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Originally written 2/28/16


How do I live beyond the map? I cheat and hide myself to myself. I go outside the lines and then drown in guilt or pleasure or anguish but go back again and again because I feel most alive there. Or I get drunk. Or high.

In my drinking days, my partying days, which just felt like regular days, I loved how it felt to weave drunkenly through a crowd to find the bathroom. Bathroom mirrors are the best for looking in and seeing your own soul. I would stare at my own eyes because you can't stare into your own eyes and feel my skin vibrate, my balance wobble, my body hum. I'd feel cocooned, in a moment of escape, loving the sense of being outside myself. Different than myself or perhaps most myself.

When I heard XIII by Adrienne Rich read aloud it meant nothing to me. When I went back to read it to myself, my eyes skimming quickly over the words as they always do, it bloomed. I felt the feeling of being in a car, off road, alone or together but away. There is something about driving. Huh. Somehow I just realized that.

How do I live beyond the map? I step away from what I'm supposed to do.  A found day is the best, richest kind of day. Not a day off that I've planned in advance but one that gets plucked in the morning after waking up and saying Nope, not today. I will not do what others expect me to do.

Secrecy keeps me alive sometimes. Even though it is almost always shrouded in guilt and self-recrimination. I find ways to cover up how little I got done so no one would guess that I laid on the couch watching Spotlight, giving into my stomach ache and watching great acting a few days before an Oscars whose movies I've seen none of.