)

* Performance review: next Wednesday

* Having to pack for another weekend at Anna's. Subsequent guilt about complaining about having to pack.

* Another client in total crisis. Have been at work early, late and during lunch this week. Contributing to ulceration.

* My Skittles addiction is back.

* Have to get up at 4:45 tomorrow morning in order to drive to Atlanta, beat the traffic and be at the office in time for a v. important meeting. (see "Client in total crisis")

* The CD player in here keeps hanging up and spinning and spinning in silence and then abruptly restarting and startling the crap out of me.

* Alarming statistics on the volume left in Georgia's landfills - about twenty years, fyi.

* Man having baby.

* No blog til Sunday.