unwell

Tomorrow morning I will board the plane, and it will be five days until I get to be happy again.

Oh, I'm not doing well. Not doing well at all. The anxiety finds new holes to seep out, like fresh cracks in the hull of a ship. Besides the eye twitch, which is pretty standard, I have found a new way to be crazy. I don't want to explain it here, but I've never felt more like the tattoo on my back -- circling round on myself, consuming. My lips are bitten raw.

My mother called, thrilled that I'll be home for so long. I wish I could say: this is your present. Don't expect to see me back again until fall.

But that never does anything but maker her cry.

I wonder what a good family is like.

home

Two days is just the right amount, I guess. After that, someone starts crying.

Dr. Janet G. Woititz identified in her book, Adult Children of Alcoholics, thirteen primary characteristics of Adult Children of Alcoholics:

• Guessing at what normal behavior is.
• Having difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.
• Lying when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.
• Judging themselves without mercy.
• Having difficulty having fun.
• Taking themselves very seriously.
• Having difficulty with intimate relationships.
• Overreacting to changes over which they have no control.
• Constantly seeking approval and affirmation.
• Usually feeling that they are different from other people.
• Extreme responsibility or irresponsibility.
• Extreme loyalty, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
• Impulsivity - tending to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsivity leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

slumber

I had the most incredible dream two nights ago.

It was about an old flame, someone I never got very far with. (Surprise.) In the dream, we'd run away together -- left old lives behind and bought a house together, somewhere far away.

Normally, I'd expect the best part of the dream to be whatever dirty parts my brain came up with. (After all, isn't that part of the fun of those dreams?) But it was strange; there was very little physical contact in the dream.

What I remember most, what was nicest about the dream, was putting our shoes away in the closet.

It was a decent closet -- walk-in, carpeted. There was an entire wall of particle-board cubbyholes where a pair of shoes would fit perfectly. Whoever had been in the house before had left behind some shoes, and I was pulling the shoes out of their boxes and trying them on.

But there was something so peaceful, settled, sweet, about putting our shoes away together. Something that said: this is home. I will come home to you. I have chosen you to be my home.