I was sent home from work early today after cleaning out my cube. No, I'm not fired; we are simply getting a new layout tomorrow. Going through all my stuff from the past almost-two years was very... odd. A picture of an ex with the pins still in it from when it hung on my cube wall a long time ago; really old glommed up lip gloss; duplicates of training papers I've memorized months ago; reports I forgot to file which are now months outdated anyway; the most thoughtful gift I've ever been given by a boyfriend; and so many stray paper clips that I could probably construct a 1:10 scale Eiffel Tower from them. Anything that didn't get tossed, I threw in a box and put in my supervisor's office for safe-keeping.
Before heading home, I had to go to the bridal shop to pick up my bridesmaid dress for my sister's wedding. Of course, it turned out a little darker than I hoped, but seeing myself in it was very uplifting. When I had tried on the black sample dress, I was saddened by how soft and weak my arms looked. Seeing myself in that same shape again showed how they have improved, if only detectable to my own eyes. I can't even say they are more "toned", even that is too generous. Perhaps more "taut"... or "awake"? Probably just awake. Although I did destroy my mom's sense of reality by carrying a large bag of soil from the car to the deck on the other side of the house the other week.
Once home, I took a book and one of my mom's elderflower ciders outside and polished off both. One of my dogs attacked, growled at, barked at, and ate a bee. Then I lay on the couch with the tingle from the sun and the tingle of an alcoholic beverage drunk too fast on a hot day. My mom and I went out to dinner at the first place I ate meat after being a vegetarian for two years (my health and weight had deteriorated from an unrelated health problem and I needed weight back).
Then we drove west for a while.
West has always felt like a very alien direction to me. When I travel, it is always east: the only exceptions were an overnight trip to Chicago and a weekend in California. I have driven east to Ohio a thousand times, been to New York City and West Virginia and continental Europe. West of my town is a mystery to me, and I only had to go about twenty miles to be somewhere I had never been in my life. Twenty miles on a street I grew up three blocks away from.
But west makes me uneasy. It's like my body has GPS and realizes I am moving in an entirely new direction. And it's scary. It's the same feeling under the diaphragm, and the hollowness behind the sternum, I get when I look out on Lake Michigan. Like heartache, being disoriented, like that time I accidentally took my prescription pain medication too soon after an alcoholic beverage. Like being on the edge of the universe without a lifeline. Perhaps an overreaction, but it's a gut reaction I can't control.
Anyway, we drove west. In my new car, driving with no real purpose, sunny warm skies with stretches of fields and trees and horses, a perfect straight line of road with occasional little hills. It was beautiful.
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