#33. Hot Water Rising Part 2

On the day of Angel’s show, I heard someone at home mention possible flooding, so in a panic I got in my car and took off.  I got to the end of my driveway, challenging God to take this from me all the way, and looked left to see the river flooded the road completely away.  I told myself none of it means anything.  I looked right, down past the T-intersection and saw the stream had flooded out that road as well.  My blood boiled and I found myself frustrated.  I told myself none of the weird stuff was real, it was all coincidence and I’m normal.  I had one more possible road to take, but the same river flows underneath it about 100 feet from the corner, and I had to drive out to see if it was passable.  I rounded the corner with a prophetic groan of expecting the worst, and felt a little hope just for a moment that this wasn’t another insane coincidental obstacle, because the road was only half gone.  The left lane was still intact, but there was another detail that made my heart sink.  The massive dump-truck dropped 4 or 5 yards of gravel, that’s a really big pile of gravel, right in the middle of the remaining lane, and just drove off.  I sat in my car looking at the mountain in front of me and could feel the tension building, so I cleared my head and got to it.  I came back with one of my dads spade shovels and moved that pile.  When I got to the show, I was all ready to blend in with the crowd and just listen to lyrics, but I didn’t make the connection until it was too late: I was the only one who showed up besides her parents.  The songs were not about me. She turned from the seats and sang towards the bar lol. Long ago she triggered my dissociative fight-or-flight response and it never really went away in general, it was really mentally debilitating, so being new to being a complete idiot, I f*cked everything up, but it’s crazy how insanely different things would be for me if she had ever just put a non-threatening hand on my shoulder for a few seconds. It doesn’t work if I do it. I’m told after that contact I’m a different person, but if I’m that close I’m already shaking and it’s just scary lol, so I wish I could have been that version of me for her, the one whose body wasn’t independently afraid she wanted to kill it.