Darling Clementine

I think I have knuckle cancer, thus… I am totally dying. Please don’t bother with a funeral. Just throw me in a refrigerator box and bury me in the backyard… I don’t care whose. ~*~ drama queen ~*~

No, but seriously, I slammed my knuckle in a big metal door at work last week. It hurts. Then, today, I slammed it into the side of a table… made it worse. You know what that results in, right? Knuckle cancer. I know, I’m shocked, too.

* Oh yeah, a ‘Z’… I went there.

Peaches, my love… I discovered my number one source of stress and agitation today. Why it never hit me before is beyond me. It was a magnificent realization. Go on, take a guess… ha ha!

Long, long ago in a land far, far away (i.e., about 9-10 years ago & across town), I used to pack myself up and leave the house (apartment). I would get in the car and just drive all over the city. Nowhere in particular and for hours on end. Just looking and thinking and looking and absorbing. Discovering things I’d never seen and rediscovering things I thought I’d made up in my head. Up and down streets, through unfamiliar neighborhoods, ’round and ’round the city. Never on the interstate, always on the streets. Some times with camera, mostly without. Just leaving, just running.

I don’t do that anymore. Somewhere along the way I became a neurotic mess. Afraid of my own shadow and that people might look at me if I dared step foot outside. Compounded by losing my car (sibling more important), losing “my other car” (dad’s car) and moving away from friggin’ everything & too far to walk anywhere; I holed up inside and lived inside of my own head. I still do that, but occasionally I have to leave the house. Grown-up responsibilities and such. But, still not that often. I’m still scared. I can muster up the balls occasionally, but only if I’m going to be with other people.

I have yet to just get in the car and drive. It’s been a few years since I last said “fuck it,” and set off into nowhere in particular. I ended up somewhere in Mississippi, but still not too far from home. Because, you know, home still has to be close.

I don’t know why I call it “home”. It doesn’t feel like home. I’m just squatting in someone’s house. That’s how my whole life feels, like I’m just squatting in someone else’s. Maybe one day I’ll figure out what the hell I’m doing. It’s coming slowly, but one day it’ll slam right into me like a Mac truck and it’ll have been so obvious the entire time.

I need an epiphany.

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to work at. It’s a serious matter. You compromise, you give, you take, you stand firm, and you’re relentless…And it is an investment. Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I’m married to someone who is very jealous and you’re married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come.

— Maya Angelou