the shedding shed

There are lines that I read in books that knock the wind out of me. Maybe they are different out of context, maybe they are meaningless without the sentences surrounding them. I'm reading "Spending" by Mary Gordon right now, never heard of her, but it's probably the best book I've read in years. I can't remember where the old quote came from that I had up above, but it was the same thing, a few years ago, nose deep in prose, and it made sense, it still does, still makes me think about duplicity and primacy, how women and dogs are alike.

I been in Calgary all week again, training for a complicated new position at work, one where I will shine like the diamond I can be. I expensed $16 on water. Ate 3 different stir-fries 3 days in a row for cafeteria lunch. It's hard to find vegetables in a hotel.

I'm on a teeter-totter, somedays feeling strong and trusting that it has to be ok, somedays squinting at the sun with my feet in the dirt, feeling heavier than the balance required, feeling the lurch of being the one left behind, the one whose tailbone aches from the fall. All I ever wanted is what could be. I hope that's understood. At the airport, waiting for luggage, I looked at the 3 people I flew with, all entwined in the arms of their lovers. And I threw my suitcase laden with gifts into the trunk of my mother's car, took myself and my headache and my dry skin home.