My Inner Child is a Brat

and I've had just about enough out of you, young lady.

Last night, I hit a milestone on this whole grieving process thing.

I annoyed myself.

I’ve been motoring around here the past couple days weeks alternating between resignedly packing things up and laying around whining and refusing to do anything because omg this sucks and I don’t wanna.

Seriously, my inner child is annoying and is about to get a time out.

Last night, I was getting rid of more books¹ and looking out the window with Great Melancholy², when the grownup side of me was just all ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE SAD.

However, as I’m human, and no human ever was ever told Hey, have you tried not being sad? and had it, y’know, fix the whole sad thing, my brain was all neener-neener, you aren’t the boss of me and continued being…well…sad.

So I’m giving myself another week, from today.

I have one more week to mope around here like my birthday’s been cancelled.

Next Wednesday, we’re having an attitude adjustment, whether or not I feel like it. I’m going to look at travel guides for San Antonio, start making lists of stuff I wanna do in Texas³, restaurants to try⁴, people I might know in the area. I bought a handbook for the state master naturalist program that’ll be here next week⁵. I started looking at potential houses, even though it’s still early for that.

I’m planning on letting myself wallow and Eeyore my way through the next seven days, and then I’m going to find the good in this, even if it literally kills me with sun and cedar-elm pollen.

After all, this isn’t the end of the story.

It’s a plot twist.

For now, I’m heading back to my blanket fort with a handful of moss and some pine cones to whine piteously into my bag of cookies. There will be denial and tears. I’ll probably end up locking the door and hermit-ing myself for the whole week to keep from annoying everyone else while I’m, y’know, being annoying.

Then it’s time to accept and embrace this new chapter.

Even if I really, really don’t wanna⁶.

1. How are there even more of these to cull? My car is literally full of books. Literally. I can’t see out the rear-view mirror because the back and the passenger seats are full. of. books. You’d think there wouldn’t be more than that, but OH DEAR READER, THERE ARE.

2. We’re talking sighing upon the moors type gothic melancholy. I was just missing a message from Heathcliff and a not-dead wife in the attic.

3. Typing this, my inner teenager seriously just piped up with “THAT’LL BE A SHORT LIST.” and this is why I need this attitude check.

4. That will, in fact, include many iconic taco restaurants, because I still maintain that tacos are medicinal.

5. I have this mantra that I’ve always thought was true: everything is interesting if you look at it closely enough. Time to apply that to the freaking desert, even if I think I hate the desert. Rubber, meet road.

6. Insert a shot of me stomping my feet and whining and doing that annoying teenage eye-roll with my arms all limp by my side like all the teens in the Sims 4. It really is that ridiculous.