BlackHouse

Broken

2008-09-22T20:45:00.001-07:00

Beat me, please. Beat me, whether it be with your fists or your words, because I deserve it and only through that pain will I truly know myself.

Void

2008-09-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

Standard disclaimers apply

I can feel the void. It’s deep and dark and full and licking at my ankles. I’m standing on the edge, I can smell the sulfur fumes and feel the beads of sweat popping out along my hairline as I think what it would feel like to fall, to fall all the way this time. I’ve flirted with it plenty of times, but always been able to save myself. And slowly, one by one, I’ve cut the strings that tether me to whatever sanity I once claimed, till the point where the slowly unraveling thread that holds me on the precipice is coming apart in slow motion, unzipping just like ropes do in old action movies. And all I can do is watch it happen.

There’s a pressure in my head that doesn’t feel like a headache. If I had a headache I would be able to feel pain. No, this is just a pressure, a fullness, and it makes me dizzy. If I close my eyes will I open them again? Or will the numbness suck me under before I wake up to claw at the edge? The feeling of not caring is disconcerting, but not unfamiliar.

I wonder, absentmindedly, if everyone feels this way sometimes, or if it’s just me. Like I’m on a crash course to disaster, the fast track to nowhere, an endless fuckup that keeps just bashing her head on the brick wall. The definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing but expecting a different result. Bloody yet unbroken, my ass. I’ve been broken for a long time. I keep looking to other people to unbreak me, to show me the way to unbreak myself. And yet I know the way to do that. Or maybe just a way to stay broken so I don’t feel the pain. Either way it feels the same.

Will I ever become the person I want to be? Was I ever that person to begin with? With every passing week I doubt both more and more, and it makes me want to run. But run where? Run from what? Exactly what do I expect to get away from, because the person in the mirror at the end of the day is still somebody I don’t have much respect for, somebody who doesn’t stand up for what she believes and doesn’t say what she means and doesn’t do what she says she’ll do and goddammit I hate people like that. During the times in my life when I’ve actually stood up for what I wanted or what I thought or what I felt, I ended up making somebody angry or uncomfortable and went back on what I had at one point thought was important. What kind of person does that??? The kind of person who doesn’t deserve respect, that’s what kind of person. The kind of person who hates herself and deserves to.

Moving On

2008-09-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

Again, people - read the disclaimer. I wrote this a while back.

All around me are echoes of moving on. From the cups and confetti streamers that litter the breezeways, to the dumpster overflowing with kitchen trash and the raggedy old mattress and box spring that somebody finally decided it was time to throw out. From the failing grass to the thump of the bass coming from somewhere, it’s all about moving on, but is it a sign or a warning? He says I overanalyze things and maybe he’s right. But I’ve got some lady’s lung pudding on my foot and my pantleg and right now I just want to get clean.

Patients aren’t supposed to leave healthy and come back four hours later dead. Happily enough, she pulled through, but that doesn’t stop me from secondguessing, was there something I missed, something a good nurse would have recognized that would’ve been wise to suggest to the doctor? Something I should have thought of but didn’t? Something a fudged set of vital signs didn’t show but that a real set might have? In any event, the poor woman is alive, though I barely could keep her sedated enough to maintain her airway and her blood pressure at the same time, what an interesting paradox. Consciousness getting in the way of the A and the B and the C. It really is easier when the patients are unconscious, it’s so much easier to take the emotion out of the situation then. So much easier to be a nurse.

I’ve got a whole new med to put in my pillminder. Is that how it works? The fuller the little boxes get, the closer I get to being whole? It’s a stretch, but I’ll tell you what: I’ll take it, right now, if the alternative is this shitty purgatory, this damned if I do and damned if I don’t piece of trailer park, count me in and bring on the pills.

He says I’m angry. He says that like it’s a bad thing. But why shouldn’t I be? No, it’s not healthy. But I’ve earned it. I’ve spent enough time being the one who doesn’t need, being the one who can’t show weakness… and I have plenty of it.

I quit believing a long time ago that I was the one in charge of the tears, and so I let them come, and they do, reliably, like old friends, and they leave hot guilty tracks down my face until they’ve made their point. Sliding down my bare chest in fearful rivers, falling onto my lap and making a pattern of dots there on his faded, wadded up holey old t-shirt.

It’s a pretty little handful. An orange one so I can focus and a blue one so I can not be a mommy for the third time. A pearly white one so I won’t fall and break my hip when I’m forty and a clear one to help my scars heal and oh!! if it were only that easy. A pink one to make me happy and a brownish one because it says “stress complex” on the bottle so that has to be good for me, right? And a peach one because vitamins are good for everybody and another white one so I don’t get a cold. And I always wash down the handful of who I want to be with something unhealthy like coke or coffee.

I curl up in the bed, bury my face in the sheets and the pillow that still smell like him, and I cry.

The Road

2008-03-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

Creeping melancholia threatens to overtake me again. To them it looks like tired. To me it feels like dead. The difference matters only in degrees, only in ways that nobody else notices anyway. As the aftertaste of my cola curls my tongue, I absently wonder if what I’m tasting is some contaminant that might kill me. I drain the rest of the bottle in three long swallows.

I can’t remember when it was that I stopped caring, stopped wanting to be happy. Trying, in fact, to sabotage what little was left of our once happy but tumultuous relationship. But what I do wonder is why I attached such significance to it all anyway, why I was so affected by what he thought or whether we were fighting or what he said or the inflection in his voice when he said it, why I cared. There’s a big part of me that thinks I’m better off without him anyway, better off without anyone, free from having to worry about living up to somebody else’s expectations, free from the danger of losing myself in another relationship that doesn’t give me what I need. Maybe it’s because we used to be so good, when there were no promises and no strings and no baggage between us. Well, we did a good job of making baggage, by ignoring the rest, and in the process we became a statistical casualty.

I stand up on the 7-Eleven sidewalk and lob the empty bottle toward the trash can. I miss, but I don’t care enough to pick it up and do it right, and so I walk away, feeling horrible all the time, not sure where I’m going but I’m walking away, away from myself. The old self would’ve picked up the bottle and made some joke to the wino next to the can about a basketball scholarship. The old self wouldn’t feel harder and more wronged by the world than the old bum.

The air is cold and I hope it freezes the feeling, the twinge of what I used to be, hope it freezes that along with the tips of my fingers and my nose. I’m walking along the curb, traffic starting to pick up as all the good people of the world go home from their comfortable jobs to their comfortable homes in their comfortable cars. I wear my pain like a winter coat and I measure out the steps twelve-thirteen-fourteen- NOW! Three quick steps into the street without a backward glance – fuck, I still can’t do it without wincing a little – and am dismayed to hear the same sounds I always hear behind me, tires screeching, the nasal staccato of a horn, rubber yielding to pavement and granting me another day for self-destruction. The whoosh of air to my left as he swerves, he’s screaming something at me as if I cared, I barely even notice the color of the car that failed me. I stand still for a minute before hopping back onto the sidewalk, no need to draw it out long enough for somebody to call the cops. That’s all I need, to be stuck someplace cozy for 72 hours and safe from myself, protected from everything but the bitter black of my thoughts.

I turn west at the next corner, and wonder if my old self would have had the balls to do it the right way, pull the trigger or kick the chair out or drag the blade deep enough and long enough, rather than having to settle for the chickenshit gambling game I’ve been playing because I’m both too scared to live and too scared to die. Roll the dice, leave it in anyone’s hands but my own, because I don’t trust myself to make any good decisions anymore.

Like two Fridays ago in the biker bar, the big grizzly bear leaned up in the corner seemed like a slam dunk after too much booze and blow, sure he’d be trashed enough to lay his bike down a block or two away once we topped 40. But he got us to his place in one piece, rode better than he walked but he fucked just fine and even made me coffee before he called me a cab in the morning. Didn’t even have the decency to be a nasty rapist or a serial killer, an exciting way for me to go instead of waking up from another pathetic night.

I’ve come to a park I share with a handful of drunks, homeless people, hookers, and high school students from across the street toking up before English. I’ve almost forgotten how cold it is, my only reminder the vapor that hangs in front of my face like a veil. An echo of my old self wonders if anybody will bother me, but deep down I know they won’t. I’ve become the crazy park bench lady that even the crazy people avoid.

I’ve got the hands of a much older woman, always have, right there along with my soul and my lower back – all testament to having made a career of putting my own needs last and doing it well – but the last few months have taken their toll out in flesh. My fingers, sore and cracked just like my lower lip as I self-destruct bite by bite. Pain is the only thing that cuts through the numbness, the fog, makes me remember I’m alive. Sort of like you pinch yourself to tell if you’re dreaming. But not. I know this is real, no doubt about that – the only question is when the feeling will stop altogether.

I wake up and the park bench is hard. It’s nighttime, and I’m glad for the anonymity of darkness. It’s not cold enough outside to freeze to death in my sleep tonight, so I might as well make my way toward home. Who knows, maybe I can have a kitchen accident or slip and fall in the bathtub, I’ll have to put some thought into that.

I walk past a huddled mass on the sidewalk, and I know that it’s Jack, because I used to take care of him in the emergency room when I was alive, but he doesn’t know any better. He was always pickled, and I looked and acted nice. He asks me for some change as I pass, I drop a hearty “fuck you” at his feet and then hope to hear him lunging at my back, listen for the scrape of an empty bottle on concrete as he gets up to knock me cold. But Jack doesn’t care any more than I do, the numbness has got hold of him too and he’s chosen an even slower train for his final departure. A hundred yards or so up the sidewalk, there’s a fat greasy haired old bum laying a hump to an even dirtier woman, they’re both grunting and I would have steered clear in my old life, but tonight I take perverse pleasure in stepping hard on her hand as I pass.

I stand on the street corner for a few minutes, I know passersby are mistaking me for one of the cheap hookers that litter these streets and I don’t care – I’m just trying to figure out which way to get home. Walk? Get a cab? Hitchhike? Catch a bus? It’s almost too late for that. Cabbies in the city are too cautious now to offer me any promise. Walking and hitching seem to be my best worst options, so I bear north.

I can’t have gone more than a couple of blocks when the unmistakable scent of apple pie hits my nose, and it looks to be coming from the little diner up a ways on the other side of the road. The closer I get, the more it smells just like Grandma’s house used to, and that singular odor embodies safety and power and strength and love and longing and all those things that left me long ago. I have a few bucks left in my pocket, and I remember a long time ago reading Kerouac and thinking “Well if he can have apple pie and ice cream for dinner, then why can’t I?” And I decide to do just that. There’s something playing at the edges of my consciousness that feels a little like hope, though I can’t be sure since it’s been so long.
My mouth is watering and I think I’m starting to smile as I dart across the street. This time, without wincing. There are no horns or squealing tires, just a flash of blue and a loud noise and too much air all around me and blue and bright white and spreading darkness. And the smell of apple pie.

Cold

2008-03-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

Cold. Still cold. The water runs and runs, but seems to take twice as long as usual to get warm. Suddenly it hits me. She doesn’t care. Doesn’t care because she’s dead, going on an hour now. But still it matters to me, for reasons I can’t grasp. And so I wait.

When her tiny body finally let go its tenuous grasp on life, the bottleful of milk she’d drunk just before her fateful last nap continued its course and now fills her newborn-size Pampers. The smell of excrement tries to overpower the heaviness of death.

I hesitate for a moment over the box of latex gloves. I can’t. It’s not right. Again, I can’t say why. It just isn’t right. I think of how I would feel if I saw a stranger donning gloves to diaper my baby for the last time, and my heart breaks again.

An hour or so earlier. The medics rush into the room and transfer her tiny limp body onto the gurney. It dwarfs her. It’s all each of us can do to jockey for space to work. We are all quiet. Everybody knows the game’s over. George stands at her head, as powerless as the rest of us to breathe life back into this sweet little body, but as the doctor more responsible somehow. Travis stands solemnly, compressing her tiny chest with two fingers, long hair falling forward to hide the agony in his usually aloof eyes. At his side, I feverishly calculate drug dosages in my head. Push the meds. Wait. Push more meds. Wait. In my mind, the ACLS instructor: “Epi’s for dead people, epi’s for dead people, epi’s for dead people.” She won’t make it, there’s no way. The rest of the team too, we all know it. We’ve done this before, lots of times. It’s just not as easy to keep out of your heart when it’s someone who’s only been in the world for three weeks. Someone who hasn’t even said a word or walked a step or even rolled over. Here’s where you hope to god somebody showed this little girl she was loved in the short time she was alive.

The water’s warm now. Finally. Warmer than the tear that rolls down my cheek, the one I brush away with the back of my ungloved hand. I turn around and move to the bed. Deep breath. Cold. Her feet are cold. I wrap my fingers around them, lift up the scrawny legs that are already starting to stiffen. Finish the task with my warm washcloths. Grief overtakes me, and I let it win. Fasten the tabs of the new diaper as fat tears hit the gurney. Her parents sit numbly by. I wonder if they are comforted or alarmed by my crying. We learned in school that it’s professional to try and keep emotions to yourself, be strong for the patient and the family. Fuck that. If I hit a point where a dead baby doesn’t make me cry, I’m going to auto mechanic school.

Next task, no easier. My chunky trauma shears are hardly the right tool for an angel’s first and last haircut, but they’ll work. A lock into a small plastic bag. This, along with the handprints we’ve just made, are all these two people will take with them of their little girl when they leave this cold and unforgiving place.

Somebody brings a new blanket into the room. I don’t see who, the numbness and tears mar my peripheral vision. I mumble a thanks, lay the blanket on the other end of the gurney, plenty of real estate to spare. Now the really hard part. I pick up her body. Her flesh is starting to mottle, just like the flesh of all dead people. But dammit, this doesn’t happen to babies, it can’t. My soul screams at the injustice. The ET tube juts from her mouth. I swaddle the baby and gently pick her up, hand her to her dad. My eyes sting. The lump in my throat muffles my “I’m so sorry” and that’s okay because it’s a lame thing to say anyway. I have no words. Me, who has a word for everything. Not this time. Not when my heart is breaking into a million pieces. Not when I feel guilty for being happy it’s not me who has to say goodbye so soon after saying hello. Not when I know I have to stay for 7 more hours, when all I really want to do is hug my own kids and tell them I love them.

Cold. The vinyl of the way-too-big body bag is cold. As I lay her in the bag I shudder. Where she’s headed it’s a whole lot colder.

Out

2008-03-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

She walks toward me, meeting my eyes in the brief seconds my gaze rises above the floor in front of me, her ponytail swinging gaily back and forth in mousy brown splendor. She’s chubby and rosy-cheeked and entirely too old for the flowery print babydoll dress she wears, but she doesn’t seem to mind, putting one dimpled and overstressed knee in front of the other. I glance upward again and she’s still looking at me, still eyeing me. What does she want? I drop my eyes again. “Good morning,” she says. I cannot speak. I stop. My feet won’t move. I will them to but they do not obey. I am paralyzed.

“Are you okay?” Her voice sounds nice enough, but I know better. I know she is one of them, can hear the mechanical hiss that I can always hear when one of them is trying to get inside my mind. I try and try to remember the words Jodi told me, the ones that break their grasp on my mind and let me get free without giving away that I’m different.

“How…” I am stuck.

“Do you need directions somewhere?” she asks.

Words failing me, I try to shake my head and do so too violently. Dizzy. I stumble to the left. She reaches out to steady me and her fingers burn into my arm, searing flesh, melting gristle. I jerk away and she looks hurt.

“How do”

She looks at me quizzically. I can feel her fingerprints on my arm, and I look down to see how bad the holes are. There aren’t any, apparently I pulled away soon enough.

“How do you do” I blurt, and it works. My feet promptly listen, and I turn, and run, looking back over my shoulder until the hiss fades. Safely back in my car, I sob into the steering wheel. It will have to wait, I’m drained and exhausted and frightened and I’m sure she’s still waiting there for me.

I can’t remember the first time I felt the otherness of them. Or maybe of myself. On some level I always knew I was different but it never really clicked for me until the first time I saw the blood. Memories of that time are too painful for me, the world coming at me too fast, harrowing discoveries coming two by two and I realized then that I already had too much information, I was never going to be as blissfully ignorant as they are, ever again. I often wonder if it has anything to do with the accident. It wasn’t right after that, that I began to hear the hiss, see the colors, but I cannot remember ever experiencing it before.

The accident. It’s a confusing jumble of memories now, twisted flesh and blistered metal and screams and the coppery smell of blood and all that noise, the horrible noise. When the memory of that day decides to visit me, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I can’t put together the pieces of what was going on, what led to the crash, that much is still buried somewhere in my subconscious – but a glance at the scars on my left knee reminds me of the way my leg was twisted up and onto my lap amidst what was left of the steering column – it’s unnerving, even if you’re stunned, to look over and see your foot, too high and turned the wrong way. Bitsand piees likethat are all I have. Lying on the hard board, strapped down and unable to move, bright lights in my eyes, a balding, ponytailed doctor poking and prodding and barking orders. The way that child screamed “Mommy” as they pulled her out of her car seat and out of view of whatever injuries her mommy had in the front seat of the crumpled minivan. The way the IV bag hooked to my arm swayed in the back of the ambulance and glowed the color of the lights that came through the back window as the paramedic sat over me with no facial expression. And the numbness.

They told me I was drunk. I never get that drunk, I never drink to the point where I can’t drive. Sure, I drink and drive – doesn’t everybody? But I never get behind the wheel if I’ve had too much to be in control. Something else must’ve been going on that night, it’s the only explanation. Maybe one of them put something in my drink. They said the force of the impact crushed the mom, severed her aorta, killed her instantly. The little girl screaming. They told me she’s 5, that now she has to live in foster care because her mom was her only family. When they tell me these things I can see the hatred in their eyes, can hear them silently wishing it was me who’d died instead. Only I can’t tell them the truth, because they can’t hear me back through the TV. I can imagine their offstage comments about how it’s so unfair, how the drunks never have any serious injuries. I can hear the conversations in the hallway outside my room, and they all say the same thing. I want to tell them I wasn’t drunk, tell them about the somebody who put the something in my whiskey sour, but I’m so tired, tired of thinking and tired of caring for today. And the morphine helps me escape that. Under my thumb the button clicks that makes the voices quieter, at least for now.

The world seems angry today. Though the sun shines brightly, everyone I pass has a scowl or a frown on their face. I feel my own furrowed brow and twisted mouth – but I have plenty to be unhappy about, what do these people have for an excuse? These people who don’t have pain constantly in every joint, the people who don’t have the voices screaming at them or just insistently scolding at them, these people who have friends and pets and cozy homes instead of dingy smoke-yellowed apartments and a bottle of cheap whiskey and a basket of pillbottles.

I need to try again. It’s been four days since the last time I tried to come to the pharmacy, cruel joke of fate that it’s in the same hospital, and my painkillers are almost gone. I can’t be without them, they’ve become my only friends. I force myself to get out of the car.

It’s cool in the parking garage. I stand beside my old Buick and look at the fraying edge of the white vinyl top. I look around. Plenty of cars here, maybe I can get down there without too many people noticing me. Deep breath. The concrete under my feet is stained with oil and dirt and the remnants of undrunk coffees and sodas dumped out of cars. My socks are dull gray but I managed to put on a pair of sneakers that match today. There’s a mustard stain at the hem of my tan skirt and my blouse is wrinkled. My hands shake as I smooth down the stringy gray old-woman hair I’ve ended up with, and I need a drink. Maybe I’ll shower tomorrow. But today I’ve got to get more pills.

I pick up my feet, make a conscious effort not to shuffle – people seem to notice me more if I do that – and move toward the elevator. The distance lengthens and stretches just like in the movies, and it’s right over there where she froze me to the concrete a few days ago, but miraculously she’s not standing there waiting for me today. The edges of my vision turn black and I get a little dizzy, and I reach out and steady myself on the back of a Jeep that has an upside down sticker saying “If you can read this, turn me over.” I start to laugh, and almost fall down. Maybe I’m the one who needs turned over.

When the garage quits spinning, I move again toward the elevator and my fingers feel fat as I punch the lighted circle with the down arrow. A second later, the doors open with a whoosh of engine-smelling air and a scrawny brunette with a tight-lipped purposeful stride and a big globe of ratted ponytail pushes past me. But she doesn’t try to talk to me, and for that I’m thankful.

The hallway to the pharmacy window is well-lit and too warm. I pass a middle-aged man in a volunteer’s polo shirt. He smiles warmly at me and when I was alive, I might have found him attractive. But now, he just seems menacing, so I lower my gaze and shoulder past him.

The girl at the window is cheery and asks how can she help me today. I want to tell her there isn’t any help for me, but she’s young and innocent and she doesn’t need to know that one day she’ll end up just like me, old and alone and ugly and waiting to die.

“I need a repill of my-“ I blurt. Nope. Try again. My tongue is foreign in my mouth, uncooperative. “Meed a pain-“

Her smile turns to a look of concern and then she figures it out. “You need a refill on your pain medicine?” I nod dumbly and manage a small smile. “Name?”

“Crandall C-R-A-N-thee…” Shake my head. “Thee.” Blink, shake.

“D-A-L-L?”

I nod, swallow, and push a crumpled twenty across the white formica and say “Jessica” but what comes out sounds more like “Dthezica.” I am beyond trying anymore.

A few minutes later I wrap my fingers around the comfortable girth of the brown plastic bottle, and my hand finally stops shaking, drawing strength from the print that says I have 90 new percocets to make the pain go away. I begin my retreat, back down the bright hallway with the children’s artwork on the walls. Footsteps echo around the corner.

It’s him, the balding doctor with the ponytail and the glasses, and I focus on the click-click-click of his smart black loafers on the tile. He smiles and then his mouth moves but whatever he says is drowned out by the hiss and I see the glimmer of recognition in his eyes. I break into a clumsy run and am out of breath when I reach my car a few minutes later. My grip around the bottle is so tight my fingertips are white, and my knee is screaming.

I fumble with the cap and shake a few pills out into my sweaty hand. Ten, twelve, I don’t know how many, maybe more, I just want the pain to stop, and I wash the handful down with a swallow of hot flat Pepsi from a bottle I found under the seat. I close my eyes and wait for my heart and my breathing to return to normal, wait for the old familiar cotton candy floating feeling that erases the last year.

The light is bright in my right eye and my first memory is of that night, seeing the headlights the second before hearing the noise. I feel my eyelid fall closed with a heavy thump and now the other eye is pulled open, the bright light there. I can hear voices but I can’t move or speak, and I can barely breathe.

Something bites my arm and I wish I could care. I can’t move to swat it away, but it hurts, it stings. Something bites my hand. What’s happening? Have I wandered into a field of snakes? Then I hear voices, female ones.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll get blood.”

The soothing darkness returns.

The riptide of consciousness pulls me back, briefly, long enough to hear parts of conversations.

“-parking garage, slumped over the wheel-“

“-OD-”

“-just barely filled, and empty-” Funny, are they talking about me? Because I can only remember taking that ten or twelve pills, which I’ve done before, lots of times.

I am jerked from sleep to feel my toes being pulled out through my throat. I don’t know what’s going on until the smell of vomit hits my nose.The pressure behind my eyes with each retch – when will it stop – and oh god, now I feel jittery and shaky and I’m coming apart, my beautiful rest is over. Rushing blood in my ears, and I open my gritty eyes to black and brown splatters on the front of a hospital gown and somebody is holding a plastic barf bag to my face and she’s talking about something called narcan, I think. I look up into the too-bright light and see a skinny older woman with curly brown hair and kind eyes. She calls me sweetie. I used to be somebody’s sweetie, but that was a lifetime ago.

When I open my eyes again I see something white on my nose and I’m alone in the room. Crossing my eyes, I still can’t tell what it is, and I reach up to feel. My hand is caught, caught fast, and so is the other one. Tied down. But why? And then I realize there’s a tube in my nose, probably one they don’t want me to pull out. Bastards. Who do they think they are, saving me? Saving me from myself, from the sleep, from all I wanted in the world. Saving me from out. My brain is cotton-ball fuzzy but angry, and all I have left is to cry. The ragged sobs tear from my chest and I feel snot bubbling out around the tube and I can’t fix it, can’t fix any of it.

There’s no more salt to cry after a while, and my mind has cleared enough to realize I’m going to have to play the game, going to have to put on one hell of a performance to earn my next nap.

Sunset

2008-03-08T20:58:00.000-08:00

The cityscape shimmers and fades to the left. Thin cotton clings to my back and I can feel little pools of sweat in the spaces between my toes. Off to the right, the sea opens its arms to the sun. The real world bustles below, trucks delivering, horns honking, fathers rushing home to hug children before bed. I think for a second about my own kids. Julian, with his accounting firm and beautiful family, and Ellie, just starting her third year of med school. They’re good kids, done well for themselves, and for me too I guess. And their mother, God rest her soul.

I look across the table, and she is lost in contemplation, looking west. The sun sits plump atop the water. Just like in that book I loved as a boy, the one with the big peach and the little kid and the giant bugs. Reflected in a million facets of the water, the waning sunlight is golden. There are noises that drift up from below, people hustling to get through life and in the process missing out on living. Spending all our time rushing through the things it’s really all about. Hurrying along toward what’s next, and forgetting about what’s real. My soul weeps.

A potato skin and a t-shaped bone are all that remain of my dinner. The chocolate covered strawberries I requested for dessert sit patiently at my elbow, adorned with beads of condensation. The egg yolk on the horizon sinks ever lower into the sea, until it breaks and melts into the surrounding water. My eyes sting, but I can’t look away. I take another swallow of cold beer and offer her a strawberry. She politely smiles and shakes her head, but still doesn’t speak. The lines on her face betray a happy spirit, but there is sunset in her green eyes too. I wonder if her silence is borne of politeness or intimidation, deference or terror. The sky is the color of sunburn as the sea swallows the remaining light, reverse birth complete.

“You ‘bout ready to go, boss? People are starting to show up.” The words come from behind me, and though I’ve known they were coming, they land in my heart like lead. The sun has fallen out of sight, now, and the salty breeze raises the flesh on my arms. I stand and stretch my legs, push back the heavy chair. Shuffle to the edge and gaze out at the sea one last time. Something wet hits my arm, and it is only after a few more drops that I realize I’m crying.

“Let’s go, Jim.” Her black-sleeved arm interlocks with my own, and I appreciate the softness. “We have a little more to talk about.”

The sea is darkening now, the sky blood-streaked, and it is agony to wrench my gaze from the empty horizon beyond the razor wire, let go my grasp on the chain link. I turn slowly in typical fashion of a man in shackles and the guards take my arms.

No one speaks on the elevator ride down. There are no words. They lead me down a sterile green-tiled hallway into The Room. I’ve heard about this room, seen it on TV a couple times even. It’s surreal, dreamlike, the way I can feel myself detaching, slowly caring less.

In the anteroom, the nun talks about my soul like she has any idea what I’m going through. She’s done this spiel a hundred times, but my ears are virgin. I can hear her talking, but my mind is already in the chair. Her soft green eyes cry for me because I have no tears left, no outlet for the overpowering grief.

The black vinyl is cold against my back, the braces ice on my wrists and ankles. Onlookers with their frosty stares on the other side of the window, nameless faces ready for the show. Cold green tile beneath my bare feet. I close my eyes and see once again fire melting into the blood-red sea.

Angst

2008-01-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Who says anybody knows what's best for me, but me? If there was anybody else that knew every detail of every emotion I feel, every action and every consequence that I do, every interaction I have, every single little bit of soul-searching and introspection and stress and heartache and heartburn and joy and sorrow and giddiness and despair and realized the place it all leaves me, they'd know that I'm not stupid enough to keep making the same mistakes. I may make different ones, but I'm certainly not stupid and I'm certainly not blind and I'm certainly not helpless. And that's how it makes me feel when people distrust my decisions. If you love me, you have to trust me to paddle my own canoe some of the time. I may tip over, I may get wet, I may choke on the water. But I'll get back in, whatever that takes. I'll just think twice about sharing any of the details with anybody.

Venom and Spite, reprise

2007-10-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Now, a new focus.

Sad.

2007-08-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

Sad. Sad sad sad sad sad sad sad.
Aaaaah.

Underbellies

2007-03-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

Society has one. Human nature has one. Each one of our spirits has one, some of us more than one. And far too many people are afraid of what theirs reveal, afraid to acknowledge the darkness that naturally must balance the light. Is it a good thing, then, to be in touch with your own darker side(s)? Or is there danger inherent within, is it safer to ignore and deny the presence of emotions and thoughts and urges that are less than comfortable? I have my own theories, as do several of my friends. It can be said that we create our own reality. In that same vein, then, can we create our own morality? It stands to reason. The human mind is capable of vast eternities of justification, of rationalization, of making anything okay, as long as it makes us feel better about ourselves. It's all about ego preservation, and some people are really good at that.
I know what my underbelly looks like. Do you?

Okay, so I lied.

2007-03-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

This isn't a forum for my writing, just yet anyhow. It's been more of a forum for my venom, the stuff I can only spew to a very very small group of people. And that pot of venom is growing by the day, by the slight.

Endings

2007-02-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

When you lose someone you love, even though you know that someone isn't good for you right now, it still hurts.

Hostility

2007-01-24T16:43:00.000-08:00

What defines a Hostile Work Environment?
I'm pretty sure I'm in one.
If they wanna play, I'll play. We'll see who comes out on top.

Tastes like chicken

2007-01-14T22:24:00.000-08:00

I've always said I live my life so that I have no regrets. Well then. That makes it awfully hard to admit a twinge of regret. My therapist says I have to wallow in the negative emotions when they come my way instead of finding some way to push them aside. Well, I wallowed in a couple tonight. Regret. Regret at having made a big decision with high financial stakes when I wasn't positive both involved parties were equally invested. Or, as it turns out, invested at all.
Sadness. Profound sadness and a sense of 'should i have tried harder?' Will that plaguing self-doubt ever go away?
Sometimes it feels good to cry, to embrace grief like an old friend, to sob like a child even though there's nobody around or awake to hear it.

Words

2007-01-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

anger
humiliation
frustration
defeat
despair
ragged
regret
shame
fear
loathing
isolation
abandoned
alone
gray
empty

A little-known fact

2006-12-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

If I'm reaching out, asking for help, it's because I've almost given up.
If you hear my screams, know that they're screamed with my last breath, just before my head goes under.

Welcome.

2006-11-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

I think I'll use this blog to post samples of my writing. I don't know, just yet - but the muse told me to do it.