#fell to my knees in the Aldi parking lot

[sad-emo-dip-dye]

People theorizing that the reason Akutagawa didn’t kill Aya or Bram was because he was subconsciously holding on to his promise to Atsushi to not kill anyone…oh god…hold on

[wozman23]

Roller Coasters and Car Wrecks: Both The Physical and The Emotional Kinds

I’ve recently taken a couple of trips to Six Flags, but those haven’t been the only roller coasters I’ve been on. And I’ve recently been part of or witnessed a few car wrecks. In every instance, these last few months have been absolutely absurd in the most beautifully nerve-racking of ways. For my own well being and sanity, I’ve needed to severely cut my time at Aldi for quite some time. Despite the fact that I’ll be losing about $1000 a month, I’ve now done that. I’m two weeks in to being a part timer. Yet I fear I pushed myself a bit too far for those eight months. The constant lack of sleep has seriously impaired me, yet I continued to push my limits despite countless signs. First off, many months ago, after a gym split shift that started at 5 AM and ended at I-don’t-even-remember-how-late PM, I backed into someone pulling out of a parking space in a Walmart parking lot. It was the most minor accident imaginable, but my insurance company didn’t give a damn. So when it came time to renew, they raised my rates, and I decided to stop carrying collision and comprehension on my 12 year old car. Then a few months back I destroyed two tires after falling asleep at the wheel. That was the most literal of wake up calls, and a $400 mistake. It was really the turning point that made me question how hard I was pushing myself. I’m still grateful that the situation wasn’t much worse. Then again, yesterday, while not paying enough attention while trying to maneuver my way out from a gas station and in to a turn lane through a few lanes of traffic stopped at a light, I took too narrow of a path when squeezing between vehicles and put a nasty scrape across my passenger side rear door and quarter panel when I brushed up against the bumper of a semi. On one hand I was pissed off! Why wasn’t I paying more attention?! It’s either something that’s gonna cost quite a chunk of change to fix, or it’s something that won’t be worth fixing and I’ll just have to stare at my mistake until it’s time for a new ride. On the other I was relieved that the semi driver didn’t care since the rigid metal bumper took pretty much zero damage, so all we did was shake hands and agree that we didn’t need to exchange insurance. So now my car, which looked alright when it moved to California, is in much worse shape these days. The right side alone has taken a rock to the windshield (hey, at least that one wasn’t my fault), some chipped paint on the rear bumper, and now a giant war wound. Like many cars on the road out here, it is beat up. I now joke that it’s my badge that I’m a true Angeleno. But, contrary to how it sounds, my life hasn’t completely been a series of car accidents. It’s had its ups as well. I’m fortunate that my gym job is a pleasure. I absolutely love it, my clients, and the vast majority of my coworkers. I couldn’t imagine a better, more fulfilling job. And just tonight I cemented a promotion by barely squeezing out the required amount of training sales dollars and supplement sales - largely in part thanks to my amazing clients and coworkers who pulled some favors for me to get close enough to those requirements, and me throwing a few hundred down on supplements knowing I will make my money back in the next three months.

But just as I lessened my role at Aldi, I’ve also lost some good clients. While my paychecks have been on the up-and-up, my overall net pay is in a state of flux right now. And if those sales numbers don’t maintain - which they’re trending not to - I take a demotion back to where I was after another three months. So I’m really uncertain on where that roller coaster is heading next. Couple that with the fact that I’m still clearly mentally and physically exhausted from both jobs and the continued effort of trying to make that relationship I was interested in work, I’ve been in a really weird headspace. That physical exhaustion also means that I’ve curtailed my workouts. I haven’t consistently run since my injury around six months ago, and my lifting has been the most inconsistent it’s been since I began this journey a few years ago. I don’t doubt that’s also influenced the uneasy feeling I’ve been having. Most days I’m still filled with chipper whimsy, but I’ve noticed my mood start to swing in less desirable directions. While it’s nowhere near as crippling as it once was, I’ve finally began to feel a normal, acceptable amount of anxiety about my future, which is to be expected from such chaos. I’m actually surprised it took this long. But that small level is actually nice to have again, because it lets me know I’ve crossed my limits. I wish it would have let me know months ago. Maybe then my car - which seems to be more and more representative of my battered psyche every day - wouldn’t have taken the brunt of the damage it has. Maybe this steam of consciousness would be more coherent, and maybe I’d have the energy to proof read it. Then the pinnacle! Tonight we were supposed to celebrate promotions at work by meeting for dinner. Reservations were made around a month ago, but it kept getting pushed back. Finally hitting my goals, I was invited hours before the event. So after putting in a full day at the gym striking out on getting that out of pocket cost of my supplements any lower- because I’m still not that great of a salesman - I picked up another $200 worth of amino acids, creatine, joint flex, and multivitamins, drove over to the place we were supposed to meet... and found out it had closed down a few weeks ago due to a fire. A backup plan hadn’t materialized yet, so being mentally and physically spent, I laughed it off and went home. And on the way home what should I find: a traffic jam. The cause: the same generation Corolla as mine with a crushed front end after rear ending someone on the 5 (see again I’m a true Angeleno because I don’t call the interstate I-5 anymore). I’ve had some pessimistic moments. I’ve laughed. I’ve cried. I’ve been angry. I’ve been desperate. I’ve questioned whether or not moving here was the right choice. Yet, despite all of my turmoil and absurdity, there are constant reminders that things could always be worse. My place of employment didn’t burn down and while my car may be unsightly, it is still drive-able. Thanks to killing myself with two jobs, I’ve nearly replaced all the money in my savings that I blew through to get established. Overall, I remain predominately optimistic. My roller coaster has the potential to be heading up. I’ll be making around $4 more per hour when training clients, which equates to around $22/hr. I’m coaching an all-time high of 7 Gold’s Burn classes a week, which gets me $32/hr. I’m getting more full nights of sleep, which is the thing I need the most. I’ve got more free time. I’ll have most weekends off. I went for a run today with a client and her husband - the one who I resigned that put me literally $10 over my sales goal. (As a thank you I bought her some protein powder.) I’m hoping I can make those runs a semiweek(end)ly occurrence with a few clients/friends. I’ll have more time to catch up on video games, a month’s worth of Conan episodes that I haven’t watched, and a few other shows. And despite a few missed opportunities on previous invites, I might have finally talked Lisa into coming to Six Flags with me and our mutual friend on July 10th. And maybe we’ll hit the water park later next month. When I went to Six Flags last weekend, one roller coaster was shut down almost the entire day. But it reopened just before close. We hopped in line, got all the way to the front, literally waiting to be the next to hop on... And then a car got stuck on the climb... We waited while they tried to fix it,and watched as the next person-less test car got stuck again. Many people behind us left. But in the end we stayed, they got it up and running, and we got to ride arguable the best ride there.

That’s me: I push through shit, stubbornly. I’m determined. I’m always looking to move forward. When I want to hit a goal for a half marathon, I do so at the expense of my ligaments. When I hit a curb, I don’t put the car in reverse. I just run it over. When I start to hear my car door scraping against a semi, instead of stopping I just let it scrape the whole way. It’s not always the smartest decision - clearly. Had I stopped, fixing a single small blemish on the door would have been a relatively cheap repair. But in other, not-car-destroying related instances, it can be a benefit. Life is fucking weird, and that’s why it’s fun. It reminds me of a snippet from a song I fell in love with that I found not long ago, Incandenza by Waking Aida. I posted it before, but it bears repeating: “When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life" - Sarah Kay

That poem eviscerates my soul for so many reasons. It exemplifies the last few years of my life perfectly. It reduces me to tears - happy tears. I honestly have no clue where this roller coaster is headed, but I’m enjoying the ride, the people I’m riding it with, and all its ups and downs. If you’ve made it this far into this post, or even just cared enough to skip to the bottom, thank you for being in my life. Thanks for the encouragement. Thanks for laughing with or at me. Thanks for inspiring me. I hope you see life through the same glasses I do. If I can give you but one thing, I hope it’s that childlike optimism.

[originaldetectivesheep]

Tales of the Missing 6 - How To Talk To Girls When Everything Is Fire

Not everything is possible -- not everything is practical, or achievable, and sometimes the best thing we can do is settle and make the best of the good we have.  But that doesn't mean it's not allowed to dream.

How To Talk With Girls When Everything Is Fire

"Mom!  No! Mom!  Jesus, get the hell away from the tree!"  Bethany blinked, rolling over on the couch, grabbing around towards where her glasses might be.  There was a cold snap in the room like the door was open, and Tanya was…over there somewhere, and there was something orange and flapping past her.  Her hand hit the heavy plastic frames, and she struggled them on, and some of the fog cleared from her eyes.

The Christmas tree was on fire.  It was a good thing it was out at the curb and not still here in the house, but the Christmas tree was on fire and yellow-orange flames were shooting out of it, and that was maybe Tanya's mom standing out by it, weaving back and forth along with the flickers of the fire.  The Christmas tree was on fire.  Bethany didn't hear any sirens, so maybe she'd just-just set it on fire, or maybe the god-guns-and-guts Belchers across the road would come out and spray it down with fire extinguishers instead of calling the gubmint.  "Jesus, mom, what the hell?!"

Bethany was standing up now, hobbling over to Tanya with the blanket over her shoulders still, so she could hear the incoherent response from the end of the driveway.  "Revenge – I got revenge.  The tree fucked up your girlfriend – so I fucked up the tree.  Tell her it's gonna be okay – everything's gonna be okay.  I got it back for you."  Bethany was partly down on Benadryl from a bad allergic reaction to the pine needles still all over the floor in the house, but she was partly down from a crick in her knee when she tripped getting on the bus three days ago that was turning into a sprain because she couldn't keep her weight off it, and she was partly still drunk from last night, and setting the Christmas tree on fire out at the curb wasn't helping any of this.

"For fuck's – come back inside, mom, you're drunk.  Get the hell away from that.  Get away from the tree – I'll call the fire department. Jesus fuck."  Tanya shook her head, and her mom wavered in the driveway, maybe stumbling back towards the house, and Donny or Ricky or another one of the Belchers ran out of their house, grabbed a fire extinguisher out the back of his truck, and hosed down the burning Christmas tree.

"We've got to get the hell out of here," Tanya said, shepherding her mom back inside.  "If we're gone mom will get bored and drink more and go to sleep, and then she'll be slept it off by tonight. Are you good to go shopping?"  Bethany shrugged.  She wasn't feeling great, but Tanya was okay to drive and there wouldn't be pine needles all over the place in the Target or the Price Chopper.  It had to be better than lying around the house coughing and sneezing and wondering what Tanya's mom was going to light on fire next.

The tree was still smoldering in a smear of ashy water as they made their way down to Bethany's Cherokee; Tanya had the keys because Bethany had to take another Benadryl as she was getting dressed.  "We should stop off and get some pants first," she said, hitching up her borrowed pair as she climbed up into the seat, trying not to strain her bad knee.  "There was a tear in my pair that isn't in the laundry so I borrowed I guess some of your mom's, and they don't fit so good."  Bethany adjusted her waistband, pulled around on her coat to get herself arranged right, trying to keep her vision from dipping and swerving like she was rolled up into a bouncing gatchapon ball.

Tanya nodded and turned the key with a garupppa-pa-chunn.  "Okay. We'll stop at the first place."  The radio came up playing Seether, and she turned it off.  "I think there's a Lidl or an Aldi or one of those other German discount supermarkets on Highway 9, before we get to the mall.  They sometimes have clothes there, and if it's that plaza we can go in the CVS and get hair dye too, if they don't have it."

"If we're going to the supermarket, we should get some more vodka too, and some more mixers."  Bethany hunched down in the seat; the car wasn't really agreeing with her and she needed something more in the way of medication.

"It's – it's Sunday, right?  I don't know if they'll sell booze on a Sunday – it's still before noon, isn't it?"

Bethany wasn't sure.  "Aren't we in Rhode Island?  Are there seriously laws in Rhode Island?"

"No, we're still in Taunton – we've still got the Mass blue laws." "But do people seriously obey the law in Taunton?"

Whether they did or not, Tanya turned off the highway, dodging snow mounds and the still-not-demolished drive-up one-hour photo box in the parking lot to pull in almost on the lines as close as she could manage to the entrance to the Edeka.  She took Bethany's hand as they got out of the car and walked in, helping her with her balance, trying to keep that bad knee from getting worse, and then let go to pull out a shopping cart.  "I can do the cart," Bethany said, trying to be useful, because they were in here for her, after all, and it would help to have something to lean on.  "I'll just go look at pants – you can go get whatever you need and come put it in."  They would probably be almost alone in the store – midday Sunday in the lull after Christmas – but Bethany was still digesting the medication, still wanted, kind of, to get a little to herself and make sure she was getting everything okay.

She pushed the cart down the side aisle through the discounted toys and sad-looking craft supplies to the clothing section at the back, started absent-mindedly picking up pants from racks or piles.  They were stretch pants and would stretch a little as long as she could get something close to the right size, and this was a store for normal people, not those A&F waifs, so there were things that she could and would wear here, but you seriously didn't know what size something was until you actually put it on – whatever the designers and salespeople who decided what a "12" or a "14" was at some of these places were on, Bethany wanted a hit off it: it had to be good and it would definitely help with being out of pants and drunk and on Benadryl and still worried about what Tanya's mom was going to set on fire.

Tanya came back, for a second, two boxes of hair dye and a neon plastic handle of margarita mixers into the cart; Bethany turned to say something, but she was already gone.  There was a discount circle rack on that side; some pants that didn't look interesting and a few longer shirts that did.  She reached out a hand to move them out of the way, look them over; if Tanya'd gone off again, she had other things to find and she'd be back.  There was time enough to just look around before she went over to the fitting room to start trying the pants on.

Bethany turned a frilly mid-cut shirt that her chest would've been too big to fit into in fifth grade to the side, and that was when she saw her. Squatted down at the end of one of the end caps, stocking cough medicine out of a basket: dark black hair cut like a boy in a fashion-plate shoujo manga from the '90s, purple barred streaks down through it at exactly the right spacing; they somehow matched perfectly with her intentionally-ugly lavender work polo, and Bethany was sure they'd look even better with just the giraffe-print longsleeve she was wearing under it.  Her nails were that same dark purple, and her solid, thick-soled Docs were just barely tinted the same purple in the toes – the yellow stitching probably DIY-painted out in the same nail polish.  She must have felt Bethany looking, staring, because she turned, calm brown eyes and neutral make-up and the whisper of a hole for a lip piercing that she had out so that the old ladies wouldn't complain to her manager, and she didn't look bothered or shocked, and that was when Bethany, who'd almost forgotten about Tanya and had definitely forgotten about her bad knee, got a definite reminder of the second: the joint buckled and she lost her balance and fell over through the discount rack.

"Oh my god!" the clerk was saying, arms around her already.  "Are you okay?  Are you all right?  Do you need me to call 911?"

"No, I –" Bethany shook her head, trying to keep her swimming eyes from rolling back, deep breath, deep breath, no pine needles, making sure that there wasn't anything broken.  "I – I think I'm okay.  I'm just a little hung over.  And I'm on Benadryl."

"If you really think you're okay, that's fine," she said, name tag ALICIA, her arms close and strong and soft and warm around Bethany as she helped her to her feet.  Tanya was hustling back through the aisle, hand over her mouth, trying not to make more of a scene. "Don't worry about the rack; I'll put it back together.  And please come back sometime – when you're not on Benadryl."  She smiled as her hands fell away, as Tanya got over with a sympathetic arm and a half-whispered scold, and Bethany had the hardest of times looking away, not looking back as she went over to the changing room.

Two of the pairs of pants fit, but by the end of trying them on Bethany's side was a mass of raw bruises, so that was the end of the day; they'd gotten most of what they were out for, and while it wasn't that long, they'd gotten out of the house for a little bit: Tanya's mom would have to be asleep by the time they got back, and they could have some time to themselves.

"You've got to take better care of yourself," Tanya was saying, like any of this was her fault and not the bus and not Tanya's mom's dumb natural tree and not Alicia for being that pretty, "I know it's hard, but I can't always –" and then they came around the rise and saw the blue lights and the red lights and the high wide orange light and Tanya skidded to a stop in the middle of the road.

"MO-OOOM!" she screamed, bailing out of the car, door hanging open.  "Mom! What did you do?  What did you DO?!" Bethany scrunched down, curling up low in the seat, putting everything on the flat natural horizon of the Cherokee's hood: the fire engine blocking the road and the firemen playing their hoses around, Tanya's mom howling on the curb in cuffs, some skinhead cop, probably yet another of the Belchers, double-facepalming because he wasn't getting anything out of her, and up over all of everything the crackle crackle roar of the stand of pines on the far side of the house in a towering eruption of billowing smoke, yellow-red sheets of flame.  Bethany hunched down and thought about other things, other ways: ALICIA and giraffe prints and strong arms, invitations and unkissed piercings, and other places where less than everything was always fire.

further Tales of the Missing ...