I am hung over today, spent, limp and dangling by a thread. Wherever I was yesterday, or the day before or the day before is a blur. Today I am unsteady and trying hard to catch my bearings. All this and I haven't a drop of alcohol. I'm recovering from a trial. It was a tough one.
The jury is still out, so I do not know whether to laugh or cry. I am unbearable when I win, all ass and elbows high-fiving the stars and strutting. I am also unbearable when I lose, head low, chin plowing a trough as I crawl beneath the nearest rock. Truth be told, I am simply unbearable most of the time. It would take a psychiatrist to figure it all out.
And so I have elected to begin a Freudian psychoanalysis. It's been nearly a month now, four hours a week spent staring at the ceiling of a tiny office free associating. The methodological premise? The analyst is a blind man beside me on the train; I recite what passes by.
So I revel in chaos. One moment unearthing the memory of the first girl to have stolen my heart; the next fretting about a stray remark overheard just the other day. Playing the lead role in my own version of Woody Allen cum trial lawyer is wide open road: I have no idea where I am heading or even why. The ride feels less like a train that a rubber rocket launched into dark room: on impact I try to chart the vector as I carom off in another direction.
A different take on old, old material will no doubt make me a better storyteller. Yet somehow telling my own story seems to be the hardest work of all.