wearing the inside out

It's been a long and ragged week. I've been running on a modest amount of sleep and a pace that's not healthy. I've been walking to work to fill in at the radio station early mornings. I'm out of practice and haven't had to function like this in months. Even the coffee isn't helping any more.

On the upside, I haven't had to do this kind of thing in a while. On the downside, I still need to occasionally.

I bottomed out a couple of days ago, but I've been too worn out to really feel anything. After I rest, I will probably feel less honest again.

Some weary observations...

I think if someone cringes when you touch them, they don't want to be touched regardless of what they say to the contrary and no matter how many times they repeat it.

I think if you're called names often enough, even by an idiot, eventually it erodes your confidence just a little. Just because it's the nature of a particular creature to do hurtful things, that doesn't excuse it for doing those things. Naturally, if you know something is unpleasant and can not help but be unpleasant, why be around it? That's a question repeated in a million mirrors in the bathrooms of a million busted up trailers every Sunday morning.

The answer is elusive, but I think it's okay, at the very least, to resent being treated shabbily.

Lately, I've been reading a lot emails from old acquaintances in high school. Mostly, these have been surveys sent out to a couple of dozen people. We all (meaning some of us) fill them out, tell people what we want them to know, distribute and maybe look for some higher truth, some clue about the past we missed.

Some of them have been tiny half-baked conversations. I wanted to throw up after a couple of the women made it a point of noting they'd have been happier if they'd had more sex in high school. Yeah, sister, wouldn't we all have been a lot happier... well, some of us. Chances are, if they'd screwed around, it would have been with the usual suspects, not any of the rest of us.

I think I would have been happier in high school if I'd cut more classes and maybe experimented with huffing gas. I never did that. Of course, I'm probably too old to huff gas now and I never skip class now. Responsibility sometimes feels like a particularly cold chain.

I had a hard time getting past Valentine's Day. I'm not really meant to enjoy registered, scheduled holidays. I think I probably need to start making up my own and if Hallmark wants to invent cards to go with it, they can pay me.

In the last several weeks, I have thought about in a chronologically spiraling pattern, every woman I might have slept with, but didn't. It didn't take as long as I would have liked, but it's out of my system. I think I was working through some kind of regret, probably related to the season. Likely, I'll move on to shoes I might have worn or salad bar choices.

I'm tired. It's not a terrible thing to be tired. I just wish there was a better way to get rid of it than going to my bed.