It’s getting fishy

School starts today. I am lying in bed, seriously thinking about just not going to the district kick-off. It’s agonizingly painful for me to go and make small talk and be pleasant and cheerful and listen to things I really do not care about. It’s a job. Why can’t it just be a job? You show up. You do your thing. You leave. Why do we have to do this big rah rah cheer thing? It’s not the Olympics. Sometimes it feels like that though. Like a hundred mile race though the desert 🏜 with no water, hidden pit vipers, and tiny terrorists aiming paint guns the whole way. Before I went to bed last night I was thinking about the Hunger Games. The school year is an arena, each equipped with its own sort of torture. All victors get ten weeks of summer and maybe a retirement check if they can keep their heads in the game long enough. I tell you right now. I see the finish line and I don’t know if I have anything more to give to get there.

To my credit, I am starting the year off in survivor mode again. I was trying to think of WHEN I haven’t started the year off without a crises. It’s been a long time. My son is still missing. I took a walk through his room last night. He left his wallet. He has no ID. He left his phone charger. He can’t communicate. He left his pot. That’s when I got scared. There is no way in hell he’d not come back for his pot. So then I started freaking out for real. What if he CAN’T come back? Like if he drove off a cliff or into the river. I’d know that by now, right? He could be stuck somewhere with no gas. I hate to think of him in this heat with no water. I know how bad he is and I am starting to despair. The voices may not be real to us, but they are to him. And I know the voices. They live in my house and they are bastards. They are taking him down. And I know after the angry voices, come the suicide voices. And while I know suicide is a reality of living with schizophrenia, that’s not how I want it to go down. I did make a police report, but that’s have never helped before. He will come home. Or he won’t.

So I am lying here thinking about all this. I wish I was at the levee right now with my ducks and geese and trout jumping just below me. I’d sit on my tailgate looking down at the concrete assessing what to paint before the sun gets too hot. All the easy stuff is done. I guess the fish face next? And for a little while maybe I wouldn’t think of anything else.

But I guess I will do what I always do. Get up and act like I am there for the party.