turn and face the strange

I need to admit to myself that I have a flair for the impulsive. For example, I quit my job today. I walked into my low paying, demeaning and child-labourish place of work and announced that I was no longer interested in being their bitch. But it didn't necessarily come out in that way. The point is, I did it. And instead of the emotional/tearful pleading, the offer of a substantial raise or the nostalgic sentiments about all 'the good times' they have had with me as an employee, my boss actually used the words "you're easily replaceable". And he used them to try to make me feel BETTER. Which I almost thought was funny - but then I remembered the lack of good-bye fanfare and returned to being angry.

And now I just feel weird. I'm in a freaking STRANGE mood. My heart is pounding, so I know I'm really anxious, but I can't seem to formulate any sort of emotion - I've just shut off. I'm quitting my job and moving to Vancouver and I can't even put two thoughts together about it. You know when people describe an experience as being surreal? That's what I'm going through. I look at the mess that this summer has become and say "this is not my life". 'Cause honestly? My life is now in Toronto. That's where I feel at home. That's where my entire heart rests (fragile, in the hands of one Stephen Johns). So I'm going home and am really ready to be there; as much as people are insisting that I'm going to miss Kingston, this is no longer where any part of my heart resides.

Back to the weird mood. I was playing a set of Pearl Jam songs (Wishlist/Thin Air/Hail Hail/Oceans/Parting Ways/All Those Yesterdays.... if you're interested) and I actually started bawling. I was crying so hard for a few minutes that I started to heave, which was REALLY embarassing because I'm not really sure what I was so sad about. Maybe I'm not sad. Maybe there are lots of emotions that can come out through crying. Maybe I'm relieved and scared and lonely and in love and excited and anxious and tired and triumphant.... and it all became tears. I often cry after sex - releasing the million emotions that it makes me feel (love, vulnerability, tenderness, lust, etc). I'm just so SENSITIVE right now, as if touching me on the shoulder will set me off again.

Everything is so profound. Music beats away in my earphones and I can feel the sound in my entire body... beautiful and strong and meaningless at the same time. Song lyrics are making me cry. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the world - by the depth and the abstraction and the beauty and things like spiderwebs that seem both totally insignificant and divinely inspired at the same time. And I don't know what to do. I don't know how to react to things that seem so much bigger than me. To share myself with the world that I take so much from. I have a really hard time explaing to people that I am so deeply affected by everything: words and people and animals and all the different shades of colour and meaning, by moments and ideas and looks and stories. I am changed everyday. I feel like I have the emotional weight of the world on my shoulders sometimes, because everything I encounter becomes a part of me, I absorb it and try to understand and feel the depth of it.

And I just don't know what to do with myself, and don't believe that anyone could every ureally get what it's like to listen to Pearl Jam and cry. Sometimes, I think, I'm crying for myself and for the spider webs and people I meet eyes with on the train that I feel so deeply about. It's all that I can do.