November Lock-Down

Just spent the last forty five minutes staring at a ball of wires, listening to a clock tick. My mind, of course, was elsewhere…recanting a particularly extraordinary week.

Car still smells like burnt hair and cooked meat. Ran over a deer on the way to take a test last week, and ended up putting on quite a show for my fellow stranger test takers when I got there. Had to park my car over a sort of hole, slide my trunk rug under that, and get to work yanking the completely intact deer leg which had been torn from the carcass by the joint, and gotten wedged into my exhaust system in the middle of my car. The deer was dead when I hit it, but my car rides about 6 inches off the ground…and the deer, at rest, was closer to two feet off the ground (I thought it was a bush until the last second). So, the bottom of my car is (still) rancid rotting burnt carnage…even after a week…which really seemed to set the tone of things quite well.

Friend of mine informed me that she’s dead meat in four years unless she starts some new heart treatment that she can’t afford. Another one told me they were pregnant with a rape child from a husband they had, until now, been trying to leave. And another one moved to Florida to be with her new beau…this one, I’ll miss the most. Expectations and romantic inclinations were never our forte, but her departure is probably going to crush me more than I can even anticipate. Currently, I’m still just gasping in shock over all of this. Together, the three of them probably hold the largest portion of my net love for humanity– and all three, in one form or another (some more literal than others), appear to be dying or disappearing– all three of which broke the news to me this week.

The feelings I’m dealing with I can’t explain– some crazy hybrid of love born pity for their more tragic situations, and selfish mourning for the others. They also make up the largest portion of folks I am comfortable around, and folks that actually know me on a level that you, or most people for that matter, do not. I want to cry or something but it aint happening. I keep doing these emotional ‘dry-heaves’ where all the air gets sucked out of my lungs, but…nothin. I need the waterworks. This feeling sorry for yourself shit is for kids…