Getting There

*** Full Disclosure Addendum: This is a Debbie Downer post.  ***

I keep falling asleep which is never good in my world.  The quick version: when I sleep a lot it’s usually a sign of a mental exhaustion
not a physical one.

I woke up this morning with sore knees.  There is no long version to that one: genetics plus a lot of exercises that involve them = sore knees.

It doesn’t take much to make me connect dots.  Not even dots—tehe.  But both events made me think, hardly happily, about the life I’m currently leading.

How I got here could be summed up with “I’m one of those victims of the economy.”  But what of the sore knees?  What do they have to do with being unemployed and broke, darlene?  Well here I go connecting the dots since you’re still reading which means it’s obvious you won’t, can’t, or more than likely, are so bored that you’ve found your way here and decided to read because you’ve done all the Youtube you can stand and all the celebrity gossip, depressing world news, and fashion sites to death.

In the beginning, I was kinda chillin’ on a glacier of expectation: two degrees, extensive experience, a financial cushion.  That glacier melted with what has proven the irrelevance of all three.

Lemme tell you: I know the dangers of my own mind.  A chick just does not wanna go there.  So as the glacier melted and I found myself heading over to that black hole, I started re-steering the boat.  I figured: matter over mind.  (Yup, it has to work like that sometimes).  Do something.  In the past something has been physical so I went straight for what I knew.  My knees are not always happy about that choice.  The fact is when I’m thinking about icing my knees I’m not thinking (well, not as hard anyway) about the other stuff I can’t control.

But a girl cannot kickbox, spin, or Zuumba 24 hours a day!  Not to mention when people are around you—like at the gym—you kinda gotta be pleasant or else be that bitch even though nobody knows the shit you’ve been through to make you act like that bitch.

So that’s how I got here:  trying to be in control (particularly of that bitch).

And because I can still see the positive in all things here are the good parts: my heart is healthier for the endeavor.  And…well, one part is good enough.  After all, 1 is the only real number; the rest are just repetition.

Oh yeah, so about that bitch. Here’s how she described herself in 2005:

“You’ll notice I’m gone and then open your eyes from that nightmare.  Familiarity makes the best bedfellow.  New always gets old some time.

Any other trick will require getting used to, may be worse.  But I, I am an easy and predictable lover.  You know how to sleep when I’m around.  How to shadow yourself so that the bruises don’t show when others are.  You are smart.  And stupid.  But I make you feel smart.  Because you know me.  Even as complex as clinical readings suggest I am, you understand.  Have lived with me long enough to make peace.  We deserve each other.  Who would you be without me?  And without you, I would be only a theory.  You, too, give me life.  Make me tangible, alive, true.  Of course you are not that.  That’s how we complement each other.”