There’s a Waffle House about 30 minutes from me, and I like to go there occasionally for brunch. I’m never hungry when I first get up, so I just have coffee. Then around 10:00 AM, I am insatiably hungry and must eat RIGHT NOW. Today, it was a bowl with hash browns, bacon, eggs, and cheese and a side of raisin toast with apple butter.
I should have boxed up half of it, but I didn’t. I’ll just have to go again. 😉
My vision has made my driving weird and I’ve figured out a few things that the technology won’t help me with and I’m still on my own. I’m not ready to sell my car just yet, but driving is a bit of an adjustment. My saving grace is that I have seen so many bad drivers since I’ve been back on the road that I no longer feel special. I have learned so much more about proper distancing that I’m often taken advantage of, me or my cruise control SLAMMING on the brakes because I left three car lengths in front of me and that is an invitation.
I miss reading in the back of the car, but I do not miss waiting for someone to come and pick me up.
Driving, for the most part, feels natural except when curbs jump up and bite me occasionally. I have a hard time judging distances, especially side to side. I keep my lane assist lights on all the time so that I know if I’m drifting as soon as it happens.
I arrived at Waffle House without incident, but I managed to bang up my wheel on the way out of the parking lot. My car came with a lot of dings before I got it. No one will notice, not even me. I mean, I can tell if I look really hard, but I don’t. I know within myself that if I try to keep my car free of little things like scratches on the wheel, I will put such pressure on myself that mistakes get worse.
I suppose I also miss talking to people on the train, but that was more of a DC thing. Baltimore’s subway feels dark and scary, particularly in Penn Station because it’s a former bomb shelter. You go like a hundred feet underground and all communication drops.
Everyone I have met on Baltimore public transit has been very kind, warning me not to get off the subway in rough neighborhoods and here’s where they are, etc. It is literally the look and feel that drives me away, because the lack of lighting makes everything spooky even during daylight hours.
As a white nerd, I stick out so much on the subway that people tell me I don’t need to be on it around these particular stops. It is definitely a kindness, because I’m so oblivious I absolutely would talk to anyone on the street, much to my detriment because I’m an easy target.
Hi, guys! I’m Leslie. How are you?!
Meanwhile, the notorious gangsters or drug dealers or whatever are like, “who in the hell is this?”
I’m sure my delivery could use work.
I’m just searching for something, anything to feel like routine. Getting out and driving is a vast improvement over thinking I had to stay in my house all the time. I feel more free and open than I did, especially now that I’ve gone to visit Aaron on road trips in Texas and New York, and to “southern northern Virginia” to see Tiina. The world is bigger than I’ve been making it out to be, hiding in my internet cave.
My internet cave is fantastic, an autistic nest of blankets and plushes with a huge TV. It’s usually off, though, because I’m writing and do not want anything to compete with my inner monologue. But I come in here to rest and relax even if I cannot properly sleep.
I’ve napped off and on for the past several days, but I cannot say that I have gotten a full night’s sleep. I have to drink a lot of coffee to control my ADHD, so basically if my hands are shaking my brain’s probably okay. But that’s not the only problem. Getting coffee has been recent. Not being able to sleep is eternal.
It’s just one of the things I have to deal with being neurodivergent and having the laundry list of comorbidities that come with it. It’s a whole mental health combo meal, and impossible to manage at times.
I am doing the best I can.
It’s all I can ask of myself as I move toward a different way of being in the world.
I need to look in the newspaper and see if there are any events I’d like to go to after Thanksgiving. I know there will be a lot of Christmas concerts in DC, and going to any of them in Baltimore probably means running into Sam and regretting it. Nothing says Christmas like being accused of stalking.
There’s just no way around it. Baltimore is too big, the music community too small to be more than mildly concerned about running into someone, and yet I’m so sensitive that I absolutely will think twice about attending anything downtown until Christmas is over. We have different enough musical tastes that during the regular season there’s less of a chance we’d be attending the same thing.
Sam wants a completely separate life from me, and that’s okay. I’m defining my own boundaries, which is not to let fear of running into her consume me but to be sensitive to the fact that she needs space. I know what her Christmas season is like and that’s why I want to be in DC. Easy now that I can drive down for a concert and come back the same night. It’s not as far as people think.
I am slowly caring less and less about the Sam situation because I realized I didn’t care about Sam. I cared about Aada. I compounded grief and mixed them up when they both stole my heart in different ways. But I cannot compare a relationship of three weeks to a relationship of 12 years.
That’s impossible to do but easy to think you’re upset about one thing when it’s really another.
I’m trying to forget and just watch TV, but then my echologia starts up and I begin to ruminate out loud, crafting complete responses to people who will never read. It doesn’t change them, but it changes me to write.
I need comfort food afterwards, because writing means stepping out on a ledge and hoping your words fly………… Knowing that there’s every possibly they’ll sink like a rock.
It is easier to take the possibility of failure with grits.
Stories That Are All True 