Free floating

I don’t know what to make of… anything. I’ve lost my frame of reference. I’m no longer able to live my life on autopilot. Everything seems at once new, over-stimulating, and threatening. Every step requires thought and intention. I feel I’ve lost the basis of making decisions about things so simple as where to place my feet.

I haven’t cried over my condition, but today I came close. I carry a constant sense of dread and sadness, and today it feels very heavy.

The irony is, it was actually a good day. My daughter came to visit after work last night. We huddled on the couch and watched a movie. Today we went to Brooklyn for something billed as Cupcakes Arts & Crafts Day at a place called Etsy Labs, an establishment that encourages and teaches craft-making techniques. So very 1970’s! Lots of people socialized while fashioning fabric, yarn, paper, plastic clay, and other supplies provided by the coordinators into anything resembling cupcakes… or not resembling cupcakes. A very freeform day, with very freeform results, that served to underscore my own freeform lack of direction.

After the event, we met up with one of my daughter’s oldest friends, a young man very dear to my heart, and this meeting posed the decision that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Although I wanted to share my “news” with him, we were surrounded by his friends, people I didn’t know who were all on-track with young families and young lives. It seemed unwarranted and unfair to introduce such a somber note into their festive gathering. I left without telling him, and drifted toward home.

It’s clichéd to think so, but time passes so very quickly. There is no gap at all in my mind between our Etsy Labs tour and the many similar things I did in the real 1970’s. My daughter and her friends were the babies my friends and I carried around on our hips at the time.

I wish I knew where I fit in….