Me? Oh…

I wrote a book.

What is it about? Um… stuff. There’s swords in it…..?

When is it going to be published? Oh… about that… how about some time this year. I don’t spose I’ll make any money off it, but y’know, at least I did it, right? … right? Check one thing off my fiveyearplan.

Oh, and a few months ago, I got an award for poetry.

Nah, nah, nothing big. It got published though.

Nah, no book you’ve heard of, probably. It came from my college. Yeah, just about shit a brick when they told me they wanted to publish it.

So uh, yeah, if anyone asks, you can tell them it’s official.

 

I’m a writer.

 

 

I don’t get this new Xanga. I joined years ago, when it was really simple. Bear with me, I’m technologically stagnant. I even hope this gets posted. I could just be talking to myself right now. Where is everyone. Jay, you still there? You still writing? Jay….? Jay…?

 

Anyway, I fell in love with my boss. We moved in together. I had a baby.

 

Hence, the non-smoking part.

 

Pregnancy hormones made me really dumb. Like, incredibly lowered my IQ by about 20 points. After giving birth, I keep waiting for my brain to re-solidify but …. I honestly fear it’ll never get back to its former state. But then again, reading old posts, I wonder if THAT is something I should grieve or celebrate.

 

 

It’s October now though. Infamously my most difficult month of the year.

 

It’s not the landing that kills me, it’s always been the Fall.

 

 

…..

I miss smoking.

 

There’s a commercial on tv. It’s clips of a little black kid who has asthma interspersed with the lower half of a woman’s face smoking. It’s supposed to get you to stop smoking, especially if you have a kid, cuz you can give your kid asthma I guess…..

All I can think of when I see that commercial is: God… a cigarette would be so orgasmic right now.

 

I think it has to do with watching the woman’s mouth.

 

Brings out the inner lesbian in me.

 

 

Anyway, to state the obvious, I stopped committing suicide slowly, lighting up fags, adding nails to my coffin smoking.

 

And the moments when I miss it the most are when I’m writing.

 

 

 

Also, after a really big meal.

That’s what I am.

    Ex-boss said something the other day about me being human after all…. go figure. I bet Jeff would like to argue that sometimes, right?
Feeling kind of down and out …. I mean, there’s lots of things I’m excited about I guess, but the transfer to another store is kind of wearing me out. And there’s only so much I can say and complain about before I start to annoy even myself.
What the hell, I’ll bitch some more. I think the worst part is that I had a great support group and team at the old place. Now I’ve got to make new friends and everything. Trust me, I’m not trying to impress anyone. If you like what I do, then cool. If not, then tell me what I need to be doing instead. Seriously, I’m an outsider, and I kind of want to stay that way. But I’m smart and a hard worker, so use me, damn it! You pay me too much for me to just sling freight. But don’t expect miracles. I’m only human.

Today I had one of those moments where I set the alarm, locked the front doors, sat in my car, and for a second – a really long and thoughtful second – I planned an escape east towards ….. utah. Or whatever the heck state borders us. I haven’t had one of those moments in almost a year, but there it was – that fight or flight response I have when things get overwhelming. But I lit a cigarette instead, turned the ignition, and drove home instead.
I like night time traffic better sometimes because you can’t tell how fast you’re going until you check the speedometer and the needle is creeping towards, hitting, then passing the 90 mark. Nice….

Got home in record time and all the cars were here but only mother was actually home. Didn’t say a word to her as I made myself a sandwich, sat down, and played with Toby for a bit before taking it to my room downstairs. I don’t think of it as holding a grudge anymore, this unwillingness on my part to converse with either parent. I just think they’re being petty and are therefore not worth my time or affection. {{{Lose my love. I dare you.}}}

*Sigh* At least I have new crack to occupy myself with.

This article called me a leftover with flaws. *Sigh* And if you don’t have enough time to meet someone, will you have enough time to maintain a relationship?

I’m not trashing speed-dating. In fact, I’m going to be trying it out at some point; it’s just that it begs the question: where the hell are all these single people hanging out if they can’t seem to meet each other under other circumstances?!!! Is it really THAT difficult to start a conversation if you’re not forced to?

When I slit my wrists, the blood blooms red- firelane red after it rains. I sprayed it with throat spray and the knife, as sharp as it is, feels like cardboard skimming the nut-brown skin, toasted and shimmering like wet sand.

Something I once learned from my sister – if you don’t want something to bother you, then don’t let it.

So I don’t let the frayed nerve endings send their messages of pain – get away from the source of pain!!! – to my primeval brain and slice again. And again. And the blood pours down in a sheet of translucent red like a cheap curtain across my sight. It’s worth it….

worth… what was I doing again? –

oh yes, slicing this fragile thing that pretends so well at being a girl

am I really feeling anything, then? I want to hold onto something, some emotion to make this make sense, but it’s …. empty really. Because I can’t do this while I’m crying, it would be… distracting. And really, all I want is for it to end….. for …. something to end, I guess…. I don’t know.

But the mother comes home two hours early – I think it’s two hours – I stopped looking at the clock – and I show it to her. Look what I did, I proudly say, and she wraps the arms in hand towels – ones she grabs off the nearest kitchen counter and drives me to the hospital where they make me sit for not too long because everyone else is trying to save their lives and I was obviously doing the opposite.

My feet are cold.

I forgot to put shoes on.

So my feet are cold and I tuck them under me and rock back and forth because the chair is hard and everyone’s staring and they put me in a wheelchair and I want to yell at them and tell them I can walk for fuck’s sake but my tongue is numb and my lips are cold and I want to go to sleep but not where everyone is staring and I want to take a hot bath and just sleep and sleep and sleep but they make me stay awake but at least they take me to a room with only one person in it, and she sits in front of me and asks me questions and stares and stares and stares and I stare back.

And I’m drifting, my mind is free, thinking of nothing, watching and recording as they talk about stitches and glue and white bandages wrapping around and around and around until I grow dizzy and throw up on the woman who was staring at me. I want to tell her I did it on purpose but I don’t know what it is I’m talking about.

And finally, they let me sleep. For as long as I want. On a pillow that doesn’t smell like anyone. On a bed with sheets like paper. In a room without locks or windows.

Every few hours they come with flashlights.

Every morning, noon, and night, they come with needles.

Every week, they come with a machine that has tentacles they attach to my chest and head and legs.

And at some point, something clicks inside me. All the tumblers engage with whatever key they’re jamming inside my brain and the world opens up again and I ask, in a voice dragged over gravel from disuse, if I can have mashed potatoes for dinner.

---

It happens or it doesn’t. The least you can do is what makes the difference.

“What do you do for a living?”
I blink at the tall and deliciously dark Brazilian Google programmer.
He rewords the question: “What do you spend the most time on?”
“I boss people around,” I prevaricate.
“Wow…. How can I get a job like that?” he jokes.
“I’m contracted by a pharmaceutical company, working on vaccines for the pandemic bird flu,” my sister puts in with a flirtatious tone. Mentally, I stick my tongue out at her.

It bugs me that I have such personal problems with just telling people I work at a pet store. They always get this…. disappointed look. And they’ve known me for two shots and a song in the dark. Why should that matter so much to me? I haven’t figured out yet how to get over that….

Because they never really ask what exactly I Do at the pet store. From the expression on their faces, I’ve been relegated to a mindless drone working in retail. Should I bother to correct them without prompting? Should I exert the effort to tell them: yes, I oversee a staff of ten people in a store that ranks in the top 25 of 800 in the company located on a main road of Silicon Valley and we’re doing very well and have the potential to lead the industry within the next 5 years or so. *Sigh*

Fuck.

I’ve tried telling people that I write – I’m a writer.
Then they ask what I write about – have they read any of my works – do I make a lot of money off it, since it’s such a fickle career.
I always want to tell them to fuck off after that.

After being a blogger for a handful of years, I know now that I’m not just writing for myself. It’s impossible when everything gets flung out into the ether and people run around with their butterfly nets trying to catch entertainment or information or the simple understanding that I’m going through it, I’ve been there, everything will turn out ok because here’s the path I’m treading through the danger and the darkness and you can hold my hand or follow me until you can find your own path again.

And then someone suggests I should make money off it. Become a troll taking tolls at the bridge between despair and hope. Or have someone tell me that I’m not good enough at something I’m so obviously helpful at. To “make a living” would kill me.

But it’s not all open hands and sacrifices, not at all – never believe that. Because every reader gives up time to read, maybe even thinks about something I wrote, applies it for a millisecond to a decision in her day, whatever…. and should I ever need anything be it advice on what car to buy, where to visit for my next vacation, how to deal with the repetitious disappointments of single-hood, what I need is here – somewhere. And I bring out my own butterfly net and start running.

Please. Stop.

Do you want me to beg?

Please, I beg you, stop it.
You have no right, coming to me when I’m asleep, when I’m sposed to be safe from -
And then you come, with your fair face and your kind hazel eyes – glinting with some deliciously grown-up knowledge, and we walk through the airport and you’ve known me all my waking life and I’m looking at you, out of the corner of my eye, and you’re tall and handsome and serious, and free – so free…. and I want to hate you but I don’t know why, because all that sears through me right then is the pleasure of being reunited with a lost limb.

And you talk with your tenor-tinted voices, words paced and measured like a teacher, with more patience than a parent, and still that glint of something in your eyes like you know something I don’t

And someone hits me with an elbow to the head and for a second I see double but when I look at you again, you’re gone, and pain gives me twice what I think I want but takes you away from me and I wander the airport, the carpeted ramps sheathed in halls of sunlight that stream through impossibly tall windows and I look down over a banister and there you are, looking up at me from the lower floor, chagrined and impatient that it’s taken me so long to realize where I was headed.

“About time,” you say, in that not-quite-condescending way that makes me want to crawl onto your lap and find the source of why you smell like summer lawns and lemon cookies and I tell you without speaking that my head hurts.

A dozen yellow packets of pills fall down a chute to tumble in a heap at my feet. Pills of all shapes and sizes, and I squish them with childish glee through the crinkling wrappers. I don’t know which ones to take, I say with my eyes.

“Take two of the red ones,” you answer sagely.

And the pain goes away.

And we walk through the airport.

And board the plane.

And get married.

And have children.

And I’m driving home from work on that road that winds through the mountains – driving home from a job in a career that means something to you and it scares me, driving down the one-lane road with a fantastic view but acute switchbacks and it scares me, doing things like that though they scare me because you’re so proud of me and I’m happy and me cell phone rings and I glance at it on the passenger seat

And it rings and I remember

And it rings and it’s too good to be true

And it rings and I’m dreaming and do I want to wake up and do I want it to end?

And it rings and I remember how too good to be true everything was and do I want everything to end and it’s such a horrible choice – do I dream and dream knowing nothing is real but knowing that nothing is real makes me want to stop dreaming and everything cascades down like a landslide of crumbling red bricks with sharp corners so I close my eyes and take my hands off the wheel and wait for that elusive myth of eternal peace

I wanted that darkness

But I woke up instead.