I don’t when exactly it happened or why or how. But sometime last week something imploded and I turned tired. I’d sleep and I’d wake up tired. I’d lose myself walking and I’d return tired. Sunday afternoon there was a momentary, unexpected upswing and I put words together and it felt good to see the wide, lowslung spaces between those words. I’d get lost saying whatever it was I was working out in my mind just then, and stop: lost but not tired.

(He said, “Stop, you’re talking about way too many different things.” And I looked at him, blankly surprised at him, surprised at me, because no one has ever sat across from me and called me on the way I cannot/do not properly string together my thoughts.)

It was a familiar, comfortable feeling so when I said, “I’m angry and grateful for my anger,” I was speaking from on top of my usual soapbox: unable, unwilling to stop for the moment. Unable to see how this is possible: to stop. Unwilling to admit that I was in need of something I couldn’t find in sleep or in the city.

But that was a momentary, unexpected upswing. And then I was left again with the aftertaste of this anger that I am grateful for: the tired bitterness, the faded doubts.

 

I thought last night, “I want to take a vacation.”
I resolved last night to take a vacation.

big skies

I am going to stop.