Last night, towards the end of my work day, I fell victim to a Major Industrial-Strength Freakout. Short of breath, shaky, wild-eyed, panicked Freakout.
A few contributing factors: some major issues going on with my mom and her job and how I think she should tell the fuckers that she works for to fuck off, and her deciding to be scared and safe instead; the people at my work driving me to distraction, as they refuse to realize the fact that I have responsibility for the look and feel of the entire website, and not just the tiny corner that each developer oversees, and as such do not necessarily have time to make every tiny change every person wants at the exact moment they want it; and being greeted, upon leaving my office, by screaming protesters and rows after row of cops with riot gear and big armored trucks up and down Times Square.
I use these examples as excuses, to explain why I was smashed into the emotional mud by the most absurd, irrational, ridiculous surge of jealousy I have ever experienced. Regarding the Boy, of course, and my friend J, deciding that as both of them need apartments, that they may as well get an apartment together. I still maintain that I do not know why this struck me as hard as it did, but I suddenly had images in my head of J conniving with all of my other friends to make the Boy hate me, and the Boy trying to figure out how to seduce J, and a whole passel of other unpleasant self-deprecatory images.
Glorious, wonderful, saintly Little Owl helped talk me down, although when the two of us met Shiv and J for drinks shortly thereafter, I was still seized by an almost-irresistable urge to punch that hypocritical insincere bastard in his smug little face.
I was very aware at the time that I was being completely utterly ridiculous and I did not actually believe any of the things I was thinking (and did not actually think that J was a hypocritical insincere bastard with a smug little face, for the record), but they still made my stomach knot up and my heart palpitate. So I decided that something needed to happen to expiate the absurd amounts of tension I was carrying around. Something dramatic and impetuous --
So I got my tongue pierced.
Re-pierced, actually, as I had it done a few years ago and took it out after a year when I got bored with it -- in fact, I think that Zona may be the only person I know now who saw it the first time 'round. Fortunately, as soon as I had it done -- the tension was g-o-n-e. And I was able to dance around in the rain and drink some whiskey. And pretend that I am Hard Core. (ha ha ha!!)
And they all lived happily ever after.