The witching hour

I can't sleep. I'm restless like I remember being as a child. Itchy, too warm, not tired but a tad irritable. Unlike a child, I know I should be sleeping but it won't come. So I'm up and writing because nothing puts me to sleep faster than my own words. Laundry is done for the weekend though not completely folded and put away just yet. Today when it's actually daylight I may fix some clothing too dear to part with and fix a meal that will make me feel less bad for having the remainder of a obscene slice of red velvet cheesecake for dinner. Maybe I'll even prepare some more for this move, the stress of which is probably responsible for this restlessness. Ashley is looking for apartments in earnest now. We went to a horrible place today that was an object lesson in what a fresh coat of paint won't do. It's a place that would worry my mother. Then we went to a place where the saddest woman in Philadelphia sat on her stoop and smoked a cigarette. We brainstormed what manner of circumstance would convey despair that rolled of a person like that. We settled on 'fresh out of crack' but if Ashley, determined always to do the opposite of what makes the most sense has her way, she will be able to report back from her new digs right across the street if our sad woman ever finds happiness. Or crack. I don't think I can handle watching a kid piss away every advantage I worked to give them in life. She's my sister and I sometimes just want to clock her with an anvil (wherever they make those outside of Warner Brother's cartoons).

But in happier news, I am sublimating all the stress I'm not eating or writing on shopping. I started to feel bad tonight about my shopping bug but then reminded myself my version of a shopping spree is buying a new hallway runner and some flip flops at Ross (I totally bought more than that, but it was still at Ross). With the exception of the the excessive amount of purses I've purchased over the last month, everything else has been reasonable and on crazy sale, like 4 dollars for a bracelet sale. And the purses I *just* bought, also on crazy sale.

Every now and then when I'm inclined to be disappointed with how well I'm not holding it all together, I try to give myself some grace. It's been quite a spring. We seem to be so far from where we were it is hard to process that I was preparing myself for my mother to die, the government was being furloughed, I was cleaning my mother up after she used the bathroom and holding a bucket for her to spit in while acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. It was for me in that moment. That was my normal. Now I call the house and talk to my mom like I wondered if I ever would again. Then the shit baton was passed from family to work, and I had a terrible month at work in June. Really shitty. And work appears to have designs on making July shitty too.

I cracked sometime in June, driving for the nth time towards Washington D.C. and cursing a blue streak over the shitty work situation on the phone with my soul twin. I surprised myself with the words that came out of me. I was done. I was ready to die, I had/have no expectation that life was ever going to be any different than it was now. I will always be without a significant other, I will always grieving the stupid stubbornness of someone in my family (or myself), I will never be 'that girl' for anyone, nothing I ever try to accomplish at work will ever actually happen. I was done. I had seen enough and I wanted to be done. Soul Twin said she had been waiting for me to crack for some time and had not understood how I could just keep going, keep absorbing the little shit storm life had become and be so seemingly okay with it. I might be wrong but I could swear she was even a little delighted she was there when it happened. I was completely over it though. The only thing keeping me from the single car accident that would release me was a sidewalk snacking Labrador who I decided just wouldn't understand and wouldn't be taken care of as well without me. It was weird to hear myself say those things. It was an out of body experience. I wasn't upset or crying, just completely over it. Light a match and walk away over it. I can't make good happen in this world, I don't want to stick around and watch it be bad.

I don't have the time to give that episode the consideration I think I ought to so in the interim, I shall buy purses, write when I can't sleep, and eat red velvet cheesecake for dinner when I need to.