ALL The Crazy

Dear Lorenzo,

Right now it's 2:10 a.m. and I'm wide awake, watching tv and feeling my feelings so...here goes nothing.

I just finished giving Amira a nebulizer treatment because she woke up coughing and even though she's stopped now and has returned to sleeping peacefully, even though she still has one day of prednisone left to take, I'm worried that it's my fault she's still sick because I sent her back to school today and then let her stay at the park for a little while with her friends before we went to both Jewel and Whole Foods and maybe that was too much for her and I am the worst mother alive.

I have an open house at Northwestern in a few weeks where I will learn more about their Masters in Creative Writing program and I don't even know why I'm wasting my time (even though it's probably only a 20 minute trip to Evanston) because there's no way in hell I'm going to get into Northwestern.

We leave for New Orleans in five days to accept your diploma from EDI and even though I'm looking forward to the trip, after paying for Barbados and camp and now this, I am so frigging poor right now that a part of me doesn't even want to go to Boston in August and would rather stay home where I don't have to spend any additional money but I can't do to that my mother or my daughter and so I'm going home even if it's only for a week.

Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives is on and I'm watching a brotha make peas and rice, plantain and red snapper and the meal looks so pretty and like home to me but it still isn't something that I would ever eat, not even when we were in Barbados, and I'm wondering about the last non-salad meal that I ate at any restaurant and the only thing that comes to mind is the risotto that I had last summer in Boston and I'm wondering if the reason that I prefer raw foods like salad isn't only because of the crunchy texture but because after YEARS of dieting I'm completely fucked up now and I'm grateful that my daughter has both your confidence and appetite and I will do everything in my power to keep her that way.

Amira just woke herself up coughing and briefly climbed into my lap and I wish I hadn't told her about Indian Boundary Park tomorrow because if she keeps coughing I'm keeping her home and I worry that both she and our friends will be disappointed and that once again, I'm the worst mother/friend alive.

I miss Maggie a lot. I haven't talked to her in months and I don't know if she's grieving or pissed at me or a combination of both but I'm sad and mad and miss the shit out of my best friend.

And...there you have it. All the feels, ALL the crazy, which I'm kind of glad I got off of my chest. THIS is what I've been trying to keep at bay, to drown out with food or alcohol for the past two years.

Me.

And you know what? It wasn't even that bad. The world didn't come to an end because of my neuroses. I don't fantasize about kicking puppies or shoplifting. I'm just a relatively normal human being with my own unique set of fuckedupness. And maybe that's okay because I bet everyone has their own unique set of fuckedupness too. And after writing all of this down, I actually feel better than I have in a really long time.

Like maybe me and all of my crazy are going to be okay after all.