Ass Mode

Do you know someone? Sure you do, you're a superstar. But how many people do you really know? I'm talking about intimacy, tried and true. It's knowing when a person is about to burst with anxiety, and being the only one able to bring them back from the brink. Rachel does that for me. Friday, after a particularly long week, I came home to pizza, Kombucha, and two cupcakes from Whole Foods...all my favorites. She encouraged copious amounts of TV, and left me in peace as I saturated my brain with sugar, salt, fat, and mindless television. If that isn't love...

As cliché as it sounds, its a two way street. I am an expert at detecting the slightest hint of anxiety in Rachel's voice. With a mind running on warp speed, she can sometimes be forgetful, losing things like her keys. There are sign posts that she's going to the 'Bad place' and I step in as soon as I hear her starting to retrace her steps out loud. I find whatever she's looking for, usually somewhere obvious, and avert a crisis that would inevitably spill onto me eventually, (Like the time she chastised me when two horseflies stalked us all the way up a mountain and she screamed, "Bryan! Fix it!!!")

There's my brother-in-law, The Reverend Austin. Not always the most astute, he at least knows when to back off when I'm in Ass Mode. And I delight in his allowing my intrusions into his life since it reminds me that if I were able, I'd make a damn good therapist.

These are the people that stay with me in the face of my biting anger, when I feel capable of twisting both of their heads off because they take forty five minutes to pick out a pair of shoes. So who knows you?