Current mood:	exhausted
Current music:	talking heads -- 'stop making sense'

road to nowhere.
I want to run. Away. I have to get out, go somewhere, do something, be anywhere but here. I feel like getting in my car and just driving non-stop in one direction until I find the peace and answers I need or, the more likely scenario, just run out of gas with only my mile-a-minute thoughts and the starry night sky around me. If I just leave, I always think, this will be gone when I come back. Maybe. 'This, too, shall pass' as they always say. I don't want to confront my issues, I just want to leave and hope they don't follow behind. And I don't know where I want or need to go, and truthfully, I don't think there's a real, tangible answer to that, but all I know is I can't sit still. I can't stay here.

We had a brief, morbid conversation on the way home, discussing the most terrible ways to die, and were in concurrence that drowning is probably the worst. Not that any way is the most ideal way, but there are definite shiver-inducing levels of dread amongst the options. Being shot or stabbed would be painful, but it also depends on if bleeding out happens quickly or slowly. Freezing to death sounds awful, he said, but you would really just get tired and go to sleep. Being burned, again, depends on how severe the fire is and how quickly your body goes into shock. But drowning? Everyone's snorted water up their nose or choked on their Coke before, so just imagine that sensation times a hundred: the discomfort, the gasping, the burning, the tightness in your chest. The panic, too, when you would realize that your lungs couldn't hold out any longer, and instead of your brain simply passing out and protecting you from the ordeal to come, your breathing reflex takes over and the water floods in.

I feel like that, right now, I wanted to say, but I didn't, because I knew it wouldn't do any good to think such things aloud. But I do. I'm just under the meniscus of something huge, looking up through the distortion at the sky but unable to boost the last few feet to the surface. I feel trapped in my own skin, like I'm clawing it with ragged, bloodied fingernails from the inside out and asphyxiating from all the bullshit I've allowed to pile up in the past weeks, months, years. I'm a teakettle, hot and full and under extreme pressure, quietly shaking and trembling and boiling on the inside until one day I'm afraid I'll pop and do something I really regret. I thought maybe if I just opened my mouth and let my frustrations out, it would help clear my conscience, so later when I was finally alone and on the interstate, I screamed at the top of my lungs until my throat grew raw and hoarse. I started to cry then, and was momentarily relieved until the thin, slight tears dissipated before trickling from my lashes and I was left much as before: full, hot, under pressure. I want to cry because I know it will make me feel better, but I seem to have lost the capacity for it lately.

We had passed another truck at some point: a typical Kentucky redneck, with a trailer full of typical muddy four-wheelers and a typically short, simple message affixed to his typical tinted back window, in the typical ornate script font. "Why not me," I read, not realizing I'd said it aloud, and mentally noting the lack of punctuation. Why not me. Why not me! Why not me? I've been told time and time and fucking time again not to fret over what I cannot change, and I wonder why, in world full of things that are beyond my power, I always think that if I just tried harder, I could make it happen. If I strove for perfection, then just maybe I could reach it. 'Yes, why not me? I have the skills, the brains, the drive, the will, the personality, the fortitude.' Why not? Because sometimes, it just doesn't happen that way. I can't be an Olympic gymnast, I can't prevent someone from being in a car accident, I can't make someone love me. I can't be perfect. And that's why so many people turn to religion, I think. Graciously accepting that your life is in someone else's hands makes it a whole lot easier when things don't go as planned.

"What would make you happy?" I was asked by two different people this weekend, and I was shocked when I couldn't even formulate an answer. I truly, honestly don't know anymore, at least not at this time. But I feel like if I could break through the aforementioned surface -- swim to the top and finally fill my metaphorical lungs with clean, crisp air -- then I could figure it out. And when I figure out what would make me happy, I'll go from there.

In the meantime, I need to run.