This is Our Last Dance

FINALS WEEK.

FUCKLE-DOO.

To be honest, I've always treated finals week as a week to... take a bunch of tests. And to have radically reduced class times. For the most part, I've been coasting through these fuckers, I've never had to worry much about my academic performance, but I have to research and write two extensive papers and take a couple of exams on top of them and the whole thing is giving me a wicked migraine. I almost find myself hoping I temporarily lose sight in one eye again that I might feel like my anxiety is justified. As it is, I may just be fooling myself into thinking I'm stressed. I can't really believe it until I go blind.

But, man, at least I don't have to do footnotes. Christ, I hate the prospect of footnotes. Works cited, no problem. Even endnotes I can see doing, though I've never had to, but there's nothing that drains my essence more than having to meticulously, categorically track down and number each and every thought that occurs within my words, so the original thoughts can be quickly and surgically metered out. Fuckers.

Here's a tip: Stop drinking. it's just ridiculous. It's not stupid, it's not irresponsible, it's just ridiculous. How fucking boring are you that you're incapable of having fun unless you alter your consciousness? How fucking horrible is your life that you can't deal with it unless you numb your senses to some degree? How fucking ri-god-damn-diculous can one society be? Teetotaler? Tee-totally.

FUCKERS.

My dad went to the hospital today with a high fever. It's odd to see that much of a man, someone I really do look up to a lot, look so weak and fragile. I had to help him down the stairs, he couldn't keep his balance standing. My dad's three bucks if he's a pound, and I'm a little over half his weight. Regardless of whatever else I could say, my dad, in a whole lot more ways than one, is much more of a man than I am, and it was really weird him needing my support, physically at least. I don't know how I felt about it.

I do know, at one point, that I worried if it would be the last time I saw my dad. If my last memory of him, literally, would be carrying him down the stairs and trying to hold him up as we walked out to the car. Trying to keep him from falling over while he put on his shoes, fighting for balance, and how only his leaning on my arm against the wall could have broken it. And I was supposed to hold this man up?

I always secretly worried that my dad was dissapointed in me, he being such a tremendous athlete in his youth and me being KING OF DRAMA CLUB! I learned later in life that my dad's real passion was literature, that he'd been an English major and had wanted to teach, to become a professor, so maybe my scholasticism and complete reliance on the more cerebral aspects of life were more of a boon than I'd imagined. And, of course, then came the fighting and the beating and the constant physical exertion and the extreme tolerance to pain, so I had that to fall back on, showing my dad his boy's a man (he said, entering html code to make the word look bold).

He's back at home now, he's going to be fine. I don't know if they'd tell me if something was really wrong or not, but from all I can gather he's going to be fine. The weather's bad for him. I know I'd feel terrible if something happened to my dad while he was still working. He slaved, killed himself, his entire life just to provide for his family, getting up at four in the morning every day, and that's only now that he has a really posh position, not like when he had to work nights. No, he had to climb ssubstantially up the ladder in order to get to wake up before the sun does. My dad goes to work before God's out of bed. Retirement's going to be so nice for him. I see how he gets when he's at the beach for the week or two he takes during the summer. I'd love to see him like that indefinitely.

In the meantime, will I get a high-paying job which I'll only be able to work a day or two a week at. yet that alone will not only sustain me, but represent a doubling of my previous earnings at a fraction of the work time? Will I be able to have a job that will make me happy and suit my needs? Will things work out?

No, most likely not.

BUT STILL! THE SUSPENSE!!!

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Make the world look bold would be a great title for a book of fonts. Or something.