I was driving to work today down a winding road I always drive on when I leave from my parents' house, that's a mess of construction right now because of course they've torn down the forested areas on the left-hand side, probably to build another CVS.
I was late, of course, woke up anxious but not hung-over this morning, the anxiety of letting go of years of pain and grief and love making my mind and my arms and even the bottoms of my feet tingle, which all of the Buddhist stuff I'm reading right now tells me is a good sign, a sign that things are moving, that I'm living in my feelings, letting them go through me instead of walking around them in circles, simultaneously clutching them close and then forcibly discarding them, over and over, like I have for so many years.
Sucks. Not gonna lie, and my only consolation is that at least it's real. At least I know things now. I have some truth to work with, which is helpful. This week I've deleted so much, so many words and images I clung to, up to and including stuff that just entered my inbox and my hopeful little mind this month, and pondering the reasons behind that really takes me down a bad road with the universe almighty, so I'm trying not to. Like I needed more reasons to work with. But that's neither here nor there but somewhere else entirely, as I did things anyway this week that I've never been able to do in the interest of purging, put up electronic blocks so that no words will be exchanged, no more in either direction. It's so weird and sad, but I have a bigger picture that I hope will save my life after a fashion. It is one I didn't want, as the redemption I wanted and prayed for looked very different and still does, but I have it anyway. I got truth from someone nice, or actually, that's not the right adjective, it does her a disservice - just someone good, who told me stuff I didn't want to hear but that I already knew, because that was what I needed to wake up.
As soon as I turned onto the road, I'd noticed the car in front of me had a Massachusetts tag so I flipped it off, imperceptibly lifting my middle finger off the steering wheel, because well-adjusted isn't my bag on a few select issues. The car crawled along in front of me, following behind an impossibly slow Caterpillar construction-type truck. I forgot halfway down about the license plate, obsessing instead about the Caterpillar, and how slow it was, and how did people stand driving vehicles that slow because me? Can't do it.
We made it of course, slow as he went, inching past the man in the hard hat holding the "SLOW/STOP" sign, wearing the impossibly heavy outfit that made me clutch at my neck in this heat. And just past the site where hundreds of trees are dying for houses that won't sell, in this richest of areas that has so many weird priorities, the car between me and the Caterpillar put on its right-turn signal.
And just like all those nights reversed when you'd follow me most of the way home from work or wherever else we'd been with two cars, when I'd go left while you went straight across the big road on the green light, waving at me or flashing your lights goodbye, I waved a little tiny wave instead of flipping the Massachusetts car off when it turned right, and I kept on going.
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