i've seen the needle and the damage done

i didn't want to find you here. i didn't want you to have my ear. i meant to make you stay away.

(i hope she doesn't spit on my face. this time i hope i spit on hers.)

easy

it's easy to run. what's hard is getting away.

bruised knee, open palm of hand.

last night was the darkest night yet. for some reason my grief crawled across the floor and consumed me. mygod i could hardly breath. and i am not even sure i wanted to. and i looked around and there was not one thing i could think of that was worth being here for. of course it was a fleeting moment. less of a thought and more of a hiccup. and this must be what hopelessness feels like. and this must be what listlessness looks like. and i felt so hurt so judged so over the things i was in.

and i just wanted peace.

and i just wanted an end to this ache. ivan. why.

(is it a dream, is it a lie)

later. same day. same place. but i listened to the saddest songs. then the mean ones. the fuck you songs. the fuck it ones. and then the other ones. 60's girl bands. arcade fire. i let jay z convince me that its okay to be forever young.

and maybe it's okay to be so sad you can't breath. as long as you go on and breath anyway.

sometimes,

i really hate the things you do.
but mostly i just hate being so far away from you.

stay a little longer....

i am being haunted. in the most spectacular ways. sweet sweet dreams and ivan is there so tenderly for me. and i wake up to my little family in our little house and i feed jenckes and whisper my good byes to joe and then ivan and i walk to the t stop together and i feel him everywhere holding close to me and sometimes i wonder if i am losing my mind but these dreams are like nothing i have ever had before and some days i can hardly breath and i don't want even one sound, one movement, one thing to happen. i don't want him to go away again. and when the day breaks with snow flakes or sun sky the world becomes it's cold cold place and i am alone again. and i am running out of numbers to call. faces to pull. places to hide. dead friends piled next to my bed.

be mine, valentine

saturday was leigh's funeral. these things are so hard no matter what i try to tell myself. no matter what i try to do. the hymns. the things people remember. i left fast after. saw alot of people i didn't feel like, in that moment, spending the time to remember. i don't like the funeral-time-shit-shooting. i wanted to be whispering sick-stories with leigh again from my hospital bed. i wanted to be away.

so we left. stayed at a chatham inn. twenty minutes from my parents house but it felt a world away. high tea. sherry. a fireplace and a shower made for two. we ate my favorite foods (bread with brie, olives, chocolate covered gummy bears, prosecco) and he kept me from breaking right in two.

light

so the days are getting longer and that light has that brightness that hints of spring and this is the time of year when my pulse starts to quicken with all the expectations of those bbq days.

grates

ohgoodgod this constant pain starts to grate on me. i wish i could just sit with a heating pad and some pain meds til it gets better but i have a job to go to and a house to clean and dinner to cook. what am i supposed to do. and it's getting worse not better and i am not going back to that hospital. it's the last thing i want to do.

i have grand plans. things like knitting my very own sweater. baking bread and some dessert food every sunday. pineapple upside down cake waiting at home for me (okay that part is already true i made it for superbowl sunday). summer days making homemade jam and pickled corn and maybe even a garden too.

so now, and in the meantime, i just have to keep pushing through.

scar tissue that i wish you saw

so i am not in california as planned. another morphine filled heart monitored hospital day. it's nothing new for me. it's just that place i thought i had finally left once and for all. but of course recovery lasts a life time. and now its scar tissue and maybe its the nerves finally connecting again or maybe its an artery getting resituated but damn it hurts and i thought i was past the hospital stays and the doctors gaze. but never will be really. and i guess i never thought about how these sorts of things lead to more of these sorts of things. and so i will take my potassium pills and i will see my doctors and i will remind myself again that the pain and the set backs of this recovery are worth the life i in between physical therapy and cat scan appointments, have the chance to be living.

too

fuck you too.

charm

third one is the charm eh? because i thought i knew how to do this now. the right way. the way that doesn't involve pills, drunk nights or fake fights. i thought i had found the better way. but i'm overwhelmed. i don't know where to start. it's like every moment could be consumed by a memory here. a face there. and i need to be here now and it's hard because i am always remembering that time...

and the saddest part is knowing how hard the years had been on them. re-reading lines leigh wrote about his shame. his struggle. how it tied his hands behind his back. and i guess he lost the fight. or he was taken out of the game. and anyway you look at it. they all lost their way. couldn't get back home again.

and it's hard to find peace when i picture all that pain. all that fighting. if only they knew the love out here for them. if only it weren't always a moment too late.

sometimes i feel like i was at my own funeral. after my accident the faces that poured out. the love. the flowers. the packages and phone calls. it blew my mind. it lifted me up. it carried me to a place of peace even in those worst of times.

so may this love lift them. hold them close. carry them to a safer, softer, kinder place.

and why can't we just be kind, here. why can't we just carry eachother, now.

because i need to be carried right now. because my heart feels so heavy. because i don't know how much more i can take.

damn

its almost too much to type. certainly too much to talk about.
yesterday i found out another one of my old friends passed away. leigh had
a daughter and a wedding on the horizon. now he has his name on a wall and
a million facebook good-byes.

and how do you get over the first one when they just keep coming.