The week

I dread it. The impending doom of a new week. I lay awake in bed Sunday night, swimming in dread when I know I should be getting sleep. When I finally do sleep, I'll wake up in terror every couple of hours, checking the clock, counting the hours until those numbers will read 4:00. Midnight ticks by, and by the time 3 am rolls around, I'm on my back and staring at the ceiling, knowing full well that in an hour I'll actually have to get up-- and then to work. I close my eyes and wish that time would go back, that it'd perpetually read 12:04 am so I never have to get up. Or even better yet, that the next time I open my eyes, it will actually say 4:30 pm, and I will have missed the day completely (and gotten paid for it).

It's not the fact that I have to get up at 4 am to go to work that I dread. It's work itself that I dread so completely that a knot of fear and anxiety takes up residence in my stomach, making me long for the summers we had as kids.. sleep til 9, play until dark. Not anymore, it's a part of growing up. I know that. But it doesn't mean that I won't make myself ill thinking about the week of doom. I dread my coworkers. I dread the work. I dread the hours. And once those bases are covered, my mind works deeper into the actuality. I dread 'The Hole.' That deep, muddy and wet hole that I know I'll have to climb down and get all mucky and sticky and sweaty and be unhappy. I know that I'll get messy and dirty, and to someone who takes three showers a day, this is not a good thing.

I dread that ladder. The ladder that wobbles and sinks everytime I step a foot on it. Ladders and I never get along, and this one seems to enjoy making my stomach churn, my throat close. I descend and ascend it laborly, slowly, each step careful and falsely secure. I clutch at whatever I'm holding, hating it instantly for making my climb even more treacherous, because I know that ladder is just waiting for a chance to make me slip a rung, to slide down, to fall off, back into that muck that lays in the bottom of the Hole. It doesn't help that the ladder is positioned at least five feet below the actual ground I stand on above the Hole. That I have to skid down a sharp incline of dirt and stone that roll out from under my feet, making me think that this time is the time. The time when my clumsiness sets in and I go sliding off that enbankment and with no help from the ladder, fall into the Hole, that looming 20 foot Hole, onto my face, onto awkward limbs, where I'll embarrass myself not only by falling, but by crying because I know it will hurt. And once I start crying, I won't be able to stop.

I watch my coworkers climb up and down that ladder, the other 'college kid' racing all over it like a damned skinny little monkey, and I know I'm envious. I peer over the edge of the Hole, I peer down, longing to join the rest of the crew, even in the muck, just to be down there, to help. Instead I stay above the Hole, I work with the things up there. I tie steel frames, I cut wood, I find tools and nails and screws and bolts. But I don't go into the Hole.

The crew will look up and see me standing there while I unsurely shift from foot to foot, watching them, contemplating the easiest way down without the anxiety that always comes with it. Their eyes avoid mine, they look away completely finally, back to the forms they're working on, and I can feel myself flush in embarrassment, in guilt that I'm not like them. That I'm not brave and helpful and nimble. The tips of my ears turn red, and my face burns underneath the tan. Does it help that the other college girl is down there, frolicking in all that mud, dragging and carrying and helping and doing things I'm too afraid to even think about?

I retreat, I don't join the crew for lunch, I can't get into the conversation and gossip of people I know through my mother, through her working there since I was 8. Even if I do sit with the crew, I'm socially inept, awkward and stuttery, and they barely look at me, much less listen to me. I find that I'm by myself, a faint ghost of the past of when I was younger, when I would sit against the wall with a book in my lap, instead of joining the other kids in kickball, tag, 'defend your leaf fort', and football. And at work, I am never without a book close at hand, a friendly object that gives me comfort no matter what. The words swim on the page though, tears flooding my eyes during lunchtime. Lunch does not give me comfort.

The ride back is probably the only good thing. We leave early, the coworker and I who drive from the Towanda stockyard to meet the others at the jobsite. We get back in time to leave, no more lingering around for those numbers to settle on 4:30. It's just me and him in the clumsy, rickety truck, and I can find myself chatting a little to him. But mostly, I clutch at my seatbelt that is too tall for me, the belt I pull away from my neck to keep myself from throttling myself with it, not only with frustration but with the continual jerks of the truck. I stare out the window silently, still lost within in myself, and my coworker doesn't mind, he sits there mostly quiet, muttering comments that occassionally draw comments from me as well, but not often. And he doesn't look at me.

I feel no end on the way home, I know that this week will fall into the pattern the entire summer has been. I know that there will be no relief for the next four days. It makes me sick to my stomach again. And then I'm back in bed, back to staring at the clock again, that familiar knot tightening back to life. It's a never-ending cycle. Sometimes I end up crying myself back to sleep...

When the paper appears...

Sometimes I wonder...

Why I can write, and then I can't write.

My novelist eye goes into overdrive anytime, anywhere. I once wrote pages of summer at my home -- in my head on my drive home from work. But I will open the notebook, find a scrap of paper, a blank computer screen and those thoughts go skittering from my mind in every direction, tossing me like a broken toy and I curse that muse.

How did I get such a crap-tacular muse? She's only there when the paper isn't in view. Maybe I could finish something more than a short ten page story if she didn't abandon me so.

But at least my mind is filled with my words, my imagery. If I could, I would share my mind to anyone who was willing to look inside. Another downfall. I can't. I stutter and stammer, and those imageries, those adjectives, those nouns, those perfectly structured sentences swell around me in mad crescendo until I can barely think, much less let those words flow between warped lips, over a shuddering tongue. I can't even talk normally without a tiny stutter, a shake of my head and rewording of sentences constantly coming out of me. Not word vomit, no. Everyday speech. And if you saw the way I wrote and typed, you'd see why. I'm always looking back over my work, over a sentence, adding here, tucking in there. It's a damn shame, and I do that even to my own speech. I'm just fucked.

I'm going to try here. Try to let those words out and in the open. Not the everyday stuff. The good stuff, the summer at home, the simple love for the sight of rippling cornstalks in the late afternoon light, the the....

...it's gone again. So close, so close... and she's fled.