Another night in the car

I love the car bed and I love my laptop and I love my lungs. Too much inhalation of mysterious particles to which my body doth protest, too many days in a row and here I have landed once more, sleeping in the car tonight with no better option, and this time only semi-prepared—I could stand another blanket or two, to be honest. Nobody wants to hear about suffering, especially due to weird allergic reactions that are incomprehensible to most, even to me, who has had them all my life, following generations of family members with the same. I am, quite frankly, homeless, and this, because of strange and uncontrollable circumstances. Not financial ruin. Not alcoholism. Not war or natural disaster or fire. Allergies in transitional times. Say freakin’ what? And this is not the first time it’s happened. Tell someone you are homeless because of allergies and they will think you are a certified nut-bar. Well, call me crazy, I just don’t give a ---- anymore—
Really.

When you have gone for days and days w/o enough oxygen, nothing really matters anymore except that very physiological fact. It even trumps sleep deprivation, its sidekick, which I have also in my company. To make matters even more interesting, my procrastinated upper left dental project has started to ache and swell in the middle of this crisis. There are seemingly no choices, yet my sexi flexi-mind re-minds me that there always are. Things could always be worse. Seen through the roses, this old car interior is like an upscale tent, and there is the nice bed I built into it. I have laptop luxury. I have clean water and I am rurally parked so I have enough darkness to sleep, no police harassment, and pee freely just outside my four doors. The weather is just right—not too hot, not too cold, and hardly any bugs. I have a jug of clean water. I happen to have a Tylenol in my purse. In a state of acceptance of the now, things couldn’t be any better, and they’re not great but they could be worse. The kids I serve as nanny think the car bed is cool and they are right. Seen at best it’s a groovy studio apartment on wheels. Let’s roll…

The biggest evil in this and any challenging situation in life is the worry monster. The worry monster freaks you out and grabs your calm and flails it about recklessly. The worry monster grips at all your innovativeness, creativity, problem-solving power and optimism. It seizes your soul, robs you of sleep and a sense of humor, makes your symptoms worse. The worry monster is the enemy, and must be shot down by any means necessary. Cool tunes, midnight car-blogging, scribble art on the interior, car yoga, absolute childlike behavior, a dedication to the delightful in the most seemingly awful of circumstances; a refusal to be a victim, and a vicious, vicious dedication to ‘glass half full’ ideology in action, or, failing that, to ambivalence at least.

It’s a starry starry night, I am safe, and it is summer. I have a toothbrush and there is no reason for panic, doom and gloom, depression, tears, or nightmares. In this moment I am both the most threatened and the most protected human being on the planet, my experience spanning a wide expanse of lived realities throughout time and space. The car bed is cool. The car bed is eternal. The car bed could be better but right now, it has to be just fine.