This is, without a doubt, one of the letters I write you which will remain unsent.

It was the worst birthday I’ve ever had.

Other than the fact that Beau is drinking again, I spent several hours in the emergency room while he was in surgery for drinking-related injuries.

But something else I couldn’t wrap my mind around: he confessed that his ex had made contact with him about a month ago and they’ve been talking on the phone since. She flew up and they had dinner together – that night when he told me he was “going up to Chico to get some photos for the project” and would have to stay overnight. He borrowed a friend’s car, apparently, and drove up to San Fran and they had a steak dinner together. Loverly, isn’t it?

I’m pushed to the threshold of tears every time someone asks me if I’m “ok.” What the hell do you say to that? No one really wants to know what’s going on – they’re just being….. polite?…. nice?….. whatever….. Should I tell them that no, I’m flat broke – again! – and any money I’d saved up to go back to school is just gone – gone now. Should I tell them that for my birthday, I babysat an injured boyfriend who had forgotten my birthday and had considered leaving me for an ex that set a live cat on fire. Should I tell them that despite all the warnings and precautions about my medication, I’m drinking too now – trying to match Beau swig for swig because drunk numb is better than grieving numb.

Mickey, you should have just gotten a gun and shot me.

After almost 4 years of sobriety, Beau is back in the bottle.

He came home late last night and woke me up, calling my name to make sure I was in bed. He laid down at an angle, the entire weight of his upper body pushing me down until I couldn’t breathe, so I scooted closer to the edge of the bed. Then he got up, stumbled to the bathroom, and threw up.

I tried to go back to sleep, but it was hours of keeping my eyes closed and lying very still and I must have fallen asleep at some point because the alarm clock, with its insistent, nagging drone, pulled me to morning.

Sleepy…. disoriented…..  more numb than anything else. If I let myself feel, I’ll spend all day crying.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I had asked for the day off, anticipating much carousing and revelry, but now more than anything, I don’t want to be here.

I turn 28 in a few days. Not that it matters since I tell everyone I’m 35 now. Nothing accelerates ageing like cigarettes, right? I really didn’t think I’d still be smoking, but now I’m smoking more….. maybe pack a day? I guess nothing accelerates death like smoking…

In the story of Pandora, she’s supposed to keep hope in the box, right? I don’t get it – if she let all the bad things loose, why keep hope to herself? I imagine that Pandora stifled Hope in that box, murdered it with glee. Or perhaps, being so self-involved, she forgot it was there in the first place and Hope died a miserable, lonely death, and when you open the box, you’re met with claw marks on the inside, nails broken and imbedded on the wood, because Hope does not go easily – no, Hope fights to survive. That is…… until someone kills it.

I never imagined my words here would move your heart, move you to try and see what it is I’m trying to say. But I hoped. I didn’t pretend that any words that painted my naked heart on this page could show you what is missing in my silence. But I hoped. And I wouldn’t let myself believe that maybe, maybe you could care for life the way it’s meant to be- But I hoped, didn’t I? And I spoke of all the things that could be – that would be, if only….. if only you could help.

Just like that, you take all that hope that rose like a mountain  under the turbulent waters of my grief, the small space of land I could stand on while the waves lapped at my heels, and you tell me, in words that hide behind something you’ve forgotten, something you promised me twice since I’ve known you: That everything would be ok.

And I know! I know that it’s up to me to make my life what I want it to be, but I waited because that’s what I thought I was doing. I didn’t give up on you, I didn’t give up on this, I didn’t give up on myself because you said to me – YOU SAID you’d be there for me – and maybe we were never friends really and I read too much in what I saw, but I trusted you as if you were because you said that: Everything would be ok.

And so I loved you like a brother.
And so I grieve for the death of hope.
I grieve for the loss of you.

Do you understand, really truly yet? Do you? Because I’m not mad at you or anything like that – I’m not. I wish I was – I wish I could be so full of rage that it consumes me and leaves behind a pile of ashes in the shape of a cat. I wish Wrath would turn me into a minion so I could spread the pain. I want destruction to be all I can think of so I don’t think of the life I could have had – enough destruction to tear myself to pieces in some pagan ritual.

It’ not ….. it’ not whatever you think it is -
     it’s that you’ve made me a widow before I was even married, and you erased my future with a wipe of your hand.

All this sobbing has made me weak, but it had to be done, because the pain cuts like a dull razor on an old wound. I will say goodbye to you now. But I will not release you from your word, from the promise you made to me when we sat and watched tv in your old apartment, the orange corduroy of that ugly armchair making patterns on my arm, and the shadows leaning in from your open door, and again when I took the train to San Francisco and walked several miles to your new apartment because I took the wrong bus because I was excited to see you and show you the new rocks I had, and you looked me in the eye across the leather sofa and gave me your word…. No, I will carry that promise with me until the sun self-destructs to remind me that there is no such thing as hope, that love and trust can only bring you grief, that there is no honor in the world.

Happy Birthday to me.

I’ve been under a lot of stress,

in case you were wondering… not that you are, but what the heck, right?

If you’ve been following the news lately, a wholebunch of pet food got recalled due to several pets dying from kidney failure. Anywho, in case you didn’t know, investigators believe it was intentional – the supplier for wheat and rice components of pet food intentionally added a melamine compound with another thing (the details escape me at the mo) to boost the protein rating of that ingredient. A higher protein level = more expensive ingredient. So the pet food manufacturers – technically, the food processing plants where certain pet foods are processed and canned – added this ingredient to their wet food and animals started dying.

At first, my cohorts and I thought it was a PETA tactic – you know, kill all pets because life as a pet is worse than no life at all, right?

But no, it was just plain human greediness….

Anyway, did you know there’s a plant called the Devil’s Hand? Google it if you’d like to see it.

So another part of why I’m grinding my teeth so much at night that I’ve basically ground half a molar off is that our general manager at the pet store left to manage the new branch opening somewhere in San Jo. I was one of the (un)fortunate people he asked to go with him to be part of the management team. To which I replied “I don’t commute.”

Then I’m talking to the assistant manager at the store, letting her know that my year review was coming up and if there was anything I could do to – “You’re not getting a raise,” she interrupts.

Wha?!?!

Apparently, there’s a wage cap on certain positions within this oh so excellent company and I’ve reached it. The only way I could get a raise is if I become an assistant manager. Go for it – everyone tells me – though it’d be pretty much a pay cut in a way. So with less than a month until my year review, I’m really really tempted to just fuck the store up….

Oh yeah, I did my taxes online and submitted it 11:45 pm the night before they were due. Got about a grand back, and was gonna save it for our trip to Europe, but Beau spent it all already…… so yeah, I went to the dentist and they told me it’d be only $200 to get that molar fixed, but I’m just gonna wait until it falls out. It doesn’t hurt anymore ….

Less and less of me hurts…..

P.S. just in case you were wondering, I killed the rabbit…..

There are those of us who suffer
from various diseases- some physical, some mental, some sort of illness that glows like stale moonlight, denied through the glass of your disbelief.

We suffer in a silence while {while my father clips my wings}

And no, it is not poverty or war or the transience of time that presses down and wrinkles your suit like a sweaty palm.

From fear of appearing weak we hold our tongues between grinding teeth.
From fear of appearing insane we hide our lucid dreams in social drag.
From fear of appearing human we deny the pain of humanity.

It is a time that we all live in fear – not of death by the hand of another, but fear of loss of money, status, things.

I clean my room and strive to throw away that which I do not need. I throw away memories that have aged and turned brittle like October leaves. I surround myself with beauty and the tools to create living art.

But still, I poison myself weekly, daily, hourly. Sometimes, in order to feel human, I need to feel my own mortality. And the worst of all is that I wish I could feel some feeling for what I could lose, for what I would leave behind.

I lie.

The worst of all is that there are many of us out there who feel this way, we can’t save ourselves from drowning, and no one cares to get their feet wet.

Rise with me now as I take a little more poison. Join me in this toast to better humanity.

I wonder how many people I know are actually worth knowing.

I wonder how many people I know would lie to my face. How many read this and would admit it. How many stumbled across this page or were told about it or {{{For god’s sake, someone I told the site about}}}.

That’s the sad, sad thing about this site. I forget my inhibitions and write the first things that pop into my head. Faceless, maskless, just blood and sinew.

Some people I know, I wish I didn’t know them. For all their affectations and superior intellect, for all their striving to be successful or Good, everything they do seems to be an attempt to escape what they really are which is, ultimately, a black hole, sucking everything in with a selfishness that only black holes know.

God I hate liars.

If you’re going to betray me, at least do it to my face.

That way I can stop defending you to everyone else, stop believing that you are good at heart, stop expecting what comes from high expectations.

I am who I always will be; your friend, your cheerleader, the one who loves you and trusts you with the wholeheartedness of a child.

They say that if you take enough of these pills, you can induce a  hypnotic state.  Personally, I’ve never taken more than one a day, but things change.

I’ve been sitting here, sniveling with my nose running, clutching cigarette after cigarette and tping with my eyes closed. And then moments when I sit and spin slowly in my chair, staring off into space, feeling my pulse. My lower lips is sore and bleeding from me biting down on it in attempts to keep quiet. If there’s one thing I can do well, it’s cry quietly.

It’s easy to do really, if you keep your eyes closed.

And inside my head, I just keep repeating the same phrase:

Please ! please…….

And I don’t presume to know your entire life or what you’re going through right now. I don’t presume to call myself your friend. After all, I’ve never heard you say it either. I don’t know what I am to you, or anything at all. What I do know is that I’ve made you laugh on occassion.

I don’t know what’s happening now, or what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I’m    supposed   to   do.

What I do know is that I found myself wishing, the other day, that I’d never met any of you, and that if I had, I wish I’d never believed in anything. God I’m such a loser.

I’m so gullible. I wish you’d take an eraser and rub me out.

People like me were never meant to live on this planet. We belong only in one’s imagination. All I want is to laugh out loud at movies, to watch cartoons with breakfast, to believe that good people raise good kids and no one ever lies with malice.

I’m tired. Tired tired tired….

If I could, I would kill all my animals just so I could leave. At least that way there would be no problems. Just throw all my stuff out, would you? Pretend like I never existed. I want to hurt myself, but I’ve turned into a pussy. Pain is good.

Did you know that when you burn yourself, it doesn’t show until much, much later? The trick is to do it slowly, a little  at      a      time.

Makes you clearheaded.

Like resetting your watch after you accidentally drop it in the sink. One more cigarette, just one more. Then I’ll take those pills, ok?

I wish there was a reason for me to take the trash out, but there isn’t really… makes me wonder why anyone else does it. If I put myself in a garbage bag and no one noticed, that would save a lot of money on the funeral.

I can’t remember  the last time I had sex.

Surely not a year… maybe 6 months or so.

As he picks up the shards of his broken life, dusting off pieces that were thought to be lost, I find myself putting things away for his later discovery. Nothing malicious, nothing that would remind him of the warm sand he held so tightly in his hand, grains slipping through the cracks of his fingers so slowly and deliberately they went unnoticed until glancing down, the hand is empty but for the memory of holding too long.

There is a favor I would ask of you, though. That if anything should happen, would you take care of him? Watch over him like I would from wherever I end up?

Help him through the horrible foreign movie with the wrong subtitles.

If he goes,

I go.

That’s what I realized tonight. That thing about being so in tune with someone that you might as well be one string – break that string and you destroy two lives.

I can feel it in myself, that silver infrastructure corroding and dissolving with cancerous resolution. Lights are dimming, turning off in the lesser used rooms, trying to conserve enough energy to maybe see it through.

Sometimes I remember that I’ve stopped caring, and what a relief it will be when I don’t have to worry about money or food or anything else anymore and I can finally put this heavy body in the ground, this body with a heart anchored to too much weight, carried by feet that have turned to marble.

I have this theory. But it has evolved into a belief. Which is to say, an optimistic type of Hope.

I am something other than normal. I mean, everyone believes that they’re unique and special and all that bullshit, but a gander over at myspace shows the opposite. In fact, it literally makes me see how not normal I am. Not normal: for not wanting to play mind games with people. Not normal: for not trying to mind fuck and cyber tease old men with camera photos of my tongue. Not normal: for not pretending to be someone the media presses into a mold, or rolls over with a diamond studded rolling pin and cuts into cookie shapes with sharp, sharp words.

But my theory is that I’m not the only one who feels this way. I think that we’re out there, jellyfish in the deep, glimpsing each other through the dark water while everyone else gets entangled in our tentacles and, paralyzed by things they do not understand, slip away from the current we ride.

So I wanted to be the one to give us a name (because you all know how I like to name things) and I came up with a really good one: NeoSapien.

That is, until I wiki’d it and apparently NeoSapiens are 8 foot tall purple humanoid aliens.

Meh….. I don’t care. I hereby declare myself to be a NeoSapien.