This figuring out of things this Figuring out of how things came to be Things came to be me how I Became.
It is overwhelming in every single way in all three hundred sixty degrees.
It is inwardly and outwardly and upwardly and completely bowling me over and tearing me apart
no it is never too late to learn I just wish you were around so I could show you what I’ve learned who I am who I have become.
Who I am still becoming.
I am sitting in my car and I am smoking and I am shaking and I am full of fear and full of love and they are the same thing.
They have always been the same thing.
As I am parsing all of these things as I am As I am. As I am uncovering all of these separate very distinct very discrete things As I am peeling back the layers and understanding implicitly very explicit differences in things I am filled with patience and sadness at all the time lost in between then and now.
Knowing that I have the rest of forever to be well.
Having promised you the rest of forever to heal.
I had the rest of your forever. and you have mine.
clear, warm(ish) night, listening to music over headphones, productive day, visiting with some of my favorite people and meeting new ones. there’s some stuff rolling around in my brain; I’ve said some, but it seems too harsh, too cold to say, but it’s true.
my husband died and I was able to become who I am now. he died so that i could live.
I can barely even say the words without wanting to smack my own face in horror, but it’s true.
I think I’ve said it out loud to maybe three people, each time thinking my own skeleton will exit my skin when I say it. I feel like I am daring myself to remain conscious, like maybe I’m dreaming. I’m not dreaming.
I mean this is horrible shit, right? I’ll tell you something else truly terrible: on more than one occasion but fewer than ten, I confided to best girlfriends that
fuck this this is terrible.
“…no place to go but everywhere…” ²
I’d said to these women, these women all married like me, in various states of dysfunction in their own marriages and relationships, all bent and dented and damaged and nearly broken. Like me.
“…I’ve been waiting for you, in sunshine and rain… won’t you look at you now, you mad molecule…” ³
oh gods. Oh gods.
“The problem is all inside your head, she said to me The answer is easy if you take it logically I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free… …it grieves me so to see you in such pain I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again I said I appreciate that and would you please explain About the fifty ways” ⁴
goddammit.
I’d said to these women wtf knows how long before he died “If he could just be gone. I don’t want him to hurt, I don’t want him to die. I don’t want anything bad for him, not pain, not suffering. I just want to stop being in so much pain.”
and now he is and now I am. Now I am
I am becoming something more than I thought I could. I would like the dissenting voices to kindly shut the fuck up, please and thank you.
“…I just want to say I love you And make sure you feel it every day ’cause if today had been my last chance It’s just something I wanted to say…” ⁵
I feel like you know, in this way that my tenses and my conversations are still fucked up three and a half years in I feel like you know like you see Tonight, especially. Now. Like right the fuck now jesus fuck.
“Well I don’t mind sleeping alone If it means I don’t have to play your crazy games no more You’re the most precious thing I’ve ever seen But I ain’t gonna let it slide when you’re mean to me I know the love that I deserve…” ⁶
Deserve is a word I take issue with. Earned is better.
i have seen the edge. walked right up to it, lookedover. i have looked into the abyss and it welcomed me. its maw is deep and wide and it welcomed me. come, it said. step over the edge. or don’t but i am here for you when no one else is. i will wait for you. I know you will be back.
teeth bright and sharp white and cold. keep hold of what’s good. that’s all there is to save me that’s all there is flashes of all the good things
grasping at anything to pull me back from this edge. grasping at them smashing them into my brain shoving out this other look away. look away.
That’s what it is, that’s what suicide is It is literally the only and one solution to “I don’t want to feel like this anymore and I know that I will I don’t want to feel like this anymore and the only surefire way to not ever feel like this anymore is to kill myself.” That is the only surefire way.I don’t want to feel like this anymore I hate feeling like this I don’t want to feel like this anymore
my voice grows shrill inside my head and out and it amplifies as my heart rate amplifies and screams
I don’t want to feel like this anymore. There isn’t any other solution to not feeling like this anymore to *not ever* feeling like this anymore.
nothing is helping nothing is helping nothing is helping
it is going to keep being bad, isn’t it it is going to keep hurting yes. yes it is. people are going to keep being stupid you are going to want to scream and hit and rage and you cannot it is going to keep driving driving you down lower and lower and lower until you cannot breathe.
you might not want to feel like this anymore but Mojo. Mojo and cookies. Weed. The full fucking moon and a sky full of stars. Kissing. Art. Music. Kissing.
There will be kissing Saturday.
so if I’m getting this right the idea is not to wish for it to stop feeling this way because it will always keep feeling this way I mean it’ll stop for a while but then it goes right back it always has and it always will it always always will.
no the idea is to not think about how terrible it is feeling and to only think about ending that but to think about all of the things you don’t want to end Mojo. Mojo and cookies. Weed. Those are all things I can do by myself Those are all things I don’t have to depend on anyone else. but kissing. You can’t do that alone. You need at least one other person for that.
You can’t go just yet. You’re not done yet. There are still so many good things.
a photo of me with my unwashed, tearstained face, in front of a wall with a laser-cut rising sun sculpture, a photo of me as “Rosie (the Riveter) Revisited” by my husband in 2002, and an exhortation to “cheer up honey pie” . there is no filter on this photo.
I am driving and I am listening to the President and I am crying I am crying and I am crying and I am crying and they are huge ugly tears “A dose of hope”, he says and the tears flood down my face “a dose of hope” he says
Hope is something that I never ever had. It was never even on the list of things to look for. Hope was for the foolish and the losers and the suckers. the idea of hope was as painful as the reality of unrequited love, a crush that goes nowhere, being ghosted by someone you really, really thought you liked. Hope was not for me, not ever.
but maybe, maybe now it is. maybe I can have some for myself, just a little. I’m not asking for much. Just a little.
Hope. The taste of it, the texture. rolls around in my mouth, between my fingers. hope.
I draw my hand back, my heart back sharply from the edge of this hope too sharp, this edge, too unknown.
My chest tightens, my jaws clench, my fingernails dig into my palms. breath shallows, and hitches as my eyes darken, kohl smudging my cheeks.
“Guess what!” the President says, excitement clear and bright through the speakers “We landed a rover on Mars!”
it is elevensixteen now but at 1111 (waiting for the strike?) so much flash of anxiety flash of panic i learn have learned to keep track to watch to pay attention to monitor to see what i mean it is always as it is happening it is always in the middle although increasingly it is on the way up in out. it is no longer as the smoke is clearing it is no longer when there are horrified faces
there is actually (sometimes) (sometimes) time to stop it before i before without i cannot without without without distressing to the point of disintegration
so it is an hour later and it would seem that I was unable to stave off this this disintegration this dysphorically manic tumult
yet another hour later i know it is having an effect, taking the sweet but i really just don’t want to be right now. not at all.
146p
there shouldn’t be this much rage there shouldn’t be this much pain it should have eased by now i am trying i am trying everything to be eased.
another hour later chest tight shoulders tight jaws tight there are two and a half hours to go before I can go core tight i feel frozen, stiff as if the only parts of my body i can move my left hand to write, move across the page, turned forty five degrees to not ink up my hand
another hour gone anger, still no patience, rattled i need sublimation i need to be underneath and out i need to be out and gone one hour eleven minutes to go.
i can tell my mood by my handwriting. manic, here. i noticied it whike working, needed to take it down.
this lines running altogether all together ((manic manic)) heart rate elevated ((panic panic)) eyes wide and brow creased grateful for the mask covering most of my face it hides the quivering of my mouth the tightness of my lips pressed against my teeth i can see the not-curvedness of my letters the thank you notes i am trying to bury my head in brain is so scattered so noisy grateful dead on the speakers but it is jangling not soothing me at all the way i need. i shove a chocolate bar in my mouth a three musketeers where are my musketeers? where are my compadres? my friends?
The Salty Widow 