Sometimes everything happens at once, and a single day can go from "good enough" to "maniacal," in the blink of an eye.
The week begins by me finding out that I’m not seeing a band I was really looking forward to seeing in two days from now, because they canceled their tour. On April fool’s day. Which filled me with doubt and strangeness.
Mild shock.
Then, in the same instant, I got an email saying I had won tickets to a screening of The Ruins in Chicago. Also on April Fool’s day. Which, instead of making me feel grand, made me feel even slightly more doubtful and confused.
More concrete shock at this point... the type that takes a day or two to settle in.
I had very few clients this week, which usually makes me feel pleasantly relaxed, but this time made me feel poor and antsy. Then this morning I had to go and pay my 2007 taxes, which makes me VERY poor (pathologically poor, one might say) and even more antsy.
All this prefaced tonight’s internal insanity.
So, I go to this movie tonight, after an incredibly stressful drive into Chicago, through what I can only describe as the Morlock Underground of "Lower Whacker" that confuses our navigational system nearly to the point of smoke. Only James T. Kirk logic could have done a better job. Finally I find parking in a lot that says that the fee will only be $13 with a ticket stub. I try to be hopeful.
We get to this movie only to slowly glean that it’s just a free screening of the movie, and I could have come at any time without having "won" any "free tickets" in the first place. This makes me feel sort of weird, and makes me wonder if I really cared enough about the movie to see it a day early in Chicago in the first place.
Then the movie happens. And it’s at least good. And the person sitting next to me is delightfully freaked out by everything, which entertained me to no end.
But then comes the trip home. My stockings are falling down and they’ve got weird holes in them that I didn’t notice before, and it’s sort of raining by the time we get back to the car, so I’m slightly on edge. It takes forever to get out of the parkinglot and by the time we finally get to the booth, we are denied our $13 discount fee because we were apparently there for too long. So now we have to pay $26, which niether of us have, so it goes onto my credit card.
Then, trying to drive out, we end up in Morlock land again, and I’m about to have to throw the Garmin out the window because it keeps screaming at me that I’m going to the wrong way and demanding that I make turns into walls. Plus, I can’t tell where the stop lights are, and I feel like I’m about to run into either a barrier or a truck at any moment. Every turn that I do make has to be preceded by another car making the same turn because I literally can’t see where the road is, and I don’t want to end up turning down an oncoming lane of traffic.
Finally we make it back above ground, and right about the time we get onto the highway again, my "check engine" light goes on. My car is not old. It’s a 2003 Toyota. And I just had it in the shop LAST FRIDAY for scheduled maintenance. Nothing more than a simple tune up, in order to keep it running well. Of course that cost several hundred dollars, but I figure it’s worth it in order to keep my car alive as long as possible.
It’s never had a check engine light before. And that light was suddently the brightest, most blinding thing I’d ever seen. And I can hear a tiny snapping sound that was my sanity.
Suddenly I can hear every noise in my car. I feel every bump on the road. The wheel jerks in my hands. I smell... gas?... oil...?
... I go a bit insane.
I get trapped between a truck and an SUV that are both slightly slack about where their lanes end and mine begin, and I scream "Why is everyone bearing down on me?!"
Much of the rest of the trip home, and my subsequent arrival and changing into pajamas is a blur.
So yes, we finally got home a couple hours ago, and I feel so damnably wound up I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep tonight. I think this is why people start drinking. I’m hoping to just pass out from either anger or sadness or... whatever crazy feelings are running through me at the moment. Nights like these always remind me of all the bad things in my life, all the bad things stalking my future, all the scars from my past.
Hell, maybe someone will talk me down, unwittingly, and I’ll just end up having a normal night after all. I’m carrying on just enough interesting internet conversations at the moment to distract myself, so we’ll see.
I swear... some days I just lose my mind.
(Originally posted on April 4th, 2008)
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