I think I know what i’m good at. I think I can out suffer most people. I can turn off the discomfort meter and and just go. If I want. I know I’m shy and a little awkward socially but I can also find a way to meld and fit into almost any place. I can make it happen. Maybe it’s survival instinct. I dont know. And I don’t really know how I do it. But lately I struggle with the transition. BigTime.

One day your on your belly on the side of some mountain crawling through the thorns and weeds and brush up to a group of armed men and you dont want to be discovered because some of these men are bad and a few days later your asking some guy to find your name on a list so you can go to a party with a bunch of over dressed over enthusiastic people who only want to talk about themselves and that transition is a little bit tougher than you expected.

Sorry if you were at one of those partys, I’m probably not talking about you specifically.

Sometimes these things are hard to articulate. My wife understands. Bless her.

I don’t like to over think things but it has occurred to me that at times I ought to think about some things a little bit more. But seriously, the thinking probably wouldn’t help much. Why start now.

Sometimes you know your limits and can see them coming a mile away and sometimes they sneak up and kick you in the balls.

There are always strange figures in the peripheral. Peering from behind a wall. Moving just out of sight when you turn your head. The people here like to kill one another. More than any other place in the state, per capita that is. I heard the stories about how it started but I just kept thinking that things like that never really start. Never really. I heard the stories and then I wished I hadn’t.

And the sun will set and the dark sky will grow darker and maybe it will rain again and maybe there will be strange lights on the horizon. Again. Maybe.

This place where everyone has been left behind. Everyone a lost child. Everyone like particles of lint or dust that the broom always seemed to miss on it’s way to the dustpan. And there is some strange electricity in the air but the figures I see, hunched over cars in the parking lot, scurrying to and from the liquer store, they all seem not to notice. They all grew imune long ago. But I feel it, reaching in, trying to grab me. Trying to keep me.

I can taste dust in my mouth now. I hurry inside, fighting panic.