damned if you don't

sometimes in the bustle i forget where i was. not but six years ago. purple gloved hands washing my body like i was a rack of dishes in a restaurant kitchen. stupid useless legs. resting on a shower chair. stupid useless body. not doing the things it was supposed to do. i remember it all in flashes. the visiting nurses with their lap top computers changing the dressings on my wounds. the way it felt to lay in bed and feel the blood trickling out of the drain they had shoved ten inches into my body. the way it throbbed every time i moved. the time the physical therapist told me i had the body of a swimmer as i did my round of leg lifts in bed. or mornings passed lifting arm weights because it was the only thing i could still do. it's hard to read. on all those drugs. it's hard to feel. when the world acts so bad. it's hard to remember. when your days are so terrifying.

i was terrified for so many years.

come back to now. and that damn scar tissue from my abdominal aorta tear is getting my down. it hurts to breath. i am not sleeping well. and it is hard to not be in a bitchy mood when this pain is so persistent in reminding you of the ways you failed to heal. the things that will always be wrong with you. and i don't have the energy now, for this. i am not going back to those regimes of drugs and shots and forced hospitalizations.

i would rather sit very still. i promise not to move.

luck

i am lucky to live among the most precious things.

mygod

for the first time in over a year the place i live feels like a home again. i moved in may in the midst of a breakup. i couldn't get invested. i didn't know where i was or if i could stay. but now we have a bedroom that feels so nice i don't want to leave. two working tv's (being sick will never be better). a loveseat to go with our couch. a christmas light chandelier over our table on the porch. a firepit. shit. it's perfect. and we found a store in brookline filled with all the russian food joe misses and the flavors that remind me of that long ago (now) kazakhstan trip and they had the sweetest honey and the most bitter beers and i felt, again, like i am living here, and not just going through the motions on a street that could be anywhere.

and saturday i missed ivan so much my heart hurt. i remembered the first time he told me i was beautiful. we were at the stop sign down the street from my parents house. and he might have been the hundredth person to say such things but when he said it i felt beautiful and not like he wanted something from me.

it's monday now. and it's raining. steady-like. like it's gonna keep on raining. and i have the lsat's to study for. budgets to break.

and for a second before i stepped off the train i didn't have one thing to be afraid of. and that feeling. again. like life is going to be good. despite all this shit we are all stuck in.

once

i just wanted to feel your breath. i just needed to know you were here (anywhere,near,).

* footnote

for those of you who judged me (and you know who you are) i would like to retract my year of agonizing and the guilt i felt for finding happiness with the statement that josh is moving in with his girlfriend of as many months as i have had a boyfriend. (josh who is co-dependent and who couldn't be in a relationship and be his own person. Josh who didn't want therapy because he just really needed to find himself). me, with my open, bleeding heart, let you make me feel bad about myself like it was me who did something to josh by moving forward when he told me to leave. and you judged me assuming i didn't try hard enough or that i moved too swiftly. and so i guess we were all wrong.

but at least i can boast integrity. a heavy heart full of new beginnings. white light. i found my peace and i am living a better life than i ever even thought could be.

and you.

you are just an ass hole. who reads my blog.

perspective

my mother has multiple sclerosis. my dad has hepatitis c. my first love shot himself in the head. my boyfriends parents are both dead. they have been since he was 17.

it's easy to feel bitter with this kind of scenery.

but then there come the cloud breaks. the high fives and the prequels. the never-meant-tos fade away and in their place come the it's-like-you-were-always-theres.

i ate a huge m&m cookie for lunch. nothing first or after.

sometimes that is just what i have to do.

a spring cold

and really we're still in the last days of winter and i have a fever with this cold so maybe it's something more menacing and i am used to being sick but mygod how quick it takes me to that place. to those days. to those years spent decorating hospital rooms with magazines and flowers, looking forward to my hand picked meals and cable shows and physical therapy. the little things that won't go away and eff my compromised immune system how about my compromised heart. my compromised ideals. the ways women have to compromise their dignity (or else we are uptight for caring about the media and the mens exploitation of our tits or the ways we look right through each other).

or how about that blanket he took. how about the days i crawled on my knees begging him to just stop yelling. to just talk straight. to just forgive me.

how about the lies he told. how about the stories he fed me. how about the ways i agonized over the promises and the dishes when he had already given up, already run away, already taken the gun and the pesto and the good sheets to his corner. already said his good-bye.

and i am not crazy.
and it was not my fault.
and i am not responsible for the ways that he/they/you failed. me.
and you failed me first. and hardest. and without reply.

and i merely decided to let go.
so go.
and don't you even text me again.

Noah's Arc

We are beginning the need Noah's Arc here. The rain just keeps coming down. I like the sound of the rain drops ka-pluncking in the trash cans all through my office. Like the dark-ness of the day. Like the slow-ness of my office. But I don't want to get carried away.


http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/hilarysmama

tgif

cause i have had nothing but meetings today. one-after-the-other.
and i am tired of meeting.
you know?
tired of listening, tired of pretending, tired of stating the obvious.
and this morning rachel in my office started telling me about deb and her dead wife and we both started crying and neither of us knew why.
but really we both knew why because ivan is dead and leigh too and her mother in law died a month ago. and everyone dies. and everyone who lives is left living this life that sometimes, even on the brightest tuesday, they don't even want.
and who would want this?
and who wouldn't?
and who knows what number is gonna be pulled at the senior center bingo game by that woman wearing too much perfume. and who knows who will keep track and yell it first and who will have bingo for three letters and not say a word because they really don't care and they don't need the 50 gift card from target they just needed somewhere to go.
because the house felt so empty since he went away.
and his shoes. his shoes. his shoes are still by the front door.
and she can't bare to move them.

and i love you.

i love you so much the walls cave in and my throat feels tight with all these sad songs.
and i wanted to remind you to stay through the spring but the sky is gray and there really isn't anything.
is there.

and some mornings, and most evenings, and when the dog wakes me at 3 to go pee i picture the things that i could have been had i spent a little less time hiding.

I'm Sorry

Mama Please don't tell me
that this is what I'll do
Cause the days have grown much longer
since I said good bye to you

So tell me you're sorry
or tell me that you're scared
or tell me your story
and I'll take better care

And Father can't you scold me
the way that you used to do
tell me of the forrests
and all the things you do

And tell me you're sorry
and tell me you're scared
and tell me your stories
so I'll take better care

I hurt him in the morning
and I felt quite alone
And I knew he was stronger
than tea leaves and poems

And I know that I'm sorry
I have always been scared
And there's no time for stories
But next time I'll take better care

So leave here or hold me
Or do what you must do
But always remember
The ways that I loved you.

me, i've heard what you have to say.

and you, you just shout in my face
and i, i tried to be a little more pretty
i tried to clean the sky for you
i held my breath until my tongue slipped away
and i danced wearing nothing but the sheets and
the light of the moon and you, you never even saw me.

simmer down

sometimes the hardest part is saying i do care.

the blues

my baby said he'd never leave me.
i thought i never could.
thought he'd always see me
the way that he should.

but the days are gettin warmer.
and his feet are growin cold.
i know he's a charmer
and alone i'll grow old.

i said good bye to my favorite lover.
he took a gun to his head.
the nights have grown so much longer
since he is gone and dead.

i thought i found a reason
in this old sweater of mine
instead i found a season
and this stupid little rhyme.

and its well passed midnight
and it's like i've been doing time
sitting here with my computer light
and trying to stop this cryin

could you drink just one sip with me
twirl me in a line
tell me your sweet stories
and i will keep on tryin...

(baby i've got the blues)

footing

you gotta find your footing.
gotta sing the blues.
gotta yell so loud the glass shakes.
that glass that lives inside of you.

you gotta reach for the stars.
spit on the outlines.
don't ever let the spirit carry you.
you gotta carry yourself.

away.

south

So I have been out of town. Santa Monica for pleasure and now New Orleans for work though we have had time to slip out for a swamp tour and a really depressing IMAX film about Katrina. It's been good to get away. To get some perspective. To feel less of that weight that woke me some nights. I am thinking of going to law school. Joe is looking at film school. I can picture our future full of late nights and hard work but it all feels so happy when I let myself believe.

I always wanted to be a lawyer but decided it wasn't practical. I spent so many days sick. I thought I might be too tired for those kind of work days.

But sometimes I want a profession that offers more challenge. And I am so good at the fight. That is what I do. I would be the kind of lawyer that helped people. Basically what I do now but with the power of "esquire" that "social worker" doesn't award.

I am excited to get home. To go to Joe's shows. To study for the LSAT's and to spend afternoons baking bread and dreaming of the places we will one day be....

maybe

maybe i learned nothing.

maybe i will let you tear me in two.

again.

maybe i will always hate you.

nothing

maybe i learned nothing.

maybe i will let you tear me in two.

again.

maybe i will always hate you.