Uncontained

Work
9:19 am
Friday, July 29, 2005

Uncontained.

I'm not doing so well, mentally that is. I realized today that my life has made a perfect metaphor to paralel the noise in my head.

You see, I keep a rather large amount of shit in my car, 95% of which is highly useful. 3 Cd cases, paper towels, tool box, caboodle of necessity, incense, blanket, festivus, etc etc. (The Caboodle of Necessity is filled with band-aids, deoderent, cards, pencils, plastic bags, tape, markers, matches, safty pins, etc etc.)

Now the problem with these highly useful things as if that some of them have taken to sliding around on the floor boards of my car. Thanks to the fantastically utilitarian design of my vehicle, the floorboards are covered in durable plastic, no carpet, and the back is elevated about two inches from the front, the seats are high as well. Result: the CoN and the toolbox slide around, under the seats, across the back, eventually slamming into the back of my seat.

At first it was innoccous. Randoms slides every once in a while. Since Detroit, it's been getting worse. Last weekend, it was pretty constant, and Alii laughed at me saying that if I don't do something (bungee cords?) then the tool box is going to burst open, spraying sprockets everywhere.

Now, they slide every where, spawning other loud things that slam around startling me. Metaphorically, the same is true in my head.

Does that mean that I'm about to flip my shit, spewing the sprockets of my life all over the place, spending the next month trying to gather myself? My mom's idea of putting carpet down to quite the noise being medication, Alii's suggestion of bungee cords has yet to produce it's metaphorical other in real life, but I'm waiting.

I'm having an existential crises of sorts. No the type that would make Nietzche or Jeremy proud. About to flip my shit, in other words? I'm almost too anxious to drive, not really eating, trouble concentrating. All the classic signs. I had to stop this morning for both coffee and cigarettes to strap myself more securly to the earth. Momentarily, I was afraid I'd slip through the cracks in the universe.

Mostly though, it's lonliness. Deep seeded, bone-numbing, heart-wrenchingly alone. The kind of thing that would have put me in bed crying were I in high school, but now makes me stoic. I won't cry now with out 1) a reason, 2) the next step figured out. Now? Well now I don't know. Reread "Franny and Zoe" for the 84th time? Whiskey? The beach? Spending money? Painting? Jumping into some manic as quickly as possible in hopes to leave this behind in exchange for crazy?

No.

How did this happen? What brought me here? The magic of theater. We had our performance for the musical theater camp I'm teaching at last evening. Alii was there all day, ran our lights, and as I told her afterwards, if it weren't for her, I'd be lost on so many different levels. It was her birthday too, only she didn't tell me. (She doesn't celebrate them. I took her to Keller earlier this year to celebrate her existence, so it's all good.) But friendship, no matter how strong, or how sweet isn't the same.

But after the bows, and the cheers, and the intense dose of theater crack that comes from a show, I realized I was alone. Summer Linkers came, God bless them for it, and co-worker congradulated me, children hugged me, I went to the bar.

There wasn't someone who was there just to watch me, just to see my work, be proud of my successes, clapping for me, loving me, standing with me through the parent introductions, hugging me afterwards, letting me light up their life.

The problem: I'm losing hope. Lauren finds love over hundreds of miles, via the telephone, and all I get is voicemail.