One Shade of Gray

When I stay up all night – which I did last night, trying to finish a story – the world goes gray the next day.

I want to eat everything. I'm irritable. I feel depressed; punctured – like nothing nice will ever happen again. Usually (and this is true for today), I have a long list of things to deal with that I've put off until I finish the story, and of course I don't feel like doing any of them. I take things personally. (Who am I kidding? I do this all the time.)

I know this, and I remind myself of it, and yet somehow I'm still surprised when it happens. When everything seems gloomy, and I have to stop and say: Everything will be better when you wake up tomorrow.

I forced myself to do my 50 minutes of fiction late today (after four weeks of 45 minutes, I decided I could handle 50 this week), and I sat in the cafe suddenly feeling old and sad, mourning that I didn't feel like I had anyone who'd be appropriately excited, or at least pleased, with a bit of work-related good news I received Tuesday. I missed, of all things, the wildly entertaining email correspondence I had with Mr. Married at this time last year. (I never did meet up with him again, but I would give in from time to time and write. I don't anymore. I digress.)

***

A friend just called. I feel slightly better. But also, because laughing is like caffeine for me, fairly wide awake. Which is bad news at just after 11 pm when you haven't slept the night before.

***

I forgot to mark this anniversary earlier in the week, but Sunday was a year since I landed back in New York after nearly six weeks abroad. (Is that why the summer seems so long and hot to me this year?) All year I have remembered vividly landing in the sticky heat of an August evening after having binged my way home from Provence.

I'd spent the previous month with good friends. It felt almost like college, and then suddenly I was alone – really alone, because the job I moved here for was so isolating -- in a huge city I wasn't even sure I wanted to live in.

To say a lot has happened since then would be both trite and the understatement of the year.

I'm glad I'm not where I was then.

Day 35.