you asked me more than once yesterday if i was okay what gave it away it is clear that you are unable to listen or unwilling it doesn’t matter which you are unable to read my face until it is well past too late yes, I know that you are going through some shit. yes I know that there are some things that seem beyond your control. I have learned that it is safer for me to not engage with people who are acting like this until they stop, but that is the crux. I am uncomfortable in my own brain in my own body in my own self so to be around and be barraged by cutting commentary is not something I can sustain. every least sneer is an accusation, is a judgement.
I am trying to remain whole, one. Here. There is too much turbulence and I cannot keep fast to my core. I cannot weather the storm any more.
Stay here. Stay here stay here stay here (repeating ad infinitum into the dark, into the open windows of my car out to the night ) stay here please so much more for you so much more please stay.
I look out into the night, look into my mind to remember the things that are waiting for me. please stay. I know you feel unwelcome but please stay. I know that you feel that there is no room for you and that you need to be by yourself but please stay.
Please stay.
I smoke and I smoke and I smoke and I smoke I smoke until finally I find something that makes me laugh, I comment, “thank you, that finally made me laugh.” knowing that it will only last until it doesn’t.
2023 Each year that I read this (and it is now five) I am struck by how close to the initial feeling I still have, how it is now my core, how those first four months of aftermath set the tone for my moving forward.
The sentiment is the same. I wish you could see.
I couldn’t be this person if you had survived, I wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t have to be.
I wonder if you knew the electricity and wonderment and sheer delight others know to be my truth; I have to believe we had that, too, once upon a time.
How good was my best back then? How close to this could you possibly have seen back then? I guess it must have been something because we met and fell in love and you told me so eleven days later.
I wish I could talk to that girl that I was that person who was running on full-blown mania 100% of the time. I have so much to tell her.
2018 Gary, my love.
Four months ago today you left this Earth.
There is not a day that goes by that I don’t miss you, that I don’t think about you, that I don’t have something to share with you.
I’ve grown stronger, and softer, and wiser. I’ve grown in ways you would expect, be proud of. Become even more resilient, because I’ve had to. You always had my back even when neither of us knew it. Even when it was too difficult to say so, to share so.
I’ve met people who you would like, who you would love, and I’ve told them so. I’ve made changes; some small, some not-so. Evolved, mostly. Become, more. The way The Velveteen Rabbit Became.
Anyone I let into This Widow’s Life has to measure up to your memory, is judged against your bar, and a very high bar it is indeed. I can reach it on tiptoe, in bare feet. You remain the smartest man I’ve ever met. The most difficult partner I’ve ever had. The most worth-it partner. You had to be, we had to be, for me to not give up, for us to not give up. And we never did.
I tolerate less, and more. Funny, that. I’m not afraid to speak my mind, stand firm, hold my ground. I give no quarter; this far and no further.
Those I have let in, those few, I think they know, I think they realize what a gift it is. You did. Even though it wasn’t until the very very end. So bittersweet; but I am not bitter.
Waste time fucking money energy resources on everything just to be disappointed again and again and again and again and again why none of this ever fucking works none of it why do I expect anything better why fucking why why
I am going to sit in my car and smoke until I can’t see straight and smoke until the windows are so cloudy with resin that nothing will clean them ever fucking again ever ever fucking again I’m sick to fucking death of just being disappointed over and over and over and over and over I hate all this I hate it I fucking hate it I hate that I have to come out to my car to scream
(screaming) wouldn’t it have been amazing if I had died on the way to fucking get it wouldn’t have been amazing if I had not been able to keep my eyes focused on the road because I was so fucking tired because I can’t fucking sleep because my fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking brain is so fucking demented for it to not work to get it home and for it to not work
It is taking every ounce of energy and the baseball bat that I do not have to keep from smashing this thing into a hundred million bits of fucking plastic
Grateful that I am only out 350 that I barely had instead of 500 that I don’t have
Grateful that I have a car in which I can smoke and that this was not my only possibility grateful that I can come out to my car and smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke and continue to keep smoking in my car because that is all there fucking is why did I think this fucking thing would work
There isn’t a single fucking thing I can do, either I am completely impotent I am completely without recourse there’s nothing I can do zero fucking nothing there’s fucking fucking nothing there’s absolutely nothing there’s nothing nothing all I can do is sit here and smoke and smoke and smoke and continue to just destroy everything
I feel like if I had all the answers then things would make sense. if I knew all the things, if I could puzzle everything parse everything. if I could see where every single little thing fit in the world where all of the things had their place then perhaps I would know where my place was Because I do not. I see all the things and I don’t know how they fit I don’t know how I fit I don’t know where I fit. . big things huge things loom out of the dark like I didn’t know they were coming like I just fucking forgot (no, you didn’t forget you just forgot where you put that part of your memory ) does anyone else see the difference?
(in searching for something I can’t remember now, I found this. I never published it. I remember the pain as clearly as if it just happened.)
However, I am no longer this person. Not exactly.
8:18a 17th june, 2020
enduring days of abject depression, sending me into disintegration out of the clear blue. With summer comes dysphoria and rage and fury. Depression so deep that it wakes me up at night, gasping for breath at the depth of pain; the length of the blade through my chest.
I know that I have been coasting fairly easily (really? are you really going to say it’s been fairly easy?) on a swell of euphoric mania, tempered by cannabis and isolation. this depression though, this abyssal plunge into despair, this parsing of whether I feel suicidality or suicidal: do I just want to not be? Or to do something about it? (it’s suicidality, it nearly almost always is.)
The days since I found the “Gary 🖤’s Lysa” CD in the attic have been upending for me. My entire, well, my entire everything is upended. My disallowing of fantastical and supernatural beliefs has been integral to my sanity. Being able to depend on science and logic and reason has been super fucking important. And I’m supposed to just, what. Forget all that? I’m reminded of a joke that I’m mostly forgetting but it comes down to the idea of believing that there are signs when they’re shoved in your face. How on Earth do I do this? As someone who is as interested in codes and ciphers and symbols and yes, signs, as I am, as Gary was. But as a communication tool used by the living, the sentient, because what else could it possibly be?
What else could it possibly be?
Four days ago but not last night I started taking edibles before bed so that I could sleep through the night and not be woken up by my own sadness. It worked, I got about six hours each night. I was still a depressed wreck the next day everyday. I couldn’t be counted on to not completely break down. Yesterday was so hard, so painful. I knew that on top of everything that is already happening, it is now the beginning of summer and while springtime is for suicidal thoughts, summertime is for the homicidal ones. (I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.)
I used every tool in my toolbox yesterday morning, to try and feel better. Nothing worked. There was nothing wrong with my tools, it’s just that my brain needed more power, more help than these tools were capable of fixing. it was getting close to getting to be too late to go to the pottery, and I had to decide whether I could trust myself to get there safely, and get home safely. Whether I could count on myself to make the hour’s drive safely. I had to weigh the pros and cons of getting in a car and driving for an hour in order to get to my happy place. I decided that I needed to go more than I could stand not going, and so I would pour all my concentration, my focus into getting there safely.
The first flashes of dysphoric mania broke through my depression in a terrifying way. I realized how outsized my reaction was, and while I didn’t do anything to encourage it, I also didn’t do anything to stop it. I let it just sort of die down, looked at it, and realized that I needed to stop it. I was consumed with rage. While driving. This did not bode well for arriving safely.
I concentrated on relaxing my shoulders, taking my tongue from where it was stuck to the roof of my mouth and relaxing that, trying so hard to remember Kellen’s voice in my ears, giving me permission to be nowhere else but listening to her voice.
To my credit, I did not yell at myself for trying to do these things. I did not make fun of myself for trying to do these things. I did not give voice to any doubt that I would be able to do these things. I tried as best I could to just relax and drive and space out as much as I thought safe to. keeping the reward of a safe place in mind as I drove the familiar route.
I got there, smiling wanly at the familiar markers, seeing the two hand-painted rainbow signs way up in Trump country, always heartening. Anxious that I would once again get to the pottery and see cars belonging to people I didn’t want to see, knowing that this was a possibility, steeling myself for it. Managing my expectations. I turned up the drive.
No one here but us chickens.
10:42a 18th June, 2020
I couldn’t do it all in one day, get it all written. I am grateful that I had enough time to write what I did, but then I had to get ready for work and go to work and deal with work. Too many hours, too many people. Too much of everything. Back to the story.
The relief I felt at not seeing BT’s car, well, to say that I could finally lower my fear would be an understatement. All of the anticipation of having to possibly deal with her and avoid her and her narcissistic bullshit, because every single time that I had come up here needing solace, needing peace, she was here. In my way. She wasn’t there.
I had planned on going up there to work, to make new work. With no plan to sell anything or any kind of brain power to work on that but it isn’t ever about the selling. It’s about the making.
(I am regretting not working on this last night when it was still somewhat fresh. I am foggy on the details of the day now. Perhaps that isn’t important.)
I know that Lynn and I had raised voices, and that I was in distress, and I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see how much I was struggling. I know how much she loves me, I know how much she wants for me to be as sane and as happy as I can be. I also knew that nothing would be solved by not telling her how much I was hurting. So I did. I said that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. And she said okay. and if we could have hugged we would have hugged. But we couldn’t hug, so we sat six feet apart and smiled through the sadness.
We talked more about things we both agree on, talked about upcoming firings, talked about new friendships we were making and how grateful we were for each other. We made plans for the next time we would see each other, Sunday. I left, with nothing made but progress.
I put my Phoenix playlist on shuffle, one that I started making when I first started coming into my badassery for real.
The opening notes, soft, haunting voices. The Night We Met.
I am not the only traveler Who has not repaid his debt I’ve been searching for a trail to follow, again Take me back to the night we met And then I can tell myself What the hell I’m supposed to do And then I can tell myself Not to ride along with you I had all and then most of you Some and now none of you Take me back to the night we met I don’t know what I’m supposed to do Haunted by the ghost of you Oh, take me back to the night we met…
The night we met in person for the first time, the night we spent together eating, talking, walking, falling in love. Walking past the Salvation Army building with its new sign, lit but covered, ghostly and creepy.
He took photos.
This suggested one person to me Jan.
As I was listening, I began to nod. Yes.
And then?
Driving guitar. Insistent drums. Hurricane Jane.
Go ahead call me a hurricane Got no regrets I accept that name Sound the alarm big storm comin’ run for cover get gone My screams make the wind My tears become the rain My body rolls like the waves And my heart is the eye of the storm Kali, Goddess of Destruction got nothin’ on me I’m Queen Calamity
I pulled the car over. Off the road, blinkers on. Okay, I get it.
I pull over so I can text Jan. To tell her that I need her help, her counsel. Not right that second, I didn’t want to needlessly worry her, but that right that second was when I figured it out so I’m telling her. She got back to me somewhere on my way home, made plans to meet and chill. This afternoon.
Seeking the counsel of a retired priest.
I wish I could say that I am eased, now, having made plans. I’m not. If anything, I’m more amped up and tightly wound than I was. I am hyper aware of exactly how rigid my shoulders are, how every terrible thought is barging its way into my head. How a photo of the partner I haven’t seen in months is breaking my heart with how the look on his face echoes my own. How all I want to do is tell him it will all be better.
But I don’t know that it will. What I do know is that it can always get worse, and often does.
“If I didn’t see it happen in front of me, I wouldn’t believe it. Goddamn.”
That is what my witness said to me after it happened. I have proof. Finally I have a witness I have proof.
The place where I work was packed, busy even for a Saturday. My boss asked me to do something as I was sitting at the computer doing other things so I added it to the list of my tasks. One by one I got through most of them when my boss asked me if I had gotten to her thing. I replied “nope! Not yet! Haven’t had a chance I’ll do it right now.” And got right to it.
This woman. This fucking woman.
This fucking woman appears in front of me with her two children akimbo. I had helped the older one once upon a time, been very patient with her as she overcame a very difficult thing. Gently and successfully, much to her sullen, preteen resistance I might add.
This fucking woman.
This fucking woman says to me.
“Watch your mouth around my children.”
My head shoots up, eyes wide. “Excuse me?” Having zero understanding of what she’s talking about since I have said absolutely nothing since responding to my boss.
This woman. This fucking woman.
This fucking woman says “You were about to say Jesus fucking Christ in front of my kids.”
And I looked at her. And my witness looked at her. She said it in front of her kids.
“I absolutely did not say that.”
This fucking woman said Jesus fucking Christ in front of her kids.
This fucking woman. This fucking woman says:
“I am the queen of cursing and you were about to say it I know what you were going to say.”
I KNOW WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY.
“I absolutely did not say that.” My witness, shaking their head, shocked. My jaw just about hitting the floor.
The queen of cursing, you say.
The Queen.
This fucking woman thinks that I would respond out loud to a question posed by my boss with the answer Jesus fucking christ. This fucking woman thinks that I would respond in front of children Jesus fucking Christ. In front of her children. Jesus fucking Christ.
You want to know what was in my head? You think that banal bullshit was what I was thinking at the moment?
You have the audacity to think you could imagine what it’s like inside my head?
The things that I think, the things that exist inside my head would terrify you to a point where you would never, ever, ever say another thing again.
You really think you’re the queen of cursing. You want to go head to head with me? I guarantee you will not survive. I will make you rethink your entire existence. I will make you question your reason for living; I will make you question whether or not you deserve to breathe on this Earth. I will tell you things about yourself that you know to be true deep down in the deepest fucking recesses of your soul. I will share with you the reasons your daughter hates you so much (it’s because she looks like you), you narrow-eyed cunt. Every time she looks in the mirror she sees your face even though her cheeks are full and they’re going to be full for the rest of her life and you are going to shame her for her fat face. Every time she sees you look at her she sees your disgust, feels your disappointment. If you aren’t already saving for her therapy, you should do so immediately. You ought to just give up on your son because he is going to be in codependent relationships for the rest of his life. He is completely neglected and wishes for a second that he would get some of the attention you give your daughter even though it’s all negative. Honestly it would be better for all involved if you let him go live with relatives. Literally anyone else would take better care of him. You simply don’t give a shit. You take your anger out on me because you couldn’t help your child. You know that you absolutely do not have the patience to help your own child where I did. Your daughter hates you so much because you’ve made your husband miserable and he doesn’t fuck you and is most likely fucking your friends. A quick look on dating apps would find him in a second.
You think you’re the queen of cursing? Come at me bitch. I’ve got you I’ve got your fucking number. I haven’t even gotten started with you.
Jesus fucking christ. You think I was thinking Jesus fucking christ? No I wasn’t. My only thought at that moment was how to get to the end of the day without killing myself.
you know i wanted to be part of the conversation but you switch it to things i can’t contribute to.
thanks. bye. it’s okay.
they’re not rejecting you. they’re turning towards each other. it doesn’t mean they don’t want to talk to you it only means they aren’t as invested in the every last bit of it as you are so please please please please just understand that please it isn’t against you it really isnt, it is okay you are okay.
This is real fear. This isn’t the free-floating shit that pours over me like a fucking wave of lava no, this is real fear based in reality and is well-founded.
This is all of the usual panic and terror before a show coupled with the fact that I have decided to make a fucking living from my work. My real work. That kind of a decision takes confidence and it is a confidence that I am not so confident I have under me completely.
I know it’s there, I know way down it’s there.
The part of me that is the gatekeeper, She Who Heads The Committee, She stands in front of that door, arms crossed. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, looks me over the way I assume everyone looks me over all the time. It is She who I have to win over, ultimately, She is the one who pulls me together.
Today is probably the very last day this year for picking Queen Anne’s Lace from the side of the road. I kept my eyes open on this rainy, grey day, keeping up with 69mph traffic but still trying to spot my prize. There had to be enough room to pull over, traffic had to be far enough away from me that I wouldn’t panic, and finally, I saw it. The telltale long legs with flat, white faces tilted to the sky. I know this is the last shot I’ve got.
I signal, slow down, stop. Hazards on. Jump out of the car, run around to the passenger side, gingerly step across a water-filled ditch and grab her. Enough lovely ladies, small and delicate, and finished ones as well, right on the stalk, root and all. I do a quick once over to look for winged passengers, open the door, and unceremoniously toss her inside. I get to the studio, fill a plastic goblet with rainwater, plunk her in the bowl to wait.
I took a long time getting other things done at the studio, nothing towards this little wild carrot waiting outside, patiently, for me to be ready. Checking the light, the time, She Who Leads The Committee in my head murmurs, hmm, it’s getting late, maybe you shouldn’t bother. It’s getting dark. It’s raining. I deflect; i worked hard to get this last one, this last one! There will be no more especially if I do nothing with this one. No.
So I make a little more space in front of me, no, not really enough space but it’s okay, and I garrote a thick, creamy slice of porcelain from the perhaps ten pounds I have left. I tear off a handful of it as if a handful of warm bread from a fresh loaf. I am looking at the flowers and I know exactly what I want to do with every single one of them.
The Salty Widow 