Just a little catharsis, please, and maybe a coffee after

I haven’t posted because

I dunno, really.

The days have happened, altho I think there are still too many Mondays. I continue to exist. There were moments — good, frustrating, funny, bad, just fucking weird. (Three deer decide to cross the road. The first deer waits, looks both ways, crosses. The second deer with a young rack of antlers just starting to really fill in, crosses faster, pretending he isn’t paying any attention to potential cars but he totally is. Third deer, the youngest, hesitates, can’t quite commit to stepping onto the asphalt. “What’s the punchline?” you ask. Not a joke, just dealing with the fucking wildlife on another drive to work.)

My brain can’t seem to turn any of it into anything. I’m not even striving for something worth reading at this point. Just anything.

I function at work. I come home. Repeat.

I have been reading a lot. Like a lot. For summer reading. Some good books, some okay but I wouldn’t recommend, one I told Stacy that we should never get any more books from that author because the writing and editing were atrocious.

I started a new book today. And was bawling by the third page. I’m 140 pages in, and I have cried and felt my heart rip and questioned why the fuck I’m reading this. It’s about a woman who deliberately overdoses. She gets the chance to try out the lives she could have had with different decisions as she straddles life and death.

I keep thinking, “Oh, I should not be reading this. Like, the universe should physically prevent me from reading this right now. God should tear this book out of my hands or strike me blind.” But then I read a bit that makes me think that, yes, this is exactly what I need to read right now.

I thought about The Death of Ivan Ilych (gah all fonts need top and bottom bars on capital i’s!) while walking in the cemetery this morning. (My “urban hike” for summer reading bingo.) And I stopped myself even tho it’s one of my favorite books because it is so beautifully written and so perfectly happysad lovely. (There’s probably a perfect German psych term for an emotion that is equally happy and sad, but I don’t know it.) (Also, what’s up with all of my parenthetical asides today?!)

Having saved myself from Tolstoy, I jumped into this. And I keep reading it. This will either be very good or very very bad for me.

p.s. I bought a new coffee make since the old one (should last 5-10 years! and I was in the 10-15 range) is totes dead. I have not od’d on caffeine — yet — so yay me.