In Which a Bird Chases Me Into the Fridge

I'm renting the downstairs bedroom in my friends' house, blissful surcease from the nightmare my own house has become.   I'm very grateful to these friends -- without their love and support I wouldn't have been able to leave.  I would still be stuck in the madness, miserable and resentful and angry and guilty and frustrated and trapped and all the things.   So. Damn. Grateful. As we are fond of saying in my Facebook family.  I am grateful, really I am, to have this place and these friends.

But fuck me if they don't have a bird.   IN THE HOUSE.   They take it out of the cage and it sits on the dude's shoulders. And its wings go all fluttery and rustle-y and fuck if it doesn't start flapping all around the place and the next thing I know, I'm climbing in the fucking refrigerator.  I know I exaggerate sometimes but this time is not one of them.  I'm climbing in the fucking refrigerator and the dude is

either not noticing or pretending he doesn't and I'm all embarrassed and polite, like "oh, um I kinda have this bird phobia, really it's nothing -- no-- aaaah -- as the bird is swooping and diving all around the kitchen.  I try to pull the fridge door shut behind me.  "Really, it's no big thing really, I just -- aaaaah  -- okay."   I continue talking with my face nestled into the corner of the freezer.  I am seriously IN THE FRIDGE.

And maybe he's passive-aggressive or maybe he thinks I'm kidding or maybe he has Asperger's which isn't likely since he seems genuinely sensitive and receptive otherwise, but the thing with the bird is fucking freaking me out.  But he doesn't do anything to corral the bird which is mixing metaphors but fuck it, I'm in a weakened state. So I have to get out of there and head to my room and pray to all that is holy including Tom Fucking Cruise like in Ricky Fucking Bobby that the bird does not somehow follow me and fly into the room before I can shut the door like Tippi Fucking Hedren.  So of course I nee -- er, want a double klonopin with a beer back but the beer is -- wait for it -- in the refrigerator and I so very carelessly left it behind during my recent stay there.

So I wait at the door of my room, listening for sounds of the bird being put back in its cage and that dude who I have decided is neither passive-aggressive nor oblivious but downright sadistic going upstairs so that I can run back to the refrigerator, (my new vacation home) and retrieve a beer to wash down my evening klonopin (and before you get all up in my grill about drinking with my benzos let me assure  you that I have honed the craft of medicating myself to a fine art, having thirty years of practice as I do. And let me also tell you that skill comes in quite handy when I find myself in situations like the one I just described which takes place with the veepveepveep squeaky violin soundtrack that heralds the pivotal climax of most Hitchcock films, especially The Birds, a film that solidified my distrust of birds in general, and birds inside the house in particular.)

So, as much as I am enjoying the solitude and freedom from all the bullshit that has been my marriage for the last few years and the clusterfuck of the last few months that put it in the ICU, I do have moments like this time with the bird where I wonder if it's worth it, and other moments when I feel such homesickness and grief that I am this close to running over and slipping in the back door so that I'm in the kitchen making french toast and the coffee's ready when he gets up because I just want it all back to the normal that it never really was in the first place.

And now it's time to say "Namaste" as I often do at this point in the post, but I have to confess that I will have come back to write this part later when I edit it because I can't really see well enough to type at the moment because I'm crying pretty hard.

And there you have it.  Namaste, you stupid bird.  Hit the lights but leave the fridge door open because I might need to climb in there whether you're in your cage or not.