youth fades and glory days deceive
guess i can't use the trendy label for people who hype motorcycles anymore... dad and i rode his new one down to newport on saturday night. it's weird how it alters the way you see a roadway.
the first thing i noticed is how much slower things felt, interestingly enough. on 75 south, surrounded by cars going the same speed as us, it felt like they were barely moving. the road was closer, more personal. i wasn't sitting comfortably behind glass. one could almost say it was freeing.
the last couple of days have been strange from a mental perspective. the best way i can explain it is that my thoughts feel like pants that are too large for my brain. i haven't been able to maintain a solid string of thought for very long.. i've been zoning out a lot more... i keep getting interrupted with little stabs of panic and i can't identify what i'm panicking about, and then they go away but there's a lingering feeling, an aftertaste, of something that's messed up or wrong.
it could be the dreams. sunday morning renee (thankfully) called and woke me up from being in a strange elementary school building... where i had been holding someone hostage with an AR-15 assault rifle. i don't know why i was holding them hostage. but i was panicked there too. eventually i surrendered to the cops, walking out into the hallway from the room i was in, placing the gun on the ground and kneeling in the hallway. i was wearing hospital scrubs. while the cops were cuffing me with guns to my head, the kids from the school were walking back inside and throwing stuff at me.. either ketchup and mustard packets or paintballs.
last night was far more disconcerting. it was in was another school building - a different, larger one, like hughes but about six floors, like a hotel, almost. but i knew it was a school. renee was in this one - i was telling her that i needed to locate someone, someone i had dated previously, to tell her something. i think i had to tell her that i had cancer or something, but i can't really remember. renee finally gave me her OK and i spent several hours hunting around the building, like i knew she was in there somewhere but just not specifically where.
eventually i found her, and we walked around the school - half of which looked like it had been bombed out - just talking about the weather, random small talk crap. i couldn't get out what i wanted to say, though. walking through the halls was absolutely terrifying and i don't know why.
and eventually we got to the room where renee and a couple of other teachers were working. i introduced the two of them, and they just nodded at each other like two assassins who had met before and were sizing each other up, ready to draw weapons.
so we kept walking, and i ended up driving her back to her house, which was also torn apart like it had been bombed. i dropped her off and woke up.
what was i going to say to her? i wonder if it was a cusack-high fidelity-esque 'why did you leave me?' type of thing. i remember the absolute terror i felt the entire time we were walking through the halls of the school, which is what really threw me. it's haunting.
a few months after i broke up with this girl, i was still in pretty bad shape. i had passed the period where i called her like a stalker every day, pleading with her to talk to me... i had convinced myself to ignore the pull to pick up the phone, but i broke down one day and opened an IM window. she responded and we talked for a few minutes, and i was shocked to see my hands shaking - actually shaking, like you see scared people in movies shake - the entire time. made it tough to type.
which wasn't an isolated incident, because about two years later i dug out her AIM screen name while working a lonely late night shift at onenet. i called it curiousity - to see how she was doing - but i think i was still curious as to why she treated me how she did. i never had the courage to ask her during that conversation either - it was the same small talk as in my dream - but my hands still shook just as much and i felt the same panic and fright that i did last night.
this wound is deep, i think, and something i've ignored for a long time. even writing this, i feel an ache. i haven't thought about her in a long time. stupid brain, bringing up the past.
speaking of, how hilarious was chris' zit named doug on the family guy last night? and quagmire in the crowd on the bachelorette?
giggity giggity giggity.
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