Dropping Out of Life

Austin, TX

I'm taking six and a half pills twice a day now. I'm excused from work for 8 weeks and I haven't felt this rotten since I dropped out of college. I guess I'll refer to this as the time that I dropped out of my life.

I'm at my sister's staying with her while my brother-in-law is on his first business trip since my nephew's birth. It's supposed to be a help to her, but I think if we're all a little honest, I'm marginally more helpful than a housetrained retriever.

I know she's terrified of where I am and my nephew and I are holding each other at arm's reach, but I honestly don't whose arm.

I'm so exhausted all the time, like just existing is exhausting. And I'm not even existing as myself. I'm a shadow of myself just going through the motions and haunting this existence that belongs to me or some version of me that I can't even remember.

We, my sister and I -- and I think our mother as well -- live for these moments when I feel like myself. I've only had one of these moments in the last few weeks. A rather ridiculous moment, actually -- I was standing in the grocery store picking out Roma tomatoes and using all five fingers of one hand to test the tenderness of the tomato and it occured to me -- this is something I do.

How is it that a stupid tomato -- one that I never intend to eat even -- has more power to remind me of who I am than my sister or my nephew? Where is the fairness in that???