Free (098)

As a kid, I was given the freedom to explore my surroundings, including my entire neighborhood. It started with just the loop I lived on in the mobile home park, and then I was trusted to explore the entire neighborhood. Yes, I grew up in a modular home community. People were quick to call kids there “trailer trash,” but it was mostly a very nice community. It was clean, save for a few yards, and most people were kind. I knew which areas to hang out in and which to avoid. 

There were those asshole kids, don’t get me wrong. They lived or hung out in the areas that I avoided. Mean, nasty bitches, that would comment about everything and make fun of me and my couple of friends. We never really fought back, just told them to shut up and rode off on our bikes or rollerblades. 

I realized today that I can be a nasty bitch sometimes now. She comes out too much, and I don’t like her. Sometimes she just sneaks out, like in shitty comments to people I really admire. Why the fuck would I point out their grammatical error in a tweet? Because something was bothering me, probably. That’s such bullshit. I don’t like myself when that happens, and it used to happen too much. Bitchy Andrea needs to stay hidden until she’s needed. There are situations where she will come in handy, but not in front of people I enjoy and respect. 

This started as something about the freedom I feel when I’m on my bicycle and turned into something about how I hate myself sometimes. Good grief. 

There has been a lot of bad news lately. Mike’s family suffered a big loss on Friday. It’s not public yet, and I don’t want to out what happened before they do, but it was quite tragic. And on Wednesday, Grannie was admitted to the hospital at the request of her cancer doctor. The cancer in her mouth is back. It was in her lower jaw bone the first two times. Now it’s in her cheek, and it’s not good. I mean, when is cancer good? It’s been infected and causing issues with her kidneys, which are already bad. They might not be able to do anything with the cancer if her kidneys cannot handle it, which is what it’s looking like. I’m going to visit her tomorrow afternoon.

This still isn’t about freedom on wheels. This is my brain. I cannot stay focused, and it makes for long days sometimes. Today, Mike and I cleaned the downstairs so that we can have people over on Monday, and the day went very quickly. It felt good to get this area nice and cleaned up because it’s been quite a disaster for the past month. Anyway, I feel free when I have wheels under me, and we pulled our bikes out of the garage today for the first time in a couple years, and that was nice. Wow, that’s what I wanted to say this entire time, and now my right wrist and brain are so done with writing that I have nothing wondrous to say about it.