Stay here. Stay here stay here stay here (repeating ad infinitum into the dark, into the open windows of my car out to the night ) stay here please so much more for you so much more please stay.
I look out into the night, look into my mind to remember the things that are waiting for me. please stay. I know you feel unwelcome but please stay. I know that you feel that there is no room for you and that you need to be by yourself but please stay.
Please stay.
I smoke and I smoke and I smoke and I smoke I smoke until finally I find something that makes me laugh, I comment, “thank you, that finally made me laugh.” knowing that it will only last until it doesn’t.
there is evidence of life all around me physically around me in my phone noise and activity and adventure and fun. companionship. i can hear it in the air, in the neighborhood music and the leaves high up in the canopy and the cars going by mostly in the right direction in my messages is proof that life is ongoing why do i feel so detached from it all
a photo of your author, smiling, eight days before my husband died..
If I knew what was to come what could I change what could I do If I knew 5 years ago right now what was to come what would I do. If I could see this moment right now where I am, unshowered for days, sitting outside in a public secret space with my coffee and my weed the constant anxiety manifesting in different ways now. I may look calm but I am not.
Everything is so heavy, so fucking heavy. I could not change a single thing, I know that.
Five years. Five.
I need this time I have needed this time I need more time.
(((but where am i?)))
I lose sight, I lose connection I lose my self
I am unsupervised and there is no corral no border no boundaries but the ones I hold to and they are so very shaky the only (??) difference being that I have become better at holding to them i just* let go of that terrible, engulfingneed (let go or be dragged.)
or am i just so tired that I cannot summon the effort
I need to think need to believe that this is something I have done that I have wrought within myself to life, to life.
Salty tears fall; light up, breathe in. Ex h a l e .
i would very much like to exorcise certain memories i would really very much like to delete things from my brain to remove them from my everything with extreme prejudice.
but would that mean that would mean that i did not have the lesson.
it hurts so fucking much because because you aren’t here for me to say sorry.
The smallest things The smallest idea of a thing The possibility of a full fucking moon and a sky full of stars The next kiss The next kiss The next kiss The sun shining on my bed
typewritten 33 years ago. found in the attic at the last possible moment.
darkness — thick, oppressive congealing as if blood around an open breathing wound i am this the wound ed panic steers this two-ton beast not i racing racing heart racing through mazed streets dimly lit by infrequent lights sudden dip plunge headlong into wooded thick et cricket thicket surroundsound i turn up the radio to shut out the nature nature of this two-ton beast of steel racing heart racing.
I wrote this 33 years ago on the way home from somewhere/something stressful. My engagement party? I was less than a month away from turning 21.
I would have stopped to pull the car over to write this; wherever my first Filofax disappeared to, deep within its pockets lies a piece of looseleaf covered in my handwriting, tense and manic and completely out of control from the feel of it. This was about 6 months before I married my first ex-husband, The Sociopath. I hadn’t yet gotten anywhere close to the diagnosis I finally have, I mean I had finally gotten away from the schizophrenia misdiagnosis and was hovering somewhere in limbo, hinting around manic depression and clinical depression, but no one understood suicidality and ADHD back then, much less accounted for the PTSD I already had and would continue to have. I’m pretty sure by this point I had been put on Prozac which only helped to launch me fully into extreme mania.
The terror that I know that I was feeling that night, it is a familiar one. The time of year, well into the beginning of spring, added to the mania I know I was experiencing. Without understanding that this is how my body acts in spring, without any tools to help mitigate what would always be outside of my control, I can feel (finally, I think) really aware of just how much I have survived, and continue to survive.
I kept going when I had no proof of better times to come. I have that proof now.
I am that proof. My proof lives in me.
It always changes; it always shifts. It gets better and it gets worse and it gets better again. Gam zeh ya’avor / gam zu l’tovah. This too shall pass and it is all for the good. גם זה יעבור זה גם לטובה
It is need, now it is beyond want it is need I need to be out of my head taken out of my HEAD What better than weed and loud music and the dark Especially if I can stay home and have all three at once i need this to be louder more More louder glad I made it home. more more I need comforting I don’t think I am capable of being comforted need to scream need to be loud and that only ever hurts everyone do you see their faces afterwards they never quite look at you the same need someone to hear me. try making the music loud enough to drown out my brain I am glad there is no one else here Am I
this is so much.
I made it to the end of the day I made it I made it without losing everything and then why? I mean really Why thoughtless fucking fucking shit why.
once again, and again This, on top of everything else. Why? there is no why there is only keep going until you die
This is so much on top of so much on top of so much please.
I don’t want this I don’t want this it doesn’t help to say I don’t want this until I say it I don’t want this I don’t like this I don’t want this none of it thank you please stop
The Salty Widow 