I managed to snare about 25 whole minutes to myself on a day that had become so chemically induced dreary that I found myself comparing my life matter of factly to the rain soaked and blackened cigarette butts in the outdoor ashtray, and I used it to go grocery shopping. It really seemed like nothing could make me feel normal, from the moment I woke up, and continuing on even into the words I'm typing, and that's fairly normal in itself for me. I refuse to call it mental illness because I'm not drooling on myself or throwing cats at the neighborhood children, but its certainly something, a Whatever it is, capital W, that I've had lurking throughout my life. Its not depression. And contrary to the catch-all phrase I've used most of the time in order to convince doctors to give me the drugs that worked, its really not anxiety either. I haven't had a true anxiety attack in years, and many years before that, and so on. I don't particularly enjoy the company of other human beings but I wouldn't call it social anxiety so much as disliking the pressure of having to remain interesting longer than my fleeting potentially interesting thoughts. And the energy it takes to put those thoughts into words and then say them out loud to other people? Not typically worth it. My particular Whatever it is likes to specialize in rage and self depreciating paranoia, to a degree that makes for some entertaining thoughts once I'm done UN-convincing myself that bizarre imagined events are not, in fact, actually happening. I don't know if there's a good med for that, but I do know that if there is, I don't want it. In fact, I've been un-medicated for almost two months now and even though it brought the percentage of days per month where I was a fully functioning member of society down about 50%, I'd say that's pretty marginal compared to the reward I feel when I manage to logic myself out of a bout of pending bat-shit-crazy-insanity, all on my own.
Before leaving for my blessed 25 minutes of kid free store time, I was out on the deck smoking a cigarette inside of what is probably one of the sunniest days I've seen all summer, with a sky way bluer than I've seen in my entire life, bluer than photoshop, and I was wondering if it was not some kind of ominous omen of horrible things to come. And I stopped on the way in to dump the aforementioned water soaked and blackened ashtray and my head involuntarily said to me "that ashtray is like your life." It amused me, because I knew it couldn't be true, that my life was actually pretty good, but there's a part of my brain that says things it knows it shouldn't say but says them anyway just to piss me off. When I came back in, I saw Vincent laying on the floor playing with his toys and his eyes were reflecting a fairly similar blue to the photoshop blue, and I thought this is when any functioning person would think to themselves "..and then I saw my beautiful child's beautiful blue eyes and everything was just alright again," but that didn't really happen. I love my child the very most, like mothers are supposed to do, but despite how pretty his little blue eyes are, more often than not, his loud trumps my quiet, and there's not any serenity to be obtained in looking at him. So instead, that stupid brainvoice that's usually louder than logic, laughs at me and says "yeah, but you still suck."
I got myself into the car, and Frank started playing. Usually Sinatra is a pretty good bet when it comes to cheering up, but like I said, I'm not depressed. I wasn't sad, I was just Whatever (the capitalized kind), and while my ears were perfectly happy to hear my CD start up, most of the pleasure I get that's derived from music is the act of singing along with it and reassuring myself that I can indeed still sing in tune despite about ten years of being a cigarette smoker. And I really didn't feel like singing.
I did, though, park open windowed next to an elderly woman putting her groceries into her car, and turn up The Girl from Ipanema so that she could possibly be reminded of her childhood. Maybe its a stereotype to think that old ladies all like Frank Sinatra, sort of like all black people like fried chicken, but I happen to like both Frank Sinatra and fried chicken (and I'm neither old nor black), and if those are the gifts I have to give, it doesn't hurt anybody to try and offer them.
I intercepted a cart being returned by a very regular looking middle aged suburban mom type looking woman, and was absolutely shocked at the happiness and volume that came out of my mouth when I smiled and said "I'll take that!" And then I proceeded to follow the funeral procession through the doors, around the bend, and into the store, both ahead of and behind other people with the same shopping cart, entering and exiting just like every other person on any other day, and I was just taking notice of the organic mustards and garlic marinade stand that was strategically placed so that barbecuers alike could grab them on the way in, wondering to myself if I had yet become the organic mustard and garlic marinade type of person, when I saw Them.
Them with a capital T - and They were right in front of my path to the mediocre and boring items on my shopping list, like chicken and cereal bars and milk and eggs and prepackaged salad mix because I was too lazy to pay ten times less for a head of lettuce and break it apart myself - Them. They. Those.
Tomatoes. Not just any tomatoes though. They were locally grown, by real people, without steroids and pesticides and shiny fruit spray. They were organic. They were a little bit more expensive. And I didn't care.
I'm not some new age hippie that gives a shit about organic food. Sorry, but I refuse to raise a stink about GMO foods when I know that sometime this month I'll order a garbage plate and eat it with six beers or a big cup of Mountain Dew. All of the unhealthy processed food products I've consumed in my lifetime have spoken for me on that issue, and I don't have any judgement to dole out to companies that want to ease the cost and tediousness of food production so that assholes like me can walk the funeral procession into the grocery store and bring home way more food than necessary for their overweight families. I'm not judging, because I'm not different.
But tomatoes...they are quite possibly my favorite food item ever. And yet I almost never eat them because its nearly impossible to grow, or locate, a tomato as it should be. The crap I usually see passing by in the store is not only full of all the stuff that the organic hippies are lobbying against, but they are underripe, overripe, the skin is slightly wrinkled, there's a bruise, they smell wrong, and when you get them home, they taste like they're made out of wax.
These were not only real tomatoes grown locally by real human beings without pesticides or hormones or bells or whistles, but they looked perfect. The perfect tomatoes. Flawless tomatoes. No wrinkles, no dents. The color was uniform. The sign said they were picked and delivered that day. Off a vine, a real honest to goodness vine. That grew out of some dirt. Even my expert gardener father-turned-farmer couldn't grow tomatoes this pretty. The first thing I did was pick one up and sniff it. It smelled like a tomato.
Then, I filled a bag with them, ever so gently, because throwing caution to the wind and buying too many of the more expensive tomatoes with wild abandon is about as adventurous as I get these days. I didn't even want to put them into the cart, for fear of dinging one of them and ruining the whole thing. I found myself wishing they made special tomato pillows for the cart seats, satin and velvet lined with tassels coated in solid gold, something that would protect the only real tomatoes I'd seen since last year's yield of my dad's garden from any bumps or bruises or unhappiness they may experience on my trip through the store. I was thinking that I might not even eat them, I might just look at them until they went bad, and I wouldn't even take pictures because I didn't want to share them with anyone the way I would share Frank and fried chicken. The voice, though, knew better, and reminded me that of course I was going to eat them. And then I smiled.
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