freaking out in august

does any one else have a bad case of the jitters? i know summer in new orleans is damn near impossible and this malaise settles over the city like los angeles smog but i have been way more out of sorts. i can't sleep and when i do, i have horrible dreams. i am walking around like a zombie. i'm fucking things up left and right...just ask my girlfriend, if she's still my girlfriend and god i hope she's still my girlfriend. i don't think i made the connection until i began talking with several of my friends, none of which have been sleeping, and one person mentioned the approach of the dreaded anniversary of the disaster. you can't help but think what you were doing this time in 2005. who your friends were. where you worked. where you lived. decadence was coming as was the promise of cooler weather. the heat can't last forever right? and then august 29th and BAM, the world as we knew it ended. i still have missing friends and i don't know if they moved away or drowned. i doubt i will ever know but i think about them a lot this time of year. i think about all the ones we have lost since then as a result of violence, stress, or depression. the ones that over dosed or killed themselves and others. sometimes i think that it's not even right to be here in the month of august, that maybe the whole city should just shut down and remember but we don't ever forget, do we? we go on and we do it with style. we will dance half naked in the streets during decadence. we will dance because we can. we will dance because so many of us can't. because the streets are no longer flooded. see ya there.