So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Two weeks ago, I walked out of my office in New York for the last time. As usual, I was there much later than my co-workers, and only a couple of people bothered to come by and say goodbye.

Less than 48 hours later, I was on a plane to London. If it’s any indication of where my head was (and is), consider:

--I accidentally put the wrong personal email address for myself on my final work out-of-office message (and my company, which was not very helpful about so many things over the brief period I worked for them, refused to allow me to change it)

--See photo above. Those are two mismatched sneakers I brought with me to London. (I consider myself lucky that I at least have one for each foot.)

I’d like to write something graceful, lyrical and thoughtful about my time in this job and my escape. But unfortunately, I don’t think my writing is graceful, lyrical and thoughtful at the best of times, and certainly not now, after two months of almost no sleep. (If you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not. For the month before I gave notice I was waking up just about every hour or not sleeping at all, and during the last month I fared almost as poorly.)

Here is all I can say: The last eight months feel like a bad dream from which I haven’t yet fully woken up. The funny thing is that it already feels like a terribly long time ago – not a way that’s good or bad, necessarily, just a very long time ago. It’s very strange.

I think the whole experience is going to take me a while to work through. I wish it were just a rotten spot, a bruised bit of peach I could carve away with a knife, but it’s made me question everything I know and want and thought I knew and wanted. I feel terribly old, not just because I haven’t had time to do anything about the gray in my hair, but because there are vines of sadness around my eyes that weren’t there before. And my face bears the scars of hives: I started breaking out from the stress and anxiety about two months ago, and the flare-ups continue, probably not helped by my efforts to hide it with makeup.

Yes, I’m a very pretty, happy girl these days.

Er, not so much.

Before you wonder if I’m about to have a Heath Ledger moment, as a dear friend of mine put it delicately, I am not. (I nearly did the weekend of the triplets’ birthday, but that is another story altogether.)

I was going to end with a cheerful list of goals, but honestly, I haven’t got any at the moment other than not to binge (something I have not been successful with thus far on this trip) and – if I am going to procrastinate – at least to use it to do something I enjoy instead of sitting around freaking out about what I’m not doing.

I hope to be more lucid – and more upbeat – in the future, but for the moment, I’m just checking in to say: Whew, I’m glad that’s over, and thanks for sticking by me.