another day

Last piece of furniture acquired, everything pretty much out of my car except for the big pane of glass for my coffee table, which Mom and I picked up last night and we couldn't carry it up there by ourselves. She came over yesterday to hang some of my pictures. The place looks good, but when I'm alone in it, I feel strange. Even with the TV on, the quiet presses down on me.

The hardest part is over, now all I have to do is live in it. It looks like a place anybody would be happy to call home, but I keep waiting for the real owner to walk through the door, because this can't possibly be my place. There must be some mistake, Ms. Landry, go back to LaPlace. You misread the fine print, this is just a glitch in the Matrix.

Last night I was a bit anxious after Mom left, so I took a bath and then went out on the porch to listen to the rain and drink whiskey and read my book. It was nice. The whiskey helped. When the book failed to keep my attention, I put it down and watched plane after plane fly steadily through the mist, and I thought about how he and I thought we were strangers for the past few months, but at least there wasn't this awkwardness between us. I thought about all the things he gave me-a love for mountains, a chance for stability, an appreciation for nights at the theater, a stronger grip on the world, and so, so much more. I thought about the length of ten years and how it seemed so much longer then that, packed full with nights out and cruises and parties with our friends and Saturday morning breakfast at Shoney's. It is a lifetime that even I couldn't begin to span with my pictures. Despite my attempt to turn them off, they keep coming back on, and sometimes I can't remember a time when we weren't together, which scares the shit out of me, though I have plenty of evidence to the contrary. I tried to come to grips with the fact that I have to take everything he gave me and leave he, himself, behind. which seems unfair, but not much about this is fair.

I went inside and laid down, put on 90's alternative music, and finished my book. Unable to sleep, I dragged out my old high school journals to remind me of a time where I thought I was fucked forever. It is surreal reading yourself at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, knowing all that's ahead of you and not being able to tell yourself to hold the fuck on, because perspective is going to kick you in the balls. God, the worries I had then were so stupid.

This part, this part is the part I've been dreading. All moved in and nothing to do but go to work, pay my bills, and think. This is when everything sinks in, this is when I come to the realization that this is my life now, and I'm not sure I'm ready for all of it. We had to go to Norco last night for my coffee table (super good deal) and driving towards LaPlace without actually driving into it made me feel very disconnected. Driving away from it felt stranger. You're going the wrong way. These parallel lives we're living feel wooden and unnatural, at least to me.

Despite my aversion towards this next stage, I have a very strong urge to lock myself into my apartment and not come out of it, though I know it's not the answer and it's not going to make me feel any better, Zoloft or no Zoloft. I have to get out there, live life, see friends, do things, but this weekend all I want to do is sleep.

I know better than to assume that I will.

The anxiety is getting better, I'm no longer panicking in public, though I see Sid and I everywhere. In the green Soul heading towards town, in the Elmwood gym parking lot, in little white Kia Rios, waiting for me after work, like ghosts, leaving trails behind us until the whole Kenner/Metairie/Elmwood/New Orleans area is lit up and there's no place untouched.

No place but my apartment, and I can't hide in there forever.

I am starting to wonder if writing in this thing is doing me any good. When I reread it (sometimes I add things in old entries) I sound pretty goddamn pathetic, but I remind myself that I cannot feel guilty about feeling the way that I do, or ashamed that I feel grief, and that I'm not that sixteen year old in those beat up notebooks, making myself bleed longer than I have to. That version of me prolonged the suffering because she was afraid of the next step, the person I am now has no choice.

Still, I wonder, if it's doing any good.

-Rae

good news time:

it's going to rain all week/weekend, which means I'm going to be on my porch a lot.

-My coffee table is super nice. If I could get it all up into my apartment I'd be all set.

-Jack is still doing very well with not going in the apartment, even though blocking him in with the gate is not working out. Even with stuff up against it he still manages to knock it down/jump over it.