needles and pins

Knocked out cold from the 24 hour flubug, slept all day, slept all night, woke up feeling reborn, cleaned the apartment, reaffirmed my dislike of certain analysts who read things into what isn't there, knocked out some Christmas shopping, listened to some swank folk sounds thanks to my instructor's band, somehow ended up dancing in a circle all Slavic (something in the blood kicks in what can I say, and when you're joining hands and stomping it's way less hard to do it wrong).

I hear a clank of metal on the floor and realize that I've shed an earring and there's now two little flaps of cartilage where a hole in my ear once was, and knowing that it was only a matter of time because I could feel it dropping lower and lower. Ironic that this happens now and not in the years of tribal gauges and moshpits, but I miss having things hanging there (some combination of vanity and habit) and some quick googling of solutions leads into the murky world of plastic surgeons wanting to nip and tuck and inject. Evidently old women with too much money and too much time in front of the mirror get earlobe surgery to make them look younger and the whole concept of dealing with this kind of thing reminds me of that one Daria episode.

And the specter of addiction hung over this weekend, as it hits hard both in family life and in those I worship with, and while the one is not quite at the same level (alcoholism being a little easier to recover from than heroin), it reverberates through everyone affected. It's hard for me to spout platitudes or make claims of healing and so I pray and I cry and hug and write my phone number on a scrap of paper because I know there's times you just need to call someone and have them listen. It breaks me up to hear the survivors' tales, and the ones who know they have a problem and the ones in my world who can't bring themselves to admit that there's anything wrong.