Feels like something’s gonna pop doesn’t it?

Or is it just me?

It’s beautiful in a wintery sort of way out there today, I mean the snow’s gone as in melted and it’s warm enough I just put the garbage out no sleeves and bare feet in crocks and if you were unaware the quick change artistry of the weather here, you might even think it’s spring, you might even think a sweatshirt will do and it will until you get the wind off the lake which goes between your every molecule and whispers in your ear it’s February you idiot.

I’ve been taking CBD for anxiety, let’s just get that out of the way first, I’m not sure it’s working but yesterday I could practically breathe practically all day.

It is not social anxiety, it’s more the anti-social kind and also, like on top of this, I have a weird thing going on, a dichotomy you see, I am a half intro and half extro fully fickle vert

I quietly suffer about is my writing good enough while I brag in cover letters to publishers about how – I can’t even say it without gasping – but you know what I mean one has to present oneself and one’s art in a Very Positive Light if one wants to be taken seriously, and I do, but then I have to go lie down get my ego back into my body you know and sometimes it barely fits and bosses everything around and gets me all fussy and gassy and angsty.

I am always waiting for approval and this goes with my personal goals and also about my job, you know, I come up with all these campaigns, the copy and art direction, the whole fucking calamity and then I present it and wait for the axe to fall because even when the stuff is approved and sometimes very approved there’s always some fucker with an axe.

I am not attached to my work work so much though and do not suffer to the same degree, not even close, but waiting for a publisher to respond is like that balloon and not only do I have the regular handful of stories big and small out in the world, I’ve recently sent a very important volume of work off to a very important publisher and good grief the anticipation and confidence and excitement, the glee I felt pressing send quite quickly turned into a weird heart-buzzy thing that took my breath away.

But I am trying to stay balanced, lol, literally with yoga and also the gym and CBD and I’m also staying not only upright but in the game, you know, I’m going for tea on Sunday afternoon with Marie, meeting Lynne’s bf later in the day they’re coming for dinner, Charlie’s coming too, and Anna, who is going camping for the weekend, will be back in time and I didn’t mean to do this it’s not premeditated but I’m going to put a link here for this thing Anna’s doing, she’s trying to get on the cover of Inked Magazine and maybe that sounds – oh I don’t know – unwholesome at first but it’s not a vanity thing and she doesn’t have to compromise herself or tart-up but rather it’s an opportunity to promote the real her and her real (and valid) concerns as a young woman – who happens to have awesome tattoos – forging a career in a traditionally male-dominated field and I don’t know if anything’s more male-dominated than blacksmithing.

You can click here and see what she has to say and if you think it’s important (it is) maybe give your acknowledgement in the form of a vote

And now here’s a story and it’s a little angsty of course that’s the way it goes I write like my heart beat is a metronome and it’s kind of swingy today you see but here you go if you feel like it and if you don’t, here you don’t go.

The Edge of Nowhere

Wawa, Ontario isn’t even in the middle of nowhere – it’s on the edge – and I’ve still got twenty more miles like a silent movie, the pine forest so seeped it registers black.

My mother said to come before dark and I got maybe fifteen minutes left, the sun’s leaving just a few scraps across the thin road now and as I swing through one familiar curve after another I zone out until suddenly there’s the driveway into which I pull through the darkness. The curtains are still open, my mother’s leaning shape hurries away. She doesn’t want me to know she’s watching for me, still stinging I guess from the teenager I was.

I have come here, in part at least, to show I understand now. Some of it, anyway.

I have just a small bag, almost nothing. I run to the door where my mother feigns surprise which gets in the way of her/our happiness/relief. Oh goodness she says I’m so glad you made it and I know that she is still afraid of me, I sense the fear I used to bark so wildly, almost joyfully, against.

My father does not come upstairs and as usual I have to go find him in his burrow, the certain smell although he’s given up both pipe and scotch it’s still there in every cushion, every seam, the dark beams he nailed across the ceiling.

He calls me lass and offers a whiskery kiss and a Quality Street both of which I accept with a smile before I escape to the kitchen, over-chewing the stale toffee like I am yelling, and there she stands, my mother.

I catch her before she knows I’m there.

The real her.

She stares out that black kitchen window above the soapy sink into nothing – and this is what I meant about understanding – because I know that into the dark forest is where she’s packed her disappointments, the monumental thisses and dark thats of her life, and the window is where she goes to survive, to make it through, to let herself once in a while when nobody’s looking or expecting, imagine what if into the black on black landscape of her own planting.

Her body still leans into the window but she turns her head and looks at me gives me a little nod and I return everything about that look immediately which she sees and flickers an acknowledgement, but still there is a care she takes when she turns and asks what’s new? like she pours it, and this time I tell her.

We sit at the kitchen table and I tell her about work and neighbours and friends, my struggles with eating healthy I whisper through the warm residue of toffee, my money problems and then right away I show her on my phone the new boots I bought online, lol, and I show her Andy with whom I have had two dates, he looks nice she says, and I touch gently – and this one she knows is only ever between mothers and daughters – on my hovering-but-improving self-esteem and she whispers back practically choking on love good for you.

But I don’t tell her about the disappointments I packed into the forest those last twenty miles, the ones I will eventually search for through my own kitchen window.