614p, 26th february, 2021. hope.

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!”

hope.

1116a 27th january 2021

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.

twenty minutes left.
almost there.
almost there.

1158a 19th january 2021

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?

waiting to inhale. 713a, 3 january, 2020

I hate this. All of it.

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.

I can’t wait much longer.

924 am Friday December I don’t know whatever today is

i am so incredibly manic.
my eyes are wide and wider
surely looking like the stereotypical “crazy eyes”
i feel insane, my brain on fire, wide open.
everything all fight and flight and run and scream and panic
cold and hot and fire and ice and death

the only things that I know will help the only things that I know will sate this I cannot have
smoke and sex and sleep
comfort and softness
hard and fast.

so I do what I can
I medicate as much as I dare
I empty this out into here
I prepare to fight.
but already I am losing.

it is 10:18am and i
I can feel less tight
less clanging less
Panicked.
less of a horse caught in a burning barn, less a wildfire
my shoulders lowering
My eyes softening.
I find smiles there, and here, too.

622p 12th december, 2020

So I have begun the mind-bending exercise of wondering how my dead husband would be dealing with life if our roles had been reversed and he was the one who survived me.

I have been caught in a dysphoric mania, ultra-ultra rapid cycling with depression all day,
working a full day with a full staff and a full store and less bandwidth than I can afford.

I am driving and it is night and it is dark and it is foggy and it is misting and the road is fast and usually this scares the shit out of me but tonight it isn’t tonight I just want to get home.

Why can’t I get up.
why can’t I just get up.

It lifts for a little bit, a little while.

then

it is as if I have taken an enormous swallow of pain
Inhaled lungsful of death
A huge blackness fills me, empties me
My eyes grow wide, wider still
tears filling them, pooling, overrunning them
splashing my glasses
running hot down one cheek
then the other

I just have to make it home.
Home.

Thirty-seven minutes of this
around and around and
around.

Home.
Sitting in my car, engine running, music on
anything to drown out the noise in my head but nothing is enough.
smoke. ease the knots enough to feel just how tightly my core is clenched.
my entire body feels as if it is collapsing in on itself, shoulders slumping, spine curving
jaws tight, the only things moving are my eyes and thumbs.

the smoke is taking hold, finally
i can lower my shoulders
remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth
breathe in
and out.
finally.

pandemic diaries: 10:55p 6 may, 2020

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.

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.

pandemic diaries: 1145p 10 april 2010

this being apart shit.

this fucking shit is tearing my body apart
raking my flesh
scissoring my veins
shredding my bones…

it is rendering me jellied,
puddled.

my body knows this feeling
this d e p r e s s i o n.
it isn’t the right time for it not like this.
all of this laying around and doing nothing
AND BEING TOLD ITS OKAY.
this is what’s different.
i’m not tired i am active. alert. pointy.
with no release.
no way to let go.
no way to succumb.

So I smoke.

and i eat.

and i smoke.

and I have a rich fantasy life and when I do venture out it is with
dire regard
like a fox I am so
aware.
I crave human interaction I crave
I crave.
i need
voice. a face.
a touch .

this is tearing me apart.