free-fall

tomorrow i would have awakened to my alarm, got out of bed, and stumbled out to the dining room. my priorities would have been to turn on the computer, start the coffee, and feed the cat. i would have grabbed some time on the internet (read: blog) and rushed out the door to make my way as quickly as possible to my bus stop, and so to work.

but i stepped across a threshold again last friday.

and so tomorrow i will sleep too late, and no one will be expecting me anywhere. my time won't be rationed in quarter-hours and minutes. i will be reliant on my own will to give shape to the day. i am unemployed.

sure, big deal, so what, you might say with a shrug of your shoulders. who hasn't been unemployed? and it's true. i'm a late-bloomer. this job i left behind was the first i did so of my own will for no other reason but that i wanted to. i still can't quite believe that i did that. was i allowed to?

i don't know what i'm doing next. i don't know where my next paycheck is coming from.

i'm trying to be scared about it. i can feel a little tremor of anxiety when i think about it. but generally, no. in fact, i'm writing this with a tiny smile pulling at the corner of my mouth.

i jumped off that cliff without a parachute, without a spotter waiting below, without a plan, without research, without even a hastily-scribbled checklist on the back of an envelope.

what the hell am i thinking?

*grin*

no security blankets.

last night was marked by vivid memories of sitting by my dad's bedside in his last days. though it's been over a year, last night i felt the fear again, and the loss, and the desperate clinging wish that it could have been different.

last night was marked by tears.

the traces of them stayed with me throughout the day. without my will, thoughts of dying, of losing loved ones and of my own end rose in my mind. what if something happened to me? no one here would know. i would just disappear.

more death greeted me when i reached home, and saw the news.

and places of comfort were jagged and loud with anger and insults.

the pure light of the full moon shining in my window tonight isn't able to chase away this miasma wrapped around me. i feel like a child who has just woken from a nightmare with no one there to wrap her in strong safe arms and tell her it was just a dream.


more than anything right now, i wish there really was a couch to curl up on with a purloined leather jacket, and be comforted, and be safe.

don't look down.

there's one problem with the fool card from the tarot. it doesn't show you what happens after the fool blithely steps off the cliff.

see, there's this moment where you're hanging in the open air, just like in a loony toon cartoon, and you're come all over with the complete realization that in the next second you are going to be falling very very fast at the ground very very very far below you. and suddenly, you want to heave your body around and scrabble at the dry dirt and dusty grass on the cliffedge, but you can't, can you? you stepped off the cliff of your own free will, didn't you? this is what you chose to do. and so there's nothing for it, you are going to fall, and fall fast and it's all your own doing and you haven't a clue if you'll actually hit the bottom in a big puff of dust like a smoke ring rising or if there will be some branch or ledge or stone that you can snag onto and use to secure yourself, or if maybe you'll be lucky after all and the fall will become an alice in wonderland portal to your new world.

and really it's all irrelevant, because you're suspended, you did it now and it doesn't matter if it was necessary or foolhardy because it's done.

this is the scary moment.

snugged in securely.

i think i was starting to fade.

i could never totally give up this place, but the bonds it lay on me were starting to slacken. i hovered in the shadows, becoming a shadow myself, slipping around the edges of the world we have created here. i was in danger of reverting to the lurker i was when this all started.

and then, he reeled me back in. he yanked on the thread that tethers me to this place and he fixed it fast. i don't know why he did it, and it doesn't really matter why, whether he was motivated by whimsy or kindness, because the effect it has had on me is so welcome, and so solid.

this place has become a part of me. for good or for ill, irregardless that it is largely a society of the mind and heart, this place lives in me. and because of what he did, now i'm a part of it, too. my belief in this place is reinvigorated. my belief in my belonging here is reinvigorated.

he pulled me back in, he gave me back to our world, and gave my friends back to me, and i am wholly embraced by it all.

everyone needs someplace to belong to.

i am reassured that i belong here.

penny embrace.

i saw my dad today.

oh, i knew it wasn't him, of course. but the man standing at the reference desk looked so much like him, it was easy to pretend i was really seeing my father. i glanced at him repeatedly, indulging myself in the notion that dad was visiting my library.

question answered, he went off to a distant corner of the library, and i returned to my shelving. but then i realized, suddenly, sharply -- dad will never see where i work, will never surprise me by showing up unannounced.

i shelved the resulting pang in the depths of my heart, and returned to shelving children's christmas books.

after work, walking through the parking lot on my way to the bus stop, i spotted a bright penny. it was wet from the rain, and sparkled. i knelt to pick it up, and saw that it was heads up. not every penny i pick up reminds me of dad and his habit of picking up heads up pennies -- i pick them all up, after all -- but this one was undeniably a penny from dad. it made me happy, so happy that as i stood up, i mimed a kiss to the penny and smiled at the sky. when i looked down again, a second penny caught my eye. i grinned, knelt, picked it up, and stood -- and saw a third shiny penny, right at my foot!

i couldn't help it, i laughed. "ok, dad!" i thought in his direction, "i get it! i love you, too!"

three bright heads up pennies, surprising me by showing up unannounced at work. i carried them in my hand all the way to the bus stop.

fathers are always full of tricks.

befuddled.

pretend what?

i don't remember. i'll try to remember, but...

pretend what?





ah shit. why do i do this to myself? when will i ever get my imagination under control?

and yet.

i just can't shake the feeling.




i do so wish you could answer.