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This guy hit a raccoon today, along a residential part of a fairly busy street, cars whizzing by on either side. He had to pull his little red car to the curb, turn his flashers on, and cross the street to flag down a police car, because the raccoon wasn't dead; it was twitching and turning round and round, trying to die, right there in front of this poor guy's car. The guy looked distraught — palm to forehead, hand on hip, pacing. He just had to stand there while cars passed by and the pitiful fat raccoon he hit ran in little circles, delirious from impending death.

I hit a raccoon once. It was a big one and it ripped off a piece of plastic under my bumper.

I was just careening along, probably singing along to some bad music, and I obliterated some poor, random raccoon.

And it's really not fair, is it? That things can be accidentally killed, just nudged off the table, plink!

There should be no death but that which is chosen by the dying.

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I'm not sure what I'm doing here anymore. Everything is completely screwed up. Nothing is like I thought it would be. My meticulous life planning has brought me this far and then shoved me out of the back of the van. It feels a little like freefall, but it's incredibly inert and suffocating. There is nowhere to go here that doesn't make me wish I was somewhere else. But where, I don't know. Maybe I should move back in with my parents and spend some time in the country, with dirt and shit. Learn how to ride a horse. Learn how to set broken bones. Watch my nephews grow up like a proper aunt. Listen wistfully at the local gossip. Re-embrace my country twang. Meet a redneck who's good with tools and marry him and have two grubby children we will raise with rigid ideas about gender and religion.