Recently in journal Category

I was sitting in a church basement with donna last week, fidgety and
distracted. it's been a rough stretch lately, I sort of feel like I'm
coming out of a cave but there's an impermanence about it all...
everything in life so far has been an acceptance, failure,
accomplishment, what have you - but this is like early recovery. up
and down and up and down and fine and on the floor and almost fine but
whoops not really and the phone calls are mounting and you can't not
go to work... and then back to fine. whatever the fuck fine means
these days.

so I'm sitting in that musty basement, with a chalkboard behind the
people at the front table, leftover from some church camp or youth
group or sunday school nonsense. from what I can gather, it's things
you can do besides get drunk or have sex or all those other sorts of
immoral things, and instead, it's how to go find jesus in your
everyday. go to bed at night and snuggle with jesus. look for jesus in
walmart. a child's hand drawing of a cat, meowing, and something and
something and jesus. it's weird, and it's been on that chalkboard for
months and months. like it was forgotten about, or maybe they just
don't meet in that room anymore.

so I couldn't sit there for one more second, listening to stories of
drinking too much, drinking on boats, drinking and losing the
sportscar, drinking and tarnishing the family name at yale. I tell
donna I can't sit there for one more second, and she suggests a walk.
funny thing is, I've been planning on going for a walk the whole time,
since before we even got there, but as it turns out, I would have
wound up going anyway, even without intending it.

it had just gotten dark and we've been smack in the middle of blowout
summer days, too hot to go to the beach almost, with ninety percent
humidity and a general lack of functioning throughout the cities and
towns. dog days, or whatever. I leave the church and head to the right
down the sidewalk, past the house we always thought was haunted, where
I swore I saw a shadow in a an upstairs room I couldn't tear my eyes
away from. with quicker pace, past a few nondescript suburban mini
ranches where I went trick-or-treating with my father and sister years
ago, the podiatrist house, and the house that looks like they should
be near the beach with lots of stuff hanging up outside, and a big
window with a big dog staring through, and in the daytime a pleasant
older woman fixing a boat or a lawnmower in the driveway. past the
house before chet's house, and chet's house. chet died a while back, I
don't remember much of him but his old man-ness out in the yard and
the massacre of christmas carols from my youth (chet's nuts roasting /
on an open fire...). I tear up a little at this, because people loved
him, his family loved him, and now I'm walking past the glimpse of the
brook that ran behind our houses where we used to splash around,
overgrown and buggy in the heat. the sidewalk ends abruptly before it,
and the dewy grass makes me slip around on my flip flops as I come up
to my old street.

it's been years and years since we lived there, fifteen or sixteen at
least, if not more. more, I think. and things have changed but it's
all the same underneath the home improvements, but still, thinking
about it now and remembering the snapshots my whole life, it's like it
happened to someone else. like I'm looking at pictures in an album in
a living room of a friend of a friend. quaint, unfamiliar, the time my
sister kicked me in the face by accident when I was crawling over the
back of her sticking out of a fort I wasn't allowed in, and the gush
of a bloody nose, and my father telling me to put my head back, his
handkercheif on my face, the almost nauseating taste of blood down the
back of my throat. the bumpy patch of sidewalk just past our old place
where I jumped up to catch a frisbee and landed on the wrong part of
my foot, the gravel stuck in my knees and the scars that ensued.
there's not really much streetlights, one or two that weren't always
both working at once, and in the post-dusk darkness, not all the
lights are on in the houses and it's gloomy.

I've just passed our old house, with the ground cover and bushes out
of the front yard, long gone, and the front door you had to go down a
few steps onto a little dip of a cement porch to get into. the big
picture window where the piano sat, where I can see a huge reprint of
the hands touching from the sistine chapel I think, and strange
flowered curtains and a white pressboard hutch in the background where
there should be nothing and a glass dining room table that's not there
either. I stay there, where the stump got pulled out of the yard,
where the two feet of sidewalk was grass instead, the newer mailbox,
the time I left my house drunk and came here, slurring, asking to use
the phone because I used to live there, calling jay miles and how he
came and picked me up and laid me out on his bed in his apartment on
canner street and lit candles and did this thing to my head with his
hands as I fell asleep, and he set off to sleep on the floor or the
couch or wherever, and the raging technicolor dreams I had, that I can
recall like it was a moment ago, that I've written about before...
frustrations carved into an arm in a room at a camp with wood
paneling, and sitting in the car on a rainy day with robert on an
absurdly small little lake that the car is towering over on a little
rock jetty, strange, and none of it is scary but it's all just right
there. the same porch where we held puppet shows, sitting on the
driveway, squatting behind where you walked down, socks and bags on
hands in the summertime.

just as I pass that part of the sidewalk, bumpy, still unrepaired, a
huge buzzing junebug summertime beetle that felt like it was the size
of a sharpie bumps into my face, and I'm a flurry of hands waving and
duck-and-cover. a few more steps and it's lesley's old house, right
next to mine, and it starts to get worse. sad turns into rundown,
almost a nightmare it seemed, I wasn't afraid but it was all so wrong
and unkempt and like a distorted version of something I once knew. the
bushes all pushed out into the walkway, random branches grown a foot
up that no one had bothered to trim, and a japanese maple left to run
wild. I can still see her father out there, taking care of everything,
and the shabby state of the yard made me want to cry. there was a
shitty car in the driveway and two guys in the upstairs window, in her
parents' bedroom, with blinds with one of the slats broken, standing
shirtless poniting at something in the room. I wanted to tear into the
backyard, box tunnels and brook crossings and rabbit hutches and the
rope swing and the rock lesley fell over and cracked her head on. the
back deck where we smoked cigarettes when nobody was home. that one
great party we had when her parents went away, and the snapshots of
dreams I've had over the years suddenly coming to life. all behind
that wooden gate to the back.

I almost walked up to the front door two more houses down, where the
old couple lived with the ships in the bottles and the big three-way
tins of popcorn and stories and a big window to the backyard and
everything was different from our house. I think I saw them recently,
but then I wondered if one of them had died, that it would be strange
for me to be standing on the porch. I always liked their house, going
to say hello, leo the lion in the next driveway that we really didn't
know so well and the crazy white trash people with the shotgun after
that. coming around the cul-de-sac, just fancy for a dead end street,
the italian family across from lesley's with mary on the halfshell in the
front yard, in the exact same spot, where we sat on the steps in the
summertime trying to figure out what to do with our days. the red
house across from ours, where I learned to tie my shoes and roger and
his brother (who we all couldn't stand) would bring over lettuce and
stuff he grew in the backyard.

my mom and my aunt with lawnchairs in the driveway, drinking michelob,
washing the dogs with the garden hose on the super hot days. my first
kiss in the back of a suburban playing a board game, and how I had to
card him a million years later at the package store, with his shitty
fake ID I let him get away with. being embarrased in the back when the
whole neighborhood was over in the pool, and I was too old to be out
in the pool in underwear and a frilly nightie tank top, and I was
anyway, and I was embarrased to death about it. garden snakes and the
dog run and passing barbeque condiments from the kitchen window to the
back cement porch where we sat when the weather was nice. the day my
dad shaved his beard off to work for the limousine company. mom
sleeping on the couch. dad punching the wall in my room. pooh bear
curtains, nightmares every night and the lights on, screaming my head
off because I was afraid to pick up my bear from the floor, afraid of
what was under the bed, and how my sister always came, and how I did
it every night, and how I called out mom a hundred times but my sister
always was the one.

hurricane gloria and branches hitting the upstairs window, my mom
sleeping, bored, waiting, the family room and when the dog got too old
to walk and she lived in the garage with the space heater for the last
few weeks so she could eat and go to the bathroom and hobble around
and not have to go far. all of this, standing back at the driveway
now, and a car comes down the street and pulls in right in front of
me, and two kids are standing in the driveway as I walk away, looking
like they're about to roll a blunt or that they weren't supposed to
have the car out or something. all of this, racing through my head,
all these paragraphs in under three minutes, dark, mosquito bites and
wet flip flops.

it was like a bad dream that wouldn't stop, and it still is, sitting
here, writing all of this down. typing all of this down. I walked back
up around the corner, past chet's and the beach people and the
podiatrist and the haunted house, past the church, wanting to be
alone, desperately hoping to be found, finding solace on the front
steps until a few minutes before nine and the end of the meeting, the
safety of the car, the familiar of the apartment that I wish was home
but just feels like another place I'm staying at, except for when raf
comes home from work and I'm here to have dinner with him. no one came
looking for me on the front steps, sobbing into my knees held pressed
to my chest, knowing my underwear was probably showing out from under
my skirt and trying to cover up and not caring all at once. the shine
of a clasp made to hold on one of those beige cloth wrap bandages
sitting there on the steps, thinking of the old people who must have
been there the day before, getting home, wondering where the clasp
went. it made me remember my dad and the big bag of those wraps we
always had in the bathroom and never seemed to use.

donna said it was good to feel all of that and to let it all out.

I suppose I agree, but it all still seems like a movie of a bad dream
that someone else had.

editor's note: some of that just didn't deliver the way I wanted it to. it sounded... just not right. so I fixed some of it, and now it's different, and it says different things. why am I typing this, when I am quite sure no one reads it anymore? or do I know, really, somewhere, that a bunch of people do? like the last time I thought that, and I got an email from a random girl about cancer and eating peanut butter and it amazed me. so, yeah. so I'm going to stop talking now.

***

6:30, Monday evening. I just made a great dinner, proving that practice makes... well, better, at least. I found a great pair of dresses at Target the other day.

So I'm going to Target, kind of annoyed. Some days I embrace simplicity and broke-ness and having less and wanting less, because there's a freedom in it. It's hard, but it's so much easier most days. And the other day was not one of those days, going to Target, pissed off. Pissed off that I had to go buy a dress at a big-box store. Like going to Wal-Mart, only not as gross. Long story short, I found so many cute dresses that I couldn't decide. I looked good. I wanted to buy five of them. I settled on two.

Point being (if I have one) that I get so much proof. It's practically relentless. And I doubt, and second guess, and push things away, and convince myself that it's all just a coincidence. And it's not. I mean, I suppose some things have to be a coincidence, but most of it is not coincidence.

I'm on a roller coaster somewhere between fairly rational and wanting to jump out a window. I can be cruising right along, minding my business, feeling like the work I'm putting in to not being an asshole is actually starting to help. When I don't hate you, I don't hate me, and I only hate you when I hate myself on some level anyways. And then I get my head split open with a bat, and I crumble to a heap on the floor (or, in the car, like Saturday) and in those moments, it is an absolute and utter truth that I can not go on for one more second. That it's just too hard, that missing my mother hurts too much, and that someone is going to have to physically come and pick me up because I'm immobilized. And I crawl upstairs, and take a long shower, and functionality returns, and the eventually my head stops screaming and I can sit and be present.

But that dull ache, the noise, it never completely goes away. For a long time, as I stayed sober, it got quieter... and when it wasn't quiet, it was because I was doing something to aggravate... something. Whatever the issue du jour was. And as I keep staying sober, I learn that there's not noise because you're Bad or Wrong or Messing Things Up or whatever. That sometimes, it all just hurts. A lot. And that life is hard, not because I'm pissed off about having to go to Target to get a dress for a wedding, but because it's just - well, on that day, that's what was hard. And Saturday, missing my parents was hard. And today, I had an alright day, and I worked hard, and I did my job well. But - it's not always necessarily something that has to get fixed, because I always want to Do Something About How I Feel. I heard an old guy once speak at a meeting and he was all, I don't know why everyone feels like they have to go around taking their emotional temperature all the time. Just go do whatever it is you need to do, and shut up already. And then, it offended me. And now, sometimes, it's right on.

Yeah. So - right. So I don't have to fix stuff, because a lot of the time, it's not anything I have to be better at or try harder at and if I was only doing more or working harder or praying more or saying less then everything would be alright. It's another extension of "if X happens (boyfriend, job, etc.) then everything will be fine" except this kind has better intentions. But still. It still doesn't work.

I had no idea what I was going to write about, but I just knew I needed to. Funny what comes out sometimes, I wasn't even thinking about all of that - or maybe I was. Obviously, I was.

Funny how we have little to no perspective on what's happening to us or around us or in us sometimes. Kristin talking about writing... I mean, for me, she is writing. Like, Kristin = writing, not, Kristin is writing something right now. I learned to go to my notebook (well, then it was a yellow legal pad, stolen from a box in the supply room at Cyber Research or something) by watching her, and less-ly by watching Kristy. But Kristin was more consistently pure about it, it was like Kristy needed it to be a show sometimes. In fairness to her, not all the time, Kristy did write some brilliant stuff and a lot of it was just like the rest of us did it, with inkstains on her pillow because she fell asleep before she could write it all down. And I saw that happening, and I remember Kristin's picture, on that boat in the sun, and how perfect that moment was, all frozen and complete, even though it really wasn't at all, or maybe that day it actually was. And I had to write - I had to. Crappy stuff and stupid loveletters to asshole boys and I started to question everything I did and every step I took. I couldn't stop comparing myself to everyone around me. I'm not in a band, I don't stand for much, I don't have a glass cabinet full of notebooks, and I haven't been consistent, if anything I've been consistent with being inconsistent. I look at it now, and I think that maybe this is just how I am - somewhere between fucking up and succeeding. Not bad, and I'm not wrong. And It's not always that I have to try harder or do better. Sometimes I should work a little more, and sometimes I should just accept things and go easy on myself.

It's only taken about sixteen years of writing (sometimes) to not have to constantly judge how I feel by how everyone else seems. I only do it some of the time now. And it's taken the entire seven years I've been sober to just begin to learn to not beat the shit out of myself constantly. But it's so strange to me, to have someone that epitomizes (sp?) everything that writing is and means and everything that being true to yourself is all about could struggle with - well, with being that, or not knowing that. It's bizarre, and so familiar, all at once. Sometimes, I wish someone could just show me myself, and go, here. This is what the world sees, in the big way, not in the one particular person you're talking to way. And here are your strengths, and this means this, and that isn't about that so stop telling yourself _________ because it's just not true. And these things over here, yes, keep doing all of that, because it's honest and right. I want Kristin and Donna to follow me around all day just to help me get through... all of it. To help me tune the station in a little bit better. I guess that might sound strange, but it's true.

So when will I truly have that perspective on myself? Or can I not have it, simply because I can't detach from looking at me or what I have going on? I don't know. Am I'm happy with steady improvement, with working on the things that need work and letting the other stuff just go the way it goes? Right now, I guess. Definitely not all the time. More accurately, not feeling like I'm good enough doesn't paralyze every fiber of my being like it used to, it's better some days, and still just the same some days. And even as I type this, doubt creeps in and I'm quite sure if I sat here and wrote about this same stuff at this same time tomorrow, that I might be on the other end of the stick. That it's just that I'm not trying hard enough. But I could still say it's not crippling anymore. And if for it to be more not crippling takes another decade or two, then I guess that that's just how it's going to go.

I have no idea why I just felt compelled to write all of that. I should go, before I decide not to post this because it's stupid and nobody wants to read it, anyways.

Bon courage,

Victoria

It's Monday. In two days, I will have been sober for seven years, and in thirty days, I will have been quit smoking (is that grammatically correct? I don't think it is) for three years. Oh, and in twelve days, I'll celebrate my thirty-first birthday. Looking back on my blog entries and life patterns, I can now say that the end of winter is usually the hardest part, and that most transformations take place soon thereafter. (Including quitting drinking, which was the first thing I put down, a year before I got sober, a year and a month to the day). February is horrifying. Then things light up through spring. Maybe that's what happens to everyone? I don't know.

I need health insurance. I need to seperate from my mortgage job completely, because I don't want to do it anymore, and as a result am doing a bad job. There's nothing wrong with that, it's pretty commendable and leap-of-faith-y of me, but it will leave me without insurance. Right now, I'm paying out of pocket about $350 a month, plus copays (including $100 for brand-name Wellbutrin, because the generic they replaced Buproprion with is junk). That's like, $4000 a year plus. I think I'll get COBRA if I quit, which is good for a year and a half... it's just not working for me anymore. The mortgage job, that is. I think if this new gig doesn't work out, that I'd rather get some job at Yale with benefits and pensions and whatnot, instead of doing sales. Fuck sales. Seriously.

The new gig being Catering Manager for Koffee. I love using capitals for that, although it's probalby not technically necessary. I got over the hump of current payscale not affording me much in the way of owning a home and popping out babies, but since that's not happening right now, I'm not going to worry about it. And the potential to go from base to that plus a percentage of regular customers' orders is valid, real, and attainable. It's not sales to me, even though it technically may be - I'd be taking all that marketing and people skills experience and using it to go out to people in the community, to promote something I believe in, for people I believe in. I mean, Duncan (who owns the place) is basically sustaining this whole little mini-community of people, and makes decisions around that. I mean, he's not going to blow his business or anything, but the main purpose is about being good and doing what's right.

So, I think this is going to work. I don't think I have to worry about insurance, being that COBRA is probably cheaper than what I pay now. So that's that, I guess. And the other thing about it all is that good, honest, hard work is... well, working. Getting up early, working hard, paying dues, earning my keep. It's good for the soul, as far as I can tell.

I'd love to be smoking right now.

I found out today that my mom knew she was dying after that last surgery she had. I've since written about it, when she went in for surgery, and there was more there than they had seen on the x-rays and scans and stuff, so they couldn't operate on it. And they were going to put her on some other stuff, and go back in in six months or whatever to operate. And I wrote about how none of us put it together then that it meant that the current chemo wasn't working, and it wasn't different, it was getting worse. Apparently, she had talked to my aunt on my dad's side then and told her about it, only the truth of it was that they told her there was nothing left to do. And when she was getting loopy in the emergency room, saying snippets of conversations with other doctors, she wasn't going crazy. How there was a spot on her lung or something, and then later in a dream-like state in her hospital room, when she said that someone had said they were sorry because there wasn't anything they could do - it was coming out. The truth.

I suppose the truth is that my mother, until the very end of her life, took care of everyone else. I used to think it was some kind of escape mechanism, that she was neglecting self, over-mothering, being a caretaker, and all that sort of stuff. But I've been pondering it since, and especially with getting this news today - I think it's just who she was (is?) and that it's not a fault at all. She was selfless, down to the bottoms of her feet. It's who she was, it's what she did. And she did it to the very last day.

It's just such drastic information that I don't quite know where to put it. It's comforting and disturbing all at once. I cried, and then I did some laundry, and now I'm just kind of sitting here. Writing. Turning things over in my head, like cards. One at a time. Thoughtless, but totally aware. My head is turning inside out. St. Elmo's Fire is on, and everyone is drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes all over the place. And I've been walking to work and replacing my lightbulbs - baby steps. I'm doing what I can, whatever that means on any given day.

V.

me to kristin, on pet food recalls and my head exploding:

holy crap. I have her on dry nutro during the day (now I'm reading
about "meal", ew) and a can of natural balance at night for dinner.

are you okay? are the cats home, or at the vet, or improving? :(
I'm so sorry they got sick. I feel like every day, I start to think
about the state of the nation, bullshit government (like the attorney
general thing, along with a billion others), global warming, childhood
obesity - it's almost overwhelming. it is overwhelming sometimes. I
don't quite know where to put it.

and the reply:

Your paragraph below is almost word for word the blog entry I keep writing and deleting because it seems too dark to post. I feel the same way, and am frequenlty overwhelmed into paralysis.

Wellness is a brand of food -- they make canned food and dry food. They have a canned food that's grain-free and a dry food that's also grain-free (called Core). It should be safe from most recalls because they use human grade ingredients (you could open the can and eat it with a fork and it would probably be better quality than McDonald's). Also because if it's grain free, there's no chance of contaminated wheat, corn or rice, which are all under question at this point, Nutro included. You should be able to find Wellness at any decent pet supply stores (not Petco). If not, you can order it online. It's very available here, so I
imagine it's similar there.

"frequently overwhelmed into paralysis". seriously! every single time I am positive that I'm alone in my head, that no one feels like me, like I'm the exclusive owner of this brand of crazy - I get a big brick in the face from somewhere in the universe.

I've just had this impending sense of... doom? uneasiness? I don't quite know the right word for it, all of those apply. it's like the ghettos are getting darker and the rich are getting richer, like in a soylent green kind of prognosis. beautiful expanses of landscape dotted with mega-mansions, and that's only going to get worse. erratic weather patterns. plastic (and animals) in animal food. "meal". "by-product". murders, psychopaths, masses of youth with no direction. being an anorexic with a big coach bag and a fake tan is not a thing. being a... writer, or a photographer, or a dressmaker, or a massage therapist, or even a politician - it's a thing. it's all flooding in now, childhood obesity, dulling out life with drugs, meth addicts, global warming, corrupt government, hero worship, stupid television, just buy more stuff and you'll be okay.

funny, you stop using credit cards - I stop using credit cards - and come to the shocking realization that I'm not even making enough money to support myself, let alone to be going out and compiling more debt and buying frivolous junk. and then I start seeing things how they are, the divisions and the inconsistencies and the tarnish that just won't come off. and I get scared.

so I stand at the crossroads. in these realizations, I can go conform to the man's wishes and go work for yale or some other mega-institution, get a perfectly nice desk job with benefits and work for fourteen dollars an hour, and do the same thing, day in and day out. forty hours a week, just to get by, and a bunch of clothes that are seemingly bizarre, uncomfortable shoes. I was on this path when I started to put together my resume, polishing, being a little bit honest. putting it out there, what I want, cursor blinking impatiently:

Objective. what the fuck. what I came up with was: To obtain part-time administrative or clerical employment with a local business that I can grow with from the ground up, while continuing to pursue an education and maintaining my contribution to the local art community. it might not be what you're supposed to write, but I wanted to be honest, you know? I wanted to catch the eye of someone like us who would want someone like me to work for them. and then I realized, that objective, is exactly what I'm doing working at koffee. only without the part-time supplemental income part. and I went to them, and told them my realizations, and within a half hour the owner of the story was having a meeting with my manager to create a position for me. what they came up with, among some other options, was to give me a dollar an hour raise and put me to work revamping the whole bakery system. this being based on the fact that I went from a corporate environment (kind of) to an entirely foreign atmosphere, and went from crying on the second day to almost being able to run the place in about six months. and I'm not just talking about making lattes. how the business works, why it works, how to participate in management - I mean, it's not rocket science, but it's not for everyone. so I would pick up the extra hours I need right now working shifts, and doing orders and taking care of all the stuff I do now, and on top of that we would rip the whole bakery apart, put it back together, revamp the menu, do research, create recipies, and all this stuff, with the possibility of doing catering or whatever down the line.

now, running or opening a bakery was one of the things on the I Might Want To Do That When I Grow Up list. and I can't afford to go to culinary school, or any of that. so, is this an opportunity to seize? or am I selling myself short on pay? do I go take the corporate job to have the life and opportunties I couldn't if I didn't have money? I've tried it, a few times, and I've always come up short, always been disappointed. so do I try something else? do I do it just for now? my head screams for security, and my heart is like, it's just the summer. you can re-evaluate then. because in my mind, taking this job means having no pension when I retire and I have to eat cat food and can't afford my medication.

no, I am not exaggerating. this is what it's like to be me.

the other good thing about doing this is my track record: how I've done it just doesn't work. I've drifted from company to company, looking for something that just isn't there. I don't want to spend forty hours a week doing something I hate. I guess I would, and could, if I had to - but should I give this a shot? is it a waste of time, or a door that's been flung open that I didn't even know I had? another upside is the flexible schedule, allowing for school, mental health time, whatever. but will I be able to afford to go to school?

so, I do nothing. well, I'm picking up more shifts at work, while I can, and then I get to decide in about a month what I want to do. I almost feel like I have nothing to lose, like, fuck it, let's give it a shot. it will pay just enough for me to get by if my mom's house sells and my debt (except for my car) is gone. I can toss a summer, six months, a little piece of my life, to see if this is something that works or not. I can't buy a house or any of that stuff anytime soon anyway.

and did I mention, one of the only things I wanted from my mom's house was the kitchen aid mixer? and that I love to bake?

it's time for a nap. stay tuned.

vvb

so, this is my mom's house. more accurately, a for sale sign, in front of my mom's house. see that door there in the background? I feel like if I sit there long enough, and stare long enough, or if I look away and look back right at the right moment, that I'll see there standing there in the windowpanes. my grandmother would watch as we drove away, and we'd always beep as we went down the road... and of late, my mom had started to watch us - or at least me, but us I'm sure - drive away too.

as I say this, there is much beeping on the road down below our apartment windows.

it's empty. emptying out. just big things like a table and a couch and a piano, and three big oak hutches that make up an entertainment center. think of the house where your parents live now, or the last time they moved... only now, instead of rearranging or packing or wistfully poring over old photo albums from the back of a cabinet, make it feel like it all got ripped away and that you're kind of in a shrine. only it's not good sometimes.

I tried to stay there for a while, on the couch, it was silent, and good for a minute, and then suddenly I had to run out. the couch where I've napped and stayed and cried and loved and talked from, across the room where both my parents have sat. since they set up the living room like that, it had stayed that way forever (since). all of a sudden it's all uncomfortable and different and scary. she's gone, it's an empty house, already like it's someone else's because it's just not hers anymore.

a confession of sorts, I have decided to go back on wellbutrin. I've been off it for a couple of months now (3? 4?) and I just need to rule out whether or not it's going to help. I know, I know, this is going to take time and it's going to be hard and I can't go looking for it to be all better. I know all of that, and I'm stating it as such because so many people are so quick to tell me that as an alcoholic, I will be prone to look for a quick fix. fine. I don't want to not feel anything or not go through whatever the hell it is I need to be going through - it's just that I want to come out the other side of it without putting a shotgun in my mouth. which, I'm not going to go like, do, or anything, but I've sat here on this futon (that hurts my back) in between screaming, yowling fights with raf and heaving, debilitating sobs and think about it sometimes. not about killing myself, but about how I used to think about how when people tried to kill themselves, that it was so sad, and that if they jsut would have hung on and waited it out, that how they felt would have changed at some point, because it always does. and how they could have looked back and been like, damn. good thing I didn't kill myself. and now, I understand how it's not like that at all.

I'm so sad. all the time. and when I'm not sad, I'm so fucking angry I can't even see straight. at everyone. about everything. I've got a fuse shorter than my pinky-toe nail and believe me, it's an itty bitty little nail. finances are straightening out, mostly because of the house, and as all the debt is suddenly about to loom to a close, I realize how little I really need. stuff-wise. money-wise. it's all bills bills bills all the time, and in another six weeks or so it will just be the apartment and the car. and like, groceries and stuff. amazing. so an end to that is a relief, but it's like the last get out of jail free card, like, ever. like like like. who gives a fuck.

the movie of the last week in hospice in my head is starting to, very rarely and with much mental force, starting to be replaced with better images. like someone said with my dad, eventually, the death won't be the thing you remember all the time. you won't forget, they said, but it won't be the automatic thought. I had this dream, a few days before she died, and she was holding me, in a hug, with my head on her chest (more of the expanse under her neck than her actual chest, like, the bone part, which was always kind of tan and warm) and she had on one of those soft nightshirt things she always wore, just so, so familiar and right, and she was holding me in the spot I always was, and she was just like, I have to go soon, you know that, right baby? and I was all, it's okay mom, I love you, and it wasn't sad at all, and it's just a couple of fractured moments, like when you wake up and then fall back asleep for a little while and everything is brief and vivid and you wake up like, wow, I just had these weird dreams... it was like that. only I woke up, and I could feel her, the softness of the shirt and the warmth of her skin and the breastbone and the way she would just hug me like that, holding me for a second, to this day. I always got into the hospital bed with her, always. and I kind of couldn't at hospice, so I pulled the recliner chair up close to it and it made it like I was there in the bed, kind of.

part of me is like, feeling all of this is healthy, and it is, this is the right part. the coping part. not the part where I want to break up with raf and jump out the window, that's not the okay part, and it's hard because I don't want to pull away from the part where things just take their course... but it's just horrible. I do okay for a few days and then I can't really leave the house much, if I have even close to nothing to do I come home and just lay down. domestic stuff is easy, like cooking mostly, but everything else is like this chore that I can't bear to handle.

I'm writing all the time, in my head mostly.

there's some stuff that's good that I'll go dig up. stay tuned, I guess.

vvb

That's a lie. I mean, not counting shows or stuff that would just have you up then. Now.

The last time I wound up up this late was a night I just couldn't sleep in my apartment in Hamden, about five or six years ago. (I have to measure years by apartments, otherwise I can't figure out what was going on in 2001, or 2003, or whenever.) So, I was just up, rolling around in my space, staying up on the couch watching television and smoking cigarettes because I could. Dashboard Confessional was on The Late Late Show with Carson Daly, and I remembered being like, wow. This must be fate that I happen to be up tonight, of all nights.

I just realized how much I don't think about typing. Weird, how you just like, know where things are.

So, after that, I wound up watching this documentary on channel 13 or whatever - public television - about these lesbians living in the woods with their dogs. And not like, hot lesbians. Like everyday people kinds of lesbians, these two older women, and they had dobermans. And one of them had begun to get sick, cancer or the doberman equivalent of it, and they had decided to document the process, as kind of an homage to their pet. And there were slideshows and conversations and sicknesses and painful scenes at the veteranarian's office, and shots of the other doberman, paused, paw in mid-air at the top of a hill in the woods someplace. That was when the sick one had just died. I can see it clear as day.

And I fucking lost my shit. I cried and cried and cried. I've referred to that night many times since, about how the greiving went on in advance. Because my dog was old and sick and would get up in the middle of the night and throw up and I'd just sit with her and she'd be heaving and shaking and she'd have some water and settle back down eventually. I'd take her outside, thinking she was going to - I don't know what. Be more sick, or something. And I can just remember her standing there looking at me, crying, because I couldn't do anything. It almost made me mad in a strange way.

So I fell asleep, and a few months later my parents showed up at my apartment to tell me she had died. I had made right with her (the dog, that is) and had loved her and taken care of her and made a point of saying goodbye everytime I was at the house. And I had told them, my parents, to tell me afterwards, if it came down to having to take her to the vet's office. Because she's sick and she's old (15) and you know she has to go, and you're sitting there with her, and when would be the right time to say, "Okay, I'm done now. You can take her." I knew I wouldn't be able to. And that's exactly what my parents did, and they wound up not getting to tell me for like, a week.

I miss them both terribly. The dog too, we had her from when I was in fifth grade until that year, and it was a long, long time. My whole growing up, my whole coming of age was with her in the house. The house we moved to because my parents seperated for a little while, and the timeline that recalls that the therapist mapped out for me. See, look here. This is when things began to fall apart. Divorce really does fuck kids up, even though it didn't get to that point with my parents. We moved there, I started yelling at my mom, she tells me how I told her how much I hated her and hated the house and how she was turning me into a statistic. Knowing her so much better now, I realize all of a sudden how hard it must have been to take those steps for herself in the first place... and how I didn't help things much. Right after that (I was 12 or so) was when drinking and pot and tripping eased in (but not in that order) over that year and a half, two years and it's all history from there. Come by a meeting sometime, I'll tell you all about it.

Jet Blue robots are calling. I'm writing my life story. I'll have to pick this back up later.

morning pages, kind of. what's three pages in longhand condensed to typing? I have no idea. I just know I need to get up and write.

I missed mary and tom brosseau last night, they were at bar and were supposed to come and stay here, and I was too sick to let them come. tom, having to sing for a living, and probably doing a fine job of it last night, just shouldn't be anywhere near someone who has turned into a frog (or at least sounds like one). I'm so sad that I couldn't be with them, and that I couldn't have them stay here - there's always next time I guess.

I have to be honest here, I'm scared about money. really. it's not like raf doesn't provide for me, or that there's something I need that I'm not getting - but there's just something about your parents, that back-up, that just in case kind of thing... it's just another level of fear that's floating to the surface in all of this mess. my sister and I will each be getting a check in a few months, and I'm going to throw half of it at a credit card and put the other half in like, a cd or something, but to think that that's it - done - fini - is almost paralyzing. I'm a big girl and everything and I can take care of myself, it's just... it's more of an emotional thing at this point.

I have a whole bunch of stuff to do today that I don't want to do. real life stuff, work stuff, art show stuff, sponsee stuff - and raf's sister is having her baby... I think about now (scheduled c-section). like I wrote last night, it's hard and good to leave the house all at once. I've been doing close to nothing, and as I start to function again, it feels good - and at the same time, the more I do, the more real it makes it that my mom is gone. because it still feels like underwater, like a movie, like it's happening to somebody else. and then I get these moments and these snapshots and I'm like, fuck - this is real, isn't it? and I lose it. this morning is one of those times where it feels kind of abstract, which is how it is most of the time.

it's cold out. I hate the weather here. I can't wait to go to arizona, even though I tried on some bathing suits yesterday and it made me want to kill myself. what else is rattling around in my head... oh, I want to write my life story I think. I'm realizing that the shit that I've done and been through would make for some pretty interesting reading, for me at least - from growing up like a square peg to driving cross country with a part-time stripper to recovery and all sorts of stuff inbetween. I feel like I'm in a movie all the time, so I might as well write one, right?

I'm going to put in a few hours at outside world stuff and see how it goes. more to follow.

v.

all I wanted was time. there was always so much to do and so many places to go... now I have all the time in the world and I'd give anything to have all the busy back. like an old guy at a meeting put it recently, I have to stop hoping for a better past.

so what I have managed to piece together (because it's up in my face at however many decibels would make it really loud) is that leaving my house is good and bad all at once, but moreso that I'm treating raf like shit and taking things out on him that have nothing to do with him. this is for two reasons: there's a part of me that feels like I'm scared he's going to leave, so I halt at a point and I want to stop working on the relationship. like this wall we keep hitting, in a couple of different arenas. but it's the same wall. the other is that the last few years have gotten progressively more difficult, and I've been dealing with varying degrees of depression and reality - and it's caused me to "lose interst in my activities" as the psychoanalyst tests put it - and I've identified doing that with dating him. when it's not him at all. and knowing both of those things is a huge, huge relief.

I don't even know why I'm putting this out on my blog, mostly because it's easier to type than to write and it's all right here and it's sunday night at almost 11 pm. I'm tired and sick and my head is exploding. the whole time my mom was sick this last month, like, sick sick, it's been about taking care of her. and my sister has been visibly more upset than I have, and it's because I wouldn't let my head go to "well what do we do when (blank) and mom's not there?" and now my head is starting to do it. who's going to call on my birthday? or make easter baskets? what happens in like, ten years, when something is going on - where do I go, what do I do? and raf was like, well, you could go to your sister's... what if something goes wrong? this huge emotional, mental, and at times financial security blanket has just been ripped off of me and I don't know what to do.

man up, I guess. tomorrow is monday, and it's a good day to start. it better be, because I don't think I have a choice anymore.

there's such a sense of emptiness when someone dies. I know that might seem like the most obvious statement of 2007, but it's true. it's a hollow spot, a space where there should be none, a lack of warmth and fullness. there were some doctor-slash-brainiac-deluxe types on npr the other day, tuesday I think, talking about the typical stages of grief. and one woman put it so well, she said that we experience pangs of yearning for whomever had died, and that then filtered to a memory of them, and we become happy or sad or both as a result of that memory depending on... well, depending on whatever. a bunch of things. I was sitting at the atm doing a deposit, and I cried. and then I went to visit my mom.

it's been such a blur since wednesday. lots of people read my blog. cousins, strangers, friends - it made a few appearances in some conversations this past week, and it compels me to update. I'll post later about the email I got after my last post, and what I wrote the next morning in starbucks. where was I though? right. the blur. the last five days have been a dream, or an underwater show maybe is more accurate, of all the Things You Do When Someone Dies. there was the Day After, where you go to the funeral home and pick out prayer cards and make decisions about flowers, and music, and what the newspaper says. then there was The Day Before, where we had to go and get clothes and pictures and find appropriate things to wear... in the middle of all of that, there was Food Time. everyone I knew wanted to love us and feed us. as it stands now, I have two trays of italian pasta dishes, various stuffed breads, fruit, and four flower arrangements filling our refrigerator and home.

I don't quite know what to say about the wake and the service, except that it felt like it was happening to someone else. when my father died, I was present for the whole thing. every moment was real, it all happened, I felt every second - every everything. from the moment in the hospital, the hour or two and then the whole day before that, and then the after and the days waking up bursting into tears. the letter for the eulogy I sobbed through the writing of, how my mom looked as we stood next to her, the breakdowns in the grocery store, the tears and the journal entries. this has been much, much different. more hazy. I have glimpses and snapshots, but it felt much more robotic. thank you for coming. thank you for coming. then realizing what was happening, and falling apart, and thank you for coming. the restaurant and the haze of food and friends, lesley coming up from the vineyard, erin flying in, my cousins taking the trip up... and sunday with the nothingness that sunday brings from time to time. and now today, a true snow day, complete with sledding and hot tea.

everyone has been so shocked and sad, and part of me thinks on some level that my mom knew this was coming. she's been dying of heartbreak a little bit at a time ever since my father passed away, and being able to go, while she was definitely scared and unsure, must have been a relief on some level. every day I will take with me the knowledge that I passed through this time in my life with dignity and grace, just the way my mom would have wanted me to. it's hard to be sad when someone you love that's hurting doesn't hurt anymore, if the option of taking the hurt away some other way isn't there. I'm a good daughter, and I always will be - I can't bring myself to say I was a good daughter yet. it's too past tense for me. I suited up and showed up, and in the end, took care of her like no one else could. I spent every morning and every day with her, and let her friends and my other family members see her at night, because it was the only time a lot of them could come. I rubbed her hands and feet and brushed her dentures and sat there with her so she wouldn't be alone when she woke up. I mean, a bunch of other people did too, but I don't live in their heads or their lives. I brought flowers on valentine's day, I brought pictures of her and my father to catch her eye, I helped her roll over when she couldn't lift herself up and I helped her drink water until the last few days when she couldn't swallow on her own. I did those things. she allowed me to do those things for her.

all of a sudden my mother went from sick to dying, and all of a sudden she was gone. she'd been slipping away a little bit at a time these last few months, sick from the chemo she thought was saving her. she was pulled away from the haven of home that she treasured so much, and when we pick up her ashes tomorrow, my sister and I are going to make sure we put them on her bed instead of on some shelf. it was all she wanted those last few days when she was still able to talk, and when she wasn't talking anymore but trying to push and pull her way out of the bed, I knew - she just wanted to be home, with her own pillows and sheets and the familiar smells and the steps you could take with your eyes closed because you've taken them so many times. we'll put her on the bed, and then in her armchair, because it's the last thing we can do for her before we put her out to sea. and then, in the truest sense, she will be home in so many ways.

mom, I'm sorry I couldn't pick you up and take you out of that bed. I wanted to steal you away and take all the hurt out of you, even if just for a second so you didn't have to feel sick anymore. I did the best I could, and I brushed your hair and made sure you were the way you wanted to be, even when you couldn't speak to tell me, or when I wasn't sure you knew I was there or not. a man at a meeting last night (I had to speak the day after your wake and service) said we get so many lessons from our parents, and for most of us the last one that they teach us is about death and dying. you've changed me forever, not just in the obvious ways from the women you were and the woman you taught me to be, but for allowing me to flourish in taking care of you in ways that I never knew I could. if any good can come from such tragedy, I'm a better woman for it, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying as best as I can to fill the shoes you've left me. I'll always love you, and always remember you like I told dad I would that night in the emergency room, when the important times happen that you should be there for. funny thing is, since I promised him that, it's almost been that I haven't been sad for him not being there until whatever it was that was important was over - almost like he made it so the sadness would come after, instead of during. at least that's what I think it is, even though I'll never know for sure.

oh, and one last thing - I'm getting all the signs. I'm sorry for thinking people (you included) were crazy when they talked about loved ones who had passed away "being with them" in various forms - now I know it's true. I saw the owl and the navy car and the tetons sticker and all those undeniable and bizzare signals you sent, and they made it okay. you made it okay. all the way to the dream a few days before you died, when you told me you were going to be leaving us soon. all of that made me know that everyone that said you were in a better place now weren't just some fruitcakes that were trying to make me feel better.

say hi to dad for me, and to raf's mom too.

and to everyone else, thanks for being there for me, and sticking it out, and sending notes of encouragement - even the strangers. all these little things are adding up to the sea of love and compassion that's getting me through, like a giant cushion that I can't see but I can feel making it possible to live every day out loud instead of slipping into silence under the safety of my comforter. instead I'm going to go back to class tomorrow, and to try to make it work, and I've even got tickets to fly to arizona in a few weeks. who knew?

you did, I guess.

v.

where do you start? I can't. I can. I don't know how, but I do... jesus.

my mom is dying.

like, right now. my world has been divided into Hospice and Not Hospice. I keep pulling my sleeves over my hands hoping that it's going to help me hide. I'm sad and confused and stunned. this came out of nowhere, as I'm finding out, like cancer often does. one day you're in treatment, the next day you're sitting across from some guy with a twenty thousand dollar watch telling you that you're running out of options.

the hardest part is how her mind isn't caught up to her body. she's still alert and alive and wanting to get up and get out and go home, home to the living room she got ripped away from unexpectedly, to treat what we thought were side effects from chemotherapy. but her body's shutting down, and her legs are giving out, and the split gets worse and worse by the day. she's been reduced to shifting around in the bed, sort of, and moaning because she can't talk. the tumors are producing fluid that's toxifying her insides. they drain it off and everything, but it gets to all the spaces inbetween... a day or two ago she stopped even drinking water and her speech got slurred and sloppy.

all she wants to do is get out of that god damn bed and go home. and it's the one thing we can't give to her, because she needs the care they're giving her and there's nowhere else to get it. so it's essentially them taking care of her going through the process. agitation, they call it. your mother is restless. so they sedate her, to make it more comfortable, and the disconnect gets worse.

have you ever watched anyone die? I haven't. there's something to say for heart attacks and car crashes, but then sometimes those leave you with regrets. wishing for those last moments and those last conversations. having been through both, my vote's with quick, pending a good life up until that fateful moment. if I could choose what it would do to the people around me, and on my terms, and all that.

except that's just not how it goes.

my last memories of my father are on christmas day night, after the food and the presents and the naps on the armchair. he followed me outside to clean off my car, all of the half inch of snow that had fallen. and it made me laugh. look at my dad, I said out loud. I love him. and I was off with smiles and beeps backing out the driveway. it's what I go back to, that and saying goodbye in the operating room and getting up to do the eulogy at the wake.

I haven't had my last memories of my mother yet, but it's... messier. sadder. more traumatic. watching that struggle, that upset - and being totally powerless to do anything about it besides show up. things like cleaning her dentures, wiping her mouth, helping her sit up and have water when she could, and now, this total tragic helplessness. I just want her not to hurt anymore, and for her to not to be scared.

I guess the only way to help her with that is to tell her. and I do.

so that's about all I've got. it's getting down to the wire now, probably another day if we're lucky.

I don't know how to end this, so I guess I'll just go, and it will have to do.

v.