Chicken Rain

It poured while I walked home from work last night. POURED. I walked around puddles and tried to avoid hitting people with my umbrella while I tried to figure how what it smelled like outside. About 10 minutes in it hit me: downtown DC smells like Hooters chicken wings and wet dog when it rains. It doesn't smell like trees, summer, or hot pavement. It doesn't smell like cozy days under blankets or like the gym at my high school on stormy days. It smells like chicken wings and dogs.

Missing things creeps up on me. It's a slow creep towards the cliff of sadness that I never recognize as a cliff until I'm mid-fall to nowhere. The push over the cliff is usually something small. Like getting the wrong coffee order. Or chicken rain. Or one too many late nights at the office. Or hearing that song you played power hour to in college and remembering what it felt like to laugh (drink) so hard you puked. PS: don't ever play power hour.  

I sometimes confuse that missing things feeling with being pathetic or not trying hard enough. I give myself pep talks about how lucky I am and how whatever I'm feeling pathetic about is over and I should suck it up and be an adult and focus on now. 

I think that sometimes works. It works until the weight of missing things becomes so heavy that if crushes all those pep talks. I'm grateful for forays into the past like trips to Austin. For commuter planes to Shreveport. For college reunion weekends where we just play drinking games in the hotel. Those little refreshers can stave of some crushage. But not all of it. Not all the time. Not when there is chicken rain and some things you can't ever get to again no matter how many planes you take.