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?
I hate this president, I hate the people who elected him. I hate every single person who voted to put him into office in 2016, and every single person who voted to try and keep him there. Zero exceptions. I don’t care about anyone’s misogynistic, stupid, idiotic reasoning for voting for him. If you voted for him I hate you. I don’t care about you. I want you to disappear off the face of the Earth. There is no amount of apologizing, bargaining, begging that will help, that will ameliorate, there is no remedy. this is what you have done, this is all your fault.
I hate everything about him, everything he stands for, everything he is.
I hate. So much hatred that is dissolving me from the inside out. And goddess help the idiot who tells me that I need to let go of that. What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do here. there is no letting go. There is only purging. There is only excision. There is only vomiting up volcanic toxic spew. There is only violence and wrath and rage.
I wake up and cry because there is nothing I can do. I wake up crying because it wakes me up in the middle of the night.
All I can do is wait and hope that I don’t get sick and that I don’t get anybody else sick.
I wait on tenterhooks to be able to spend time with my partners. To kiss B, to snuggle with him and spend the night with him. To wake up with him and kiss him some more. I spent more time with him yesterday than I have spent with any partner in over a year. It was about twenty-two hours, total. I have no idea when we’ll be able to do that again. No time soon. No.
I cringe every time someone touches me accidentally without meaning to or just pushes by and touches me. It makes me want to hiss and bare my fangs. How dare you when I cannot?
I flinch when people reach out for my hand and I don’t want them to touch me because I don’t want to get sick.
I am sitting outside in my car, the engine off and the windows open with a rapidly cooling cup of coffee writing this so that I can watch the sun come up. It is somewhere south of freezing and I am waiting to calm down enough so that I can light my pipe and give myself some comfort.
I want to live in a no-news bubble where I don’t hear anything at all about how much he is fucking up the rest of this for everyone. All I want to hear is nothing. nothing.
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.
(i am hoping) jesus gods i am hoping i am hoping that it is just that you are busy that there isn’t some other reason “oops, it looks like his phone has been off/disconnected for awhile.”
disconnected
we have been disconnected the last thing i know you saw of mine was thursday, even though i text you every day, almost. (i know you are busy. i am not complaining.)
six days ago. disconnected.
it will be five months since we’ve seen each other no longer am i worried it’s something i’ve done no more paranoia around that particularly fun attribute of my chemical rollercoaster no. you are a doctor. there is this virus.
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.
in desperation I tried to not be desperate. (I do not think that I was successful.)
to your infinite credit you did not shy from my touch you never do. I stroked your cheek, your chest, your collarbone. watched you inhale exhale. I tried to be in the moment, to get out of my head and simply feel. Wanting to swallow you whole, to be swallowed. Whole.
i could not.
breathing through my open mouth so I would not sniffle so I could control it (could I? Girl.) so my breath would not hitch so you would not know. Right.
I had to stop thinking about about not touching any other person until I see you again having not touched any other person since the last time I saw you And the time before that. no other physical contact no matter how wholesome. None.
I am hoping that the intrusive, inconsistent noise from overhead isn’t disturbing you anywhere near as much as it is clearly disturbing me.
i cannot sit with these thoughts anymore so I turn away pushing myself back up against your hip to hide the inevitable tears that are Falling.
you know. you just know as I just know, always. You curve me into your embrace resting your head on mine dear, sweet thing.
You have given me exactly what I have needed And for a while, it is enough.
“I don’t know how it’s possible, but I, I think my birthday this year was possibly the best one I’ve ever had. It’s certainly one of the most special, and I want to thank everyone for being a part of it. 52 on 5/2 I’m certainly not playing with a full deck it’s more like a deck full of jokers. So thank you everyone for being part of it.”
for the record (and as far as i know you look it up if you don’t believe me) for the past fifty-two years it has been shitty exactly once on my birthday. That was 2001, the year I turned 33 and one of the years I was in and around dating Noel. I’m sure he had just recently broken it off again. Anyway.
my parents built the house I grew up in in 1970. A typical, split-level ranch. Right outside my bedroom window they planted this glorious cherry tree, a Kanzan Sakura, with the big, fat, pale pink marshmallowy blossoms. I love that tree, it’s my favorite flower of all. Blooms every year on my birthday.
I don’t remember how early on but it was early, Itold Gary that when I finally owned my own home I would plant one of those trees in my yard. The first spring that we were in the house we planted our tree. We didn’t plant it in a good spot, it didn’t get anywhere near the kind of sunlight it needed underneath the massive canopy of maple and oak. I could, however, see the blossoms from my bedroom window.
Last year, after the house went into foreclosure, I knew that would be my last birthday with that view, of cherry blossoms from my bedroom window. And then the neighbor went ahead and chopped down the maple and oak, that gorgeous canopy of green that had been protecting my head for 13 years. A full backyard of sunlight meant that the cherry tree would have a chance to grow properly now, reaching up towards the sun instead of slinking around corners to find it. Only I wouldn’t be here.
This year however, with the world on pause, I got one last, magical reprieve to spend with my tree. So I went to my backyard, prepared to see admirers as any queen would, and enjoyed my day under the cherry blossoms.
tootsies!
protecting mah face with g’s hat, sunscreen, maui jims
Chalk whimsy by MK’s Jess
activities for the day: snacks, notebook, cannabis, knitting
Buon Giorno from me & Paolo! (check out Alfalfa)
Is it sunny or am I stoned?
yeah.
Kanzan Sakura never disappoints
heya!
first time i’ve worn bracelets in ages
fairyland
Feelin’ alll of it
🌸🌸🌸
🌸to🌸the🌸sky🌸
🌸🌸🌸
holding hands with bae
wicked little grin
physically distanced birthday seating. hearts to know you’re loved💜💜💜
love is💜
fully lit in 3…2…1…boom!
The Daddiest Daddy: America’s Governor Andrew Cuomo
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.
good morning. it is a beautiful day the sun is out, shining on my bared skin raptors circle overhead in the clear blue sky and we are all thinking about death.
softness, poignant and melancholy in my ears. rediscovered from a time of such darkness a hopelessness, back then.
i cried every day eleven years ago, every day. always on my way to work. often in the bathroom. usually from relief in the parking lot.
The Salty Widow 