Happy Birthday to Me

I'm really only writing this because I should be writing something... I mean it's my birthday and I should have some statement to make. But curiously, I don't.

This is mainly because of the glaring, gaping chasm between what I am feeling versus what I should be feeling or want to be feeling. The day of one's birth is a day of reflection, like New Year's. I don't like what I'm seeing in this annual mirror; I'd rather it be a day of fun instead. Self-reflection these days is nothing more than a curse of voices in my head. Someone cure me!

Instead of Maya Angelou, I am Edgar Allen Poe, dreary, dark, and sad. It's not how I want to be! It's just what is.

I find myself wondering if anything can pull me out of this funk; right now, if someone showed up to my door with a lottery check with my name on the payee line, would it make a difference? Not immediately (but I could buy some smiles within the hour I bet). This emotional problem has become deeper than circumstance. This is a bottomless pool of melancholy and nameless regrets. Not happy with where I am, not knowing who I am anymore. Fighting to hold on to the me that I want to be, trying not to despise the me that I am forced to be right now. Warring to implement biblical lessons of contentment and joy in reprehensible circumstances. Exorcising worry and fear every minute, bailing out buckets of dark emotion while trying to row against the current. Sinking fast.

It's because I feel completely ineffectual and powerless to effect change in my own life. Out of control, moving nowhere, achieving nothing. What have I done in the past year? Nothing worth writing about! Nothing worth remembering.

Strangely, I feel better now. At least I can pour my secret sadness somewhere.

Happy Birthday to me.

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Notes from the Underground

I'm only posting in this blog right now because I feel like I should, but I have no idea what to write or how to log my thoughts down. It's because I have no idea what my thoughts are. I can't even wrap my mind around what's happening. What is happening?!

Tomorrow by noon, Gustave is supposed to hit. Katrinaville is in the critical path, on the strongest side of the storm. I live with my parents in Long Beach, MS since April. Most of my clothes and things are scattered between my aunt's house in New Orleans, my parent's house, and my storage unit around the corner from there. I am poised to lose my things again, just like last time. I don't have a job or car to lose this time, however.

My feelings of failure and inadequacy, that sense of life having come to standstill since Katrina and being stuck in the mire and unable to rebuild, are personified in this eerie repetition of events. What am I do? How am I to make decisions on where to go, what to do? No one can help me; I am a face among many, with no unique thoughts of my own. Oh, my people!

Bottom line: am I stupid for my decision to move back after Katrina? Will my blocks get knocked down like a Jenga tower? As apt as the example is, my life is not a game! As my sister says, this is a new nightmare that starts the same as an old one; as much as you want to believe that things can end differently, you can't avoid the flashbacks and echoes of old pain.

So here I sit, my face a frozen mask. Waiting, waiting.

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