Reasons why

I am feeling so out of sorts. I wrote a rant of a post yesterday about something at work that had me twisting on the spit and then it turned out to be nothing really, just my propensity to make up stories. Oh, I can make up stories. The thing I don't fully understand is why I always make up stories that incinerate me. It's depressive spiral I'm in today. I am writing it here in the hope of getting it out of myself, like casting out demons, like sending flying into the cool sweet air a silent poisonous ache.

On a more cheerful note, I have become an Instagram junkie. I finally have an up to date iPhone with a crystal camera, and I'm snapping everything everywhere. Spring is so incredibly beautiful to me this year, because I am really looking. I love seeing the ways in which the different filters reveal what's hidden in a snap, peering into the shadows, making colors their most vibrant, softening here, sharpening there, matching the mood you might be in, or helping you find what it was you saw in your mind's eye when you snapped the photo. That's one of the streets bordering where I live in the photo above, the moon just emerging, and me outside at twilight, the way I experience twilight best.

My friend asked me yesterday, "Do you not feel as if you are worth a birthday party?" I denied that to be the case. How pathetic that would be. I told her another truth, I just don't know how to pull it off. How odd, when you think of it, that my daughter wants to be in the hospitality business. My husband said this morning that he was going to call two friends of ours to see if they are free for dinner Friday. My heart leapt in a kind of panic. I wanted to say, no don't. Let's just make it you and me. I didn't. But I still might.

I miss my children. Birthdays are simple when there are kids in the house. You get a cake, light some candles, sing happy birthday, and call it a day. Could all of this just be chemical? Is that the same thing as hormonal? Aging isn't pretty. I'm on my way before work to trim my 94-year-old aunt's hair this morning, catching the window when the home attendant who can lift her moves her to her wheelchair. She's also getting a new hospital bed delivered, one with a mattress that rolls on mechanical puffs of air under her, relieving the pressure of her body against cloth so her skin won't break. She is skin and bone now, knees sharply bent, arms curled into her chest, hands in perpetual fists. Sometimes she knows you're there and uncurls one fist, lifting it toward you. Other time she refuses to let you find her eyes. This might be the real reason for the tears.