three strikes, two balls, no runs and a distant brush with death

the word auxiliary comes to mind.
my whole life i thought that bodies fallen from great heights make a mess on the concrete when they land. like water balloons kind of. only full of guts. why do they make you think that in movies if it isn't true? (stupid question)

today shook me up and it wasn't even my problem. it didn't have anything to do with me. it just reminded me that i am neglectful, that i am a selfish and cold-hearted bitch who would rather assume that people chewed me up and spit me out than rationally conclude that maybe i abandoned them because i feared that they were on the verge of abandoning me. sometimes people just get busy and when they do, you might fall to auxiliary ranks.

i've run that very same red light a million fucking times on my bike. sometimes with a helmet, sometimes not. always knowing that i shouldn't do it. i think about the danger every time i casually look to and fro at the opposing green lights before cruising invincibly into an intersection. after all, what's the point of riding a bike if you're not going to get there faster than the cars with a shit-eating grin to show for it? everyone i know has at least gotten doored. i only almost got pinched between a bus and a limo, right outside casey moran's bar, cattycorner from Wrigley Field on clark street two years ago. i cursed something awful. i cursed the neighborhood. i still don't trust bike lanes, but what other choice is there?

i met her once. i just realized. it was very very very brief. last tuesday. i was getting coffee before rehearsal, at my favorite coffee place that i never have time to visit. a girl in front of me in the line kept looking back at me, grinning like we knew each other. while we were both waiting for our drinks at the end of the bar, she said, "you're a neo-futurist, aren't you?" and i said yes, that my name was megan, what was hers. her name is hayley. hayley comes to the show all the time. she works up the street from the theater, at the metropolis headquarters on clark. her friend took our orders. in glasses and a bandanna. "yeah," said hayley's barista friend, "i thought i recognized you from there too." the three of us talked for a hot second before she got back to work. i didn't realize that she was my friend's new roommate. i haven't seen my friend for awhile. i haven't been to her apartment since last winter, before her old roommate moved away. we haven't hung out since we got dinner at tank noodle on the corner of argyle when her family got crazy (like all families do) and her kidneys tried turning to sand and i was trying to help by driving her to that sketchy MRI place near my house that took an expensive and unnecessary picture of her inner pelvis. she got a boyfriend and i kept a boyfriend but i still took it personally and i guess we got busy and haven't even seen each other since the summer. today was the first time we'd even talked since probably july. i was reading the Tribune online. i came across the news report. i recognized the victim's address. i put the pieces together. it was a very sad phone call.

i know that i am not invincible. i curl up with that reality every night when i go to sleep and when i'm at my worst i pray that the cruel ass world will prove it. when it doesn't, i'll admit, i roll over and over ways to prove it to myself. the initial shock would wear off, and anyone who knew me for less than ten years would just forget anyway. dark? sure. dark lasts longer after the leaves turn and i usually turn into a train wreck. it's better when it's just me. no other people involved. the last time it happened with other people around was the worst, darkest point in my life that i can remember--much of which i can't in specifics because i managed to block sprawling chunks of it from my memory. but what i can remember felt almost identical to this, this being almost certainly a cyclical downturn.

today set out to teach me a lesson, to prove that all the ways i break down feelings are petty, that caring about others isn't as simple as that and you'd better not forget it because you could vanish at any second and so could they. when that time comes, wouldn't it be better to have been happy at the moment? or does it really matter if you feel miserable? maybe that actually makes for a happier ending.

the thing i can't figure out is whether it really matters whether you're alone. when i think about It, that's how i see It. it doesn't sound much different from right now. it's the inglorious tuesdays when people address me as if someone died or i just lost the bid for student council president and i have to act cool about it, it's crying a shitload on a strange couch and shredding a whole box of kleenex in an effort to make sense of how i feel to another person which is degrading in and of itself, particularly when it just ends with someone feeling bad for me and not really understanding at all and then doing it again days later, hours after looking at two three-year-olds and realizing that i'm just their bitch. knowing from the way it feels when the shower head runs over my face that this back and forth / up and down isn't going anywhere for awhile so i can either take cover or take responsibility if i don't want to drive anybody away but i think this is out of my hands because i don't have any insurance to take responsibility if i even had the time to.

with every poop i clean off someone who is not myself, i think about life-changing choices made in split-seconds when i haven't the foresight to see in increments beyond the confines of a clock. and i take those poops personally, because we've talked about the potty and i like to think i know a deliberate look that says "no. i think YOU should clean it."

buck up. buck up. buck the fuck up. buck harder. buck quieter. buck like you're enjoying it, like you wanna buck here. buck up before you fuck up.

sometimes i just don't know how. but that doesn't mean i like falling from great heights, especially now that i know that your limbs just snap back akimbo. i liked it better in my head with an explosive splat splaying the innards.

i'm giving up trying to explain this. it is totally useless and humiliating.
i am no good for talking these days.

i am going to fuck. this. up.