June 12, 2015

I want to believe in beautiful things. I want to hold the sky to my heart and feel it reach into me. I want these things to be true.

There was a good run of two or three months back there somewhere. Everyday life seemed to drift along, one day into the next, and the waters were quiet as we drifted over them. Seamlessly. No wake behind us. Normally, I would have approached that lack of disruption as a sign that it was a matter of time before everything came undone again. But that wasn't the case this time. I embraced an attitude of detached positivity. Maybe this was what other people felt as life went along. A placid surface to feelings.

I wanted so much for it to be true that I accepted that it might. It was the first time.

And even now, looking back through a lens of weeks that has shaken me, has shaken my home, I still think it might be true. Maybe that is a place I can go back to someday, and it will take me back. Just not now. Not today.

--

There are so many layers here that I don't know where to start unraveling them for inspection. There is a death, which was sudden and tragic and so so young that my brain still won't accept it as a part of any reality I could live in. It stabbed me right in the fucking heart, and right in my home, and I think it's going to take a long time before I can think about that person without little pieces of my heart flaking off and falling away. But that is death, and there is a somber comfort in knowing how that process is supposed to work. How closure is something that can only come from within. I know there is no exact script for this circumstance, but then what would life be if there was any part of it that could fall in a perfect line like that.

There is also the greater but related existential crisis of what anything means anymore when the world I've created for myself flexes and ripples around me so much. The constructs that I've used to identify myself seem to be shifting, and there is no comfort for me to find even in my own skin anymore. This is more of an abstract fear, because it comes from knowing that I do not know myself, at least not fully. But who does? Who doesn't walk about with a giant question mark suspended over them, praying for some small piece of truth to fall out and into them. How much of an impossibility that seems. I spend time thinking about this until I am exhausted, and I didn't really have a lot of energy to spare.

And then there is an even greater layer, one that I'm most afraid of. I need to think more about what I want, and how I feel, and what I can do for myself that would make me happy. I told myself this would be the year that I actually ask those questions, or at least build tools for being able to appraise that in a real way. While I think I am working toward that, I also think that I hide away. It's so easy to hide, and off I go, leaving all of the work that I promised myself I would do. I might have aimed too high, but what a target. What a beautiful target.

--

I'm getting lunch tomorrow with someone that I hold very dear. Someone that I haven't really had the chance to talk with directly in some time.

I worry that this person sees me, but only sees the ripples. Only sees the confusion and the lack of confidence, and the disorientation. I worry that this person believes that I lack the ability to find my way out of these circumstances, or that I create these circumstances so that they can follow me around like some sick cloud. I want to convince her that this is not the case, but I'm not sure that this theory is wrong. I do often seem to be swimming in some kind of sea, and there do always seem to be waves. How much of that is directly my doing?

Maybe I don't know how to be stable. Maybe I don't know how to glide along without a wake. Maybe I don't have the tools, or I was never taught how to do it as a child. Or maybe I do know how, but instead prefer to settle into the fog, into the wake, and let it bounce me around.

Maybe I'm just a person, and this is what people do.

Maybe I'm not lost, and the waves come for me anyway.

It feels like there should be an answer in here somewhere if I was smarter. If I was better than I am.

Maybe that is where the waves come from.

This is crazy. I know it, but I'm still going to do it. When I realized that I needed to move up my job search I typed Oconomowoc jobs into my search engine and found myself on the official city website. There was a posting for an EMT, but when I went to the full length description I saw it was from 2012. I decided to call anyways. The guy I was supposed to speak with wasn't there so I left a message and called my sister. When I ran this idea past my therapist she said that I should go for it, adding that she thought this would be a great job for me, and if I couldn't get training there I could always go back to school for it. I was on the phone with my middle sister when a number I didn't recognize popped up on my screen. I answered it since it was local and felt like an idiot when I realized it was the fire chief on the other line. I assumed he would tell me to drop off an application, but he started talking and pretty soon I was telling him things I hadn't intended.

After twenty minutes he learned that I was forty, not in the greatest shape, and only five feet tall. He told me none of those things were barriers and just from talking to me he would be interested in meeting me. Then he explained that they batch applications and wait until there is a pool to choose from. Out of the last eleven candidates three were selected. If I'm hired I have my choice of taking an accelerated class or the more traditional two day per week one. I have half of a nursing degree which will help. One thing I'm not sure about is the fire aspect of it since the idea of entering a burning building and having to get people out of it is pretty intimidating. I have a pretty vivid imagination so I can picture thick smoke and terrified people trapped in a structure that could collapse on us and them. Like I said, I know that this is crazy. One thing that is giving me hope is my ADD and Romance book, no, I'm not kidding about that.

The book says that there are three types of ADHD which is the proper term for ADD. There is the hyperactive type, the more quiet daydreaming type, and the mixed type where people experience both sides of this lovely disorder. Underneath the first type, which I probably am, it says these people often excel at jobs that are chaotic and stressful. Some work in the OR, the emergency department, and some are fire fighters. Others are comedians, a lot of them are self employed. The need for constant stimulation works in their favor when disorder is the norm as people with ADHD tend to be in the moment anyways. I have no idea if this is going to go anywhere, but I'm really proud of myself for picking up the phone and filling out the job application which involved multiple repeats as I kept making mistakes and I wanted to turn in the cleanest copy I could. There is a minor mistake on the third page, but I had to let it go. They have to expect humanity from a human after all.

The girls and I were going to bike down there, but now I think I might drive. I don't know what to do. I'm wearing an outfit that hopefully makes me look capable, competent, and athletic enough to handle the rigors of the job. A friend of mine that I consider pretty badass said she doesn't have the balls for the job. I don't know if I do either, but strangely, I'm not really scared. Maybe I should be. I can't control my emotions that way. I might cry, but I'm not afraid even though the job would involve heights, extreme temperatures, hazardous chemicals, violent and disorderly people, and terrible car accidents. For how flighty I can be, I'm great in a crisis. I don't lose my cool although I sometimes have a mini breakdown after when I can relax and relive the moment. As someone who has life threatening food allergies who has ridden in an ambulance I appreciate the role of these people in society.

I just got the call that the person I'm supposed to meet is on the way. Here goes nothing...