Tuesday, October 4, 2016

What The Hell?


Woke up this morning with my anxiety-meter redlining for no reason whatsoever. I had strange dreams but nothing too scary and Maurice had spent the entire night with me close enough to touch and her eye is mostly healed and it looks normal again and I truly thought she was going to lose it or be blind at the very least, so that is good, and it's a beautiful cool day and so what? Why? How?
Fuck.
I don't know.

I did my crunches, my stretches, started laundry, downloaded a new book, took up my walking stick and headed out because what else do you do? Sit home and tremble?
Sometimes. Sometimes you do but if you can, it's best to move.
And so I did, down the sidewalk and onto the little path where the beautiful old house under the beautiful old trees sits, it's Make America Great Again: Trump! sign still there up next to the ancient wire fence.

The other day as we drove past the truck stop it looked closed and Mr. Moon told me that he'd driven past it the other morning early and no lights were on and so I went to explore that and sure enough.



I peeked into the windows and the shelves are bare as bones, the coolers and refrigerators empty as well. This is so weird. In the forty-something years I've either lived in or haunted this area, that place has been open. Nasty, dirty, bereft of any charm whatsoever, stinky, unwelcoming, with food (when the restaurant was open) that would hardly please a starving person but still- open.
You know?
This leaves the one convenience store and Subway right next to the truck stop open and that store is scarier than the truck stop ever was. No matter when you go in there you see the same employee- an old woman whom Flannery O'Connor might have been frightened by, her skin as blue pale as skim milk, her eyes somehow flat and wild, both, as if she were eternally and always being held hostage, as if she would simply discorporate if she so much as dared step outside the store, and I've always suspected she sleeps on a cot somewhere in the nethers of the place. And yet, she manages somehow to ring up the purchases made by unsuspecting travelers who have wandered off the interstate, the local people who have no transportation or other choice.

Oh, Lloyd.

Well. I walked and I walked and I sweated and I sweated and now I'm home and feeling no less anxious but tired, so I guess that's an improvement although it hardly feels like it.

I'm going to eat some lunch and shower and go to a nursery and buy my bedding plants, my seeds, even as I am thinking of Haiti and wondering if it will even be there after this storm passes, people living in tents still, all these years after the earthquake. I am thinking of how much damage the relatively mild storm which hit our area just over a month ago did and wondering how in hell life can be preserved when a storm with twice the windspeed covers an island where people live in such tenuous conditions on hillsides and beside crumbling walls.
I am thinking of so much today, too much, some of it close to home and some of it far away and wondering how we humans can go on, day after day, and yet- we do. We do.

We go on and we hold on and somedays we wake up and it's all right we felt tenderly held in the light and those days do come.

I wonder what's going to happen with the truck stop?
Like so many things- I have no control over that at all.

Love...Ms. Moon



10 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry you're dealing with this shit! I've had anxiety for over a week....sometimes bearable and sometimes I want to run away so bad that I can't stop shaking. I had two doctors' appointments today and they made so many changes in my meds that I'm confused and have decided to just take a damned nap.

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    1. I have GOT to get a new doctor. Just one that will listen to me. At least yours are trying.
      God. It sucks, doesn't it?

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  2. I really admire that you can get up and go when you have anxiety. When I am going through it I am frozen. I stay in bed or on the couch all day long. It isn't healthy.

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    1. I know that I absolutely have to try to get out of my bed, out of my head. It doesn't cure me, but it makes it better. I swear.

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  3. My heart aches for you. Because I know what it's like...I wish I didn't, but I do.
    I've been waking up from my nap with intense anxiety...which for me is the worst. No reason for it, it's just there. I always wish I could just go back to sleep, but that's impossible.
    I'm sorry for all of us that deal with this monster.

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    1. I think that sleep is like rebooting the computer. Sometimes it makes it better, sometimes it just doesn't. And we are never sure of which it will be.
      I'm so sorry.

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  4. I'm sorry the anxiety has ramped up. No, you can't do a thing about Haiti -- at least not at the moment. I wonder if this is one reason religious people find comfort in religion -- by praying they feel like they're doing SOMETHING.

    Weird about the truck stop! I wonder what happened there?!

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    1. I think the truck stop guy may have put all of his eggs in the sports complex basket and then it got snatched away from him and he's left holding...an empty basket. That truck stop is a mess and an eyesore. I would not mind seeing it get torn down.

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  5. a small truck stop here closed recently but I think I saw a sign that said 'future site of...' so I guess they are going to tear it down and start over. sorry about the anxiety. I'm already dreading the anxiety I'm going to be suffering on the day this job is installed.

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    1. At least you'll have a reason to be anxious. I bet it's going to be okay. And god- won't you be happy when this job is DONE?

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