It's been hard, these last few weeks. I knew they would be, was scared of them, dreaded them, and when they arrived they were so much worse that I'd expected.

And their timing couldn't suck worse.

Oh my god, for a shortcut to fall out of love.

And everything else, the edges and the seams and the pieces in between... they aren't so good either.

Out with a friend, her newly single and reveling in it... and I find out just how invisible I am. Funny, I don't remember engaging my cloaking device.

Driving home, thinking of all the things I'm probably not supposed to be thinking about, feeling sad in a nameless sort of way, feeling lost in a mapless sort of way, feeling disconnected in a distressing sort of way... I couldn't take the cd that was playing anymore. It was dark and I reached up at random and picked another. Beirut started playing and it was perfect. I couldn't have chosen any better. Sounded old and foreign and not tied to any mood or enforced feeling. Not happy or sad music, but not ignorable music. And then I passed a church sign, and instead of the 'witty' little words they usually have that produce vague feelings of ill-will in me, this simply said "CHEER UP". And I thought, okay... there's your sign.*

I turned the music up and up and up and felt somewhat better, somewhat calmer, somewhat... No, I didn't. But I wanted to, and that's something.

(* I don't believe in signs. Even more so, I don't believe in church signs. But just that morning I'd read a framed piece of artwork on a wall in a house I was taking pictures of that talked about looking for signs. Something about someone looking for signs and then dreaming an angel said "this is what you've been looking for" and they said "oh, so this is the sign?" and the angel laughed and then the person decided from then on, everything would be a sign, as long as it was accompanied by laughter. All that to tell you that seeing that "CHEER UP" and the wry laughter that unexpectedly bubbled up in me at it made me think of that piece and wonder about signs and their likelihood.)