A photo of the pink moon over Croton in a Facebook memory from 5 years ago, Gary commented, “My lovely lunatic. ๐”
it is getting close to the end, again.
five years ago this was your last two weeks on Earth. You didn’t know, I didn’t know. No one did, no one could.
I turned off facebook memories for those first three years, it’s too much.
(there have been years gone by, now, years without you. Years.) “those first three years” is a terrifying thing to say out loud. i digress.
As the memories come up for this week, though, I am warmed again by the things I see, the things you responded to, the way you responded. all not knowing what will come, all perfectly normal and routine and lighthearted and me rapidly cycling, clutching fast to anything stable
and then there is this yawning pit that opens and will never, ever close unhinges its jaws and e v e r y t h i n g in my life hurries in, disappearing.
it is only now, close to the end, again that i am beginning to see my way but is it clear? no, not yet.
breezy, uncertain i woke to grey light, dim the temporary buoyancy of yesterday, the day before gone. sometime in the night it left, stole away, slunk away embarrassed to have lifted only to leave “i’m sorry,” whispers on the breeze “i’m sorry, that wasn’t for you.”
i’m sorry that wasn’t for you.
my shoulders all wound together knit together, snicked tightly, bound. the hand that holds my pipe tensed and clawed the tips of my fingers white from the pressure
unclench your hand, look at your fingers. sit up, you don’t have to get up. sit up straight, you can stretch. you remember most of it. take in deep breaths of this shaded air look up aggressively blue sky hidden (thankfully) mostly by the canopy there are a lot of silvery clouds breaking up the blue
today feels very uncertain, I feel the mania pulling my shoulders together i will do everything that I can but there is only so much available.
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 โ 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. ืื ืื ืืขืืืจ ืื ืื ืืืืื
your author, dressed for 29ยฐF weather at 7a, sitting in the parking lot to medicate (description below)
It is currently 29ยฐF outside, actual feel of 22ยฐF. I am outside for my morning medication: today is cannabis and coffee. I’ve already taken my fish oil, but there’s no one to say anything about that if I take that in my kitchen. So I come outside after having dressed for the weather. This includes: underwear, thick socks, two pairs of flannel pajama bottoms, a long sleeved shirt over a short sleeved shirt, a fleece hoodie, my purple fuzzy robe with white stars, a knitted neck warmer, a knitted hat. I have spiked my coffee with hot cocoa mix and butter to make the warmth seem thicker and more long-lasting.
I have a medical marijuana card. Up until *very* recently, whole flower was not allowed to be sold in medical dispensaries. Smoking whole flower is the method of delivery that works best for me. If vaping worked for me, I could probably get away with vaping inside my apartment, although I really wouldn’t want to try. But it doesn’t. Smoking whole flower is what works. I no longer engage in practices that are meant to be good for me but in actuality, aren’t. Imagine if instead of taking your anti-anxiety meds by pill, you had to have them by suppository and you had to do that outside because that’s what the law dictated. Just because.
When it is colder than this, or when the weather is shit, or after dark (I feel like a D!sney princess out here sometimes, skunks ((Flower!)), raccoons, possums, cats, ALL the squirrels), I sit in the car. Even with the engine off, this is illegal to do. When I have zoom therapy and I am home I do it in my car or outside so that I can smoke. So that I can medicate. When I have zoom therapy and I’m at a friend’s house, I can be inside and warm and still medicate.
No other medication is subjected to restrictions and procedures like this. This is inhumane. Could you imagine if I told you you had to go outside for your heart medication if you weren’t well off enough to own your own home with private property? If I told you you had to take your cholesterol meds every morning but go outside somewhere on the street, what would happen?
And if I told you that unless you had the wherewithal, you couldn’t have a get-together with friends and have a smoke sesh. Have all the wine and cheese parties you want, every book club has its Bordeaux, every rehearsal dinner its Riesling, but no ma’am, you’re not allowed to enjoy this totally legal thing where you live, where you love, where you entertain. What would you do? What would you say?
People are going to consume where they are able to consume. Where they are forced to consume. This has always, and will continue to be what happens. By welcoming dispensaries and consumption lounges into Peekskill, by allowing smoking in specific areas of our many public parks, we are making our residents and visitors feel more comfortable and welcomed.
sitting in my car, rain smashing into the windshield coming hugely into the narrow slit I’ve opened in the window smoke hazing around the inside of the cabin
It is pouring (again)
giant crocodile tears wetting my sweater I don’t dare lower the window any further not even to tap my ash thunder competing with the din of the rain on my roof
I have eaten and smoked and am grateful for the help I had in making it through this day. I am not alone.
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. ๐ท 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 yetโฆ
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.
The Salty Widow 