north of 4am

Up at four-something; the sound of an upchucking cat isn’t a noise to be ignored. Pushing him (gently) off the bed so I won’t have to wash the entire coverlet again. Tangled in the comedic/horror movie mess of giant bed + weighted blanket + CPAP mask and racing against the threat of a heaving animal simultaneously a thousand miles away and on top of me, I know that my day is going to be a fight.

The waves of depression and subsequent rapid cycling and eventual mixed states yesterday only subsided because I smoked myself into oblivion. I ate a shit ton of sugar and passed out. Took an edible to stay asleep.

Mojo.
DUDE.

I go to the bathroom, look at my phone, my email. I’ve been avoiding the actual mail and swiping left on my email like it’s a dating app. The email saying my rent is posting today.

Okay.

I’ve been looking at my balance, not buying things. Nothing. How do you get money?

You sell things.

You have things to sell. Good things.
You even have photos.

why, then.
why frozen.
Fogged.
Stuck.
Frozen.

I can do for Mojo, I can take pretty good care of him. If no one else.

It’s 6:14 in the morning and I realize I can’t go to work. I can’t control this today.
I barely could yesterday.
(there is no longer any thinking about what would happen if I had to, about how terrible it would get)

there is no longer any fear of safety.

that is a difficult sentence to write.
to digest.
I cannot breathe.
i cannot breathe.
.
breathe.
breathe.
.
What it means
what it means is that I can do what I need to do to care for myself without worrying about getting written up, or in trouble, or fired, or discarded. Left. Ghosted.
It means that I have compassionate people who care about my safety for my sake first.

My safety for me, not as an asset. A tool. A toy.

It is 6:27 in the morning and this is what that is, this rage, this dysphoria. This sadness, this depression.

This makes it so clear to me, finally.
The sheer disparity.
Reminders of how it felt.
The unpleasantness, the imbalance.
I don’t want that. Not ever.
Not even knowing.

So, now what.
Delete the playlist (again. It has one song on it.) Done.
Back away.
Understand this isn’t ever going to change. Really, though.
Understand you don’t have to burn it to the ground, either. Really. You can continue to walk away.

you know there isn’t always a trigger
but a lot of times, there is.

it is seven in the morning and I am inside as the rain begins to fall.
it isn’t, though, raining outside
but sure as a rainfall cools the planet
feeds the plants
smoke slakes my thirst, soothes my fear.

the sky is lightening, the grey becoming less so
enough to douse the harsh overhead light
and open the curtain.

Mojo in the foreground, backlit, sheer grey linen curtain gathered in the center. hanging from the window: a suncatcher in the abstract shape of a whale, made of driftwood and vintage beads, and a small astronaut 7:08am

I am worrying about how I will manage things
but right now the fear isn’t strangling me.
it’s sort of set apart, a bit.
It isn’t going to stay there, not today.
Today is going to be

(oh, Mojo)

better at home. Quiet, as I need.

it is seven forty-nine in the morning and
and there isn’t much getting done today.

That isn’t true, no. no it isn’t.

progress, however glacial a pace,
is progress still.

letters into the void 1:11a 29th may, 2020

I hope you are safe and well, and stateside.

I’ve gone back to work, albeit only one day a week with clients, one when the shop is closed. I went for a test at the drive-through location in New Rochelle. Everyone there, the State Troopers, the Army, the healthcare workers, everyone was so calming. One of the army guys, the name on his jacket said Lorenzo, he called me beautiful. He saw how nervous I was and he called me beautiful.

I’m waiting for results, no symptoms but I’m in a public-facing position. I was sicker than I ever have been in my life back in January but no way of knowing if that was it.

I’ve gone back up to the pottery after a 5 months hiatus. I’ve wanted to go back, needed to go back. I’m making new work with nowhere to sell it but online. It isn’t really the selling that the making is about, though.

I called my father.
I haven’t spoken to him in a brutally long time. i know that he did not recognize my voice. but i told him that i loved him and he told me that he loved me too. i’m going to call him again this saturday.

I’ve been writing more, leaning into how cleanly I want to live my life, how little extra baggage I really want to carry with me. Channeling and focusing the rage that has been, in my past, such an incredibly destructive force with little to no benefit into something that I can use as both a tool and a weapon. It’s been this side of exhilarating, and I want to keep it that way. It isn’t something I want to revel in feeling but to be glad to be done with.

My second husband used to get off on watching my fury rage on unfettered. He loved how sharp I was, how precise. How everything I said was undeniably true.

That is until the day it finally turned on him in earnest. The day in couples’ therapy when the doctor asked me how I was feeling after watching me sit and seethe for 20 minutes, when he asked me how I was feeling and I turned to my husband and answered,

“I’m feeling like every time you fall asleep before I do how much I’d like to slit your fucking throat.”

I can tell you he didn’t like it very much then.

I’m not going to send this to you, am I.
No.

I have no way of knowing if you are alive.
I wish I did.

pandemic diaries: 3:53p 26th april, 2020

i took two showers yesterday
one when i got up, thereabouts
another after i knew for sure that i was going to see you
brushed my teeth, twice.
(nothing is sure anymore.)
i hate having to keep putting myself out there to ask
hate being the one to put myself out there to everyone
this isn’t about you so much as it is about me.

i reach out tendrils
lengthening, sometimes to the sky, it seems.
feeling so very pushy, always
but now even more so since there is literally no one to talk to
every in-person conversation, interaction feels precious
hoarded.
turned over, inspected. saved.
i don’t want to waste any of it on anyone who doesn’t matter.
screens are one thing but it is no substitute,
so flat, so
cold.
so not real.

i had hoped for more skin time
more actual face time.
more hugging
more snuggling, curled up.
more of your hands in mine.

patience is something.
i know i cannot push you, you will stand firm.
and there is only so much that i can say.

i am thankful for you
as i know you are thankful for me.

as always.

pandemic diaries 224p 21 april 2020

i cant smoke enough today
cant distract from all the love all the
couples
all of the truly meant “i love you”s
not the sweet softness of friends or family but the true
deep, desperateness of a real love.
the kind of love that has seen pain, felt it within its walls.
heard its voices quake in fear.

this pain this
absence.
this lack.

the isolation makes it more intense more
invasive
the virus of loneliness manifesting and growing wilder still.

try as i might to quench this beast this
monster
i sit under the clear skylight
under the rain
no sound other than the shrieking in my skull
the purring of the engine
the staccato of the rain on the car.

six thousand
five hundred
seventy-eight days ago
on a day very much like (and completely unlike)
today
i saw your face for the first time
saw you wink
for the first time saw that thousand-watt smile
for the first time.
6,578 days ago i fell in love with you for the first time.
there honestly has not been a single day since
that i haven’t had the most incredibly complex thoughts about you.

i wish i could comfort myself with the belief that somehow
somehow you know all this
that in some way you are hearing me
seeing me.
still loving me in that complex, fierce way you had.

but this is how i know there is no god.
this
this is how i know for sure.
(nobody fuckin come at me over this you can fuck off and keep your smug shit to yourself i am TIRED)

unrequited love is BULLSHIT and it is roaring inside me like a furnace
oh it has places to go (well it used to, now didn’t it)
but it is held back
it is most definitely restrained

it doesn’t want to be.

everybody EVERYBODY
everybody says how strong, how brave, how resilient
WHAT CHOICE DO I HAVE.
no one is coming to save me. No one.

so i sit and i smoke and i cry and i hold my own hands.
and i scream inside my head all day long.
and when i do talk to someone anyone
mania takes over i have no control.
and i scare myself.

gam zeh ya’avor gam zu le tovah / this too shall pass and it is all for the good
i know I KNOW
but it is killing me NOW.

it’s been almost an hour that i’ve been out here, now, smoking.
my plant is finally drenched.
my medicine is finally working.
i smoked enough to take down a fucking RHINO.
there won’t be any ill effect from this, either.
my body knows what it needs, i feel clearheaded, if stoned.
none of the usual giggliness i usually do but most definitely
uplifted.
my medicine works hard,
i work harder.

thoughtless. 1027p 9 march, 2020

how dare you.
how dare you ask me if it was wise, crinkling up your face to say no, I don’t think so
“was it wise? to spend so much money on a good mattress?”

HOW DARE YOU.

it isn’t the most expensive mattress, not by far.
it is a good mattress.
a king-size mattress
for my king-size bed
my king-size sheets
my king-size comforters
my king-size blankets.

how DARE you.

I sold my dead husband’s clothes
so that I might have a comfortable place to sleep.

HOW DARE YOU.

i do not recommend. 909p, 9 march, 2020

i sold the fireplace.

i sold the thing that kept us warm,
kept me warm at the end.

i sold it for three hundred dollars.
it cost us three thousand.

(i do not recommend
when someone you love dies, when someone with whom you have a complicated relationship dies
i do not recommend that you be the one to sell their things.
it is heartbreaking to hear someone argue
that five dollars is too much for the leather belt that held up your husband’s jeans.
that isn’t holding up his jeans anymore because he is dead.
i do not recommend it at all.)

i took the steampunk raygun out of that girl’s hands
being very careful to not snatch it
or be angry
or upset
knowing that my word was law
that i could say anything to anyone
that the regular rules of retail Did Not Apply.
that i could tell her, carefully, breathing very, very carefully,
the sensation of broken glass in my lungs
“no, honey, I’m sorry you can’t have that.”
she looked crestfallen.
i don’t care.
it was mine to keep, mine to give to him.
mine to keep.
still, i felt craven as i clutched it,
remembering his vicious long-ago comment about my “grubby paws”
(meds clouded my memory back then so all that remains is his proclamation that i am, was
craven, grasping, sub-human.)

feeling like setting fire to the place would release me of this finally
every single thing i keep putting aside to take
still, rooms with piled treasure
(is it, though? is it really worth keeping?)

hey, you with the grubby paws?

this is what it comes down to.

i sold the fireplace.

i fucking hate spring. 9 march, 2020

I hate spring.

I hate spring so fucking much.
Especially since i love all the flowers.

I fucking hate spring.
.

It’s the weirdest thing, what happens to people’s faces when you say
“i hate spring”
it’s like you’ve said “I EAT KITTENS ALIVE. WITH HOT SAUCE.”
like how could you hate spring?
Spring?
even the fucking name SPRING
fuck you.
FUCK YOU.

i never knew it was a thing, a valid thing that it wasn’t only me
not until i was thirty.
not until i read
An Unquiet Mind
saw that it was a familiar, if not common symptom of bipolar disorder,
like self-medicating (check!)
poor impulse control (doubling down!!)
hypersexuality (triple-whammy checkaroonie!!!)

All of the manic, growing energy of the Northern Hemisphere
and Mother(fucking) Nature (you malevolent cunt) going balls to the wall
sending roots deep into the earth
budding leaves reaching for the sky
grow grow GROW
the very air hums as if electrified
is electrified
amplifying every atom, every nuance of mood
every paranoid, unworthy thought
it is taking enormous effort
exquisite pain
to bridle this rage, this beast.
you can’t possibly be worthy
you?
no
not you.

Not. You.

i fucking hate spring.

but summer’s worse.