I wonder what you would say if you met my Brian. Would you look up at him and say (head cocked like the dog on the victrola commercial)
how? how are you so good? why are you so good? I see how she loves you. Everyone does.
And he would look at you with kindness in his eyes and his voice would drop and he would say
aww sweetie because you are me.
I want you to feel the love I feel I want you to know what this feels like because I don’t know that you ever have. I don’t know that I have ever felt this love for you before now. now, when it is un/complicated.
It hurts me that this is here and you are not. That I am here, That you are not.
i am thankful. greatly grateful. hugely. for my family, with whom i did not spend the day, but who understands, or at least is willing to take my word for it that it would only harm me to be there. i am grateful for my friends, my lovers, my loves. the people with whom i did spend time, both physical and emotional. trying to be as out of my head as i could stretch while still remaining tethered, albeit tenuously. knowing that this feeling as all feeling always does will pass and that there is indeed if not light then a less-dark path.
I have so much to say to you so much that, um, I just i keep thinking that
I keep wanting to
I just I just want to share with you. I just wanna tell you I just want you to see me now. I want i really
and I don’t think you would blame me for where I am. I don’t think anymore that you would blame me for where I am. Because I
depended on you so much
i depended on you so much and it just took everything away.
you’re gone.
and everything you did stopped with you.
There’s no one here. To see me doing fuck all.
There’s, there’s no one.
No one to report to.
There’s no one here.
There’s Mojo. He was real happy that I went to bed at 9:30 and fed him first and got into bed and he came right in with me. And we snuggled all night, got up around six or something for his medicine. And then went back to bed. Had like 10 hours of sleep sort of
what the fuck am I supposed to do now? what do I do now?
I mean, if I thought there was no way before and then there was but now it’s like everything is used up. I, i If I spend the money I have on the car, I will have nothing else. nothing. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.
Last year I turned off Facebook memories for 2017-2018-2019 for this week beginning today. Today is the beginning of the end. Today is the beginning of the last week that Gary was alive.
So much in my life has changed in the last four years. I am not the same person who I was four years ago. I am not the same person I was forty years ago.
Forty years ago is when my bipolar disorder began to truly manifest in ways that other people could see. When my behavior became outwardly observable. Things that only I could see and feel and experience from age five were finally coming to the surface. The person that I grew into, the person that I became was by necessity, a damaged, broken, angry, fearful thing. I was shaped by my experience, by the storms inside my brain that no one could understand, but the results of which everyone could see.
The person that Gary met, she was a powerhouse. She had divorced her first and second husbands. She was taking care of her cats. She was running her own shop, she had an employee, she was working a lot. She was working out a lot. She was taking care of everything around her. She was not taking healthy self care.
She was, however, manic 24/7 and hella cute and driven. And on fire.
She is still here, in my brain, part of The Committee. She listens mostly. Doesn’t have much to say anymore, more an observer. She sits back and nods knowingly, joint in hand, smoke curling from her lips. She is Rosie Revisited, captured in a portrait, hanging on my wall. There are times when she does speak, a forceful, if gentle “STOP IT.” I have evidence.
your author. đź“· Gary Hoffman 2002
Four years ago I was forced to stop. I became incapable of movement in any appreciable direction. The formerly driven, push-through-ahead-no-matter-how-miserable-it-makes-you person could not go any further. The “attack wife” had no fight left. I had no accountability to any other human. There was no one there for better or for worse. My life spun completely and totally out of control. I lost things, am losing things I can never get back. And yet…
I have found a new self, a calmer, more even self. I am finding the capacity for euthymia, for a happy evenness above my emotional equator. A firm-yet-squishy pleasantness that exists beyond the edges of what I smoke and carries me through the day and into my involvements with others.
I am no longer miserable.
In voicing this thought, however, there is such exquisite pain for the reality that Gary could have been helped. That perhaps he too could have finally found some measure of relief, as I have. That we just hadn’t gotten here yet in researching. That given enough time, we would have.
We didn’t have enough time. But I do.
I miss you so much. I wish you could see me now. I wish you could hear me now. I wish I could talk to you. The only thing you can do is listen.
And all I really want is to hear what you have to say.
I did not think it would ever be possible but in this moment bells ringing birds singing breezy air soft and comforting around me there is no benefit to questioning any longer it doesn’t matter
none of the things we said or did to one another matter now none of the hurtful things, anyway. you are no longer here to protest and I am too tired to do so any longer. easier to let go
I am sitting on the damp chair (everything is damp) It is 3:41 in the morning and in the space where my car usually lives there is nothing but a half a piece of paper towel I am smoking and I am smoking and I am smoking and nothing is going to soothe this I fear The woman who comes to repossess my car at 3:24 in the morning says, “I don’t want to embarrass you” I am not embarrassed I am defeated, again.
She says, “you have your health” I snicker Do I? Do I. “You have a roof over your head” yeah and a house in foreclosure. “Just call Nissan in the morning” she says, airily. Just call. She says this as if it were actually that easy. Just call Nissan. I try to explain that it isn’t that easy. That I have widow brain and I am bipolar. At the word bipolar she perks up. “Do you need to call someone? Are you going to be okay.” wanting to absolve herself of further responsibility The answer to that is obviously no and no. No I am not going to be okay. No I am not okay. No I am not okay no I am not embarrassed but I am desperate. How am I going to get back to sleep.
i did my job today. i did my job well, today. it was non stop and busy and there were too many people and now i am . and now i am sitting barefoot on my couch too overwhelmed by everything to want any noise near me the noise inside my head, also nonstop the pain in my hip from not resting but for ten minutes, nonstop shoulders, tense, up around my ears hot tears fall, splashing my lenses i can barely breathe.
I look at this it looks like a cookie i wanna eat it I look at this and I think you might have liked it. Like really liked it. It has that stone boulder-type look that you loved you made your file folders and icons all have it It has that riveted, homemade robot-type look to it that wonky, wabi-sabi ancient technology look. something you could have unearthed on a dig or found in our backyard, sticking half-up out of the dirt. You can see my fingerprints in it, for now. You can see the literal hand of the artist. The linen cloth I use to protect both surfaces above and beneath.
I had to come forward this far. this far. Three years. I had to come forward this far to make something I truly think you would like.
I think so much that you would like it.
but why am I trying so desperately to please my dead husband?
i do not want to be alive right now i want to be not here right now i do not want anything other than to not fucking exist right now but i can’t write that and post it now because everyone will freak the fuck out so i cant post it i cant reach out i cant scream i cant tell anyone i just have to not do anything not do anything not do anything just sit with this and struggle and scream inside my own head and not do anything nothing nothing nothing
nothing. it is all i can do to sit and type and the stench of that motherfuckers cigarillo is in my fucking apartment and all i want to do is punch him in his fucking dumb face
nothing. nothing i cannot do a thing i will scream and scream and scream and not stop and i cannot stop i have to do nothing.
i know if i open my mouth i will scream and scream and not stop so i dont
nothing.
nothing. my shoulders are tense and around my ears and tight this empty this noise this noise this noise this noise . there is no enjoy there is not any enjoy.
i need to smoke. i need to smoke but it does not last my plant is so thirsty she needs so much attention i cannot give her the attention the care she needs she is suffering.
i take great big gulps of air but it is not enough there is not enough air..
i am going to go smoke and maybe it will be enough if i just smoke enough
nothing is enough my brain is on fire and falling into a crevasse there is no end to the fire no bottom in sight
it is a relatively quiet evening even with the idiotic clapping of some fucking asshole for some fucking reason even with the assault of garbage music that competes with blasting television noise no yeti-footed neighbor upstairs (took his black-and-tans and split) stop with the fucking clapping for fuck’s sake already
i don’t want music i don’t want noise i want silence nothing interfering
my eyes are dry, for now core unclenched, shoulders still tight, but lower i can think about packing a bowl now try without becoming frustrated, fucking it up easy to do in general, yes but nothing is easy and if that asshole doesn’t stop clapping soon
The Salty Widow 