Stuck

I have been feeling an intense desire to “run away”. I want to get in my car and drive forever but I have no one to go to, no where to go to, and no one to come with me. My insides feel stuck and unmoving and my surroundings feel stuck and unmoving. It felt like the faucet was running and was abruptly shut off. I don’t know if I shut the faucet off, if someone else in the room did, or if God intervened and shut it off. Life is beautiful and abundant and life is also a dried up deep and empty well. I’m craving the rainforest. I am craving the ocean. I want to lie down in the ice cold pacific and let the waves obliterate me. I want wet humid fecund dew drops falling off of the vivid green trees outside of a cabin window and I want to lay down next to that guy I think I like up in the Pacific Northwest nestled in the crevice of his underarm and watch incense smoke rise up to the ceiling. Drunk on wine. Far away from the arid desert.

Yesterday I woke up in the morning after a day of random Friday hormonal depression and decided that I should go to Catholic mass at the St. Francis of Assisi Basilica in the Shambhala town square. 9am mass. I’ll get ready, grab a coffee before mass. I’ll park outside of the hipster wine bar cafe downtown and then walk over to mass. I need this. I just got the Mercedes back from the shop and put my new ABNDANCE license plate on it. I can’t wait to drive it. It’s been almost 2 weeks. The Mercedes is fucked and the engine is falling apart but I was told it’ll last another 2 years as long as I keep filling it up with oil.

I drive the 10 minutes downtown from my house on the hill. There are people everywhere all over the streets. I hate when people wake up early like me, drive on the same streets as me, and go to the same places. The heat meter for my engine is rising. I’ve been paranoid about the Mercedes overheating for some time now. But the engine is really getting hot now. Oscillating between 100 and 120 degrees celsius. And I can’t find a parking spot. My Mercedes is going to blow up in the town square all over the Shambhala Boomers and embed hot shrapnel and oil into their weathered old skin.

There is something called the “Free Indian Market” happening downtown that has brought out the Shambhala Elderly in droves on this early Sunday morning. I drive around for 10 minutes with the Mercedes on the verge of overheating. I am increasingly irritated. My cortisol is spiking. This exact same thing happened to me the last time I tried to drive to mass alone a couple of weeks ago. I had a feeling it would happen again, but what are the odds? It’s happening again. I am proved wrong every time I try to optimistically rationalize.

The Mercedes is getting hoter and hotter and I’m getting angrier and angrier and I decide to drive back home. I pull into my dirt driveway. I swap vehicles and get into my Chevy Spark, my reliable jeeted plastic toy car. I don’t care if my friends think my Chevy Spark is lame. I love this car. It gets me everywhere. I can drive it with my eyes closed. I trade the Mercedes for the Spark and drive back downtown. I wonder if the Mercedes is a liability now. This is what I deserve for going rogue and buying it without the advice of my male friends who know everything about cars. Whatever. I’ll deal with it later. For now, my only objective is getting lucky and finding a parking spot downtown so that I can make it to mass in time.

Back downtown in Chevy Spark. People once again everywhere flooded on the streets. No parking spots. Passing by random lots with handwritten signs that say $20 ALL DAY PARKING. I don’t want to park all day. I don’t have cash to give to the Mexicans who are laying claim to the parking lots downtown. I want to go to mass for 1 hour. I need to pray. I feel despairing, lonely thoughts today and I need God. But God is keeping me out. I feel like I am going insane. I can’t find anywhere to park. Fuck it, I’ll go get breakfast by myself at the diner 5 miles away and cool off.

I’ve been gaining weight back again because I have been depressed and bored. I’ve been thinking about my diet too much. Starving myself to the point of mass irritation and then binging on food and alcohol has become a vicious cycle. Maybe if I chill out and relax and eat some eggs in the morning I’ll just become skinny if I stop thinking about becoming skinny. I discovered the GLUCOSE GODDESS the other day. She says to eat a savory breakfast so that your glucose levels don’t spike and lead you to get sugar cravings the rest of the day. So I drive to the diner by myself for some eggs.

I order the Mexican Shakshuka. The only thing Mexican about it is that they grow a jalapeno on top and give you a tortilla on the side. The waiter starts automatically speaking to me in Spanish while taking my order. I look at him with a blank stare, say “What?” and he apologizes. “Would you like to start with some coffee, ma’am?” I am the only one eating alone in this diner amongst old couples and Sunday Morning families. I am upset but I look relaxed and confident. I have no friends to ask to get breakfast with me. My landlord is out of town. I don’t know what to do with myself when my landlord isn’t around. Maybe that’s why I’ve been like this.

I finish my eggs and hash browns and side tortilla and my coffee with cream and I decide to drive back downtown to try to make the 11am mass. So I drive downtown for the 11am mass. Same scenario. People littering the streets people littering the world people living and finding their place with each other and with life and giving rise to my frustration. I start crying. I just want to sit in church and close my eyes and let God’s word pass through my body. But God is barring me out today, keeping me away from Him. My number one Fear is the Fear of getting cut off from Source, severed from the Divine, cut off from God, Exiled from Meaning. I leave the downtown area and aimlessly drive up the big mountain, taking ARTIST ROAD. 15 miles to the ski area through paved and windy mountain roads and green trees. I listen to Sistine Chapel choir music as I drive up the mountain with watered eyes I don’t even know why my eyes are watering. I feel sad, lonely, lacking (unsure of what), outcasted. Maybe God doesn’t want me to go to a Catholic church today and maybe God wants me to find Him up in the mountain instead. I always feel God in nature more than I feel God in a church. Maybe He wants me to find out that the trees are my cathedral.

I make it to the top of the mountain. There are cars everywhere at the top of the mountain. Hundreds and hundreds of cars and traffic. I can’t find anywhere to park. There must be a wedding or a funeral procession or a church gathering or some other event happening up on top of the mountain that I wasn’t invited to. I have to pee really bad. I pull my car over on the side of the road illegally and head inside of the ski school building to pee. I still don’t know what all of these hundreds of people are doing on top of the mountain. They are dressed nicely. Why can’t I escape the plague of people today. All I want to do is escape people and all I want to do is be a part of the people. I am so physically conflicted in this paradox that my only logical conclusion is to fling my body off of the mountain. This sounds dramatic, but sometimes I will get the feeling of not knowing what to do with myself. I want to crawl out of my skin. I want to exit my body. I don’t want to die, but I want to be somewhere else. I want two opposing things at the same time, and the only logical thing to do is to escape my body. To transcend it. To go Beyond. This is the feeling I had on top of the mountain. I haven’t felt it in years.

I find my way to a random bench by a little stream under the trees and I pray. I ask God to lift this darkness from my heart. I say Amen and I feel frustrated and I get in my car and drive back down the mountain. I don’t cry on the way down but I feel nothing except the feeling of emptiness and the feeling of guilt for feeling the emptiness. I have grown so much as a person and an artist over the last couple of months, so finding myself back in this dark place within feels like sin. How can I even find my way back here. I know better now.

My whole life I have felt like an outcast. I have never fit in with any particular group of people. I have never fallen naturally into a friend group. Friend groups are a sensitive subject for me. Friends always come and go from my life. Time Will Pass And New People Will Love Me. I could make more of an effort to keep friends in my life. I could water the garden of my relationships, check in with people, bother my friends to get coffee and margaritas with me on a Sunday. But I don’t. I long to feel like I am a part of The Others. I want nothing more in life than this. But when I don’t feel like I belong, I exile myself. That which I long for the most, I actively sabotage myself from getting. Maybe a few times I have been on the verge of belonging, and then I stop myself before I truly get there. I give up because I can’t find the parking spot right away and turn around and I drive up the mountain. I think I want to be on top of the mountain. I drive to the top of the mountain and figure out that I don’t want to be on top of the mountain either. I don’t know where I want to go.

I drive back to my house. I always have a house but never a home. This place does not belong to me. These people do not belong to me. I don’t know where I belong or who I belong to. Maybe everyone was right all along, and I belong to the internet. Maybe I feel like I don’t belong anywhere because I really belong to everyone.