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.
You say I never write about you. It’s true. well Not exactly true. You are in everything I write. You are part of how I am able to be still here So yes I have written about you.
But tonight it is in a conversation with another lover that I think of you that I am reminded of you.
I am saying that you are French and you wear scent and I don’t think that the French are allowed to not wear scent and this makes me giggle. And that what you wear is perfect for you and not too much and just enough. Just like you are not too much and just enough. I say that you are polished, and smooth, and slick, and you wear cufflinks (you wear cufflinks that I made for you) and you always look perfect and that I love when I cause you to not look perfect. That it makes me happy. I know how happy it makes you to have me undo you.
I smile for the smile in my voice and my lover can hear that smile and he knows that smile. He has heard that smile. He has made me make that smile.
You have allowed me to be open about who I am what I want how I know my worth. Your vulnerability with me has allowed me to feel safe, and worthy, and brave. You have trusted me, and gained my trust. I can depend on the memory of you. I have learned the importance of being wanted instead of needed.
Desired. Ached for, pined for. Lusted after and well missed. Treasured. Cherished.
Adored.
“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”
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.
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.
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 don’t know, how I don’t know how it got to be a thousand days since you’ve died.
A thousand four days. How?
I don’t know, I don’t know how that happened. But I know that I’ve missed you every fucking day. And I just… it’s only and already two years and nine months tomorrow and I just keep talking to you, I just keep talking to you. I keep talking to you because I don’t know how else to, not.
We always talked. About everything. We did that really well, talking. Sometimes not so nice. But we always talked.
So now what, do I just ask questions at the air? Do I just keep doing what I’ve been doing and uh, keep talking to you this way, writing, and…
I found pictures of you. Well, Brian found them in the attic. I’ve never seen these pictures of you before. There’s a really hot one.
I miss you. Every goddamn day.
Love you more.
Gary, age 20. 1990. Killer smile, wink, and dimple 😍😍😍
That’s what the subject line read. “Gary saves the day again…” An email from T**, a client of my husband’s who I haven’t heard from in a year, if not more.
Thinking it might be spam, (the all-lowercase addressee and the name of my dead husband in the subject line seeming strange but somehow remembered) I was only slightly distracted from watching the new season of “Dead To Me”, ironically enough. coming down off my necessarily extreme cannabis high of earlier, however, and thinking about what I wanted to smoke next while waiting to hear back from several friends, I opened the email.
It said, (and this is where I am stopping, having read beginning of the email, gasping for breath and not wanting to look any further, not yet, not before I refilled my lovely pipe and repaired to the privacy of my parked, darkened car where I could smoke and sob in peace) in part (and here, I should tell you, I am pausing to take an enormous hit of medication. Perhaps five or six. I brought refills. Who can know for sure?):
Lysa,
One of the core components of (our company) which Gary designed stopped working today after the Government changed something on their website. Back in the good-old-days I would have called Gary in a panic, he would have calmed me down and quickly resolved the issue. Now I have to reverse engineer his work in a language of which I am only somewhat familiar.
You got some comfort from seeing his writings last time I e-mailed you, so I thought I would share how he saved the day today. While attempting to understand what he wrote, I looked through his copious notes and discovered that he described in great detail how he solved this problem last time. This allowed me to bite a little piece of code that he wrote years ago and use it to fix everything. If he hadn’t documented everything so well, I would be spending the next few days trying to figure out what he did while customers complained.
Man I still miss that guy.
Hope you and the kitties are well. N** and I finally closed on a house after living in a crappy apartment for ** years, so now we get to live like adults. How are things with you?
Below is boring shop talk, but it reminded me of how much I liked working with Gary and how good he was at his job.
T**
(So here is where I am now, sitting in my car, about to read words from my husband from years ago which somehow saved the day today for someone’s company. Eyes wide and full of tears, of missing and knowing how much of a huge void he left.)
a screenshot of the kind of zealous documentation Gary adhered to.
How do I explain that? How do I explain how seeing what looks otherwise like gibberish I know is tinged with his particular flavor his Stink (he used to say “I like your stink”, a pretty aggressively passive-aggressive way of saying something nice, like he had Calvin as an interlocutor)
Knowing that code that he wrote notes for six years ago with no idea of the future (especially not that he wouldn’t be in it) would save the life of someone’s company today. That that person chose to pay that forward by remembering how much it comforted me the last time this happened and to let me know again. save my life, today. Gary did indeed save the day again.
to me this is what it means by “may his memory be a blessing” . there is so much pain so much brokenness in his life, my life our life. I got shoved into the lessons I am learning everything all at once a whirlpool of chaos nothing to do but be stuck choosing to pick through the debris and only take forward what shines what will shine with enough patience taking forward the joys, the lessons. I wouldn’t be here but for him. In every single way.
The Salty Widow 