Marching in my grownup heels from the m�tro to the towering glass spires of the bank, I felt great crystalline wings unfurling out behind me, slicing the rain into ribbons in my wake.
I walked with my head held at the height of a hunting amazon (yet still in full posession of my breasts).
None of the construction workers called out to me today.
On the packed m�tro car I had two agressors this time, the taller one with his pathetically erect penis rubbing against my right hip, the other rubbing against my left thigh.
Something was different this time, or perhaps the same as longer ago, as I grinned right into his eyes before tripping right into him and sending him sprawling into the chest of a very large, very amused, rastafarian man.
I stepped away from the snivelling goo on my left, standing behind a smiling woman and joining her in teasing giggles from the little brown bundle in her arms.
Today when the big boss at the bank asked in his suspicious way if we were actually doing anything productive, rather than try to come up with all the little things I could think of, I told him frankly of the problems we'd run into and where I thought we were now.
It was his turn to point out the positive aspects of our progress.
Last night I decided to pamper myself before climbing up my stairs and setting about weaving neat cornrows in the mass of options facing me.
Wandering into the indian restaurant at the base of my stairs I found it empty save for the waitress and a woman from Sri-Lanka who announced that she was having a bad day and that she needed distraction.
We talked while we waited for my "please make it as spicy as you would eat it, not white person bland" shrimp and nan, of siblings and piano lessons and immigration to France and work and play and violins and horoscopes and the men in our lives and how Leos are good to gallop through exotic jungles with.
Powerful conversation, to say the least.
Falling asleep last night my dreams were not the confused nightmares they might easily have been.
Pitting my stresses against an open mind last night, asking large questions and swallowing the answers whole, I think I'm ready for most scenarios, when I ask myself what I want, I cleave through the doubts with wings I'd forgotten I'd grown long before my first acid trip, and I am left beating them with a monstrous determination against the wind of a furious mountaintop.
Just the way I like it.
And somewhere inside, without wanting to pay compliments or pay tribute to a not necessarily relevent affection, I have Mr. Pyke to thank for a reminder of this strength.
Watching his impermeability to his own stresses of the last months and at the same time learning just a little from his corporate-whoring-related POVs, I remember what strength is, and suddenly the word stress is no longer so intimidating.
Fuck stress. The only people who get taken down by it are the ones who want to. University was full-time work and full-time classes hell with rent to pay and plain pasta dinners, I'm still way ahead of that game.
I remember how to fly. Sometimes the wind tears holes in my gossamer, but I am unashamed of bearing that weakness like the trophy to learning and courage that it is.
Holes like that heal swiftly with enough exposure to the sun.
And the next time I stand at my window watching the cour fade into distant visions of unfamiliar cities versus more mundane options, when I feel the doubts come creeping up my spine, I will use these great wings to beat off the senseless fears borne of intimidation, and sort the remaining questions into multiple-choice answers.
I'm a geek. I solve things for a living.
I've been doing it for years.
Incidentally, that horseshoe was still firmly ensconced in my nether regions upon retiring to bed last night. A coworker of geekslut's whom I had the opportunity to work with at my previous company seems interested in my resum�. Given how much I respect this guy, and given that the company seems right up my fucking alley, I'm pretty happy about that being one of my major options. It must be a really BIG horseshoe, for the first bite on my resum� to be that pretty.