Published at: 10:10 pm - Monday October 13 2008
It’s 4 am, and I’m standing beneath the overhang in front of the building where I work. Not due here for another hour, I’m alone. Staring out over the wide, empty parking lot, watching puddles form in the wake of a gentle, steady rainfall. Finally, this rain. It’s quiet, somewhat lonely, but peaceful. In the periphery of the streetlights I see hundreds of thousands of tiny flickers pass by, little white dots so numerous and falling so fast, becoming threads that make up a net that covers the expanse of the world beyond my little concrete barrier. “There’s a reason they’re called ’sheets’ of rain,” I think, watching a passing wind ripple the wet air in front of me, the way curtains next to an open window bend and wrinkle when the breeze sneaks through.
Been drinking a lot more lately. Got high for the first time in many months the other day, too. It’s all about getting out of my own head, I think, or at least altering the way things are being processed. Not healthy, I’ll be the first to admit, but I’m not doing well with the self-discipline thing these days. At least the experience with the pot was somewhat educational- I’ve learned the stuff is pretty much of no use to me anymore. Can’t read while on the stuff, can’t write either (as evidenced by forty-five minutes spent searching for that *one* vocabulary word that just wouldn’t materialize). Listening to music can be fun, but my attention span resembles that of a 3 year-old with ADD while stoned, so I can’t really sit through anything long enough to enjoy it. During college and in the few years after I felt pot helped expand my mind, but these days it just leaves me disoriented, my thoughts muddled rather than clarified. No thanks. I can find more effective, less obnoxious ways of fucking with my system.
More destructive behavior: along the lines of those wacky cell phones with built-in breathalyzers, I insist upon the invention of computers that can gauge the user’s emotional vulnerability and prohibit certain pre-set actions accordingly. Was it wise of me, knowing very well how raw I was feeling, to start digging back through several years’ worth of chat logs? It’s amazing, reliving conversations with people who are no longer in your life, seeing what you shared with whom, what you were feeling and saying and doing all those days ago, word for word. The transcripts of dialogue that took place within the last year were the most damaging; thankfully some internal self-defense mechanism activated and shut down my wanderings pretty quickly, leaving me with only small scrapes and scratches, spared the wreckage of deep cuts. They hurt, but the pain is not anywhere near what it could have been. Nostalgia truly is a weapon, and may be a more appropriate name for this place than I’d realized two-plus years ago.
The obsessive-compulsive tendencies have emerged again, timing their appearances with increasing frequency. I lie in bed reading, stopping every few pages to slide the bookmark in, cross the room and check the alarm. Once. Then again five minutes later. Two minutes after that. Checking the alarm, not even making it back to bed before turning around again, thinking that I never even looked at how it was set, just that I’d made the motion. I long for the carelessness of falling asleep in someone’s arms, the comfort found in a warm body pressed against my back, the arm around me. Forgetting to check the alarm, perhaps even waking late one day- that would be exquisite, the best and only excusable reason I can think of to be tardy to work.
For now: a warm mug of chamomile tea, some calm breathing exercises to clear my head, and - with any luck – a night of restful sleep. Here’s hoping.
