We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Moping

(Heh, you just know it's not going to be Jerry Sutton who finds that last post, but one of his kids and they're going to read it and be pissed off and embarrassed and they're going to get that sharp pain right behind their eyes, and they're going to hate me with every bone in their bodies. Well, kids, get used to it. We all go through it. Our dads have shitty jobs. Be thankful your dad at least brings home some money. It could be worse: he could be Methodist.) Anyway, the Professor gave me a ride home and I sat in her car and sobbed hysterically and dripped snot all down my jacket and made that terrible hiccupy noise over and over again and she pretended not to notice and instead offered to beat the Butcher up. And I tried to explain to her that it's more than that. And she said that she knew, that she'd sat and watched just about every protective barrier I have come down over the past year. And I hadn't thought of it that way, but maybe it's true. Something has changed. Because it used to be that I'd get down and think that I was miserable because I sucked and any happiness I had was just a fluke until the Universe righted itself. And there was a way that that attitude was actually kind of comforting: my life sucks because I suck; therefore there is justice. But I don't suck. I don't deserve a shitty life. I don't even have a shitty life. I just have this feeling that I'm barely holding onto the good things I have and the good folks I know and it scares me that I might lose them through no fault of my own. We don't have much, but what we have, I want to keep. And I'm afraid of losing it. Afraid in a way I don't even know how to talk about, because it comes from some place so fundamental to how I understand the world--just when you come to be some place long enough that it feels like yours, just when you find yourself with a large group of people you can't imagine not knowing, there's the moving truck and the new house and the new church and the new town and there you are, new again. And so every time something goes wrong, I think that we're going to lose everything and have to leave. It's kind of funny, y'all. Most folks are afraid of being abandoned. I'm afraid of abandoning you. And also, like I told the Professor, it's just this feeling, like things are beyond my control. If I'm happy or not, if I feel safe or not, if I feel loved or not, it's not something that I alone can control. Which means that I've got to learn to be open to people and to trust that when they tell me things that what they say is what they mean and that they don't have ulterior motives. I have to stop trying to anticipate if and how people are going to hurt me. The Butcher is just not getting his life together. He's not intentionally trying to make me spend the day wondering if I'm going to throw up or start crying like a baby. I've got to stop perceiving his troubles as such a direct threat to my well-being. For my own sake, I have to stop that. Eh, I know this is kind of jumbled, but I just want to get it out.