Road to nowhere

How are you, sweetie darlings, on this fine day in May? Hmm? One at a time, people, please. But seriously, did I promise to shut up until I heard something regarding that submission of mine? Was I that foolish? Let's pretend for a moment I never said that, and this relates, it does it does, kinda sucks and blows too, because it took a detour, my baby did, and isn't that just the story of my stories. It's supposed to be a teeny-weeny back in a jiffy one, so here we are, once again, waiting patiently, or I am since ye three of little faith abandoned ship a while ago to go hang with the published authors. You know, the ones who offer books and not laments to read.

I can hardly blame you. When I start thinking about those detours and delays and some back office stuff I've had to deal with this fine week in May, I find myself on a fast track to a not-so-happy-place, Things Beyond Your Control (est. right about now, population one soul with half a mind to get out of Dodge). Funky town, that one, every route you take a dead end like those infinite loops by Escher. You start thinking about other signs you may have passed along the way. You thought nothing of them. Go Away. No Exit. Turn Around. No Trespassing. You're suddenly very certain that's what they said, but for some reason you decided to pay them no mind.

Before long, you start having a bad feeling about things. Before you know it, you're beating yourself up. You're beating yourself real hard with a Give Up Stick (pat. pend.) thinking do I need this, who needs this, do I want to feel like this and wouldn't it be good not to feel like this and how you wish you could stop feeling like this oh if you could only stop feeling. And you think about the relief giving up would bring along; the tidal wave of relief letting go could grant you. And how about a good hard cleansing cry, hmm, snot and all, the kind that clenches your chest and has you fighting for breath. How's that for a sweet hereafter? (Give up give up give up *whack whack whack*)

What person in their right mind wants to deal with this, voluntarily, you wonder. Some manner of crazy person, surely. Your heart doesn't hurt enough as it is, hmm? Not enough to work out, get over, deal with, hmm? Hmm? So you start thinking that maybe, for all your protests, you are a masochist after all. And you think about time, how somewhere a meter is running. Do you really have time for this? You don't have more important things to do? Good fights, more meaningful battles, places to go and people to see, things beyond and outside yourself, roads that actually and eventually lead somewhere? It's not as if anyone would notice or care if you gave up on this. (Give up give up give up *thump thump thump*)

And you look at authors smooth sailing their way into publication without glitch or delay and envy rears its hideous head. But it's not them you envy, not exactly, that would be so unfair because it's not their books you wanted to write and see published, it's your own. So what do you envy then? The process? Another dead end, my friend, in the land of Things Beyond Your Control. Pointless. Petty. It doesn't lead anywhere. Still, thoughts of how much faster and better and whatever those authors have to be blindside you at five in the morning and eleven thirty at night. You consider that, the possibility. Maybe you shouldn't, you know it's unwise, you said you never would, and still you do it because you believe you've seen signs, and maybe you're in denial. (Give up give up give up *pow pow pow*)

And then you remember what else you promised. You promised you wouldn't lose heart and you wouldn't lose your head. And so you force yourself to calm down. Calm the hell down and hold on for one more day, just to see how it goes. The world owes you nothing. It's the other way around. So you thank the universe for the love of a good man; a man who knows just what to say and when you need to hear it and who knows when he needs to shut up. And your friends... Thank you universe for those amazing solid awesome women and one very special lady in particular who called and asked if she could see me and could we talk and could she bribe me with and interest me in a movie after, an Almodóvar. And you know which one it was? Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. And when I realized, I just had to laugh, so hard, and she joined me and couldn't stop because I wouldn't and we made a scene and so what. 

The disarmament summit was, I'm happy to report, a success. Because if we didn't laugh, we'd be crying, and I've seen signs that suggest that, for the time being, I'm all cried out.