Death Comes in Threes

Well, death comes in threes, and last week it was Nate Dog and Mikey and yesterday it was Liz Taylor.

I'm sick of being in my rut.

I feel very trapped by my life right now.

I keep thinking about Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, where he's trying to bargain with Jody Foster, and he says, "What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water," and he has this look on his face that is really hopeful, and his eyes are on fire with excitement because he's envisioning something better than right now.

I'd like to have that Hannibal Lecter face, where thinking of something good gives me hope. I always think about walking West on Washington and looking out at Venice Beach, at the ocean and the sun and all of the weirdos, and the Santa Monica Pier and all of those mountainous hills of Malibu on the right. That's what I think of a lot. I remember feeling like, "This is it," when I'd look out at the water. It made me feel whole or something. I'm not sure that's what I want anymore, though. If I had been sure, I wouldn't have left, right?

I wonder what it is that I actually want.

I've been stagnant for a solid year and I'm a little bit afraid that I've lost myself for good. I keep hearing this echoing, "Rachel has left the building," envisioning all of the lights at the FedEx forum shutting off with that resounding "POW!" followed by a resounding silence. I am struggling with my faith. Not just my spiritual faith but my faith in myself and my faith in people and my faith that things are going to get better.

I talk to one of my friends a lot about the quarter life crisis that we're enduring, and something we often discuss is that it's sometimes frustrating to know that what you THINK in your mind logically can conflict so strongly with what you FEEL. I KNOW that things will get better, I KNOW that life will, eventually, work out - but I FEEL like digging a hole in the backyard and just sleeping in it until I'm about 35 because I feel like I can't handle one more second of my life right now.

I keep thinking that if my quarter life crisis is this bad (and it truly is the worst stage of my life I've yet to endure), then I am very, very concerned about my impending mid life crisis. I can just picture me 20 years from now, getting tons of Botox, driving to Vegas, stealing some hunky gas attendant named Jose away from his family as I drive through Arizona and making him be my cabana boy, wearing mini skirts and sparkly heels and getting extensions and blowing through money on red Corvettes and Louis Vouittons and Nike Shox and Ed Hardy hats for Jose....

Seriously. I'm not handling my current QLC well, so the fast approach MLC is really going to be a doozy.

I'm not even sure what I think is fun anymore.

I'd like to just quit everything that I'm doing right now and take a road trip. It could be my own, white trash self-discovery/Tibetan spiritual journey equivalent. I want to leave this depressing building RIGHT NOW and just take my keys and my Chapstick and start driving until I reach some sign in the middle of a prairie somewhere that says "You are not insane. You do not have a terminal illness. You do not have bad karma. God is not punishing you. You're going to make it. YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT."