feels like i'm under the dark
24.01.21 | 9:41 am
a desperate pull for attention: that must be what this is.
--
i am pushing my body harder and further. beneath my skin, i can feel the muscle growing more solid (though i don't see much of a change, if any, in my actual appearance). i am forcing myself to take a rest day today after i worked out three times yesterday and spent the entire evening running after my niece and nephew.
speaking of, my brother and sister-in-law are pregnant again. only five weeks along, due in september. i am elated.
but when i am chasing tate around, having him jump into my arms and carrying him all throughout the house, when the new baby is announced, everyone looks at me and says, "can you really go back to france? what will tate and sutton and addi do? do you really want to miss the new baby?"
--
today, i miss it dearly. i see a friend in avignon's instagram story where she's walking along the river, sitting on the barthelasse, and i want to be there, too. i'm reading a silly romance book about an american girl who ends up marrying the prince of england, and my thoughts are jolted back to my twenty-first year, spending the entire summer after breaking up with eric in london, taking the tube, drinking at pubs for the first time, eating egg salad sandwiches for lunch every day. actually feeling free, as though i could do what i pleased. and that feeling persisted in avignon, finally experiencing living alone at age twenty-nine, opening my giant window to let the light and the sounds from the street in.
i want to go back.
but it feels like i'm going to be stuck here forever.
--
you are reaching out ever-so-slightly more. i have my theories as to why, but no proof.
lockdown was hard on me, that first go around, sitting in a tiny apartment with just emma, scared really to interact with anyone, spending all of my time making to-do lists that i finished carrying out by 4pm and then not knowing what to do, so i'd stare at the wall, or i'd drink a bottle of wine, or i'd watch a tv show and cry.
i wish i hadn't reacted the way i did.
i wish i'd been better.
it might've been different in that case.
but probably not.
--
okay, last bit here.
the anxiety is always worst in the morning. usually wears off through the day.
this morning, my chest was tight, my legs shook slightly. i had to breathe my way through it.
so that's what i did.
and here i am.
my life now.
at home, 95% of the time. alone, most of the time. unable to entertain any possibilities of a different future? sometimes.