Countdown to Homelessness...Day 4

I got people...

I don't know what it says about me when I don't realize that it's not Saturday until 2 in the afternoon on Friday—that I was getting ahead of myself? It's one of the things that happen to me with my ADHD—my kids will vouch for it: my internal clock ticks to the sound of a different time warp.

For those who want to know, progress is happening, but it's the twilight time of waiting that falls in-between intent and action. I just don't know which way to go until I have more information and that is on its way.

The good news is that I'm not engaged in my terror right now. This may change upon awakening tomorrow but for now, I'm living one moment-at-a-time and trying not to think any further so I don't scare the b'jesus out of myself. The downside of this approach is that it makes me thoroughly bad at planning what to do next. To imagine all possible scenarios and prepare for them means leaving the 'living one-day-at-a-time' post and scouting the landscape of worst-case possibilities—the very ones that paralyzed me. It's my own personal catch-22.

I will say that my email box has been remarkably clean of email after sending out my SOS to my personal list of friends and family. I don't want to jump to any conclusions about what that means. However, it hasn't been entirely silent, and a miracle happened when an old and beloved friend responded.

We've known each other too many years to admit in public—and we laughed about that. We've both been so wrapped up in our own lives to be able to really pay much attention to others for quite a while. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with her today and we talked about everything, interrupting each other with a fast switch to another topic. Mostly stuff that we'd tucked away to someday mention to the other. There were tears and admissions, recollections and the filling of long gaps, our shifts in philosophy and lots and lots of laughs.

At the end of the conversation, I didn't want to let go because I realized how much I'd missed her over the years. It's not anything we could have avoided—everyone has their own world that sweeps them away and tends to make us myopic if it doesn't directly affect us.

But in our case, we've had so much to give each other. It was a revelation to me how much I'd longed for her wacky point of view, her examples of cowboying up in really bad times, her love for me and her delight in the love I've always felt for her.

There are private wars being fought in silence, in lonely bedrooms at 3 a.m. when sleep has deserted its post and not even the shopping channel can bore us back to sleep. These battles are invisible: the hand-to-hand combat with the relentlessness of chronic pain; the assaults of aging on the body that leave you continually surprised every time you pass a mirror; the losses that come naturally with growing older—the people we've lost, the eras, the passions—each took a piece out of us. Perhaps that accounts for the very human tendency to pull in a little bit at a time until we're isolated and nearly invisible.

But I don't know if we ever grow old enough to not need an old, dear, trusted friend. Today, my friend gave me the gift of believing in me. That meant something because she's known me when I'm at the top of my game, in the losers'-circle and every place in-between. Like two conspirators, we began laying the plans for the next phase of our lives and this time, with one another in attendence! After I hung up, I cried at the feeling of being full again—I had not realized how empty I'd let myself become. By opening up and re-embracing me I felt as if she'd just given me a brand-new bullet-proof vest.

So---World?—Bring it on. Do your worst! I'm not afraid of you.

I got people.

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