Ramona Averted

You say you're clearing out, the devil's in your eyes
No time to walk, no time to talk, no time for long goodbyes.
The ticket's in your hand, you've made that final call,
The hard words flying by like punches in a barroom brawl

We've made a mess of things,
It makes no difference now
let's chalk it all up to the blues.
Little girl, think it over one time
Before you break in your walking shoes.



It was a strange moment. I sat here at the computer composing an email. It was several paragraphs long and I kept going back and forth through it trying to make it more concise, less emotional. I got it honed down to what I thought it needed to be and then there was this voice.

Not a voice out of the heavens, not a Saul Saul why do you persecute me kind of voice. But it was this feeling that said, "wait."

I highlighted all the text (I do so want to say "highlit" even though I know it's not the way to say that word). I hit the delete key.

And then I wrote one paragraph, including a frustrated run-on sentence, and sent that. It summed up the disappointment and worry without digging myself into a hole that I would not be able to return from.

Because there are things I am angry and frustrated about. And the person I was writing to is almost the right person to say them to. In some ways yes. But you know email. As opposed to the written word on lined paper, or a phone call, or a face to face discussion, it is a cold hard "I AM UPSET AT YOU STOP THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO STOP" modern telegram.

I know this. I've used it because of that fact in some situations, to help me maintain a distance from a situation or person that I in no way wanted to get more involved with. But I'm in a relationship with this person I almost emailed (not in the Facebook sense of in a relationship). And it would have damaged that relationship.

Wait.

I sent the single paragraph instead.

And like magic, the phone rang.

It's not all better, but the part that I wouldn't have been able to fix had I sent that email is better. I got off the phone and sat in my big broken in leather chair in the living room listening to the silence.

It's been a really crappy week, no, two or three weeks, waiting for my cat to die (who was the color of pumpkins, orange and those spooky white ones? and we have a few sitting in our front hall and out of the corner of my eye there he is. Again and again and it's just pumpkins). It's been a long beginning of the school year and I wonder what it all means. It has been two weeks of our own doctor and dentist visits and my doctor told me the lovely news: "I can see it on your face that I need to increase your thyroid medication." It's been apraxia and my own talking too much. It's been my hands shaking as I tell another person I'm in relationship with not the Facebook way no matter what those idiots think who I am and where I am and that I can do what is needed if I know what it is. It's hugging that woman in the parking garage of Target. It's my oblate director stepping down because her rheumatoid arthritis has gotten the best of her. It's pinkeye and a potential root canal and it was my damned birthday on Sunday.

But I did not squeeze all the toothpaste into the sink this time and then stand there wondering how I would hide it.