Quiet as Snow

Having one of those days where the strain of an anxiety disorder and navigating perceivable reality/ies is so great I'm afraid to listen to music I usually love. I can't trust what effect it might have on me.

I have a job, and healthcare, and partners who love me. I'm writing more days than I'm not.

And mental illness still sucks.

Today's soundtrack so far has been limited to Sunday Munich and Zoe Keating.

It's not what you thought when you first began it

Last Friday, I was laid off for the second time in six months. This morning I kissed my partners goodbye on their way out to work, then sat down to watch the clip from Magnolia where all the characters sing along with Aimee Mann's "Wise Up."

I forgot it started with Philip Seymour Hoffman's character quietly breaking down as he administers morphine to a dying man. I don't have anything original to add to his being lost to us, just the usual bewilderment and sadness that someone so great and talented, someone who elevated entertainment to art -- or wasn't there simply to entertain in the first place, maybe -- is gone. And I hate the way he left.

I was modeling Tuesday and my painters' group asked me about how my generation felt when tings like this happened -- did we feel more strongly that legalized drug use/sale might prevent some tragedies? I told them I lost a friend to an overdose, when I was 19, and I don't know what would have fixed that. Like someone dying is a political issue. I told them I think it would eliminate a lot of the violence and death that surrounds drug distribution and sales. That's some lives saved.

But I digress.

I was watching the clip because I love the song best out of any of Mann's work, I think. And I love the movie dearly, probably more than any other. And I got a dream job, a creative job, that underpaid me and had shaky foundations and organizational insanity that I recognized a few weeks in, and it hurt me nearly every day, and I kept thinking it would get better, because I liked a lot of the people. Because it was interesting. Because there was vision, even though I knew the visionary leader was untrustworthy, manipulative, and abusive.

And it did get better. They ran low on money and let me go and were incredibly shitty about it, but now I don't feel trapped there, thinking it will get better and I owe them loyalty and I need the money.

I spent all week making myself get in touch so I could get my final paycheck in time to pay my rent, or at least have the option to, because eviction is hell on one's future, and I haven't been evicted since I was 18.

I got in touch, I was nice, and tried to mean it. They were incredibly fake-nice. The cognitive dissonance between what was and how they were acting was so unexpectedly awful that my mental problems decided to remind me they weren't gone. So I curled up in a ball on the couch and heard and felt a huge, wavy presence -- like a dark luck dragon or a floating eel or some shadowy spirit-wolf -- move past me in the living room and disappear down the hall. I couldn't decide if I found the illusion frightening or comforting.

A few hours and some Klonopin later I managed to call my property management company and find out about getting out of my lease without eviction, because I can't afford to pay rent and be left with nothing, but I can't afford to pay off my balance, BUT my partners offered to lend me the money -- and my company rep said I'd have the month to move out if I paid the whole fee by the first of March.

I hate borrowing money. I hate borrowing, borrowing, borrowing and I hate poverty and I hate debt, fiscal and emotional.

When they got home and I was trying to bring it up, the money thing (knowing someone said something is OK isn't the same as having to be the one to broach the topic), I was so rigid and locked down my girlfriend brought me a stuffed sea otter to cuddle, and I finally told them what we needed to do, or what the options were for me, and they wrote me a check, right then, for the whole pay-out-of-your-lease amount. And they brought me another stuffed sea otter. And a fuzzy baby seal. And two penguins.

We watched a silly movie and I went to sleep on the couch surrounded by animals because it felt easier than moving to the bed and my girlfriend came to find me around 3 a.m. and ask if I'd rather sleep in the bed, and I went to bed, and I woke up to a nightmare about being questioned and tortured and my limbs being cut off, the atypical but typical-for-PTSD-folks kind of dream. I finished interpreting it before my girlfriend finished making us coffee -- boom, I feel betrayed and helpless and punished for something I didn't do (in this case,my former business owner's personnel and financial woes, as well as his extremely toxic policies). Key point: not my fault. Not. My. Fault.

Like having my psyche shattered in places. I'm in a relationship with two people who know that and know that it isn't my fault. Instead of leaving, they regularly reinforce that I belong here, with them.

They tell me they love me so much and I'm amazing and they kiss me and feed me and love the gifts I give them when I have money to give gifts, and I've never been safer. Never been more supported.

I mean, I'm still afraid of having to go back to my ex-workplace and deal with people today, but then I only have to go to the bank and then pay my get-out-of-lease check and go back to my real home, and then if I want to I can collapse. And no one will be mad at me.

--Psalm 27:10.(paraphrased heavily).