the plagues

it's not bubonic, but doubt that fills me right now. tonight. this minute. this second. i'm tired but know when i get into bed i'll be pluck awake, my heart beating a tiny jog faster than its usual trot.

i'm supposed to sign a lease in the morning and i'm filled with a sense that perhaps i should not. and perhaps instead i should stay put until the end of december and then leave my job and move away to some future filled with more than the regular dose of uncertainty. and i fear that in signing the lease, i'm signing on for humdrum and old age and resignation and cowardice. i thought for a moment today i might be out of work suddenly (i've suffered a bout of the paranoids lately too) and though that scared me, it was also exhilirating. and what if i was? i've quit jobs before. never left the other way and hopefully that's not where i'm headed. but the what ifs of doom—from them i also suffer tonight.

and romance? i went on a quasi-date last night. quasimodo. a guy i had gone out with a few times before. and we had a strange communication over the summer, or mis-communication, and he was very direct and honest about my arguably wormy behavior. and he rather called me on it. that made him a little heroic. such a straight shooter, you know, those are kind of rare. the funny thing yesterday was that at one point as he was talking i thought, oh yeah, that's right...he's got issues too. sometimes i do the dumbest thing and forget that, and assume other people have it all screwed on just right, are confident, well-adjusted. and then with a glance or a gesture or a sentence, or even just a fragment of one, the truth peeks out, or i spy it anyway. such a relief to see that equality.