I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if I stop moving I’ll fall apart.
I work. I work more than any human should. I work when I don’t need to. I work to a level that is not required and satisfy objectives that are not asked of me.
And I clean. I vacuum perfect lines in the carpet. I wash my dishes by hand even though I have a perfectly functioning dishwasher. I wash loads and loads of laundry, and almost compulsively purge things and dust and get down on my hands and knees and wash the walls.
I stack my calendar with places to go and people to see and obligations I can neither minimize or shirk. I am at dinners and drinks and meetings and events and dates and volunteer opportunities. I meet and I smile and I talk and I laugh when I should and I am who I should be.
It is never quiet. I walk from room to room in my place, cleaning and cooking and pacing and plotting with all the lights on and the TV blasting and music blaring because I am not ready to be silent. All the while the things I won’t touch, can’t deal with, pile up bit by bit in the corner of my life, the emotional hoarding of it all starting to take up room.
My life is changing. In major ways. And if I step back to objectively survey them, they’re mostly good. They are the type of changes that bring your life into sharp focus, that make your life brilliantly colored and beautifully HD. In short, they are the type of changes people hope for. And I should be grateful.
Instead I am in a constant state of motion because even good changes feel like instability I cannot weather. There is no one more well read than I in the agonizing disfigurement of existing in a life that was not made for you. But still, I find myself mourning the fact that I’d finally- for the first time ever- gotten my life to feel safe. And any change to that feels like a failure.
I cannot deal with any of this. I don’t have the energy to feel anything about any of it.
So, I keep moving. I work and clean and talk and laugh. I don’t sleep and I live on caffeine to keep me awake and NyQuil to take a nap. My life is haunting me and I am running, flat footed in the opposite direction, a coed in a slasher film not even sure of what apparition I saw but fleeing anyway. I must get away.
I can’t stop moving. Because if I do I will fall apart. And as long as I don’t posses the emotional currency to pay the debts I’ve amassed, I can’t afford to be in pieces.
Liquor, Loans & Love 
Damn it, La. I feel you. I used to be this way. But somehow, before I realized it, fatigue snuck up on me with a chloroform rag and knocked me flat on my back. And I haven't been able to get back up since. So I guess I'm stuck at the stage after you fall apart but before you can find the strength to pull it back together. In fact, I'm wondering if there is even a point to pulling it together when experience has shown me that I'll just get the rug pulled from under my feet again.
But I hope you're better than me. And you stop to deal with what you are avoiding before it deals with you. And that you continue to have the strength to move through this so-called life.
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