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
The next kiss.
Tag: reasons for living
frustrating thoughts on a tuesday morning
It is currently 29°F outside, actual feel of 22°F. 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.
water washes away
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.
i do not know if I can take being loved this way.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I turned 53 years old.
I spent the entire weekend with people and missing people who clearly love me and who I love so much.
I spent the weekend
I spent the weekend doing familiar birthday things,
Going to the Lyndhurst craft fair as I have done for decades
(maybe half the artists this time, different layout, timed ticketing, all due to covid restrictions)
stressing out from all of the unknowns
(known and unknown, thank you D. Rumsfeld)
wanting so much for normalcy
(but what is “normal”, anyway? I certainly don’t have a fucking clue)
feeling so much that I have to explain even though I know I don’t
It seems like all I have been doing for the past three and a half years is explaining and explaining and explaining because honestly I
don’t understand any of it.
Just when I think I do I get caught off guard and none of it makes sense again.
I suppose I’m not explaining to others so much as to myself.
I miss all of the things that we talked about, all of those things that we never did.
All of the ways we responded to each other, all of the good, all of the terrible.
The contrast, I think,
the contrast is what’s killing me now.
i do not know if I can take being loved this way.
I can say things out loud and
I can say things out loud and not worry about feeling stupid for saying them.
Being made to feel stupid for saying them.
I can say things out loud and not worry about
I can say things out loud and not worry about being instantly and immediately criticized.
I can say things out loud and not worry about who might be on my side.
I know
I know for sure
I know now that you loved me but I didn’t then. I never knew for sure. I never knew from one minute to the next.
You would rescind and retract your love like the outgoing tide.
Snatch it away from me,
away from my
craven, grasping, grubby little paws
I want to forgive you for saying these things to me.
I want to forgive you for this so much.
How can I miss you so much and still be so angry at the things you did to me?
That we did to each other.
I told your sister once that I never really had an accurate sense of your feeling for me, not that I felt I could believe anyway. That I always thought you thought I was stupid and not enough and too much all at once.
That now I can look at the last things you wrote, and know.
I can look at all the small lovelinesses you left behind.
I can look at those things and know that they are real, they are proof.
Not soon enough to be able to enjoy with you, no.
The very desperate need to hold onto them
((craven, grasping, grubby little paws)screaming to the sky to talk to you
for you to hear me
I am trying so hard to do everything I can to be well.
I am still so
I am still so unwell but I don’t feel crushed by having to hold up every other damn thing anymore if only because I have given up on everything it seems)
I can look at the small lovelinesses that you left and see them for the huge gestures that they were. Everything is relative.
I can see the unexplored and forever unknown possibility of us becoming better to each other, to ourselves.
Knowing how difficult it was even in the very best of us
knowing I would not be this person if you were still alive
proving my progress to the memory of a dead man
wanting so much to escape your critical eye, your devastating words
and yet wanting to show you that I am okay
I am not okay.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I felt loved, and cherished, and adored, and so sad for what we never had.
If you could see how people treat me now.
If you could see how people love me now and aren’t afraid to say, to show.
I know you would, too.
3:13p, 15 April, 2019
Waiting in this room by myself with our cat
With Teaz’ka
Ivan Rumpelteazer, first of his name
Cleverly named, loved more than life itself.
I am so angry at you for being dead.
You aren’t here to be with us
You aren’t here to talk to
You aren’t here to be overrun with emotion with me
You aren’t here to console him, to console me. We are alone.
You aren’t here.
Asking for help, 17 September 2017, 2018, 17 March, 2019
From 2017, three days gone:
So.
I am not ever one to ask for help. But I am one to realize when things are beyond my grasp, beyond my capabilities. So with all of the love and support and heart that you all have shown me from the beginning of this total and complete horror show (and really? For a long time before this), I am learning to ask for help.
My friend Jennifer (has) created a YouCaring fundraiser for me, to help get me through this next part of my life. This difficult, insanely stressful part of my life.
Thank you all for the love you have shown, and continue to show me and Gary.
From 2018, one year and three days gone :
The daily struggle to survive is real. The money that everyone so generously raised last year paid for Gary to be cremated. That’s it. The entire $4600. Every day since, every bill, every single thing gets weighed in importance. I’ve been putting off Mojo getting his teeth cleaned because I need to return more bottles and cans. Somewhere along the way the YC fundrasiser page disappeared. No clue.
There was no life insurance, no pension, no 401(k). It’s all on me, my part-time job, and selling my art.
If you can give, even a little, please. I have no pride anymore. No shame.
I have Venmo and PayPal (lysa.hoffman@gmail.com). An Amazon wishlist (which right now is mostly a holding place to watch the price of bras I desperately need to replace).
Asking for help shatters the last bit of hope I had.
From this Friday, 542 days later, and today:
Mojo (whatagoodboy) waiting to be seen by Dr. Romano for his well-baby checkup and dental work. This little dude is the more scaredy-cat of my pair of knockabout clowns, but he really is an amazing creature. He always knows when his Momma needs him and snuggles right in.
UPDATE: Home now, a little wobbly, but really none the worse for wear💜💜
And that was more than my entire paycheck. Worth it. Worth every penny.
But still more than my paycheck.
I stopped paying my mortgage in September. I never had the intention of completely defaulting but the bank (thank, Wells Fargo!) refused to work with me until I did, until I had completely destroyed my credit. My house, our house is now in foreclosure. I have come around to the idea that I need to find a smaller place. That I need to let go of this place. The idea no longer terrifies me; I’m resigned to it. I need to stay in this city that I have grown to love, Peekskill, where my created family lives.
I am simply frozen. There is so much I have not gotten done, so much piling up and broken. So much I know I’m overpaying for (hello, Verizon wireless and internet!) but am completely unable to take care of. I certainly don’t need the upload/download speeds that Gary did, but I know for sure I’ll get taken advantage of. Because that is what happens.
I am adrift.
As the inevitable waves of depression wash over me I do everything I can to ease them: listen to the “groovy shit” and “boss BITCH” playlists I made on Spotify, write, snuggle wee beasties, plan playtime, EAT SOMETHING FFS, use some CBD, head into the studio to set type for the orders I desperately need to print. Messing about with my little secret garden. My mother is coming over in a few hours to help me clean and organize, to help make some sense of this mess. Knitting with one of my best girls was cancelled because her shitheel of an ex has yet again decided to be a totally pernicious twit of a narcissistic asshole. So instead of knitting and dishing, I’m writing, and listening to good music while snuggly bois wind around my legs. And making my plan for the day.
Which, as I see it, isn’t the worst thing that could be happening. I’ve managed, by spending this time writing and attaching Spotify links and stuff, to elevate my mood. I’ve responded to an email chain that continues to make me happy.
Gotta go. Shower’s running.
Babies. 7 June, 2018
Ten. The babies are ten years old today. Oh-six oh-seven oh-eight.
Teaz’ka and Mojo. Ivan Rumpelteazer and Yevgeny Mungojerrie. The $50,000 Rescue Cat and Sgt. Mojohowicz. Stinkerbelle and The Fangster Gangster. My fanged, furry barnacles. My constant companions since you died nearly nine months ago.
My love, you worked from home, were home all day for them, *their* constant companion (whether or not you paid strict attention to them). They taught you their games, taught you how to play Fetch, Human! Teaz’ka became your 3pm alarm, telling you he needed his second dose of phenoxybenzamine.
Since your death, any time that I am anywhere close to being horizontal, there is at least one of the two on me, and usually both. They both sleep on me at night, in the middle of our king-sized bed. They are never far from me when I am home. I worry, now, about what would happen to them should something happen to me. I trust no one to care for them as I care for them; no one. The doors are always locked the second I get home, my phone is always with me. A few very close
friends have keys to the house, just case. I am remiss in not writing out their care plans, their medication schedules, sharing my passwords with those friends for just in case. I’m not sure that I haven’t begun to become a bit more mad than I already am over this.
They are literally the most important parts of my life now, the reason I get up every single day. My friends, my family, I love you but you simply do not need me the way these two little creatures do. This isn’t to say that I do not love some among you more than I can express, more than I think some of you can handle, and I know that there are those among you who I lean upon with a sometimes (and many times frequent) desperate intensity. I know that some of us share a calm when we’re together; that we are a peaceful respite for each other. These boys these *cats* are my respite when nothing else no thing else no one else can help me. When there is nothing but noise and rage and pain in my head and heart these two beings are what keep me here.
For those of you who have met them, have had the pleasure of their small, soft, warm bodies snuggling into you, you get it; you know. I trust their judgement; there is not a single person I’ve allowed into this house in the last nine months who I’ve not felt comfortable around. They are my keepers as much as I am theirs; we take care of each other.
Happy birthday, babies. I wish your Daddy were here.
The Salty Widow 