very little everything

what is there to say, very little has changed, yet everything has changed. it's hard to wrap words around it, so i don't try. i'm just trying to sit with it and look at it. with a show me what i fear kind of attitude.

i don't really know what else to do except be present in this moment while it lasts. i have emerged on the brighter side of a very dark week. with more of an ability to strengthen myself, self soothe.

it grows quiet and the days are muggy and heavy. the only lightness i find is in nature. so i try to be true and heed the call. the a/c is such a temptation though. we don't seem prone to sweat anymore. sometimes i wonder if the next antipersperant they market will be a white laytex paint. sweating releases toxins. and how many toxins i have to release.

the a/c is broken at work, or was over the weekend. and it was in the 80s over the weekend. so it was really a tough haul. at one point i thought my manager was going to pass out. as you entered the store from the a/c of the walkways, the store got progressively hotter in waves.

the first wave was bad, but three or four waves into it, it was nearly insufferable. so many of the customers turned on their heels and left. but we couldn't. we had to work. so the customers who stayed, God bless 'em, would comment,

i don't know how you do it.

i began telling them the truth,

all the mean customers leave, so we're left with the kind customers like yourself. hard to argue a/c is better.

though i was burning up too, don't get me wrong. i don't like working in a sauna. but i got to dress the mannequins in the windows, my first time doing that. and cashier all day. i enjoy that task too, makes the time pass quicker. but i did have to walk the length of the store all day, and working in the front windows under the halogen lights wasn't much fun.

but we survived.

that's the thing i always tell my girl,

you'll survive.

and she replies,

you always say that.

and i respond,

and you always do.

she does not like that dialogue. but it is the truth. i am prone to melodrama myself. but i am also aware of the fact that if i can just stay in the moment and breathe, i will make it to the next one, by sheer force of will, if nothing else.

i will survive.

in fact, there will come a day quite soon when i will thrive.