bed of nails

Way down there.  Near the bottom.  Like a lone butterfly in the pit of my stomach.  I don’t know what it means.  Am I still alive?  Or is Elvis about the leave the building?  One last encore performance before the final curtain?

I feel like a climber who’s falling, desperately trying to stick my spikes into the ice…somewhere…somehow…to stop falling.  Maybe this piece?  Maybe that chunk over there?  Try them all.  I’ve got nothing to lose. 

I quit my job today.  By text.  Made me sick to my stomach, but the prospect of going in there and having to explain why?  Not this time.  Too personal, and, honestly, they don’t deserve the truth.  They probably wouldn’t even believe it.  ‘I’m not coming back’ I said. 

I’m not coming back.

Lifted the boulder of my chest…for about an hour…before this new reality set in.  The one where I’m not making enough money to pay my bills.  The one where I still don’t  know what the hell I’m doing…only now, I don’t have those 9 hours a day where I can crawl out of my own head and see something other than this.  Now I’m wasting my time sucking up news and information about things that don’t really matter.  Things that won’t help.  T.S. Eliot maybe…but the other shit…pure distraction.  I am watching movies again.  At least there’s that.  Good ones too.

Do I want to see how this ends?  Am I going to stick around for the final credits, or am I going to skip out early to beat traffic?  I don’t really want to die…but I say it enough that I’m starting to believe it.  How do I fight that?  The monolith of ill feelings casts a shadow over me that I just can’t outrun.  And maybe that’s the problem.  I should be trying to tear it down, not running away from it like I have been.  But should and will are two very different words. 

I can’t sleep.  I won’t let me, even though I want to.  Desperately.  The minutes turn to hours and the sun peaks its head out from behind tall buildings and forces me to look at a new day right in the face with tired eyes.  Very tired eyes.  My body feels strung out…like pulled taffy.  My steps are ungraceful.  My head filled with acid.  Twitchy, shifty, twisty, can’t-seem-to-get-comfortable restlessness that rolls up and down my body like a steamroller.  Sometimes I don’t recognize my own body.  Its like I’m somewhere else.  Like I’m someone else. 

Am I?