shazam!

this is what it feels like to be in process; to have your brain letting go of the foreign stuff embedded within; to have nothing but yourself to balance you out, a few days after the last tiny half of a pill has been ingested:

there are hourly electrocutions! double-takes of the mind!  a little shiver, a little shake!  holy shit, it's like a frickin' rollercoaster on acid up in here!

i look down for one second and my mind just skips a wee bit.  not enough that you'd notice it, but enough that i am disconcerted, completely and utterly.  it's almost like being dizzy, except that i can't claim that lovely physicalness of motion.  it's sort of like when you get a shiver in the cold and you can't control the shake; this, my friends, is all in my mind.  

mostly.  sometimes it shoots a little arrow down my hands and arms, tingly all, the way you'd feel if you touched a bit o' electricity.  static cling in my body; this glorious thing that is jonesing for the meds the way i search out good bakery items.

i'm trying to ride this out.  i know it's only been a few days, and i'm in at the tail end of my little experiment, but man, these fried-brain moments are most unpleasant.  i am here, but i am not here.  i feel okay, but i don't feel so good.  i am drug-free, but i am still bucking along on top of the bronco called "zoloft".  

yee haw!

i love myself enough to know that this whole thing might not work, and i might need those meds again.  i might decide it's better for me, and my family, and my world.  and that's okay.  it really is.

but i also love myself enough to want to try to find out what it's like to be in my own head again, without the little foreign do-gooders messing with my junk.  i might be able to take care of my own junk, damnit.  it might just be okay, as long as i keep meditating and exercising and eating lots of ice cream and chocolate and laughing raucously, without fear of reprisal.

for now, i'm just going to cradle myself as much as a person can who's about to embark on a 3-day open-air camping excursion with 37 ten and eleven-year old students, 8 parent chaperones, and three other teachers.  what better time to wean myself from my smack, i ask you?

what better time?

i ask you:

what could be more beautiful than me, just ten minutes ago?

what could be more stunning in its specificity of purpose, of its determined nature and focused bones on the task at hand?  what, i ask you?  

there i was, naked; truly naked, not just laying-down-on-the-bed-looking-inviting naked.  full light in our tiny bathroom, bleach tile cleaner in hand, ready to do what needs to be done in order to fully clean our mildewed, rectangular phone box shower.  

i open the shower door and begin spraying wildly, hoping that somehow my strong conviction against bleach in homes will be forgiven by the eco-friendly goddesses around me; also hoping that the goddamn stuff works because nothing else has.  immediately i realize that the window that looks out over our neighbors' driveway must be opened for ventilation; my eyes are starting to water.

i rush to the window and try to push it open with one hand, realizing that i am nekkid but also grateful that my gay neighbors won't mind if they glimpse me, sprawled and jangly, trying to give myself some fresh air.  at least i think they won't mind.  maybe they will mind.  shit.  get it open, get it open, get it open--there, fresh air.

ha!  fresh air!  hahahahaha!  it's still 100 degrees outside, so "fresh" isn't exactly accurate.  opening the window feels like opening the oven door to check on some brownies.

but still, i need something other than bleach-air; heck, i need something for my eyes.

"alex?" i yell out, door closed.

"yeah?"

"can you get me some goggles, please?"

i hear rustling, walking, cabinet being opened.  i hear him approaching the door--and then the handle turning--and then i thrust my hand out to grab my swimming goggles, because no one, no one should look at me right now.  i am too stunning to behold.

but wait, i thought i was--until i put on the goggles.  then, and only then, do i truly feel that i have reached the apex of my adulthood thus far.  there is no other point in my life where i have felt more like an older person than when i glimpse myself in the mirror: bare, stomach swollen from the recently eaten nachos, dirty hair up in clumps around the band around my head. . . of all that is holy and true in this world, it was at this moment that i finally knew that i have grown up.

and then, kneeling down in the shower, scrubbing hard at the stains while my belly and arms jiggle along with the sound of the brush; changing positions and being vaguely aware that my nether regions are mixing in with the bleach fumes, wondering what kind of damage can be done to my special purpose ("vulva?  hang in there, lady..."); then marveling at the fact that hey, this poison stuff really does work!  man oh man, i've been trying to make things happen with baking soda and vinegar and meyer's clean day and method, but at this moment, all of those do-gooders can go fuck themselves.

me and bleach!  together!  a match made in bathroom heaven!

there is nothing more real than what just happened in there, people.  THAT is life; life on all fours, life that demands your grab the brush with both hands and thrust your way around the tile.  life well-worked for, life well-lived.  except for the bleach-poison that i've just inhaled.

all this, the gloriousness that is me, reveling in my beauty and the new sexy clean walls of my shower; and when my daughter asks to see what i claim is a very clean space, she peeks her head in and claims, "it doesn't look that clean to me."

i'm putting my goggles back on, just so i don't have to look at her for the rest of the night.