God, what a rollercoaster weekend. (If you're wondering what I'm doing better than, check out the previous post.)

Had a bit of a freakout experience last night, left me a little shaky, but oddly, I feel also incredibly refreshed. Or like I will be, once the jittery part dissipates, which it will. Once I get some sleep, and more than a meal or two a day.

Man, did I have a night last night. But I'm a little leery of blurting it out here in public.

Jean Genet wouldn't have any fear about it. (Not that I was robbing anyone last night. Don't go too literal on me.)

That's what's odd about this, though. I think I could in a book. I write those things--books, stories--by myself. Yes, I hope to publish them at some point, but never the point I'm writing them. That's just hanging out there as some future danger, that I brush off as something I'll just have to face down the road some time. Very different than facing it in the present. Or is it just because a book feels more like one time. Gather all your sins together in one place and confess the whole lot of them at one time: Even St. Augustine pulled that one off, he's been a religious hero for nearly two thousand years for doing it. Of course he had a slightly different take on his sins. That they were. I use the term more ironically. He just confessed the sins to repudiate them. I still hope to write a response to that book someday, but I really need to get around to reading it first. I tried once and it was tough going. I was chugging along anyway for a little while, but then I conveniently forgot it on a plane, and never bothered to re-order a new one. (A recent translation was highly recommended by one of my most prized recommenders, Miles Harvey, whose link I bet you've never clicked on down there in the bottom-left corner. I had to get the bookstore to special-order it, and you know how much of a psychological block shit like that can be. Worse than finding a stamp.)

Well, it's going to have to wait for a book, I think, and God knows how I'll ever work this shit into a book. But I didn't get to sleep until three this afternoon, so you can imagine I was having a pretty good time. Mostly. Afterhours club closed at five, afterparty started at 5:10. Dance dance dance. God I love to dance. Ever see Billy Elliot? Exactly how I felt all my life, minus the talent. But exact same level of need.

People are so weird. Most adults never dance, never to speak of anyway. I can't comprehend. Dancing, writing, eating and sleeping, any one of those make me cranky when I don't get enough, but those are the only four I have identified. OK, homeless would suck pretty bad, and I've never tried to stop breathing more than (two minutes? oddly, that was my favorite ownpersonalsport growing up, and i was amazingly good at it.) I dance because I have to--how come other people don't have to?

(I initially posted this--ten minutes ago--as an update to the Thanksgiving(s) from hell post from Friday. But man, it veered way off that topic and went on way longer, so here it is on its own):

A few of those comments [in the Thanksgiving post] were really unfair to my family. I forget that I've written almost nothing about them, so for all you know they are a bunch of heartless, cruel Mormons who have disowned me and wracked me with guilt every time a sexual thought passes my brain.

The guilt can actually get pretty intense, and oddly, I think I bought a much bigger load of it than any of my siblings, but it's the Catholic brand, and has nothing to do with being a homo. They could not have been nicer about that. They don't really approve of some of the edgier things I've been known to do, but I think it's mainly one part disapproval to four parts fear. Though I'm not completely sure about that, actually, and there are eight of them, so it varies, a lot.

Wow, look how drawn back to the negative I am. I made it a point to come back to this post to rectify a gross mischaracterization. I'm really blessed that I have eight siblings and two parents, who I mean the world to. I'm not sure if that's a little bit of an overstatement, but I know they care about me a great deal and their lives would be thrown into turmoil if I were suddenly to leave it. And let's face it, I'm the one who left, couldn't get out of state soon enough when I got out of college--before I got out the first time; I dropped out and joined the Army and shipped off from Chicago to Georgia when I was 21. I moved to five other states and three other countries, but never the state they lived in. And I really don't know how to visit properly. I seem to make a minor mess of that frequently. This time, for instance. Does that get any easier. It seems to be suddenly getting harder, that's the scary part.

Is that what I'm writing about? I've got about six things on my mind, it appears. I thought I sat down just to write about one, which is that I made that rather vicious statement about my family in a moment of . . . confusion, I guess. Confusion in the truest sense, I think, because I was about to say, anger, frustration, isolation, guilt, melancholy, loss . . . and I was aware at the time I said it--and throughout Thanksgiving Day as it happened--that every one of those and more were in play, but I couldn't for the life of me tell which one was the real mover.

Kind of a troubling time for me at the moment. So much in flux in my life, and while my life tends to be all about the exhilaration of change, it's also the one thing that scares the shit out of me. When it all changes at once, really. And I'm working a more or less new job, I'm single again without the guy I've spent the bulk of the past six years with, and I'm halfway on my way to moving--essentially living most of the time in Chicago (the Chicago suburbs!) for the time being, and sort of solidifying plans to move to finally move to NYC next April or May. Kind of emotionally shaky, right now. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a basket case, but then it passes and I'm fine for awhile.

And I'm getting way ahead of myself here. I still need to tell you about the moving plans and the job. But then I've been trapped in Chicago away from my blog, so what to do?

And while I'm wrapping up loose ends. I was just kidding about that "bleaker than life itself" crack up at the top. I just get the giggles every time I say it. I think because it tends to unnerve some people. You can actually hear a shudder sometimes. Melodrama. What am I, ER? (When are they going to create a new emmy category for it:"Best Melodrama"? Though it would have a lot of competition.)

So. My family. Great people. Really nice. Really care about me. And some of them even tell me so. Two of my sisters called to check on me Thanksgiving night, and one of them told me she loved me. They're really sweet. My mom did too. I know she cares about me, so I really feel guilty that I made those vicious little cracks. In my head. That's the thing. I came here to apologize, but just a little while back I decided to find the exact quote in question, to see just how I put it and discovered I never actually put it here. God, did I want to. In an unusual show of restraint, I actually demonstrated a bit of restraint.

Hopefully I can say it now without it stinging since I have admitted it was not true. I said--over and over and over in my head--"It will be so glad to get back to Denver where there are people who care about me." Definitely sounds foot-stomping kindergartenish, but does it sound vicious? It is. No greater acusation to hurtle at someone you love than they don't love you back. And they love me--in only one case do I have to take it on faith, which is a pretty solid percentage; I'm willing to wing that one. Anyway, it would bother these people. A lot. I know my audiences, I know how to make it sting.

I decided that rather than just go back and eliminate it, I should explain it. Because I did think it, it didn't come out of nowhere. And the fact that I didn't say it doesn't make it any less real. I was just lashing out, but I do have a problem here. Isolation, I wasn't focused so much on that one Thursday, but that might be the big one. Out of my whole family, I think I'm the most different than everyone else. I don't feel like I fit in very well. God, I feel that everywhere, but I did I ever feel it so much in my own family? And feel is definitely the right word, because right away I can think of two obvious candidates for siblings who could make a compelling case for least similar and or most isolated. If you put it to a sibling vote, I might be neck and neck with one for one title and lose handily with the other for the other.

But that's not really the point, is it, aside from undermining my case for martyrdom. I don't fit in well. Most of their lives are so utterly different from mine--but it has been for decades, why am I feeling this so intensely now? Because the isolation is slamming me in other parts of my life, suddenly the stakes are raised?

Oddly enough, being there more. Or the prospect of it. They have these family gatherings once a month I guess, for birthdays. Used to be even more, once the brothers in law started joining the family, and then the inevitable breeding, though only three have actually bred yet, so I still have more siblings than neices and nephews. (Nine of us to seven of them.) It got to be too much, so they cut it back to monthly group celebrations and I think there are a lot of mixed feelings about the burden of them mixed with the happiness of staying in touch.

I have guiltily counted my blessings at being unable to attend. But also kind of sad. And more sad that I miss every one of the graduations and confirmations and first communions. Missed a confirmation last Friday night, was actually across the street from the church where it was conducted an hour earlier, but didn't know it was going on. (That was weird. Did I mention that in a complete coincidence, via a contact met in Denver, I am working in the same little suburb I grew up in. In a hospital I actually visited as a patient as a kid. One mile from the house I grew up in, where my parents still live and the Thanksgiving dinner in question was conducted.)

I think I'm scared about showing up at these things after 20 years and having no idea what role to fill. Stupid, they're just like all the other holiday gatherings, right? I guess. Scared that they've been bonding this way for 20 years and I've been running off on my little adventures missing out on one of the most important and easiest ones.

OK, not easy. Maybe I'm just too freaking scared of any more drama in my life at the moment. That was the proverbial last straw Thursday. At least with putting my back out earlier in the week, and various other shit going on, I suddenly just couldn't handle one more thing. Not when it was the tip of an enormous iceberg like your family.

Am I getting weaker as I grow up? I thought I was getting stronger, more balanced. I am, I'm pretty sure--yeah, that's my usual fear, way too sedate and balanced!--but sometimes. I do tend to lurch. First time I heard the term manic depressive was on a Maude episode in the 70s, and I guess I was about 15 and immediately diagnosed myself. Not with a clinical case, just a mild version. But the it was one of those early Very Special Episodes where Adrianne Barbeau recited a little speech/lesson on it, simultaneously to Bea Arthur's character and the audience. One of those chilling moments when you hear yourself described, but you had no idea until you heard it coming out of their lips. Oh, I have that. Sort of.

The great part about my version is that I tend to be 90/10 manic, which I guess is the reverse of most people--or at least the ones I hear about it, because it sure seems to be more of a problem that way. But that 10 percent. Hmmmm. Probably one or two percent? Which is that even more than, say, normal life? I think it is, because my swings seem to be much wilder than some people. So maybe they have a separate diagnosis for me (surely by now!). I am so rarely depressed, but the swings. I am both ends of the spectrum.

Here's the weird part. The peaks and valleys have really leveled out the past few years, and that was so comforting, but really started to scare the shit out of me. I miss those peaks! I lived for those peaks. Suddenly I'm getting more peaks again, and now it is scaring me. Just a scardy cat? Everybody is scared, right? Hope I have descended into whining. I'm just unravelling, if you could hear my voice, it's more like a rapt student in the midst of discovery. Or right on the fucking verge of it. Am I ever going to figure any of this out? That I'll never be satisfied with what I've got at the moment?

The reason I've been sort of scared lately is that I had my first kinda scary encounter with depression since college, that i remember, this fall. I was having real trouble pulling myself out of bed in the morning. I didn't open my mail for a couple, three months, and my phone got shut off twice, my long-distance once (at the moment, actually, but then I the opposite problem, too busy), my newspaper (big deal, it's the Denver Post--I was mainly just using it as a placemat), several credit card problems that leg to other smaller auto-bill things getting cut off or some just threatening, but at least those tend to email me, so I have been warned, and I was apparently a few hours from my electricty getting cut. The final deadline on that one actually passed, but then on a whim I opened the mail one day and it was a letter informing me that the final deadline had passed but they had left it on anyway but this time they really meant it and i had like five days, ending the day i happened to open it. that would have been depressing. sitting there in the dark, food rotting in the fridge, cut off from the web, from email, my blog . . . at least the phone would still work, so I could call my friend Dave and admit what a freaking loser I was.

That's the first time I've ever been that messed up. Or even close. First time I've ever been in debt. Way in debt, scary for me. And I was way too depressed to get any decent writing done or especially to bang my head on more doors pitching stories to big magazines and getting rejected--especially after my big break on Radar (did I ever tell you about that?), which gradually unmaterialized as they fail to get the money to put out the next issue, and the story i spent all of July manically working on for my first New York based national magazine--and it was a great story, i was thinking maybe my best ever--will likely never be read. that's what really put me into the tailspin. actually, it sort of set other things in motion, because i made a conscious and i think astute decision to hold off pitching several other stories to Vanity Fair and The Times Magazine until my Radar piece came out, since that would have dramatically raised my credibility. And then it was delayed and delayed and delayed, and I'm only just now realizing that that September issue is probably never going to hit the newstands.

so there's a lot of shit going on in my life. and i did not handle that last one well, though it sort of snuck up on me and i tend to do poorly with those gradual things, cause once i realize i'm drowning, it's already hard to suck in the oxygen to capsize.

i have capsized, i've got this other job, but it means putting most of my writing on hold for six months, maybe more. the plan is to work nearly full time for six months, then maybe half time after that. it's all very fluid, though, which is part of the unsettling part. and i can't believe how much i enjoy it, that's the other scary part. i enjoy it, and right now i need to do it, but it's so freaking hard making yourself a writer and i'm terrified of anything that pulls me away. i have been so jonesing to write some longer pieces here, by the way. I'm thinking maybe it's time to focus less on the day-to-day shit and write more lengthy pieces, though hopefully a bit more focused.