The thing about moods is they’re so mercurial, at least mine are. The other day I was moved to tears of happiness talking about the farm. By the end of that day I was storming around the office looking for someone to push into oncoming traffic.
Okay, granted, I’m no longer on any mood stablizing medications and that may have been an ill advised decision. Sometimes the mood swings are just that, my mood swings. I’m a moody bitch. I get it.
Writing is a mood changer. I’ve been writing the other blog, thedirtygirldiaries.com, about the wild and crazy days of Times Square and NY in the 70’s & 80’s. Those were also the wild and crazy days that almost killed the Jodi.
I’ve been reading everything I can, remembering, going through photos, watching films and documentaries. I’ve been looking for that tear in time. I want to see it all with sober eyes so I can tell you what it was like to be there then. It’s a hard thing to remember. Hard because of the blackouts and the insanity; hard because I’m trying to remember things that happened when I was busy trying to forget everything.
I’m always surprised when someone from that time & place shows up alive, it was that bad, it was that much of an otherworld kind of existence, a parallel universe. There’s a smattering I know today that are okay and a few that are well, still a little stuck.
And then there is Facebook and the way you can find the most unlikely people. And suddenly, there was E. I don’t know how to refer to him, we weren’t really friends. He managed the bar I worked in that his father owned. We were junkies together. I was his sister’s friend, his father’s lover. And his brother’s, and his. How are we all not dead? How is it that he and I are alive and intact enough to be able to navigate a keyboard? And what is that background in his Facebook profile picture that looks suspiciously like a prison? Can you get Facebook in prison?
I was desperate to get out of my skin then, to not be wherever I was, to kill anything that resemebled a feeling. So I guess it’s no surprise that writing about the then, remembering who I was, can plunge me back into a dark, violent mood. And I guess I need to be grateful, that I’m on this side and darkness is a mood these days, and something I know will pass.
I didn’t know that then.
