so go, now, walk out the door...

Tonight I had a bad day at work. I got in two fights with the manager (Bekah), and got really angry with Sarah. Also, I left my windows open, and it rained. Then, after I rolled them up, the rear window was open, still, and when I was driving it started sucking all the pressure out of the car and pounding in my ears, and I almost...

...almost...

started crying, from a combination of things. Bad day at work, poor work hours for the last month (and a subsequent shortage of money), the lack of purpose that seems to be letting my life ooze out across its borders and thin so you can see the crap it got poured over, multiple frustrations, Sierra leaving, my inability to cope with anything remotely emotionally strenuous, the cat smell in my bedroom, and a wet ass from the wet carseat.

All of that, and a wet ass? Tell me you wouldn't cry. The pounding hurt.

So I made sure to put some DCfC in when I stopped at the gas station to roll up the window. And it got me sorted out, in a way. And I stopped thinking about things in my normal way, and just as I stopped the car behind the house and turned off the engine...just as I was about to turn the key, the song started ending. And I let the engine die and just sat there in my car. I leaned back and watched the lightning, and honestly thought that if this were a movie, by God, they'd find a 90 Honda Civic Hatchback with a sunroof.

The song ended, and I turned the car off. And you know what it did?

It just sat there.

I was almost surprised. I mean, you build emotion to a point and do something as prophetic as taking the key out of the ignition just as a dramatic song ends and you expect...I don't know. A lightning flash. A tear. Something.

Nothing.

And I looked around, almost ready to cry again from the sheer letdown of that natural silence, and saw all my things in this dark blue car, with the dark blue sky, and the thunder and the rain rapping and shuddering the world, and the sky that would flash, like someone was scattering magnesium into the clouds when the lightning hit, and all I saw were memories.

She didn't move, she didn't light up, she didn't make a sound. Just rain rapping and thunder tapping on a door to a room that you couldn't live in and had no perception other than me. It was the most alone I've been in my entire life.

I let down the seat and unfocused my eyes, trying to see all the lightning and its reliefs at once. Despite the damp, and the cool, and the stress, and the bitter, bitter life, something about lightning ripping through the clouds and fading into neverexistence makes me feel more at home in my car than home has been everywhere else, and more happy.

And more sad.