The Going Rate.

Saw the ADHD doc this week.

He asked about Maine.

'Great at first,' I shrugged. 'Stayed too long.'

He had a sympathetic smile and word for that: derailed.

'Good word for it,' I said.

Unfortunately I implicated my ex in the train wreck, and he seized what came across as a long-awaited opportunity to question why I had kept the rest of the male population out for so long.

Bro out here acting like six years of celibacy is a crime. Same old song and dance about how objectionable it is for a smart, attractive woman to be single.

What a waste. Somebody ought to do something!

Went in about my attention. Ended up discussing who ought to be getting some.

I told him I used to go straight from one relationship into another. Let the next man take up enough room that I stopped noticing where the last one had been. Kept doing that until I thought I might like to find out who I was between them.

Yeah okay, so maybe I lingered there a while.

I had not wanted to get a boyfriend and make being with him the thing that fixed me. I knew that trick. I wanted to get myself working, then decide whether I felt like sharing any of it.

Still seems like a reasonable order.

He thinks I should find somebody intelligent. Driven. Somebody like me.

I don't particularly require those things. It just gets tiresome when a man feels stupid beside you and decides you did it to him. Or starts resenting the career you already had when he met you.

I can see the practical advantage of somebody with his own shit to do.

Told him about the kid at the gas station. He flirts. I attempt to flirt back. I think what he receives is a small personal attack.

Poor guy. Probably thinks we have a feud.

The doctor said I should be more intentional about where I meet people.

I had been. I needed gas.

Dating apps would be false advertising. I am not truly single. I am married to my work... and to metaphor. Adultery would require finding an evening.

Maybe I am a little less determined to keep the door bolted shut now. Things are getting better. I can get through a day without having to drag myself through it by the collar. There might be room for somebody eventually.

I am not standing in the doorway waving people in.

I like being alone. I don't feel like half a person. I am not waiting for a man to arrive so the time I spend here starts counting for something.

He seems more interested in finding me one than I am.

Meanwhile, he and I have been seeing each other for two years.

Our anniversary, actually.

By the time I brought that up, we had about ten minutes left to discuss what I had originally wanted out of the relationship.

When I first darkened the doorstep of his corporate office suite, physical & mental "health” was a courtesy title for whatever my body and brain were still doing.

Chronic pain made exercise excruciating. Between a missing gallbladder and a stomach that took its time emptying, eating properly had become a territorial dispute between organs, one of which no longer even lived there.

Home life got tougher. Job responsibilities got bigger. My capacity to handle either kept getting smaller.

Body halfway in the bag. Brain fully in the blender. Both still expected at work on Monday.

For years I just tried harder. That was my only plan. Occasionally I revised it to much harder.

Eventually, I had to enter the confessional and admit the one thing I could forgive in anyone but myself.

I needed help.

I told him at the start that if we went the medication route, I wanted it to be temporary. Just long enough to get me moving again and get the old routines back underneath me. A little help getting going. I expected to take it from there.

I thought a few months would do it.

We tried one medication. Then another. Practiced skills, strategies for getting through the day. Reworked the ones that fell apart on contact with an actual day. Untangled where I kept getting stuck.

Between the plethora of pharmaceuticals and the tireless executive function training, my expectations were repeatedly invited to reconsider.

I had expected a running start. Instead, I crawled from one appointment to the next. Another month. Another inch. Another fresh scab on the knees.

Progress was made, but... my original timeline became a work of fiction.

About a year ago we got to Adderall, and the behavioral coaching we had been building upon started becoming stuff I could actually do. I began to feel functional again.

We worked hard to get me here. Both of us. The jumping-off point simply needed considerably more construction than I had allowed for.

And now I'm starting to do those things again. Running. Eating properly. Putting some regularity back into the days.

That was what our anniversary had me thinking about. The plan I came in with. Whether I might finally be ready to take it from here.

Twenty months later than I had in mind.

He had spent most of the appointment considering whether I was ready to start seeing someone.

I was wondering whether I was ready to see a little less of him.

Anyway. My boss called.

Ten-thousand-dollar bonus.

Said he sees how hard I've been working. How much I've taken on. Said having me handle more has given him room to do the work of leading the organization.

He meant it. I appreciated hearing it. The money, too.

Always nice to learn the actual retail price for the lack of a work/life balance.

Come on down! Bring your laptop.

Called my friend.

Her mother had taken a nasty fall, and she was waiting at the hospital for her mom to come out of surgery.

She told me about a trip she took to California a few years ago. Put some sandwiches and her Bible in a backpack and went out.

Sat with an old man who was homeless. Said he taught her more about Jesus than she could have taught him.

Then there was a man going through the dumpster outside her hotel. Addicted to fentanyl. On the run. They sat and smoked cigarettes together.

He prayed for her.

She thought he had more standing with God than she did. Called it the best trip of her life.

I keep thinking about that part. A woman goes out with sandwiches and a Bible and comes back talking about what she was given.

Plenty of people would have stopped at homeless. Or addict. Entire life, apparently. Nothing else to read.

She sat down for the rest of it.

I wish people would do that. Let a person tell the whole thing. Read the ugly chapters. Find something worth staying for. Be willing to get to the last page and know less than they thought they did when they opened it.

I don't share her religion. I like what happens when she takes it seriously. All that talk about loving people, and there she is sitting beside a smoking dumpster, letting somebody love her back.

I want to write about that sometime.

This isn't that story. I'm just muttering about my week.

I know the last composition I 'penned' sounded encouraging. It was. I'm getting up. Jogging. Doing things. There is a real difference, and I am pleased about it.

Still pretty flat in here, though.

No great rush of feeling. No new attachments. Things happen, I notice them, I can even like them. Mostly they don't get their hooks in.

Apparently you can get your shit together and still have very little feeling about where you've put it.

Had a general tarot reading, too.

Asked for a blind reading. No question. No background. No pointing out where it hurt.

Just deal the cards. Let's see what the universe has to say for itself.

Didn't take long to get personal.

Competent. Overextended. Emotionally unavailable. Further into recovery than I had apparently noticed.

Four cards upside down. The World upright.

The important part was that something could be finished before I understood it. Before I even felt differently about it.

Well, that undermined my authority. I had explicitly informed the situation that the overthinking would continue until my conditions improved.

No Wands were drawn from the deck, either. Nothing about pursuit. Not one instruction to go find somebody.

Nice to get a second opinion.

Over a dozen entries on this site. Put them beside this tarot reading and you could start wondering which one was copied from which. I'd spent all those pages trying to say it. Here it was again, with a different set of pictures.

Fifteen entries, and five cards had apparently been reading over my shoulder.

Wanted to cross myself, whisper the Trinitarian Formula.

Anyway. Thanks for listening, but I need to be going now.

Gotta find a church... see if the holy water is available in quantities suitable for bathing.

Need gas on the way.

Just gonna say 'thank you' to the kid at the register this time.

Safer for everybody.