Postscript To A Shitty Day.

Back again, and why? Because I'm not in bed.

Why am I not in bed, given the fact that I am most definitely exhausted, disillusioned, and just plain fucking raggedy?

I'm not in bed because I'm afraid to go to bed.

I'm not afraid of the Closet Monster, monsters under the bed, Jack Nicholson coming to fillet me with a Pampered Chef carving knife, or that freaky little girl from The Ring.

I'm not afraid that the increase in cigarette prices will drive me to prostitution (although it more than likely will), I'm not afraid that Miller Lite will stop producing its fine product, and I'm not afraid of the dark. Much.

I'm afraid of my own brain and what it might decide to do this evening. I'm afraid that if I lay down, some little vessel in my head will go *plink*, and I will be taking the big dirt nap. I'm afraid that somewhere in my head, someone is spinning the wheel, and it might stop on 1000 or it might stop on Bankrupt, but I won't know until it gets there. By then it will be too late to do a damn thing about it.

The crazy thing is that this is a completely logical fear. When you fall down for no reason and see things in Bad Acid Trip Vision 2D, you start to realize that although your life sort of sucks, this might not be the worst of it. And then you start thinking that you might be wearing Depends one day, and that makes you cry. It makes you cry a lot.

I picture myself in a nursing home, pissing in plastic pants with a feeding tube and a ventilator, and I want to scream. I wish I didn't have an overactive imagination, but I do, and I see scenes from my possible future that make me want to cover my face with my shaky hands until I pass out. I think about my son and I wonder whether he will one day find me choking on my own vomit as my brain shorts out like a cheap toaster.

So here I am again, using this place as a pacifier, as I often do, and thinking in code.

The thought occurred to me that I almost felt like a normal girl during the past few weeks. I danced, I drank, I worked out like a dog, I laughed a lot, I had sex, I smiled, and I even braved the El alone without worrying about having a seizure and winding up dead in someone's dank, ugly basement. No brainfarts. Nothing amiss but the usual vision and the annoying hearing problems.

That's what sucks, you know? It's not the fact that I'm neurologically screwed. It's the fact that sometimes I'm not, and then I remember what it was like to not be afraid.

10:23 p.m. - 2004-02-24
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