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.

I’m like 98.587% sure I’m sick.  I’m not calling it yet because I DO NOT WANT TO ADMIT DEFEAT to whatever this thing is that is making my throat feel like sandpaper every time I swallow.  Fuck this shit.  I’m not acknowledging its existence and maybe it will go away. If I ignore it, it can’t bother me right?  Right.  So carry on, will ya?  I’m fine.

I really really really feel like horse shit, though.

UGH.

Most of the company from out of town has arrived now.  My sister will be here tomorrow and she’s staying with me.  That means I’ll be running around like a psycho making sure everything is in order and presentable.  Not that I don’t keep a clean house…..well, what’s your standard of clean?  We should talk about this.  I have a young boy, two fairly large dogs and a cat.  There’s a lot of living going on around here and it’s not always pretty.  I do keep the dishes and the clothes washed, though, and I vacuum pretty regularly.  I’m not the greatest at dusting or putting things away after I’ve used them.  I have 712 junk drawers and they’re all full.  I don’t alphabetize the cans in my pantry.  (I have a sister-in-law who does.)  My refrigerator sometimes resembles one you might stumble across at a frat house.  Being just the two of us here, there’s always leftovers that rarely get eaten.  I throw them out eventually but sometimes they get shoved to the back, like they’re hiding, and I forget they’re in there.  What else?  I don’t have a whole lot of junk everywhere but I do have a dedicated junk room.  That’s where Max’s old toddler bed is that I’m thinking of turning into a dog bed.  They have a whole couch to themselves now but it’s getting kind of raggedy and I want to replace it.  I’m thinking of getting another toddler bed, one for each of them, and painting their names across the headboard.  How fucking adorable, I know.  Also, I don’t make my bed everyday.  Horrors!  A fucking grown ass adult with an unmade bed.  What in the actual fuck.  Ok.  But listen.  Here’s the thing.  Who the fuck is going into my bedroom?  (I mean, clearly, you’re not.  I’d make it up the first time you saw it, though.  After that, I can’t make any promises.)  Look, it’s not like my bed is in the middle of the living room when a guest walks in.  It’s upstairs and down a hall.  No one is seeing that shit.  I’m not giving people tours of my home for fuck’s sake.  I do regularly wash the sheets, so don’t worry.  I really like things that smell good.  I’m all about scents.  I love linen sprays and room sprays and candles and all that predictable girlie shit.  And incense occasionally.  Depends on my mood. 

Don’t worry, it’s really not so awful around here.  I just have other things to think about other than the dust on my mantel on any given day.  I bet there won’t be a speck of dust to be found anywhere tomorrow, though.  Watch.

Anyway, I have to go socialize now.   Actually, they all went out to eat but will be back soon.  I didn’t feel like going.  I really am sick.  Blah.  Come tuck me into my unmade bed and read me a story.  But not one of your sexy ones, dammit.  I am in no condition to jump your bones at the moment.

P.S.  Is it mantel or mantle?  It’s mantel, right??

It’s quiet now.  Everyone has gone home.  It’s late.  Max is upstairs sleeping.  Waiting on Santa.  I’ve put all the gifts under the tree, filled the milk half full in Santa’s mug, chomped the end off the carrot, left the crumbs from the cookies, filled his stocking.  We’re ready.  I can’t wait to see him in the morning.  There won’t be many more of these left.  Maybe one.  Maybe two.  This blind faith.  This innocence.  It’s so fleeting.  You have no idea how fleeting it is.  I never did either until I became his mom.  I think of him sleeping up there in my king size bed and I think of all the sleeps he’ll hopefully have from here on after and I wish every single one of them could be a Christmas Eve sleep when he was 8 years old and he knew Santa was coming.  I wish all the world could have that kind of sleep forever.  The pure exhaustion from a day of anticipation.  He didn’t think he’d ever be able to fall asleep but he was passed out by 8:30 on the couch.  I carried his limp body up the stairs and tucked him in under my covers and whispered “Santa is coming.”

I’m exhausted and my house smells like a Hallmark Christmas movie if you can imagine what that might smell like.  It’s disgusting and comforting and home all at once.  I don’t know what that means or how that makes sense but somehow it does. I’ve cooked all the food I can cook and tomorrow I will take it over to my dad’s house and we will all laugh and talk like the past never happened.  And maybe it didn’t, you know?  Maybe life is just a series of individual events and not some ongoing monologue you can’t escape.  I like the idea of that.   It’s not true, of course, but for this one day, let me believe it just as surely as that sweet boy upstairs asleep in my bed believes that Santa Claus is coming tonight.

Goodnight, wherever you are.  I hope you’re already asleep and dreaming of some epic Christmas Eve when you were a kid.

I just lost my damn mind at the grocery store.  To the tune of two hundred and some odd dollars.  What?!  What is wrong with me?  I went through all my holiday recipes this morning and decided I was going to make ALL OF THEM!  Dumbass.  It’s too late to back out.  I’m committed now.  I hardly have time to type these words to you.  There are cheeseballs to put together, Christmas chex mix to bake, casseroles, snowmen shaped fudge, chocolate covered pretzels, roasted pecans.  Oh my god…. Not to mention the cheese chowder I make every year for Christmas Eve.

 I need an intervention.

If you need me anytime before Christmas, I’ll be in the kitchen.  I’m just gonna sleep on the floor.  There’s no time to waste.

So listen, this is a sad but cool story.  There’s this guy I follow on facebook (don’t worry, I don’t actually post or do anything on facebook – I just troll around).  I’m not exactly sure how I stumbled across him but somehow I did and he’s interesting as all fuck.  He lives over in Mississippi and used to write for some magazine or newspaper or both, I’m not sure.  Turns out, he and his lady are driving to San Francisco at the end of this month to attend the Dead & Company show on December 30 and 31.  Here’s a link to the story.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/cap-can039t-go-ginger-can?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR3XDSCVmeXG1cx2HssSPc3FLaqcvSMNny0odFr_ztYQG_PFMU9QkyVn3ZU

If I were to buy an extra ticket to see Taj Mahal in April in New Orleans, would you come?

I’m serious.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this since yesterday when it suddenly occurred to me that, at some point, I will have to accept the fact that you are not coming back.  I won’t be able to do that unless I’ve exhausted all my resources.  I need to know I did everything in my limited ability to try to reach you.  I say limited because you’ve left me only this platform with which to speak to you.  I come here every single day to send my words out to you.  I don’t always know what I want to say.  I don’t always know if I’ll have anything to say.  Hence, the utter garbage as of late.  I only know I need to say something so you will know I’m still here.  I don’t ever want you to think I’m not here or that I’ve left you.  I’m never going to leave you but I will eventually have to accept the fact that you may have already left me.  I won’t accept that without something concrete.  A sign, if you will.

So I propose the following:

Meet me in New Orleans on April 30.  I’ll buy an extra ticket to see Taj.   We’ll meet somewhere at a certain time.  I’ll give you those details later.  I haven’t quite worked that out yet.  I’ll tell you exactly what I’ll be wearing.  You already know what I look like so you’ll recognize me, I’m certain.  I’ll buy the tickets on my birthday and post a picture here when I do.

I know you aren’t reading any of this and this is all in vain but it will maybe give me closure on April 30 when you don’t show up.  It will give me the proof my heart needs that you no longer exist except in my memory.  I will go to the show alone.  Maybe I will leave the extra ticket on the bar before I make my way to the venue.  Maybe some stranger will pick it up.  Maybe he will hold my hand while I weep for you.  Maybe he will hug me and tell me goodbye after the show and maybe I will whisper goodbye back to him, knowing I’m really whispering it to you.

It’s official.  I need to disengage from the world for a while.  I need to hide out in a cabin in the woods for the better part of forever.  Or a cabin in the mountains.  Or a beach shack somewhere.  Why not all three?  I’ll just rotate around the different seasons.  Somehow they’ll all be magically stocked with everything I need and even some things I don’t.  Just as long as I can completely disengage from humanity for a while.  That’s the main goal here.  I’m not trying to ‘rough it’ or anything.  Hell, I couldn’t hunt for food if my life depended on it.  I can’t even bait a hook with a live worm.  Poor worm!  Poor fish!  It’s all so tragic.  I eat meat, of course.  I just can’t actively participate in the killing of the meat.

I went Christmas shopping today.  Hence the need to disengage.  It’s so awful.  And before you make any remarks about how shopping between Halloween and Thanksgiving would alleviate this need for solitude, I’ll have you know I always feel this way when I have to go shopping.  I do not enjoy shopping.  I like things and I like buying things but I do not like other people who also want to buy things.  I do not like the sad, old men sitting on the benches while their ladies have been in the same store for half a century and still can’t decide on the red or other-red scarf.  I can’t stand to see them dejectedly pushing the carts around after their Martha’s and Shirley’s while both Martha and Shirley have been standing in the middle of aisle 3 for thirty minutes now talking about the church potluck.  I want to punch both Martha and Shirley in the face and take ol’ Tom and Ed to that little bar up the road, settle them in all nice and comfy at a corner table, order their seltzer water and tell the bartender to turn the game on already.  Poor Tom and Ed.  Neither one drinks much anymore but they still enjoy the atmosphere of a bar with a ballgame on in the background.  At least let them have that while you ladies take up the entire aisle talking about the same shit you always talk about.  And for the love of all that is holy, enough with the hairspray and baby powder perfume.  I can’t even deal.

And double fuck the socialite moms with their oversized sunglasses and Starbucks.  Bitch, it’s raining.  It’s actually raining.  They’re constantly on the phone and have to stop right in front of you to shoot off a text to …who?  The Queen of England, apparently, because it cannot wait one fucking millisecond.  You’re just going to have to deal with it whoever you are behind me because don’t you know I don’t give a fuck about you.  You are a mere peasant.  Didn’t you know you were in the presence of royalty?  I don’t know, ma’am, half your face is hidden under those giant sunglasses and the other half is swollen from the lip plumpers your husband keeps begging you not to get because you can’t suck dick for at least a week after the injection and a dick suck is all the poor bastard gets anymore now that you’ve gained a few pounds around your middle that NO ONE can even see except you.  Maybe those fake eyelashes are casting a shadow on your tummy and making it appear to have grown an actual curve?.  Go sit down somewhere.  You fucking exhaust me

God, the teenagers and the couples in love and the awkward dads and the single moms and the kids and the babies and even me and my own goddamn self who is just as annoying to someone else as they are to me.  It drives me as batshit as all the crap stuffed on all the shelves everywhere all over every damn store you walk into.  There are literal pathways through all the junk, forcing you to walk single file like you’re back in elementary school.  There’s a million different versions of the same thing everywhere.  There are 76 shades of this brown pottery and 184 portraits of this painting with the red dot in a slightly different place.  Changes the whole meaning of the piece, don’t ya think?  NO.  I don’t.  Put the red dot back where it belongs and destroy the other one hundred eighty three imitations.

Awww, fuck.  I’m turning into an ornery old lady!  I’m gonna be swinging a cane around pretty soon and yelling at all the neighborhood kids from the rocker on my front porch.

Except I won’t.  I’ll just keep it all to myself and then vent to you about it when I get home.  I’ll get on my soap box and deliver a tirade so full of expletives you’ll have no choice but to grab me off that soap box, haul me into the bedroom, throw me on the bed and proceed to pound all the bah humbug right back out of my bones.

Then we’ll decorate sugar cookies and lick icing off each other.

Like these.  Maybe your name will be on one next year.

This new coffee maker I got doesn’t make any noise whatsoever when it brews. I’m kinda pissed about that.  The son of a bitch isn’t even red, either.  The only red one they had was $30.  This one only cost me $20.

Wait a minute. I lied.

I just walked in the kitchen to get something and it’s over there making these faint gurgling sounds all under its breath like it’s embarrassed or something.  Like “sorry, I have to do this, hope you don’t mind.”  Bitch, let me hear you!  My old coffee maker made so much damn noise.  Like an old man working all the kinks out when he stood up.  I guess maybe that’s why it died on me.  It was old as fuck.  Well, this new one needs to go on and live a little because I like a coffee maker that talks to me while it’s working its magic. 

I don’t know why I’m making coffee at 1:30 on a Friday afternoon except that when my other one died, it suddenly became urgent that I replace it ASAP.  The thought that I couldn’t brew coffee even if I wanted to suddenly made me want coffee at all times of the day.  It’s 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, need coffee.  It’s 2:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep, must make coffee.  Brains are a total mind-fuck, aren’t they?

How do you take your coffee?  Do you even like coffee or is tea more your thing?  I like both but I drink two cups of coffee every morning.  I drink the first cup black and the second cup with powdered creamer.  I don’t use any sugar or artificial sweetener.  If I have coffee in the afternoon I’m inclined to use powdered creamer.  Obviously, I’d love to use heavy cream in my coffee but that’s just too much decadence for everyday life.  I save the heavy cream for places like Waffle House or the continental breakfast at a hotel.  One simply cannot live luxuriously every single day.  What ever would become of us if we did?  We’d be way too bougie.  I like peppermint tea sometimes in the evening.  I once read this book where the main character was always drinking peppermint tea.  Like every other page (I don’t even remember the name of the book now).  I’d never had peppermint tea before but halfway through that book, I made a special trip to the grocery to pick some up.  I’ve been drinking it ever since.  Sometimes I put milk and honey in it if I’m feeling special.

Max’s guitar came today!  Oh my god.  I’m so excited.  I want to take it out and play with it.  I bought him an amp and a stand for it plus the picks.  What else does he need?  His best friend, Dez, is getting a drum set for Christmas. They’re totally going to jam together.  Obviously, they’ll be rock stars any day now.

I plan to finish my Christmas shopping tomorrow, you’ll be happy to know.  I only have every single person left to buy for so I should be able to knock it out in an afternoon.  Max is mostly done, though, so that’s really all that matters.  I’d buy a gift for you if you were still around.  Maybe I’ll buy myself one instead.  What should I get?  I really need a new flat iron for my hair.  I banged mine on the counter the other morning because it was in my hand and it just sorta accidentally happened to slam down.  It may or may not have a crack in it now.  I’m not sure.  But whatever.  Listen.  I’m not a violent person.  I was just very frustrated because my hair would not lay flat no matter how many times I passed the iron over it.  Fucking bitch ass hair. 

I’ve had two cups of coffee while I’ve been writing this whole junk of nothing to you.  I guess I’m feeling a little better today.  I’ve made it to the top of this hole but I still haven’t climbed out.  I’m kind of just hanging here on the edge, like a swimming pool.  It could go either way really.  I might get out and sit on the side or I might hold my nose and go back under.  Too early to tell.

I really just stopped by here to tell you that no matter how many days keep piling up between us,

I still think of you every single second of every single one.