I am who I am

I ate homemade peanut butter cookies this morning for breakfast, one after another until I could feel cookies in my esophagus. There were about 9 on the plate. Now there are two and a half. I couldn't finish the half. I haven't exercised such little self restraint in a long while. Honestly I don't feel that guilty. I should I guess. But I don't.

I have been craving Xanax something fierce.

For the past week I've been obsessively cleaning and organizing my house in order to avoid my art. The house is now polished like the top of the Chrysler Building, but no adventure blogs have been written and my book is nowhere near done. But DC has clean underwear and hasn't had to do the dishes in days. I even pulled his inside-out socks the right way before cleaning them. I don't know why inside-out socks gross me out so badly, but just picturing sweaty feet rotting in hot shoes all day and then pulling them off from the top of your ankle downward, so that you trap all the dirt and smells inside makes my skin crawl. I started washing DC's socks in the inside-out ball to make a point about how I would not stick my hands in that cavern of filth, but the socks were coming out of the wash crunchy and then I was throwing them out. I told him he had to undo the ball himself and he did for a time, but now they are back to inside-out balls. I made myself undo all of them yesterday for the laundry. If that is not true love, I don't know what is.

I have also been catching up on True Blood as a way to avoid my art and because the show is tops. But the violence combined with my overactive imagination has gotten to me. I was shaving my legs on the side of the tub yesterday with my bathroom door open, when I thought I heard someone in the living room. I assumed it was DC so I kept shaving. He didn't come in or call my name, so I got nervous, quietly stood up, shut the bathroom door, locked it, stepped into the shower and as I washed my hair kept picturing a vampire ripping open the shower curtain and my eyes flying open in horror like they do on the show right before I am fanged. I practiced my best blood curdling screams. I told this to DC later.

"You practiced blood-curdling screams?" he asked, eyebrows raised.
"Well in my head of course." Honestly I thought that went without saying.

I feel tremendously lost lately and it makes me want to run away. In fact I took DC's car last night without telling him and just drove around for awhile at dusk, purposefully getting lost on back roads. When I came home, he called me on it.

"You were running away weren't you?"
"No."
"Yes you were."
"Okay fine. But just a little. I came back."
"Why did you want to run away?"
"I always want to run away when I don't know what to do with my life."

We proceeded to talk about why I do it, and DC asked if I wanted tough love. I said no thank you. He gave it to me anyway which infuriated me, so I told him I was done with the conversation, turned away and cried. He came over and kissed my cheeks, my tears and my mouth. I kept my lips and eyes shut tightly, but didn't push away his lips. He went to the office for a bit and came home. He asked if I hated him.

"No. But you're not my favorite person right now."

He nodded and said he was sorry, looking genuinely contrite and went to bed. I came in an hour later and he reached for me and held me very tight to him. So tight, I got hot and felt sort of smothered but couldn't let go because it felt like love. A lot of it.

That's why I came back from running away. Well, and I had his car. If I were serious about running away I would have taken the train and a stick with a bandana filled with my most prized possessions.
Who am I kidding? I could never have done the stick pouch thing, only carrying a postcard from my mother and an old lighter from John Wayne. I would pack four suitcases and overly flowing bags and then when I really am homeless like I was in New York City for a time, carting all those bags through the rain-soaked streets of Brooklyn would seem quite stupid and thoughtless and the weary traveler with the stick pouch makes all the sense in the world. Alas I am who I am.