Molt

There is something uncomfortable about trying to build a life. Uncertainty has a smell but this, this discomfort, has a feel. It is sticky and gelatinous and seeps through your pores like sweat until you are afraid to touch anything and afraid to move. It spills into every moment you have, every decision you make, every thought that pops into your head. It is everywhere and I am afraid. Because one day it might harden and trap me inside a shell of everything I cannot be that I cannot escape.

Yesterday I got dinner with H and Fire at Ulivo, which was reasonable pasta. I don’t think it’s some place I would necessarily recommend, and Poutine did mention that some of their food was very not good. But it was still nice be among friends, who I got to gossip with, and hear about their lives, and speak, like actually speak, about my own. It was nice to laugh and be comfortable and gossip and talk about TV Shows and YA fiction obsessions. It was nice to sit outside in a little bit of drizzle, eating Milkbar truffles and feeling like a whole, real, doing-well kind of a person. Though the Milkbar truffles might have instigated another addiction because I bought more today. For the past week, I have been constantly, uncomfortably in need. But I can’t tell what I’m in need of. I have this hunger, but the food doesn’t fill it, the nicotine doesn’t quench it, the exercise doesn’t help. I can’t paint it away or numb it out with music and shows. I lie awake at night agonizing, every night until 3, knowing that there is something that I need, unable to think of what it is. I have no doubt that tonight will be the same, even though today could be considered a good day. I made a new friend and tried Chinese/Indian food at Spice Symphony and got to catch up with Moose. To be honest, I haven’t been doing much at work these past few days, even though there most definitely is work to do. I think I might really need an actual vacation, which I should be planning with Soot soon. But then the more realistic side of me realizes that even that would not make a difference. In all my nebulous versions of myself, I think the one thing I can be counted on to do is procrastinate.

Tomorrow I do not have anything planned and I may attempt to break my brain again because I feel like I need something more to tell me who I am and what to do and what it is that I need. Living is a delicate, boring craft full of maintenance and care. And as obsessive as a person I may be, I am not necessarily a dedicated one. I felt like I made progress the day that I started this blog. I thought I was leaving my addictions and busy mind behind the way the clouds pass behind the skyscrapers I see every day, smooth, light, free. But that is not how change works. Change is like suffocatingly humid weather, the dust under your bed, a drying stain. It is the sticky discomfort and need that I have so much of and don’t know what to do with. Maybe one day I will decide not to fight it. And one day it will harden and crust. One day I will have the strength to realize that this is how it works. It’ll crumble off my skin, my eyes, my throat. I will look down on this dusty grey pile of hopelessness and fear, and I will wonder how that ever used to be me.