The problem with being strong all the time is that you never learn the end of your strength.
Until you drive into it.
Doing sixty.
It was interesting. I felt it go. My internal narrator folded her arms, leaned against the wall, and said quietly, to no one in particular, “And there…right there…is the moment where I lost my shit.”
I did it quietly, in the apartment. I didn’t go climbing any clock towers or driving off bridges. I think, however, that I cannot do this out here. This doesn’t feel like a passing panic. I am an old hand at passing panic–I’ve been passing it for quite awhile. This is me being done.
I’m gonna take a week and do tourist stuff, I think. And then, if I have not made some kind of miraculous saving throw on my sanity check, I think I may haul off and go back to Raleigh. It’s a little embarassing–it smells like failure–but I have reached my limit–this is too much, too soon, too huge, too far afield. God help me, I am as tough as they come, but I just don’t think I can do this now.
It’s been the longest year of my life, and very nearly the worst. And I kept on going, and I kept being strong. And I kept throwing myself into things, because I thought that strength was inexhaustible.
Guess not.
Live and learn, huh?
