My Demise

Los Angeles is beating the proverbial crap out of me. I’ve only been here two weeks, but so many darn things keep going wrong I’m sliding right back into survival mode. The one where at any given moment I’m prepared for an anvil to drop from the sky onto my head, semi-truck to careen into me from nowhere, and something as random as two strokes to strike my brain. It’s exhausting, living in a constant state of disaster preparedness. If things don’t start turning around quickly I’m not sure the town I’m from will allow me to continue. Over the years I wondered why I grew-up to be such a cynical, surly, hotheaded broad. Well I’m not wondering anymore! Simply surviving the insane drivers and aggressive, self-absorbed people I encounter at every turn is enough to make a girl want to crawl on her hands and knees back to the sweltering desert I just deserted. Or at the very least revert to my previous state of being known as ‘total bitch’.

I’m damaged goods. There aren’t enough pep-talks inside me to keep going like this. I’ve barely healed from the previous nine years of sickness and random tragedy. I finally got to a place where I could walk around like everything’s fine and dandy, even though it isn’t. I liked pretend land! Because for so many years I was in so much physical pain there was no pretending anything, there was just wanting to die. A bold-faced game of ‘blend into the land of the healthy’ seemed like such progress for me… Now it seems to be my undoing. Of course I’m taking on more than I can handle. It isn’t really an option. I knew when we decided to move I was foregoing safe and comfortable for a life I actually wanted to live. It’s doubtful I would ever have enough insulation around me to not feel the bumps and bruises such a rough transition delivers.

Harsh reality tells me life doesn’t give a shit if I’m sick. Mr. Werner Erhard’s est school of hard knocks tells me simply by being alive I’m entering into a consensual agreement to accept whatever the hell may happen in the future, along with the responsibility to fix whatever it does to my life. And too much experience living tells me things can still get a hell of a lot harder than they are right now. But the bitterness is taking over. I got sick and it ruined my life. Does that mean I'm relegated to wither away living the life that happens to me, not the life I make happen? Am I ever going to rise from perpetual victim-hood and soar among the clouds of my dreams? I didn't ask for this life and I didn't do anything to cause it. Yet still, the charge to fix it is mine, and mine alone.

Thanks for joining,

Leah