Into the void...

2003-06-03

10:50 a.m.

I feel a strange combination of nausea and confusion. I’m very close to passing out or falling over, whichever comes first. It’s amazing how much something you don’t expect to affect you can catch you off guard and catapult you into a realm of complete oblivion where you have no concept whatsoever of what you’re doing or why.

That’s where I am today.

I’m sitting here at work, waiting for five o’clock to roll around so I can just go to the airport and get this thing over with. I hate traveling when I’m going somewhere fun. This is horrific. Not only am I completely tripping over myself because of nerves about the flight, but I’m also twisted up in convulsions of confused anticipation about the funeral. I have no idea what to expect over the next few days, and I don’t think I’m prepared to handle it.

I’m still not quite sure what compelled me to bake cookies. It seems absurd. I also spent several hours last night trying to come up with two nice outfits to wear to the viewing and the funeral, and I decided that I have absolutely no clothing. All the nice clothes I own are either too big or too sexy. I’ve lost several pounds since the last time I had to wear anything nice, and all the clothes I’ve bought since then are low-cut and tight.

That’s what happens when you lose weight.

So I wandered in circles around the bedroom for several hours not quite accomplishing anything. Once I finally picked out my clothing for the next two days, I tried to go to sleep, but I woke up every fifteen minutes throughout the night. Every fifteen minutes, I looked at the clock, wondering if I was somehow missing flight that’s not until 7:40 this evening. Now I’m in a total fog. Everything looks fuzzy and I feel a little dizzy. My stomach is tied up in knots. I haven’t been able to eat without feeling sick for the past two days.

I fucking hate anxiety.

Work feels like it’s never going to end. I’m going to sit here for all eternity, and this will be my hell. The ongoing cycle of sitting in the workplace around people I couldn’t care less about will be where I will remain confined for all eternity, desperate for a way out, knowing there is no alternative.

I want out.

I just want to get the fuck out of here so I can get on the goddamn plane, go home, feel awkward and sick to my stomach for the next two days, then fly back so I can get wildly drunk and puke till I feel like I’m going to die. Let’s get started already. What’s the use of this random sitting in my cubicle, watching the clock, knowing no one will approach me to do work because everyone’s afraid to talk to the crazy girl who doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing because she’s flying home to Pittsburgh for a funeral in just a few hours?

And so I sit.

I’m afraid pretty soon I’m going to get to the point where if someone tries to talk to me about my grandmother, I’ll just be like, “Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll deal on my own. Just keep your thoughts to yourself, and we’ll all be a lot better off.”

This is the first funeral I will have been to in a few years. The last one I went to was for a professor at BU, and I didn’t really even know him. He was a friend of my voice teacher, so I went to the funeral, and it was a beautiful ceremony for a man who sang very well. I didn’t go to the funeral of my sister’s best friend last year around this time. I didn’t go to the funeral of my friend, Cecilia, who died when I was in college. When people die, I generally do whatever I can to avoid going to the funeral, but I know I have to go to this one.

And I want to go to support my mother.

But it’s probably going to drive me insane. I feel like I’m not going to know how to act around my own family because I won’t want to seem unaffected, yet I don’t want to seem artificially sympathetic, either. What does that leave me with? I don’t trust my ability to react with the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time.

I just don’t work that way.

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