Jenga.

I get nervous when things end. Even bad things. As a New Englander, the devil I know is better then a strange new world. As the daughter of both an Irish-Catholic, and a fake Jew, I know better then to rock the boat, even when the boat is leaky and taking me down with it. There's a line in Fiddler on the Roof: "If you spit in the air, it will land in your face." Similarly, my mother's step-father used to say "Don't let a bird poop in your eye." Course, I've always rebelled against that. In my little quote book that I've kept since I was 12, I have a quote from Da Vinci: "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." And one by Oscar Wilde: "We are all of us living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Which is to say, I am mixed up a lot of the time. Trying to turn my eyes skyward without a bird pooping in my eye while sitting in my gutter, searching for the stars.

But I've been experiencing a jen-u-eyene bouleversement lately. Relationship/heartbreak-trauma with little hope of any satisfactory resolution, two jobs ending within a week of each other (only one of which is voluntarily, the other due to budget cuts), one new job (phew!) which, while exciting and awesome, will barely cover my financial bases until October when it goes full-time. Big, epic travel plans, spanning two weeks and four cities. One -- maybe two -- of those things would normally strike fear into the depths of my soul; all of them at once leave me dizzy and confused. The way I feel after getting off a spinney carnival ride: disconnected from the earth and slightly nauseous.

I intimidate myself on a regular basis. My whole life has been a lesson in being passive until pushed to the limit of my capacity to deal, and then I lash out in an attempt to defend myself. To keep myself safe. I've been very not-safe before, physically and emotionally, and the survival instinct is strong in me as a result. Some of the time this is to my benefit. Most of the time, it's to my detriment. But there's plenty of things I don't love about myself; the ability to fight back when I perceive myself backed into a corner, unable to breathe, suffocating and drowning, isn't one I can hate that much. I know it's cost me a lot, but, to quote my friend Melanie: "Do what you can do until you find you can do a little more."

I need to stop taking whatever I can get. I need to stop acting like that's all I'm worth. But it's hard to envision a world you've never known; it's hard to imagine feeling safe and loved when feeling panicked and lonely is the norm.

Sometimes, I just wish I were normal. Boring. Stable. I wish I were an accountant (wait, I sort-of am...I should say a content accountant) who married an insurance salesman and had three children with perfectly ordinary names. Names that come on pencils and erasers. Names that come on bike plates. But I don't even know how to begin to imagine actually living in that world of normality. I'm a game of Jenga, played on a roller coaster, not a game of Scrabble played on the kitchen table. It's time to accept that.