You see what happens when you leave me alone with the red wine late at night?  You really shouldn’t let me drink so much when you’re not around.  I get a little out of control sometimes and start carrying on like I’m some tortured soul that no one understands.

Gross.

Just ignore me, ok?  Honestly, that’s all you can really do when I go off on one of my tangents.  I promise to be on my best behavior if you come back.  We can read the newspaper together and clip coupons over coffee and bagels and I will not tell you how the cream cheese reminds me of the snow that fell in 1993 when I lived in that blue house down that dirt road and how it covered everything everywhere and we had never seen snow like that and we went out and made snow angels in it and brought some inside so my mom could make snow ice cream for us.  No.  I will not tell you any of that.  I will read aloud to you a headline about Iran and maybe an interesting obituary and then I will take my leave of you so you can go do your things and I will not disturb you until you need me to disturb you; at which point I will crawl into your lap and disturb the ache in your loins for me until you are completely spent and weightless.

Then I will cook for you and you don’t have to do anything at all except sit right here and read your favorite book or play a song for me on the stereo.  I will run my fingers through your hair as I look over your shoulder to see what you’re reading and maybe you will put the book down and pull me into your lap and kiss me.  Or maybe you won’t.  Maybe I’ll lean down and kiss the back of your neck instead.  Or here.  Go sit in your favorite chair.  Maybe you need to close your eyes for a few minutes.  That’s ok.  I’ll wake you when dinner is ready.

After we eat, you can help me with the dishes if you want.  But you don’t have to.  It’s been a long day for you and I don’t mind taking care of you right now.  You are tired and feeling bad so let me do this, please?  I know you don’t feel like it.  You don’t feel like doing anything right now.  I understand.

Maybe you’d like to take a walk around the block tonight.  Let me finish up here and we’ll go together.  I’ll hold onto your hand the whole way there and back and I won’t let it go.

I’ll never let go of your hand.

I hope your Saturday is beautiful.

If it can’t be beautiful, I hope it’s bearable.

I rule my life by the thing that beats inside my chest.  Sometimes that makes me a fool.  Sometimes it makes me a sage.  I don’t often know which one I will be when I go in any one direction.  I don’t much care.

Maybe that means I will  make foolish mistakes even when I’m old enough to know better.

I never want to be old enough to know better.  I want my bones to be old and brittle and thin and near death and even then I will never stop making foolish mistakes that involve my heart.

It means I get hurt.  It means I love too soon and too hard.  It means life is hard for me so much of the time.

I don’t care.

It also means radiance.  It also means I receive love too soon and too hard.  It also means life is beautiful for me so much of the time.  I can find meaning and beauty everywhere.  You would not believe it if I told you. You’d die to know the places I find beauty and safety and solace.

You’d also die to know the places I see torture and sin and angst.  In me and in you.  In everyone everywhere. In all the dark spaces between love and indifference.  Oh, that horrible place of indifference.  So many people are stuck in there and I want to tear down the walls and free them all but I can’t. 

I love love and I love life even though I am tortured so much of the time.  I would not choose to be untortured ever for no part of any kind of day.

I want this life to torture me.  Spend me.  Chew me up and spit me out, whole or chewed up, it doesn’t matter.  Just render me useless.  Use me all the way up until I can’t be used anymore.

I wasn’t put here to move mountains.  I wasn’t put here to invoke change.  I wasn’t put here to get people to listen. 

I was put here to feel.

I feel it.  I feel you.  I feel you way down at the bottom of my heart where the blood pools and coagulates.  I feel you everywhere all the time.

I feel you so deep down inside me that I am you.

This is maybe the greatest thing I’ve seen all day.  God, I love this man.  How is it possible that his voice hasn’t aged at all? Like it’s still 1987 where he’s at.  I don’t think his hair has changed at all either.  I’ve never seen a person age into themselves in a more perfect way.

I would give anything to see him perform.

For comparison and because I adore this song and this video in so many different ways.  What a total hottie he was.  Perfect parts strange and intuitive and sentimental.

I could post videos of The Cure all day long but I’ll spare you because I know you can just as easily go look them up yourself.  Do that!  Go check them out Live at Pinkpop 2019.  I just did.  It was amazing.

 Anyway.

What is that saying?

God willing and the creek don’t rise?

Have you ever heard that?  It basically means ‘if everything goes as planned; if all goes well.’  I’ve heard it many times throughout my life but I don’t think I’ve ever said it before.

Well, god willing and the creek don’t rise I’ll be turning 29 again Sunday.

I will be doing one of two things:

Taking Max to see The Harlem Globetrotters or leaving town after his basketball game Saturday morning and spending the night wherever we end up.  Or maybe both.  I guess there’s no reason we can’t skip town sometime Saturday afternoon and drive around until we land somewhere and also go to the show Sunday.  Sounds like a perfect way to spend another 29th birthday, actually.  I’ll keep you posted.  I haven’t actually bought the tickets for the Globetrotters yet.  We saw them last year and had courtside seats, which was super fun and I highly recommend paying the extra bucks for the experience.  I’ve waited too late this year and can’t find any available so we won’t have that same experience again which is kind of a bummer.

Listen.

I tried really hard to keep the sads out of this post.  How did I do?  Did I come across as upbeat and normal?  That’s what I was going for.  I was really trying very hard not to let Debbie Downer out tonight.

I did that for you in case you’re having a hard day and are tired of reading about my aching heart.  I mean, can’t I get over it already?  How many times am I going to say the same things over and over again?

Honestly?

Forever.

I’ll say them forever if that’s what it takes.

Today feels like Monday.  Yesterday felt like nothing.

I have the blues.

Are you so tired of my blues?

I’m so tired of them too.  I wish they would go away.

I feel like a caged animal at night when the world sleeps.  Or like right now.  It’s that in-between time.  It’s not really night yet but the day is finishing up her business and is about to clock-out.  The Gloaming.  That’s what I’ve always heard it called.  I don’t like The Gloaming.  I want to like it because I love the idea of it and I love the way it sounds.  The Gloaming.  I don’t know why I’m capitalizing it.  It just seems like it deserves to be capitalized; like it deserves that kind of respect. 

Didn’t Stephen King write a book about The Gloaming?  I should Google that.  Or DuckDuckGo it?
You know, the first time you mentioned DuckDuckGo, I had no idea what you were talking about.  When you went away, I downloaded it just because.  It was a thing of you and I was grasping at straws to hold on to anything of you.

Remember how I lamented that I was kind of bummed that this was the only version of me I had to give you because our lives had to run their separate courses before we could meet?  About how my face would be changing and evolving pretty soon and filling up with time and wrinkles?  Well.  I will be even less than I am now when you come back around.  I hope you will not be too disappointed in the way age has taken her claim on me.  I try to eat my vegetables and exercise and moisturize my face both day and night but I don’t sleep nearly enough and I drink too much red wine too many nights and I worry constantly about everything.  My forehead is starting to crease and the bags under my eyes have their own zip code now.  Oh, and my hands.  Good god, what happens to our hands as we age?  I can’t even deal with what they have going on.  They need to seriously chill the fuck out, though.

I hope it will all be acceptable to you.

I realize this sounds vain and I don’t really think I’m a vain person.  I just hope you come back before the sea of wrinkles overtakes my face and my body because I have a few things I’d really like to show you and do to you while I still can, you know?

I know you know.  You want to do them to me, too.  Remember how I was gonna coax every last drop of life out of you until there wasn’t any left?  Yeah. I still think about that.

I still get weak when I think of you diving under my blanket and scratching all my surfaces, your dishpan hands all over me, your beautiful words falling from your lips as they trace every part of my body.

I still quiver at the thought of you.

The thought of you is everything to me.

I’m sorry for the amount of sap in my post yesterday.  I’m sure it’s all over you and you need a bath by now.  Maybe it’s like that jar of molasses you were playing around with that one time.  Was it molasses or marmalade?  I think it was marmalade but I can’t remember exactly,  I just recall that it made a huge mess while you were buttering your toast that morning.  I would go find it but I don’t want to open your pages just yet right now.  I can’t look at them all the time.  But I think of them constantly.  

Max had his second basketball practice tonight.  His first game is Saturday morning.  His team is The Mustangs.  They’re all so adorable.  I can’t wait to see them play.  His coach is a bit of an overachiever for this age group, though.  I remember him from last year and was really hoping we wouldn’t get him this year.  So, of course, we did.  He was constantly yelling at the refs and his own kid.  I’ve always felt sorry for the coaches’ kids. It must suck so bad to never be able to live up to who your dad thinks you should be because he played basketball that one year when he was a junior and he was really good at it so, of course, his offspring should also be.  Gross.  Why do people project their own bullshit onto their kids?  I’m sure I do it too.  Being a parent is mad hard.  You never know if you’re doing it right.  It’s kind of a lonely place.  You just hope you’re giving them the best of you as much as you can to counteract all the bad that you also can’t help but show them.  Believe me when I tell you they understand so much more than you wish they did.  They don’t get to stay little long enough.  The world comes looking for them way too soon.

Max is a cool guy.  You would have liked him.  He’s smart and hilarious and really good at sports somehow.  He definitely does not get that from me.  He’s really tall for his age.  He’s almost as tall as me but I can still pick him up.  I can still carry him upstairs to bed when he falls asleep on the couch.  It just about kills me but I do it.  I’m not looking forward to the day when he doesn’t fit in my arms anymore. He has horrible taste in music.  Horrible. I’m hoping he’ll come around.  He’s stubborn as all get out.  He has a really smart mouth that gets him in trouble every single day.  He loves animals but will tell you he doesn’t care.  He’s sensitive.  Very.  He’s afraid of the dark but would not want me to tell you that.  He loves his teacher and school.  His Mimi is probably his favorite person in all the world.  He’s kind but he can also be unkind.  He’s really a lot of fun and we laugh a lot.  But he also sees me cry and act ridiculous.  I really don’t want him to see any of that but it’s just the two of us here and I can’t hide it from him.  He knows things I wish he didn’t.  

What’s going on over there on your side of the map?  I wish you could tell me all about it.  There’s so much I want to tell you.  More than the things I say to you here.  Just everyday mundane things, really.  I miss your sense of humor.  I miss the way you wrote to me.  I miss the shorthand you’d use sometimes and the symbols that I didn’t understand but wouldn’t dare tell you I didn’t.  I miss the way sometimes your words would go over my head and I’d have to read them again and again.  I miss the way I’d get so excited to see your name in my inbox.

I keep waiting to see it there again. 

I may never stop waiting.

I hope you’re ok with that.

I am broken inside my head. 

I’m not depressed.  I’m just sad so much of the time.  I don’t know how to not feel all of the things I feel.  I don’t know how to not feel hate and love and indifference and compassion and empathy and embarrassment and shame and joy and pity and vengeance and rage and beauty.  Everywhere.  Every single person is walking around with it stirring all about their being, coming off in waves and I can feel it and it makes me feel the way they must feel and I don’t want to feel the way they feel.  I only want to feel the way I feel but I don’t know how and I don’t know what I feel because what I feel is all mixed up in what they feel and I wish I could untangle myself from everyone everywhere and not feel anything at all.  I wish I didn’t listen to sad songs and watch sad movies and read sad stories.  I wish for 5 minutes I could not think at all.  I wish I didn’t take all the words and dissect them and pick them apart and then try to rearrange them to mean something they were never intended to mean.

I don’t want to care anymore.  I don’t want to find a tiny baby spider on my windshield while I’m pumping my gas and wonder where its home might be and how far away from its web has it strayed and will it ever get back there again and if I drive off from here will it be able to hang on or will the wind knock it off?  I better try to get it off my windshield then and sit it right here on the ground next to the pump and hope no one comes along and kills its baby life before it’s even had a chance to begin. 

A fucking spider.

Why can’t I just smush the thing?  Why do I think it has a soul? 

I am a disaster.

I want to be like everyone else with their lists and their schedules and their nightly routines that involve face masks and bed time stories and lights out by 9 because we need 8 full hours of sleep to be our best selves at all times.  I want to wake up at 5 a.m. and run 6 miles on the treadmill, then cook a hearty but nutritious breakfast and walk out of the house with a smile on my face and a hot cup of coffee in my hand, ready to face the day and kill the tiny baby spider that has found itself on the inside of my window now.  Fuck you.  Get out of my immaculate car.  I am immaculate and so is my life.

Except I am not and I never have been and I can’t keep up with anyone.  I feel like a tiny island over here.  No one is coming to my island.  It’s all of overgrown and broken down and there are no pretty things here.  There are no hammocks to lie in.  There are no fruity cocktails to sip.  There are no cabana boys to slather lotion upon your perfect skin.  There are only fallen coconuts that I can’t figure out how to get into and vines upon vines upon vines that hide this tiny little shack that I lay down in each night and count all the stars up above because I have to know how many there are and I can’t rest until I’ve named every single one and I wonder if all the stars up there are the souls of all the baby spiders in the world who never made it past that gas station pump and never got to taste victory in a web it created from its own glorious body.  It was just smushed out and sent up into the atmosphere to hang out amongst the stars.  And that’s where I want to go too.  I want to go up there and be a star and look down at the world from above.

The truth is.

I think about everything all the time.  There is never a quiet moment in my head.  That’s why I need you to get in your boat and sail over to this island.  Bring your machete.  There are vines upon vines upon vines to cut through before you can get to me inside this tiny little shack that I have built for us where we can lay down on this blanket I’ve made of palm leaves and gaze at the stars together.  I will tell you all the names I have for them but you can rename some of them if you don’t like them.  Here, I know you will know how to open this coconut.  Hold it to my lips while I drink.  I’m so thirsty.  I’ve been waiting on you to get here.  Now, lay me down gently and crawl on top of me and make love to me until I can’t see or think about anything else but the stars above your head and the way you feel inside me.

I don’t want to think about anything else right now or maybe ever again.

I finally took the Christmas tree down.  I know.  I’m super late to the party.  Story of my life.

I haven’t played a song for you in so many days now.  I wonder how many songs would have been shared between us by now if we were still talking.  I need a break from my songs.  I need you to throw something in the mix.  I’ve been listening to the same things over and over again.  I have begun to bore myself.  I wonder if you were reading these words if I would also bore you.  Most likely.

I have no idea how any of this reads.  Is it crazy?  Desperate?  Pathetic?  Or is it just sad?  I really don’t know and I have no idea how you will react to any of this if you ever come back around.  Maybe I just won’t tell you I’ve been writing to you here and delete it all before you have a chance to look at any of it.   Maybe I’ll only tell you about it after you’ve fallen in love with me and decide you can’t live without me and I know this will not make or break us.  Maybe then I’ll print it all out for you and present it to you as some kind of token of my devotion to you.  Maybe by then you won’t see it as crazy but as endearing.

I’m not crazy, you know.  If you wanted me to go away, I would.  You didn’t tell me that, though.  I don’t think you want me to go away.  I don’t think you wanted to go away from me either.  I wish you didn’t feel like you had to.   But you did feel like that and I’m so sorry.

Everything is still the same.

Someone played this today so I’m sharing it with you.  Maybe you’ve heard it before.  I never have.  You have to follow it all the way through.

A customer brought me flowers today.

Pink roses.

He said it was a gift for the new year.  No one has given me flowers in over ten years, maybe longer.

I almost cried.

Sam.

He has this infectious laugh that feels like home.  The first time I met him, I heard him laugh before I ever saw his face.  I knew I was going to love him then.  His laugh feels like an old house that smells faintly of mothballs and cornbread where a western is always playing on the TV and his favorite chair is covered in an afghan his wife made 40 years ago.  His laugh makes you want to sit at the foot of his recliner with a glass of cornbread and milk and watch those westerns with him all day long while his wife knits a scarf for you to take with you before you leave.

I never knew how much I loved pink roses before today.

Shortly after that, the new employee asked me how old I was.  ‘Old,’ I told her.  She persisted.  ‘I’ll never tell you,’ I said.  I’m not even sure myself.  I have to think about it and then I have to go dig around for my birth certificate and get my bifocals out to look at the date, then I call my mom or my dad or both just to confirm it’s right.

She said, ‘you’re only about 29 or 30 though, right?’

God bless you.  Here.  Put these bifocals on.  You need them worse than me.

I almost made out with her and gave her a raise all at the same time.

I do NOT look 29 or 30, by the way, so don’t go getting excited over there.  

Her people must not age well is all I can figure.

A song playing in the background while I write this to you:

There’s a hole in the roof for the stars to fall in
I gather them up for you
Fill up my pockets, start walking again
Bringing these stars to you
 


I wish I could bring all the stars to you.  I’d pull them out of my pocket one at a time to show you how they pale in comparison to you.  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you so I’m going to arrange them all in a circle here around you so you’ll see.

P.S.  You told me one time, or more than that, that I wasn’t allowed to send you ‘clarifying’ post scripts.  So I’m not going to clarify my words to you yesterday.  I’m going to let them stand because sometimes I feel so heavy with the burden of this loss, I don’t know what else to do but let the words spill out of my head.  I hope you will understand.

It’s almost a new year. 

Where are you? 

What are you doing?  

I’m still here.