The war has stepped up a notch. Can you feel it? Some of us are getting slammed so hard we can’t avoid it.

It was everywhere this weekend. And this is coming out of the mouth of a perpetually cynical eye-roller. But I witnessed it firsthand, all weekend. Even at home.

Someone’s been breaking into my house. I first discovered my front window open about an inch in January. I thought that was strange, but figured I just hadn’t closed it all the way from the last warm spell we had. So I closed the window. Strange thing was, though, that the way the window was built, it wouldn’t latch. Of course, I didn’t work too hard at it. I mean, I live on a well-lit street in a quiet subdivision. Right?

Saturday night I sat in my car with a chill running down my spine. The same window I’d closed over a month before was open again. Just an inch or so.

With the same fury that during my junior year in college propelled me into my apartment when the door was laying in rubble on the floor, I launched into my house and made fast and furious rounds. It’s really a good thing no one had been there. They wouldn’t have survived.

I hauled myself to the window, ripped up the blinds, and slammed that window fully open. The screen was no problem to slide up. And the ledge in front of the window was slightly bent. I was livid. I slammed the window down as hard as I could, got up in the bay, and knelt on it … At this point I could actually lock it. So, that’s done.

Tonight was insane. Everyone was flipping out. Max was getting distress cries from every corner of the city. He even got a call from out of state letting him know his best friend had turned up missing. Another friend of his wigged out from visions and dreams and now refuses to be alone. Max can’t find anyone to stay with her.

On top of all this madness, Max’s entertainment lawyer needs copies of his new music to take with him to the South by Southwest music festival on Monday, and Max needed to get labels created for them. So, between creating art for his CD, running this way and that across the city and dealing with a phone that was ringing nonstop, Max was losing it.

I did my own personal round of “insanity” on Saturday night, cursing God and Jesus and Max and my church and my family and my friends and everything else in the middle of the night. I don’t know why. My fury let loose and I was finished with everything. Had I died in my sleep Saturday night, I would have spent quite a long time dancing in fire - apostasy does that to you. So now, with a clear mind drenched in limited partnerships and variable deferred annuities, I could see everything else around me falling to pieces.

Max checked in with me about once an hour. I was at the loft, in the peace and quiet, studying as quickly as I could, and praying for the whole messy situation. I was also counseling Max when he would call in, because when he’s that deeply into a mess he loses objectivity, and unfortunately I was the one he had to hear it from. But I feel sometimes like that’s my job. Don’t ask me. It’s more than I bargained for.

He found his best friend around midnight, and sat him down and talked to him straight about his substance issues. Then Max called me at 12:30am, and I could tell he was at the end of his resources, mentally and spiritually and physically. My concentration was severely waning, and we did our best to prop each other up.

When I called him from my bed, at 2:32am, my call went straight to voicemail. I hope he finally went to bed. Sunday had to end sometime.

Fighting the good fight,

michelle