Apart

Team Taco™ and friends! It’s Monday! Which is not Tuesday. Just six days late. But I have a good excuse. In that we’re moving across the country and extending a visa while the world continues to burn.

But on the positive — late is better than never, and you look wonderful today.

Coming Apart at the Seams

I am coming apart at the seams. I don’t know where my anxiety ends and I begin. I feel it stretching my skin in odd spots. Carbonating my joints, fluttering in my skull, lead feet.

Everyone I know is coming apart at the seams. I can hear it in their jokes. Their exhaustion hidden under excitement for a new show or movie. The same, tired five questions we’ve been asking each other for two years.

I am coming apart at the seams. We all are. We’re hanging hanging on by a thread. The problem with using all of your coping mechanisms to survive your day-to-day experience means they’re fucking useless when something comes up.

Living through the collapse of a failed state, an empire crushing itself and us under it’s own weight? Watching people lose safe access to abortion?

Your landlord renting your place out ten days early? The Mexican government fucking up issuing your visa renewal right in the middle of a cross-country move?

What does having an edible and three cocktails in the evening do to touch that anxiety when you’re using that to get by on a good day?

The first therapist I had didn’t end up doing much for me. I was young, still religious. They were old, always religious. The counseling was littered with religion and Jesus. During one session, he told me he coveted my passion and that he wanted to make sure I was using it for the Lord. It was not a successful relationship.

But he said something that stuck. Something I’d read on message boards and in mental health groups and been told by friends at 3AM over AIM. In the darkest depression, his rasp of a voice with a southern twang said something that finally stuck. Something I knew, something I didn’t believe, something made of utter bullshit.

“You won’t always feel like this.”

I don’t believe you. It. That. I am always going to feel like this. I have always felt this. As long as I can remember, through no fault of my own, I have always felt like this.

“Yes, but you don’t only feel this. There’s more for you to feel. Sometimes. At some point.”

I am coming apart at the seams. We all are. We’re hanging hanging on by a thread. What’s my thread today? What are we holding onto to feel some day soon?

The joy of new love or friendship. Helping a friend when you can. A wild goose chase. Mustering the courage to say the hard thing when the simple thing would suffice. Ordering a new piece of art for a new space. Giving directions to a tourist. Organizing a round of mutual aid in your community. Showing off your new ceramics. A perfect joke. Flirting. Staring at the candlelight for an extra moment. Relief that a visa is completed, even if it’s weeks late. Organizational pleasure from  packing.

None of us are well, we’re all we have, and we’re hanging on by a thread. Multiple threads make a strand, make a cord, make a rope, make a lifeline.

Oh, fuck off. I don’t believe you. I’m always going to feel like this.

But maybe I’ll feel more than this. Sometimes. At some point. Maybe tomorrow.

TACO TOTAL — 2021/2021

Oh, yeah. So. I'm done. I wrote about it two weeks ago when I finished on a Friday. You can read that here.

This week, we're moving. And hopefully I'm picking up my visa. Who can say. But I can say that tomorrow's report will also be late. But the week after that! Back on track, and I'll be announcing next year's project and the forever home of the Taco Report archive.