Want

You may have gathered now that I have returned to my beloved Northwest. True to form, though, I have failed to update when I promised I would.  The world, it would seem, has returned to a state resembling normal.

But it is an uneasy peace, at best. Memories and sensations from where I have been will flash through my head at the most inconvenient moments, and while it seems I have been healed, I am still struck by how greatly I've been broken.

It is a strange thought, to see the world, to taste and smell and love the place outside the lake I call home, to pick up hints of green in the air and the dirt and the people, but find that deeper, darker ocean green inside your own small pond.

How do you go on?  When the plane lands and the luggage is unloaded, how do you persist in a world you almost don't understand? When all around you are people caught in the web of cyber-reality, how do you remain? To sit, to smile, to cross your ankles? To share, to stay, to understand? No running out the door, no flying away - just simple absorbtion back into an old life that fits poorly?

I feel in need of pure existence without pretext, post-text, context - only subtext.  I feel in need of silence, of a companionable hush, a friendly eye in the middle of my storm. I want to shout, I want to sing, I want to scream and dance and run and fly and live in a world of gentle gray until my voice is lost and my legs give out and my eyes see no more colors. I want to get drenched in a cold rain and feel the chill enter my bones. I want to let go.

Two of my toenails are in the process of falling off. It seems ironic, but even as I field questions and navigate the quagmire of returning home and telling people stories and starting work and listening sympathetically to people feeling upset about not having shower doors and preparing to move to a different state to get continuing education and a lifetime supply of debt, the only thing I really, truly desire in this physical reality is that skin holding the last part of my nails to my foot would loosen.

I just want them to fall out. And in a way, that's how I want the rest of my abbreviated stay here to go. I just want these thoughts to go away. I want these problems, these distractions, these difficulties to fall off.

Is it too much to ask? Please go away. I'm not here. If I hide away for long enough, will you believe it?

But the thing about wishes... is they don't come true.