The Fall

My ears are still ringing.

It's 1:28 A.M.

I danced hard in multi-colored high tops.  Danced to wear down the boulder in my stomach weighing down worries.  Rotting economy.  I'm unemployed.  How will I pay rent, buy groceries, buy a 6-pack?

Life is cracking another knuckle.  I'm trying to breathe steadily.  I've decided nothing.  I've drawn no lines and each day I wake up to fidgeting wonder.

The fall hurts.  It's left me broken.  My fingers are gnawed and bleeding from my mind's whirling whys.  I keep wondering why it's gotten this bad.  I wonder why I can't do better than this.

Twenty-four years old and freshly laid-off from a "secure" State job, but it wasn't really State.  I worked in an office processing birth certificate requests. It was so boring.  Technically it was through a temp agency.  We all knew lay-offs were coming.  Everyone around the office reassured each other that we'd all be spared. 
"They need us too much," we all said.

By 4:45 P.M. on Friday, we all got our paychecks without termination notices, and walked out of the office.  We thought we were in the clear.  Then, over an hour after I left work, I got the call.  If I had been sucker-punched in the face it would have been less of a shock.

You'd be surprised to find out what kind of environment ensures you receive your birth certificate so you can go on that Caribbean cruise, adopt a child, or finally get the spelling of your name corrected.  We had office parties all the time.  Potlucks.  Food galore.   People brought in things like fried chicken and they'd all fold their hands in prayer while I stared at my lap, eyes wide, wiggly and uncomfortable in my seat. 

Them: Jesus. God. Lord. Our Father. Amen.

Me: I can't get married in this state.

I'm queer.

Separation of church and state.

My ankles are still buzzing.  We left the club early.  She wasn't feeling right.  She slid the key in the ignition to bring herself quickly beneath a heating pad, stomach flipping and flopping, wrapped in covers and a paper-back.  Her hair is still trussed up in Bobbi pins and hair-spay; her eyes charcoal-lined and then carefully adorned with purple and green...or was it blue?

I'd do anything for her.  I hold her close every chance since it happened.  Some 32 hours ago.  Like I lost a bet.  Like someone plucked my five cards...all wild...and folded.

Some five hundred...seventy-something state employees.  Are they terrified like me?  Foolishly coated in a cracking pride shell.

It will all work out.  It always does...every year I saunter my way to a hearty gallop, then lose my footing, greeting the ground with my unwitting cheek. 

The fall is so much easier than the getting up.

I even make it look good.  I moon walk into the fall.  I smile the whole way down.  No one will be the wiser to how much it hurts. 

But once I'm down, it hurts like hell, and where to go now?  Panicky and wide-eyed, I don't sleep.  I've got to figure this out, and I'll be damned if I ask for help.  My eyes are rimmed with red from staring at my laptop screen applying for job after job.  I feel desperate.

I revamp my resume with each application I send.

I wonder how far I can stretch my skills.

Typing skills forty....no, forty five...fifty words per minute.

Customer service?  Too bland, let's go with...In-depth customer interaction.

My stomach aches as my eyes blink to coerce the next words.  The next simple, clean, white lying words that will land me my next job.  I'll take practically anything at this point.

I pace my small Fan apartment. The wood creaks beneath my feet.  I hear mice in the walls and I stare at my ceiling fan turning its wobbly circles.  The guy in the apartment above me is torturing his bass guitar as his dog barks at God only knows what.  I close my laptop and let a long breath out of my lungs.

With the economy crumbling into smaller and smaller pieces, the mess is getting harder to clean up. I fear I have a long way to fall, and since there is no savior who can possibly mend what the world has become, it's just me and the hand I've been dealt.  The New Year's just begun, so I guess I had better ante up.

I may have fallen, but I won't be down long.