The Bottom Line

I think I've mentioned, with some regularity, how very ready I am to put 2009 behind me. Without doubt, this has been the most challenging year of my life. Of course I'm not so deluded to expect that the clock will move to 12:01 on January 1st and all will magically be well... but I am just deluded enough to hope that will be the case.

I think I've also mentioned - perhaps with some regularity! - that MSU scares me when he drives. Not always, but often enough to think of it as a constant. It may be the pilot training that allows him to take such a cavalier attitude toward maneuvering through traffic and navigating the roadways, but whatever it is, it doesn't approximate the defensive driving that was pounded into my brain as a new driver (that has stayed with me all this time, mostly because I am certain that everyone else on the road is out to get me). Since I've been injured, he's done most of the driving. I'm sort of a wreck when we get home.

Yesterday, as we zoomed through the ultra-skinny and constantly-in-construction-and-therefore-never-the-same carpool lane on the northbound I-15, MSU was cruising at his normal well-over-the-speed-limit velocity and had assumed his standard position of waaaaaay over to the left. There is no break down lane, there are just two skinny lanes protected on either side by retaining walls. MSU's standard cruising attitude positions the car about six inches from the left retaining wall (2 if the side mirror counts).

I think I've also mentioned that I LOVE my Nimble German Car. I love it beyond all logical reason. Needless to say (I hope), it seriously freaks me out when MSU drives it balls-to-the-wall and six inches from certain destruction.

Back to yesterday, I found myself not just tense, not just slightly ascairt, not just peeved, but downright terrified and sick to my stomach as MSU hung to the left and messed with the heater controls, the radio, his cigarettes, and his lighter. As he took his eyes off the road repeatedly and for several seconds at a time. As he took his hands off the wheel entirely to feel around in his jacket for his phone. I cringed in my seat, eyes dribbling helpless tears, waiting for my Nimble German Car to have its left side mirror ripped off by the retaining wall; or worse, for the front end to bump a slightly erractically placed bulkhead and send us spinning into the other lane, the other retaining wall, the other cars.

When we safely arrived home, I wracked my brain trying to figure out why my reaction had been so intense. The details of yesterday's commute aren't really different from any other day, but my reaction sure was. I allowed my little rodent brain to chew it over as we went to get haircuts for MSU and Z-bo, and continue mulling over dinner.

After a satisfying sushi dinner, complete with a surprise appearance by My Really Stupid Friend (who I am very angry with right now, but enjoyed the surprise anyway) and two large decanters of sake, it finally hit me: I can't take one more thing. Not even one. And I'm so afraid of that One More Thing that any proximity of possibility is enough to strike terror into my heart and soul.

As I pondered this bolt of lightning to the brain, I realized further that it isn't really the One More Thing that I fear... it's what is going to happen to ME should that One More Thing manifest. Because, hey... One More Thing. It is what it is, right? There have been SEVERAL One More Things over the course of this past year, and all of them have been dealt with (some more constructively than others). What's One More Thing on top of all those other Things?

The breaking point, that's what it is. The event horizon. The point of no return. The squaw that stroked the camel's sac, so to speak. The surety that One More Thing would certainly compromise the thin veil of sanity I currently hide behind struck me like a speeding train. And though I don't really know what that means, I know it is real enough to be feared... because I suddenly felt, really FELT, how stretched and frayed that thin tether to reality in my consciousness is. How close I really am to the point where my body, my chemistry, my very cellular structure will orchestrate a hostile takeover for the no-confidence vote of my mind. And so many recent impulses suddenly made sense: reaching for the garish purple-black berries of the nightshade that grows where I take my cigarette breaks, to pluck a few and pop them into my mouth, actually touching one before I realized what I was doing... pausing at the top of the back staircase, marveling at the glittering and deadly cement perfection of it... upping my life insurance policy at open enrollment to three times my annual salary, because more is better. Right?

My consciousness didn't even take note of these events until well into their execution. Nor did my consciousness, until last night, take note of the significance. Which answers a question I've long wondered about: does a crazy person know they're crazy? Apparently not, friends. Good to know, eh?

So hurry up, 12:01 on January 1st 2010. Hurry, please. I need a little magic.