I had a huge breakdown on Friday night, the kind of breakdown that leaves me sobbing and hyperventilating and physically paralyzed with tense muscles, just hours before our friends with the two little boys were to arrive for the weekend. A combination of isolation, work stress, and generally feeling unappreciated piled up on top of me until I collapsed under the weight. I don't remember everything that I said, but I remember our shy cat uncharacteristically hovering at my right knee through the event.

I should just quit my job, or at least go on stress leave, but I worry that avoiding the issues that stress me out will just perpetuate the problem. I need to figure out how to relax and calmly work through some of these things instead of quietly trying to stop myself from crying about things that I imagine just roll right off other people. So anxious, my nervous habits are getting worse - embarrassing things that I do unconsciously like cracking my knuckles, biting my nails, and pulling out single strands of hair. If I were in a cage, I'm sure that I would be weaving and pacing.

On Saturday, as I was prepping food for lunch and dinner while the kids played inside-outside with the sliding glass door, Daniel called to ask me to pick him up. The Pathfinder died; the alternator the suspect. Still foggy from the previous night, this set me off into a more private breakdown, as having company isn't conducive to adult tantrums. As I drove to pick him up, as I waited in the car outside of the auto parts store, and as we waited for the tow truck I was silent, heart racing, mind foggy like a persistent hangover. Worried about the cost, the inconvenience, and having to deal with a mechanic just three days after picking up the Honda from having had $3,500 worth of body work done because the kid across the street backed into it.

In many ways, having our friends over was therapeutic. Company is a good antidote for depression, and their little boys are so gentle and loving that I can almost imagine what it must be like to have your own kids. I pushed the two year old on the baby swing; he sat on my lap going down the slide. I carried him around the house on my hip as if I'd done it a million times before. They're easy like that.

And Laura, she's a spiritual healer. She did some work on the shy cat and on me, and her conclusion is something to do with Vivaxis, which I will have to read up on because I've never heard of it. Something to do with your energetic connection to the earth.

I don't know. There's so much going on in my head right now. Images of my boss coming into my office and childishly telling me that he doesn't want anything to do with a project that I've been struggling through with little help from him asides from criticism, of little boys sucking pieces of my home canned peaches into their sticky mouths in the angelic Sunday morning light, of the upstairs bathroom covered in drywall dust with various exposed pipe connections, of the massive leaves of devil's club trembling in the forest as we barrel through the trails on our mountain bikes.

The longest day. The sky finally fades at 11pm. Bread baking in the oven, granola cooling on trays on the counter. Sprinkler swaying back and forth over the thin lawns. Mosquitoes cling to the outside of the screen door. Life is large and small, and I am moving wordlessly through it.