Tidal Pull (II)

May 20

I don’t consider myself introspective by nature.  I have never kept a journal.  You can see how good I am about writing  regularly.  But I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around.  I feel great.  That’s not the problem…but at the same time that is the problem.

I haven’t been doing anything differently.  I get up.  I go to work.  I’m a “tech support specialist.”  It’s nothing glorious.  I answer phones and help people with their computer problems.  I work in a small “office”, a grungy room on the third floor of an even grungier building.  I don’t have to wear a tie or anything.  Every once in a while I’ll go out to a location physically if the necessary, but rarely.  I don’t wear a tie then either.

I have a car, but it’s a beater.  I usually walk or take the bus to work.  It’s not that I don’t make money.  I just don’t really have any reason to spend it.  All I do is go to work.  I come home at the end of the day and eat bachelor food in front of the TV.  I watch Law & Order.  Maybe drink a beer, beat off, and go to bed.

At any rate, up until now, I’d say the walking is probably the only reason I haven’t become a complete fat slob.  That and the fact that I tend to pace when I’m on the line with the same customer for too long.   I haven’t changed my routine much.  And still, over the past couple of months I have been noticing changes.  I don’t spend a whole lot of time looking in the mirror, but I couldn’t help noticing differences lately.  It must have happened so slowly I didn’t even realize it until lately.  Like I said, I wasn’t in horrible shape, but the chub that was surreptitiously insinuating itself around my middle seems to have melted away.  I have abs again.  Mini love handles, gone.  I can’t say I don’t spend a few extra minutes now admiring the sinewy new look of my limbs.

Mom and Dad have noticed too.  I go out to their house in the country about twice a month to visit.  (They always ask me if I need money, so I must have looked worse off than I realized.)  They say I look better than ever.  Asked me if I’ve been going to the gym.  I just smile and shrug.  I tell them I cut back on the alcohol, that must be the reason for the improvement in my physique.  I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it seems like a good enough segue to finally ask them about Christmas Eve.  They have not mentioned it to me, which perplexes me, and I have not had the courage to ask them exactly what I did during the time I ”lost” that night.

I mention that I must have drank too much because Christmas Eve is “fuzzy” (I don’t want to come right out and admit that I can’t remember shit from after dinner on.)  They look at one another with a mixture of confusion and genuine surprise.  They said I barely drank anything, that they saw.  And that I didn’t seem drunk at all.  In higher than usual spirits, maybe, but not drunk.

What is happening to me?  Something, I’m sure.   I feel normal or better than normal most of the time.  I look better.  But I keep losing time.  That’s another reason why I started writing all of this down.  I’ve started to keep track of the blackouts… and the strange feelings.  There seems to be a pattern.   A few days of excellent health and wealth of spirit (ha ha) around the same time every month…  Am I making too much out of this?

June 17

I feel it coming on again.  It’s a feeling somewhere between anticipation and dread.  An itch waiting to be scratched.  If only I could reach it.  I feel my energy amping up.  The weather has been unseasonably hot this week.  Sticky.  Humid.  The moisture hangs heavy in the air and on it rides a multitude of strange smells, smells I know, but can’t put my finger on.  They tease me, daring me to follow, seek out their source.  Is that where I will go in a day or two when my time and my memory wander off like a lost dog?

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