I can't think of anything to write lately. What little mental energy I have, is being sucked up into essay writing and forcing myself to read Just One More Chapter of the Iliad.
I think, honestly I wanted to take a Classics paper because it sounded smart and intimidating.
And then maybe people would think that I was smart and if not intimidating maybe, noticeable.
I've developed a mouse complex.
Really I could have taken another English Literature paper, and enjoyed it. But now I have paid a ridiculous amount of money, and it's too late to withdraw and I just have to keep going.

I found an old notebook of mine yesterday, and spent a while trying to decipher my handwriting. When I wrote in it I was very, very sad. And reading it, I felt strange. Feeling the memory of a hurt, was like trying to negotiate a ghost limb.
I went through and wrote myself notes in the margins.
Dear Beth, it stops hurting.
Dear Beth, there's a lot of love in your life now.
Dear Beth, it gets better.

Happy Now Things

Right now I am cooking the biggest piece of meat I've ever seen. It's stuffed full of mint and and lemon balm.
I'm dreaming up ways to launch sky lanterns in the midst of suburbia without setting things on fire. Or mistakenly landing a plane.
I'm waiting for it to cool down enough outside to shift my herbs out of their baby pots, into a grown up garden.
I'm hoping that the cats won't squash the catnip.
And I'm hoping that the dog won't pull them all out.
  Yesterday as I was bending to close the gate I saw a half chewed bit of velvet covered foam. A slotted insert for a ring.
Bad words were said. The garden was searched. Tears threatened.
I found it just as the light was fading. A slim circlet of gold set with a sapphire, glimmering in the grass.
Jude gave it to me when she told me she loved me, for the first time.
She looked so nervous.
She might be cross when she sees what I've done to the lamb. She always says "why can't [insert food here], taste like [insert same food here]?!"
"Why do you have to make it taste like [insert variable here] instead?"
At least I left out the lavender.

I think I miss you.
And this is not a good thing.
And this is not an honest thing.
This is not a thing that leaves me lying peacefully in my bed, while she sleeps beside me, our joined hands clasped tight, and our joined breath condensing on the ceiling to fall in droplets on our faces when the air cools.
This is not a thing that lets me kiss her with open lips.
This is a thing that fills me with bitter taste.
And makes me hope, that this  is just the result of premenstrual syndrome.
A particularly bad bout.
And makes me hope,
that this is not a true thing.
This is a thing that ruins my grammar, ruins my peace less mind.

We walked around the gravel lots, hand in hand, peering through the windows of dispossessed houses.
It was dusk. We passed signs that said HAZARD CONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZED PERSONAL and you helped me up into the doorway. The floor was split in two, we stepped carefully.
Skeleton walls and gutted out rooms, I was a little bit frightened.
Even though it was just a house. Less filled with ghosts than piles of plywood and abandoned paint tins.

They like to say that we are post feminist.
That men and women are equal, that we have nothing to fear anymore.
Nothing to really be angry about.
And I can never find the words to disagree.
People like that, who like to make clever sounding, dismissive statements, always want the right words.
As if a lapse of grammar, or an inability to cite sources can render an opinion null and void.
How can I say to people like these, people who care more for glib epigrams than real emotion, that now, when I hear about a rape-
I used to feel sick and horrified and angry and hot and cold all over-
But now, I feel sick and angry, and grateful.
That it has never happened to me.
And then I feel guilty.
And then I feel apprehensive, because maybe it just hasn't happened yet
So you can tell me I'm wrong, that I don't order my arguments coherently.
You can tell me that "null and void" is cliched, and ask me if I even comprehend what it means.
But you can't tell me that I'm safe, to walk alone at night.

Resolutions.
Eat more of the green things.
Be friendly.
Make an effort to meet new people instead of hiding in relationship-land.
Write.
Draw.
Sleep.
Wake up.
Learn  to knit something.
Yoga.
Treat my beautiful home(s) with love and respect.
Answer text messages on the day they were sent.
Appreciate what I already have,
without becoming complacent.
Do something little and sweet for my lady-love every day. Even when I feel icky.
Let go of the past.

Panic

When I am having an anxiety attack, I walk as if I am drunk.
I see things, and then I don't. Until I decide that I didn't see them after all and step forwards.
And then bam! There they are, directly in my path.
Today I stumbled out in front of a blue jeep.
They swerved but didn't beep. I wouldn't have blamed them if they'd blasted their car horn. Or stopped the car to shout.
I caught sight of the drivers face for a moment.
She looked confused, and then concerned, and then disgusted.
I could hear her in my head "That young lady, with her holey jeans and her clumping boots and her raggedy cardigan. Gone. And it's not even noon. Probably drugs. This used to be a nice neighborhood."
No ma'am, I mean yes ma'am I am, on drugs. But this kind, not that kind. And I'm not drunk, I don't even really drink. It's my body, it's my body, it's my body, it's my body, it's my body, it's my body-
And oh shit, I'm stuck. If you have to do that, repeat something constructive-
I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay-
My mind I can quiet, mute with some effort, my body is a different story.
Still stumbling, I think I might fall soon. I hope I don't fall.
And now. Electric shocks running from my chest to my middle finger.
I'm a live wire. I could believe, in this moment, that if I reached out and pushed up a palm, a building across the street would collapse. Under a beam of pure energy.
Or if I pointed my finger. Like Roald Dahl.
Or I could believe that I was about to succumb to a fit.
I don't have epilepsy. They tested me when I was small.
It's just my body. It's just my mind.
I'm okay.
I hope I don't fall