Already in a foul mood yesterday, I planned to take my antique car, Garfield, out for a spin when I finished last night’s blog. But after jumping the battery, I discovered that it was leaking–pouring–fluids onto the driveway. (Who knows why?) So that didn’t happen. Still, I needed to get out of the house, so I took my other car, Tom Collins, for a drive. With no destination in mind, I pointed Tom in the direction of Siloam Springs, up winding Highway 59. I drove this road all the time in my twenties, back when Dad used to work at a local chicken plant and they paid me like forty-two dollars to deliver chicken samples to their lab up north.
I’m not sure why I was pissed off last night, why I still am. Probably something to do with sitting in my feelings every day or the fact that I want my body and my health (hell, my life) to be different than they are. Talk about a recipe for a bad mood–want something you don’t have. (Just add water.) And the antique car thing didn’t help. Driving Garfield is one of the few things that never fails to make me happy, and there he was, spilling his guts all over the concrete like I’m currently spilling mine on the internet, making a big, damn mess. Then I started thinking about how much money it would take it fix him, how I’d probably be better off selling him anyway because I could use the cash. And I hate that thought.
Being desperate.
Driving up Highway 59 last night, I was probably going 45 miles per hour when the deer ran out in front of me. An honest-to-god Bambi. I’d come around a corner, and she darted from the other side of the woods into my lane. Slamming on the brakes, I slowed to maybe 30. It all happened so fast, it’s hard to say. The next thing I knew, the deer was gone. She made it–I made it. I swear we came within two feet of each other, maybe less than that. I could see her head, but not her legs. Talk about a close call. It felt like one of those roller coasters, where you think you’re gonna die or at least be wrecked, but then you don’t, you aren’t.
When a close call happens on a roller coaster, my reaction is to laugh. But last night after I barely missed the deer, my heart jumped into my throat. Not when it happened–there wasn’t enough time–after. It’s so weird. During the thing, there were no choices, no time to calculate. The deer ran out, my foot hit the brake. I thought, Shit, I’m going to hit the damn thing. But I didn’t. And then the fear came. I thought, I’ll laugh about this later, like, I made it!, but I didn’t. I drove for an additional two hours worried something else terrifying would happen.
By the time I got back to town, my bad mood hadn’t gone anywhere, so I went to Taco Bell because feelings taste better with cheese. I had to “pull around to the front,” since “your chalupa won’t be ready for two minutes” and the guy didn’t want me holding up the line even though I was the only one in it. So that pissed me off, just like it pissed me off that I ordered a meal box and it came in a sack (“we’re all out of the boxes”). Then when I got home and picked up my iced tea, the lid came off and the tea went everywhere in Tom Collins.
Which pissed me off even more.
I’d hoped that sleeping last night would improve my mood, but it really hasn’t. Taking a nap didn’t even work. Maybe getting things on the page will. I could go for a walk, take another nap. (I’ll try anything.) I wish I could convince myself to be grateful that I didn’t slam the shit out of a deer last night, but I can’t. Every near miss just feels like life is fucking with me, like I can’t calm down because what’s going to jump out of the woods next? I’m so tired of barely making it. That’s what it feels like–just getting by every month, just being healthy enough–one near miss after another. Like your heart never comes back down from your throat.
Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)
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For me, it's important to hang on to this idea that no matter how bad they are, your circumstances can turn around, to believe that if an elephant can show up in your life, it can also disappear, to believe that just as the universe full of big problems, it is also full of big answers.
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