Veritas

The unvarnished truth, as (best) as I can see (or be even vaguely aware) of it:

- I am tired because of my workhours, but I am also tired because I do not sleep well. I slept fitfully before this all began. Lately, I have taken to waking up in a panic, cold sweat and all, at 3:30 in the morning.

- My dreams are about work and/or work people in work derivative situations.

- I was in Boston last week. At my alma mater. Sort of. (One of its grad schools). It was for work, not for pleasure. Yet, the familiarity was a welcome feeling. One I was surprised by, as I thought I had little or no sentimentality for that chapter of my life.

- On my way to Boston, I wrote a very long (and unfinished, because my batteries - both laptop and internal - gave out on me,) post. It is flowery and very varnished. It attempts to get at some truths. I am simply afraid to post it. If I do, then I have to admit them.

- My dear, dear friends are moving away. I know why they are doing it. I understand it. I support it as I know it is best for them. And yet, everything in me wishes that they weren't going, that they would stay, and stay and stay. I do not want to have to miss them. Selfishly, I always want them convenient and accessible to me. I want my urban family frozen in time, I s'pose. *Sigh*

- I need to make changes. That much is clear. I do not know how to make changes. I am terrified. Something drastic (i.e. giving notice w/o alternate plans already being set in place) might be called for, but I am not sure I have the courage for that.

- I should be qualified to do something else, but I am afraid that I have no skills.

- I really want to go back to school, but I can't afford to pay for any more fancy letters after my name. I am still paying off the first four.

- I tried to make some claims yesterday that I am not a drama queen. Yes, I did so with a straight face. No, I did not get struck by lightning (though I am sure it was a very close call). Needless to say, I had been drinking.

- Generally, I am indeed a drama queen.

- When I have been drinking, I am Drama Empress of the Universe. Usually this manifests itself in uncontrollable weepiness, or simply getting myself into inappropriate intimate situations. Every once in a while (okay, probably 20% of the time) it manifests itself in a full out scene.

- In Vino Veritas. I enjoy having a drink because it allows me a space in which I do not worry. I just am. But when I do drink, I like that non-worrying state so much, that I have no concept of where to draw the line. And ultimately fun and games, and happy hour jovialness give way to all of the things I have been bottling up during the day, that my consummate plate spinning is supposed to distract from. And I cry. And I cry. And, I wish that was all that I did. But sometimes, I actually talk (read: rant) a fair amount too. All without a social screen. And I am still crying. And the result is a weepy, incoherent attention (and not the good kind) drawing mess. I am lucky that, in my life, I am usually forgiven my indiscretions.

But not always.

When she was fourteen, in front of a majority of the cool kids who populated the senior class, the weepy drunken attention-calling mess forever lost her reputation, her inherent trust in others, and her ability to perceive her own self worth in a quarter-hour eternity on the cold, hard tile of a bathroom floor.

When she was twenty-eight, a whole lifetime later (but apparently none the wiser), on a cool starry night standing on a dimly lit sidewalk, the weepy drunken attention-calling mess irretrievably lost her dignity and, it seems, the respect of someone very important to her. More important than she had ever realized. It was only when it was too late that she realized she had been blind. That in wine there was in fact no truth, there was only exaggeration, innunendo, bravado and conflagration. An inability to see things as they really were, and as they could be.

And she pays dearly for those two episodes every day of her life. They have made her the unwitting guarantor of a karmic debt which no amount of repayment can seem to settle.

It is a weight I must bear. I must accept it and move on. To "learn a lesson" from them and thereby "be a better person" for it. But it makes me sad. A profound heavy-limbed sadness when I think about it too much. And it seems unfair to me the sacrifices I must make for the halting wisdom that is these "life lessons." The price is too high.

I am an apt pupil. I can learn in many ways. Wasn't there another way?

Did I have to learn that having sex with someone has serious consequences by way of my rape?

Did I have to learn that people will always assume the worst about you because everyone who witnessed it did nothing to stop it and spent the next few years doing nothing but talk about it?

Did I have to learn that the really painful things are best left ignored because no one believes you were the injured party anyway, so why bring them up, so best to be bright and happy and bottle them away?

Did I have to learn that I have no concept of my own behavior and how others perceive it by way of losing the one person with whom I have had a serious non-platonic connection with over the last three years?

Did I have learn that, for as much navel gazing as I do, that I cannot correctly recognize my own feelings for someone because they terrify me so much?

Did I have to learn that I am unable to really open up and to trust that someone actually feels something for me?

There is no use in lamenting what could have been. There is only the now. But in the quiet moments, I think it is okay to be a little sad.

And even if it's not, that is the way you survive so that you can do all of this learning.

I learned that too.