"Ladies, it ain't easy bein' independent" - Let's Be Real

“Ladies, it ain’t easy bein’ independent”

Sunday night, was the second night in my life, I’ve had a holy crap - I live alone feeling.

The first? I was in Indianapolis.  I had just flown home from a trip to Montreal (je sais, le sigh.) And I felt like crap.  Of course, after flying home - I went out to the local hangout with a few coworkers and just tossed up that crappy feeling to being at 30,000 feet up in the air and flying being generally germy.  

Was very wrong. 

I went home and took a conference call with some of folks in Japan (Arigato!).  The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the middle of my small apartment hallway apparently having been passed out while on this conference call.  Turns out I had a kidney infection and the lack of “taking care of myself” caused me to run a fever so high, my body shut down.  I ended up driving myself to MedCheck the next day (after working a full day, natch) and the nurse freaked out on me when my temperature was 103. 

Je sais, insane. But at least then I passed out.  

The second? Sunday night, I wasn’t so lucky. I essentially woke up at 3:30am to a women in an apartment above me/near me/around me - screaming.  Like bloody murder screaming. For the record, I could sleep thru a parade - and so to be woken up to this SCREAMING.. It was totally disorienting. I hear furniture moving, glass breaking, and a guy yelling…hey, hey, hey. 

Then silence. 

And I froze. I couldn’t move - outside the nervous shaking.  Here I was sleeping in my bed, by myself and couldn’t remember if I’d locked my door.  What if I moved? Got up and this same “hey hey hey” guy could hear that - and knew someone woke up? Do I call the cops? I wasn’t sure where all this came from? 

I’m all about the “all the women who are independent, throw your hands up at me” - but sometimes you need SOMEONE to just be there in some way.