Feeling: atrophied
Listening to: Beatles - You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
Reading/Watching: lots and lots of job descriptions

I don't know what's wrong with me.

We sat in IHOP, the boys talking about the new WoW setting for D&D, and for some reason I had to get out of there, away from my miasma of stony personal silence, away from the table where I couldn't draw together the energy to join the conversation.

I excused myself and went to the bathroom, sitting down inside the stall and putting my hands over my mouth, and suddenly I was fighting to breathe, fighting to stay quiet, trying with all of my might to stop crying because in the space of five seconds I went from quiet and moody to completely unraveled.

It was like an asthma attack, a clamping around my windpipe, and I realized I wasn't breathing so that I wouldn't sob, and thus make the other ladies' room inhabitants anxious and uncomfortable. I held my breath, and sprinkled my jeans with teardrops, until sparks danced before my swimming eyes and I breathed in slowly, slowly, slowly, then out again, shaking with the effort of it.

After a few minutes, mopping at my face, breathing shallowly, slowly, silently, I came out of the stall, washing my hands busily, not looking in the mirror so that the girl at the other sink wouldn't see my face.

When I came back to the table, I was smiling thinly, but chattered and grinned with the other two, perhaps breathing a bit strangely, but collected nonetheless. I made it out of the restaurant just fine, into the car, and asked mon coeur to take me home, so I could regain normal respiration without anyone looking on.

I pretended intense interest in the flashing sidewalk outside my window, looking fixedly off to the side, and was furious when my eyes filled again. I breathed, and breathed, and held very still, and when my left eye threatened to spill over I began a silent mantra of don't fall, don't fall, don'tfalldontfalldontfall... oh, you bastard. And then it was a game, a mirage, no everything's fine here, just scratching my chin, and now I'm rubbing my lip, and for a moment I'm resting my cheek on my hand, then itching under my eye, and finally removing the sleep from my corneas, and there, tears all gone. Erased. They never were there, you know. You didn't see a thing.

We arrived at my apartment and I climbed out, no, no kiss goodbye, you'll see my face too closely, and you read me so well, you know too much, and you'll ask what's wrong and I won't be able to tell you, and then I'll break.

I made it in the door, past the gauntlet of my roommate and her morning aide, pretended I needed to divide my clothes for laundry, and there I hid behind the closet doors and rocked back and forth, breathing rocking breathing and not a sound, shhhh very very quiet, and no one has to know, no one will ask, you won't be crazy you'll just be quiet.

But Nimsay lives with me, and she knows when I'm too quiet. She knows the difference between annoyed and hiding something, and when I finally stopped in the kitchen, leaning against the wall and fighting another asthma/tear attack, she asked what was going on.

I don't know what's wrong. Nothing's wrong. Everything's right. That's the problem. Everything is right, everything is perfect, and I have no right to be upset, but I am, and I can't stop and I can't solve it because it's nothing.

For the longest time, it was always something. It was school and recital and thesis and work and school and finals and hospitals and healing and frantic and graduation and finally, a long stretch where I didn't have to do everything anything, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, because nothing's expected of you when you're on vacation and in love and walking in the mud and getting engaged, and then it was coming back and preparing for him to leave, for him to leave me, preparing for half my heart to rip off and fly to another hemisphere, preparing to deal with his car and his bed and his furniture, and preparing to marry him quickly, in secret, preparing to manage it as best we could, preparing, and there's a perfectly good reason to be sad, isn't there, when he's leaving you and it has nothing to do with waking up useless every morning, nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be done, accomplished, because you're worthless and you're spending money like it's water, trickling through your fingers and the bottom of the pond is coming to slap against your hands once the water drains away, and you can't do anything about it because you went from accomplished and soaring and trying and working to underqualified and overqualified and underexperienced and overeducated and promising but worthless.

Then I woke up one morning, and he was staying. He was in my arms, now and for every other day, watching me dwindle with no reason to fade, but fading anyway. He was so very busy, to the point of exhaustion, and I was so very worthless, and instead of leaving me he was staying to watch every moment of my failure. Instead of having every reason to wake up panicked in the middle of the night, unable to breathe, shaking with silent sobs, suddenly I was doing it without any reason at all, no reason, because everything is fine, everything is better. I have everything I ever wanted, and I'm just wasting it, and you selfish little brat, how dare you cry, when you have everything, and you're squandering it?

I tried saying these things to Nimsay, and they came out tangled, and I was sobbing again, holding onto the handles of the laundry basket, on my knees and shaking, and she was understanding and she was my point exactly and she was crying, and we both cried, but I still was the worthless one who squandered her good fortune, because I have no job, no money coming in, but neither does she, and hasn't had for over two years, and my God I had no right to be crying when I'd only been empty a month, and she'd been under that weight for so much longer.

And I looked at her, at all the things she is, all the ways she is amazing, yet crying and shaking and terrified. She is me, except I have legs, and I can work at the grocery or McDonalds or haul lumber if I have to, and she can't because someone somewhere decided to make her inspiring instead of usual, with her traitorous bones and her brilliant mind, and all she can work with is that, and I am such a waste for not realizing how valuable my body is, my strong, unbent bones and their supple muscles.

I sat, desiccated, while she cried and talked, and she was amazing and I was embarrassing, until finally we were both empty, purged and dried out, and I got up and went to my computer, because it's not office hours but the internet is always open, so I grabbed the phone book, found the website for every bank and temp agency I could find, and applied to them all. And after that I will open to the retail page, and the restaurants page, and finally the lumber-hauling page if I have to, because my bones are strong.

I am tired of being a waste. I am tired of letting everything drain and atrophy, and I am tired of being so idle that depression sneaks up on me, in its lethargic way. My legs can walk, and my arms can lift, and for that reason I don't want to be a mess on my knees over the laundry basket, because the longer I languish, the harder it becomes to try.

The last time I felt so vestigial, I wrote a book. I intend to go one better this time.

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