you're not unlucky, you're just not very smart

Hard week. Couldn't say why. Whatever is inside my chest feels brittle and sharp and I feel cut off and disconnected from the people in my life. No one to talk to. Sometimes it feels like there's so much trapped up inside me that I can't say or don't know how to articulate to even myself that one day I'm just going to fly to pieces. 

I went for a long run listening to my old running-fast playlist instead of my boring Washington biography or the GRRM book I'm rereading for the hundreth time. Running fast in the cold blowing air hurt in a good way and made my nose feel slightly like I'd been hit in the face, that slight tang of blood in my sinuses.

Tonight I'm going up Betsy Bell to forage with a friend. I don't think it's been warm enough for morels yet, but what do I know? If nothing else, it will be good to see the old girl. (The little mountain, not the friend. I admit, I'm not feeling especially sociable and have been less so as the day goes.) I wouldn't mind collecting some nettles for tea though and maybe a clutch of violets to make a syrup. Outside, the wind is banging and throwing stuff around my yard. 

sleeps in my head in this interstate world

 Finally Friday. My second dose vaccine has been kicking my ass. I'm grateful to be vaccinated, and I know it's a good thing I'm having such a big reaction as it means I have a strong immune system, but it's been so long since I've had a fever, let alone one for so many days. I feel like there's an irritable couple living inside my body who are constantly fighting over the thermostat - turning it way, way up and then way down. 

It's starting to green up in Staunton. The leaves are coming out and my plants are starting to perk up. I have a windowsill of tomatoes that it's too cold to plant. Even this year, I couldn't find it in myself to resist. Nothing wanted to grow from seed, though. Dead little pots of cold soil. I have a half dozen hosta I need to plant under the catalpa tree.

I had a terrible dream that I was running along Burke lake in my home town. It was at dusk and a five mile loop, so I knew I'd be running in the dark, but it's a route I've run hundreds of times in my youth. As I crossed the dam into the woods, the trees kept getting darker and darker until I realized I wasn't in the woods at all, but a rambling wooden attic. It was packed full of old furniture and junk, and the path was covered with it, so I had to swing under old exercise equipment or duck around an open standing dresser with the drawers all pulled out. It got dimmer and dimmer until it was totally black and I fell through a trap door into an uncomfortable party mixed of people who knew and didn't. 

I want to write in this blog more, but every time I examine my emotions in the privacy  of this blog, I start crying. That's probably a good sign that I should probably examine my emotions in private a little more. 

Counseling ends soon. I'm supposed to think of questions I still have or things unresolved. It hasn't been very focused on me at all, but there have been two things that stuck out. One, an observation the therapist made when I offhandedly mentioned that I keep so much about my religious and sexual identity from my family. "So living a double life comes naturally to you?" Another was some advice about being angry or I guess just a mess, to take a moment and "organize" yourself. I liked this a lot and found it very practical, but I can't help thinking about how it's a word meteorologist use to characterize the development of severe thunderstorms. Clouds and organized rotation. It would be good for a poem.