drips

Post-Kansas and I'm still feeling a little lost. It's been a busy summer and yet a lonely one (and I guess there's no rule that says those two adjectives are mutually exclusive). This past week in particular started real-ly and metaphorically awful and continued down an implosive spiral. If ever I needed my friends, this was the week. And mostly they were absent--traveling, busy, gone.
There was a memorial service for a lady I knew once; a few minutes in, I remembered with a pang like a sucker punch the poisonously pitying stares of church people, the knowing, prying eyes, the behind-the-hand whispered updates from the choir. I popped a pill (thanks Sid) but I can still feel those eyes, like a thousand little stabs. A day later I was out for an early jog before work, dazedly putting one foot in front of the other; near Seattle Center I tripped and ate pavement, ripping big patches from my knee and elbow. I ran home, hot and shaken, blood streaming down my leg. The week passed in a hot, tired haze. I tried to socialize, I did try. I drank beer and ate nachos and attempted to sparkle. By Friday I was on the phone with my shrink. Hearing her say you are in a dark place was less of a relief than a relative assuaging of pressure, like unkinking a hose and then whipping it against the side of the house. 
It got better, slowly; I enjoyed a Friday night with an allied soul, drinking and confiding and ending our night at Pony with booze, beautiful boys, beats. Yesterday, backyard margaritas with dear friends, navigating their own hellish few weeks. We found solace in trading painful stories, finding laughs, and jointly supporting a fragile soul just out of Harborview and trying for a place of peace and health.

The photos are paint drips on the backside of a parking garage on Roy Street.