I got off my birth control pill two months ago and now my nerves are wrecked. I'm a little razor honed by rampant hormones, crying then raging, ticked off by some minor thing, or a memory pulled from the archive of my inopportunistic mind. Every day I wake up, boobs sore and head aching and throat parched, from dreams of vengeance, on the bullies of the past, my ex-husband, certain politicians, priests, on myself most of all, all the former, more naive, inarticulate, blundering, asinine selves. You're a jerk, I tell myself, you don't know how to leave things alone.

I don't know how to process, beyond the realm of dream. Sometimes I blame the internet, our capacity, gift or curse, to collect images and text, quotes and landscapes, essays and animals, the beautiful and the weird, in tumblr and Facebook and flickr, second homes for our infinite selves, selves made purely of desire, rather than experience and meditation. The interior is crowded with the dusty relics of the past and the shiny objects of the future; the present remains inscrutable.

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