Headed back to Arizona tomorrow.
Not sure why I’m dreading it so intensely tonight, but I am.
I know it’s important that I see my family, and I do love my family and I do enjoy spending time with them.
It’s just that I associate Arizona with pretty much every single emotionally devastating event of my life. Not all of them, but the vast, vast majority. I feel like Arizona is where my emotional stability goes to die. And I’m doing so well these days, and I just don’t want to get all fucked up in the head again, and I feel like Arizona has this way of taking all the mental health I’ve worked so hard to create for myself and sucking it up into this black Scottsdale hole where I have to battle the densest forces of gravity to get it back. And I’m not 22 anymore. I can’t do that shit over and over again. I have to figure out a way to be in Arizona and not let it chip away at my sanity. I just have to remember to stay in very close contact with God and be mindful of all the things in my life I have to be grateful for. I have to remember to live in the now, and remember that today is not last year and today is not high school and today is not middle school and today I am not helpless. Today I get to choose what hurts me and I get to choose how I react. I can exist on that plot of land without fixating on what’s buried beneath.
To give myself something about the experience to look forward to, I have rented a very expensive car for the week.
To quote the wise words of the wealthy mother of a dear childhood friend of mine: “Money can’t buy you happiness, girls, but it sure does help.”
