I think it's sleeting

Couldn’t wake up this morning. I stayed in in bed listening to sleet. Obviously, I did wake up finally. I’m pretty sure that my cousin called last night to ask me to speak at his mother’s memorial, to which I agreed. She–my cousin’s mother–is not dead yet. But apparently she’s expected to be in a week or so. I can’t imagine what I will say. She took us to the pool when we were little and I liked it? She gave us candy when my mother was the candy police?

My own parents are almost halfway across the country dealing with my sister’s problems. I’m used to them being here to deal with my problems. And I can tell you, the problems have been piling up like dirty snow since they left. I’m going to be shut in by the time they get back, whenever that happens.

I missed another NaNoWriMo day yesterday, so now I’m stuck at 32,563 words, which puts me behind. I was sailing along for a while. Then I smacked into a 50 foot thick stone wall. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to go pick up the car from the body shop this morning. I don’t want to do my work-from-home job. I wonder what would happen if I just let it go. Stopped responding to emails, phone calls…how long would it take before my boss figured out there was a problem?

I’ve stopped thinking of myself as an aspiring writer. I’m partly relieved, but mostly sad. The job pays okay but it is unspeakably pointless, in the cyclone-in-Bangladesh scheme of things. Not that I expect to run off and join Oxfam. I don’t even want to do that. I don’t care enough about other people.

What I want is to go back in time and start over. Make myself grow up as a different person, gather up all of the potential I might have had and do something with it. Barring that, I’d like to sneak off to the Caribbean. I’d have to steal money from my spouse, though, and it would be traceable because I don’t know anything about erasing money trails.

So instead, for now, today, I will go off into the sleet–I think it’s stopped now anyway, and pick up the car at the body shop with my husband. We’ll drive back here and I will try to force myself to do my meaningless job. Then I will force myself to work out, do laundry, dishes.

Repeat.