Disoriented

She's back in her house for the week, while her (ex?  when do you start saying that?) husband is on the East Coast for business.  So far, the reviews are mixed.  It's nice to be able to take care of things as she thinks of them, but the clutter and chaos are maddening.  If she could, she would just pack three boxes of things to keep, back a Dumpster up to the front door, and haul everything else away.

She woke up, disoriented, in her own bed, in her own house.  Her phone alarm went off, but it wasn't on the right side, like it is where she sleeps now.  It was strange, to wake up in a familiar place and yet not know where you were at first.  And then the sick feeling of recognizing where you were, and realizing why it didn't make sense that you were there.  She wore that feeling all day, a cloud she couldn't shake off, no matter how defiantly she shrugged her shoulders and tossed her head.  It's impossible to get out from under the cloud when it descends.  Panic ensues when she sees it coming, no way to get around it.  It's like a train is bearing down on her.   A trainwreck, more like.

They had planned to play Boggle after dinner, but something struck her while she was doing the dishes, and she just couldn't face sitting down to the game.  The waves roll over her and she has to hang her head, and run the hot water to try to make it look like it's not tears, but perspiration that is making her face red and wet.  "What's wrong?" people ask.  The answer used to be that she had a mood disorder, that nothing was objectively wrong, it was her responses that were wrong.  Now what's wrong is her marriage is over and her family is in ruins.  And she has a mood disorder.  Let's not forget that.  No.

It is overwhelming to think of all the things there are to do, all the decisions to be made, all the awkward moments to go through.  All the feelings.  Exhausting.  The manic months of the Nightmare  Spring have caught up with her and she can barely slog her way through the evening's activities.  She just wants to sit on her (former) bed and drink beer and write about all her feelings in the third person in an effort to make them somehow literary and not pathetic.

So we'll always know where it is.

It's disorienting, to feel all the feelings, all at once.  She's been doing that her whole life.  Apparently it's not a good thing, although for so many years she didn't know that, and she didn't really have a choice.  Now she understands that she is somehow different.  She mistrusts her responses.  She cries a lot, seemingly out of the blue.  She laughs out loud, hard, sudden laughter, maybe disproportionate to the joke, but it feel so good pouring out of her.  She feels angry, she feels love.  And these days she feels distracted, exhausted.   Like usual, only more so.  Even more so.  As if that's even possible.