strange musings of a distracted spunk

Last week, I watched water fluctuate in gradients, mountains rise up from the road almost out of nowhere, hairpin curves and bathing-suit less boys. Seagulls were shameless and squirrels motioned to attack. Redwoods soared beyond measure, I hiked in flip flops and socks because I forgot sneakers and it was cold, and I tucked everything aside for five days.

I didn’t worry about what I would do what I got back. I didn’t worry about what would happen with GDB, though we did have a discussion during my trip that opened new doors, but leaves things as open-ended as ever. I didn’t worry about how I would get the five remaining pieces of furniture out of my apartment and all my clothing and books home. I just drove. My shoulders began to ache, helmed at the wheel, and I would pause every few hundred yards to stop, run out, snap a picture, admire the breathless beauty of the Pacific coast, especially in Big Sur, before finally heading home. I watched sea lions play in Monterey Bay. I slept better, more soundly than I do in my own bed, where my subconscious infiltrates my dreams with thoughts of everything I have to do. To say the last time I slept well was Wednesday night would be truth; and only because I was so exhausted from exploring coastal California so intensively. Since then, my dreams dance with a future that still wavers with that same boy in Chicago who can fulfill my needs so well, yet walks a fine line between being my love and being my friend.

You would think that the world would give it a rest.

I went to my office on Thursday, cheery with the knowledge of all the travel I had planned. It became clear that my bosses had explained my leaving as my decision, saying, “She’s moving on.” They sought to assign me new projects when I was only in to finish old ones. They even asked me to put my dentist appointments on Friday down as sick leave, when I technically didn’t even have to be in the office that day, or ever again after they told me I wasn’t a good fit. By the way, showing up to the office with the right side of your mouth numbed out on Novocaine is one hell of a way to make an exit. I felt a bit like a 40’s film star, speaking out of the left side of my mouth. I should have said, “Take this cigar and smoke it, kid,” but alas, I waved and said, “Bye!” The impulsive trip up the coast somehow made it manageable for me to walk into my office, not take the sympathetic look one of my former bosses gave me personally, listen to my boss jumble her words as she said, “I really appreciate you coming in; I realize how awkward this must be,” and have the wherewithal to reply, “I’m not awkward at all,” and even allow them to take me to lunch. No hard feelings? Check.

Leaving somehow felt more freeing than it did when I left in tears just a week and a half ago.

Yet in that same week and a half, the hits keep coming. My tuition bill made an appearance, asking for almost five thousand dollars that I certainly don’t have. My grandfather landed in the hospital for the fourth time this month, and is having surgery tomorrow, a surgery that has me racked with guilt for making plans to travel instead of flying directly home to be with my family. My stepgrandfather has been sedated for the last week because blood stopped traveling through his intestines; a man who is almost 90 and has been a cigarette chimney and a beehive of Coca-Cola activity for most of his life without a single effect.

You would think that the world would give it a rest.

My bags are getting packed, the furniture emptying out. All that’s left are toiletries, about 20% of my clothes, and four books. The electronics are slowly dissipating as buyers exchange me their cash for my used toaster oven, television, space heater. And yet, I worry. I worry that I won’t be able to find a job when I get home. I worry that somehow, this month of irregular communication is going to end up hurting me more than anyone else. I worry that I’ll land down in Thailand and get the phone call that I need to come home. I worry that somehow, going home is going to lose the me that I’ve found in the last year. Where I become wrapped up in family obligations, commitments to friends, jobs, school, and the time that I had to write, to think, to reflect, to regain the little sanity I had is going to dissolve. That my writing will change as my voice changes as my habits change because I’ll return to a fast-paced lifestyle that keeps things zooming and zipping.

How do I make the world stop turning again?