summer blues

 

Not sure what it is lately, maybe some grief related to losing students, and turnover amongst staff. Maybe not having any gurus pull me from the crowd (ha). Maybe the lack of a crush. Maybe the fact that the world is on fire and the sky has been darkened every day by Canadian wildfires, but billionaires are going for joy rides like nothing is up. 

It feels a little like winter depression, like struggling to wake up, desire to hide or crawl into bed, difficulty getting motivated. I am not depressed really, just everything is a touch harder and little thoughts creep in that aren't very pleasant. 

I was supposed to go to Rachel's birthday party movie, the sky was clearer, but I went home and ate some food and decided I had enough time for a nap... and well, you know how that goes. But did I really want to go to the party? no. Was I figuring out how not to go? maybe. I was consciously putting in the effort to try to get hyped up... but...

I had a nightmare that finally woke me up  (about 4 hours later). I was in a car, speeding to get to a destination... it felt like it was something related to work, but might just have been an obligation. I was speeding down a road I hadn't been on. A sharp turn. Suddenly my car slid out, and I felt like I was not in the car anymore... like I could see it from all angles, including from high above. My car slid and tumbled and launched up a small embankment on someone's lawn landing upside down on someone's house, smashed into one of the rooms, so that the front of the car was facing the ground and suspended like that by the fallen debris. 

I was not in the car anymore. I was seeing it from many angles. Then I was on the ground approaching the house, and I could see an old elderly man (relief, oh they aren't hurt), and then a live-in nurse (Oh, they are taken care of), and then an elderly lady cry-wailing in the background (Oh my God, I hurt someone). There were a flurry of thoughts and emotions, fear of hurting others, fear of going to jail, fear of the unknown. I was crying and trying to remember what to do. I knew I needed to call 911, but it was like, they were already calling and again I could experience it from all angles. I could see them dialing the number. I could hear their discussion with the dispatch describing me crying. I was still outside their house looking in, and felt ashamed that I wasn't doing the right thing. I was trying to call 911 to report myself, but instead found myself listening to their description and nodding along. The old man and the nurse were talking, the old man didn't seem alarmed at his (presumable) wife's despair, the nurse wondered if she were having a heart attack and he basically shrugged it off. Her tone sounded like she was looking for someone to blame for all the discomforts, even though she was being evenhanded. I took comfort from the man's assumption that there wasn't anything else to do, even if she was having a heart attack, no reason to be alarmed, just keep following through. 

They finished the call, and I found myself trying to make my own. Still outside. Some part of me felt homeless, felt lost. I tried to look inside the car. Tried to find something to comfort me. A hoodie or something so that I could cover myself up as I waited for them to take me away. 

When I woke up I spent a considerable amount of time wondering why I had a cell phone in my hand, and whether that would be the thing that damned me. I do have a really hard time lately not checking stuff on my phone when I am driving. I don't know why. I usually wait till red lights, but sometimes I find myself looking at something while I am on the highway. Probably this is troublesome. 

I also spent a lot of time wondering whether I was ejected from the car, or pulled out (perhaps angelic intervention), or simply bailed out like I used to from the tire swing when it was going too fast. Seeing it from all angles, I wondered whether I hit my head, whether I had wounds I wasn't attending to. Whether they would think I was drunk. 

Speeding into obligations, suddenly cut loose, the collision of things I can and cannot control, the responsibility regardless, the desire to hide, the fear of being misunderstood, the curiosity of wondering why I know the things I do -without anyway to explain to the passerby. The way others respond, calm, accepting, wailing, pointing the finger at those who should take accountability. 

I found myself on a rather cruel joke yesterday. Rachel and I had talked about being single earlier in the week, Sat? (I don't know days anymore). But there was this amusing thought to me that maybe we are just waiting for the apocalypse and that is when we would find our people. And then the joke became something along the lines of "Don't worry single people, there will be some widow/widower that needs your support after their partner dies in a natural disaster." and "Hey people desperate to have children that don't have any, just you wait, some amazing parent is gonna sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children, and then what? Well, you will swoop in to half ass foster those children!" Life will make sense, tragedy will make sense of your present solitude. And its funny and kind of cruel, but its true right?  Life makes of itself, regardless of your perception of it being right/wrong, it just is... and we get to choose what we do with it. "Single people! don't kill yourself now, wait for your devastated future partner to appear."  And some part of me is like.... hmmm if all of us single wealthy people stopped using up resources and killed ourselves instead, would it save the world for those children and families? but then I was like... yeah but, come on... I mean were not THAT kind of altruistic.  Bo Burnham's song "comedy" in which he says "maybe I (white people) should just shut the fuck up... I'm bored... I don't want to do that..." 

My Dad asked me (over Red Lobster, living large in the retirement age), what I was planning on doing for social life this fall.  I had nothing. It was like I had been thinking about it, and came up with nothing, and then just assumed life would figure itself out, but once he asked, I just felt stupid. Like... "yeah, Dad, I am a failure at life. I have no plan other than work. I am basically giving up on other parts of life because I can't figure out how to do them."