Thursday, December 29, 2011

things I look forward to

1) 10 p.m. - the time I feel I can legitimately go to sleep.  It's crept back from 10:30.  It sometimes backfires when I wake up before my alarm goes off in the morning.  Any night that I don't stay awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night after waking up with a pain in my guts or chest (I wonder why it varies between the two) is a success.  I still don't dream about him. Very different from when my mother died 11 years ago.  I would dream that she is there, but yet know she's dead, and I'd desperately try to reconcile the two. The difference is I watched her die and felt sorry for her, because she felt sorry for herself.  In the dream I would know that she couldn't survive and that I would have to relive her death again - heartbreaking.  Maybe because he didn't know he was dying, I don't have the same kind of dreams now.  But I also don't have the comfort of 'being with him' in my dreams, except for one time, early on, when I dreamed we were walking along a scary cliff together holding hands, and the dream ended as I turned and kissed his shoulder.   I guess that was goodbye.  In those days I felt his presence intensely.  I think it's a defense mechanism we have - goes along with the myth of the spirit staying around for 40 days.  I think it lasted about that long.  Now, I'm constantly aware of his absence.  When I sometimes feel for a second an animal optimism of being in my body, it is immediately crushed in the next moment by the thought that what's the point when 'that' happened.  I also think of this horrible year ending, but can't find any comfort, because 'that' cannot be undone.

2) my mid-morning cigarette

3) my after-work drink

That's about it.



Saturday, December 24, 2011

foretold

I found your notes for a novel from a few years ago. It starts with a phone call telling you your mother's dead. Your biggest fear. You imagined it pretty well - the inanity of the stranger telling you he's sorry; no histrionics, no tears, just the physical weight of it, the broken sleep, the silence. It's uncanny. Just the way it happened. Only it wasn't my death but yours.

That must be the novel that went missing with your stolen laptop. I wonder if it's still out there somewhere.

won't you try?

Do you know there are spaces open and wide?
Believe me, there are days longer than nights
And you will be happy the minute you try
So won't you try?
--The joy in forgetting/The joy in acceptance, Bright Eyes


I had the first line of those lyrics inscribed on the iPod I gave you one Christmas, which you promptly lost.  But who was I kidding.  Days longer than nights?  Never for me.  Did I instill in you this sadness you couldn't bear?  You tried to be stoic, but you were too exuberant.  Not like me.  I can trudge like this forever. But you said:

"Everybody wants to go forever. I just want to burn up hard and bright."

That you did.  That you did.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

godlessness

I'm sick and feeling sorry for myself.  I don't know what I'm trying to be anymore - superhuman or something? I'm trying to be philosophical about it, but the animal in me just bleeds.  I feel like my soul is hemorrhaging.  Yes, I need to be loved and I need to be pitied.  I'm not above that.

But there's only so much other people can do for you.  I regret every decision I ever made.  The difference between a world without God, I read today, is not lack of morality, it's lack of redemption.  There is no redeemer.  Everything is cast in stone.  Loss is forever.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

unreality

From the first moments this happened I've been fighting the feeling that it couldn't be real, because it's so literary - to be precise, it's like a bad novel.  Life shouldn't be so pitch perfect, with everything taking on meaning, everything being foreshadowed.  Life should be messy - the bad guys should win, nobody should get what they deserve, a parent's worst nightmare shouldn't come true. No, this can't be reality.

As a result, it's not only his death that seems unreal, but my whole life has taken on that tinge.  It's like - you can't be serious.  I am not going to play along anymore.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

nightmare

It was like a horror movie.  I was in a house that was mine, but suddenly these people, who were my friends wanted me out of it and they changed into something else - they were still outwardly themselves, but they attacked me and I realized they were not what they appeared to be.

I woke up with the old familiar pain gripping my stomach and my chest and couldn't go back to sleep for hours.  I still feel hungover.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

record

I am so grateful to have your words.  Some of them are the best and truest things I've read, ever.  I love the technology that has allowed me this glimpse into you - smartphone, Facebook.

I never knew we were so alike.  Though it figures - a misfit will beget a misfit.  This line, especially struck me:

"I'm too judgemental for a real relationship. I always think people should be harder on themeselves than they are." 

But I'm so glad you had someone to say it to.  And to see your growing self-awareness:

"the things we hate in others we learn to recognize from ourselves first. its nice being a little bit more enlightened but it sucks to have to go back  and undo soooo many mistakes. I feel like i have maxed out all my existential credit cards. Its like living on bread and water my greatest achievements involve not fucking up that day." 

"'We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget'  joan didion"

It used to drive me crazy when you would write off the past with a simple 'but I'm not like that anymore.'  I'm glad you came to see that it's not that easy.  Our actions define us, not our intentions, or our words.  I feel all the weight of that judgment now.  How I wish I had dropped everything and flown to you when I realized you were alone and lost.  I offered to come for your birthday, and though you dismissed it, you mentioned it to someone, so you were not averse to the idea.  Instead, I mourned you on your birthday.  The birthday party you never had as an adult.  I wish I had celebrated you more.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

his words

I'm sober and at my best, or at least my strongest. I just want to be good, whatever it costs. It really is love it just manifests as fury.

I just feel like there are parts to a person that you have to go somewhere to find. Moving around helps you feel new. It makes you braver.

Shakespeare says being born is like being kidnapped and sold it to slavery. I don't want money I don't want power I don't want any of the things they tried to teach me to want I just want dignity.

I am constantly in love, with all of it. I'm just not strong enough to carry it. It tears me apart. I have to face the horror of it all to be able to really feel that love. At least that's how I have it figured.

Happy is just one thing, it can't be permanent ever. I want more than to be happy. I want to be strong. I wanna be strong enough to carry the weight for those that i love

Aug.18, 2011

I miss my country that deep distant part of it. Everything becomes kind of hallucinatory when you feel so far away from where you are.

I have a need to be wanted. It's a massive cruel weakness.

I feel like my intentions are so good, something just gets lost in translation. That's why I separate myself. I feel like I just hurt people. This monastic lifestyle is some sort of penance but sometimes I still fuck up.  Because I'm needy

When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in he has no choice  but to become an outlaw' nelson mandela. That was hanging on the wall at the farm. I don't understand why the world around me seems like its fabricated from my thoughts.

Aug. 19, 2011

I just assume that people are with me until they find something better or newer. Like everyone is just playing to win not trying to love.

Because you are what you love, not what loves you back.
Because love must be courageous.

I'm probably always going to be alone. It's just how it is. I make people sad when they are close to me. It's unfair to drag people into that. I have to much love for the real world.

Aug. 24, 2011

It's rare that I feel that I inhabit the same world as most people.
I was writing for a while, now i feel incredibly agitated. I need some sort of catharsis. I have been reading like 3 books at once like 200 pages a day on top of training and I just feel so FULL I could fucking scream.
I don't know, just trying to live my life I guess. I'm always hungry for more even now its never enough.

Aug. 27 2011

I feel my rich imaginary life helps me live my ordinary one. Ordinary life isnt really that ordinary and when you let your mind swim with really lush shit it gives you faith that you can do anything. I mean maybe its hard to actually become Batman but I think I'm doing a pretty good job.

There's so much more to life than what happens. There's an entire world inside people.

Sep.16 2011

Ive sacrificed fun, I have sacrificed companionship, I deal with enormous amounts of pain and frustration on a daily basis. Sometimes I am crawling on hands and knees but if I don't get better that day I can't sleep. I don't get bored, I fight for my spirit from when I wake up to when I crawl into bed. It doesn't define me it is only one expression of who I am. It teaches me how to live. It teaches me how to persevere.

Sep. 20, 2011
It's the past but emotions are memory.

Sep. 21, 2011

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

2012

I always thought I "supported" you. That is laughable. You held me up. You took away the nagging feeling that there really was no reason for me to go on. Now it's back for good. Why am I here? Twenty years in this country and I haven't left a dent. I have nothing to show for it. Less than nothing - painful memories and financial debt. Here's a thought - I don't need to be here. I'll pay off my debts and take my pitiful compensation and leave. I have nothing to lose after losing you.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

13

The number of photos of you in my room. Your beautiful face, at different ages. All magnificent. They say you looked like me, or your father, or my brother. But you didn't look like any one of us. You were yourself - unique, inimitable, never to be again, never to get old. Usually I can look at you without crying, but not today. Somewhere along the way I equated your death with your magnificence. You were too big for this world. It's hard to see it as the random event that it was. And yet, it is. You didn't have to die. Your luck just didn't hold out. I always thought the 13th was lucky for me, because you were born then, on a Sunday. And you died on a Friday. Now 23 is forever odious.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Illusion

The stable bow

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."

I read Kahlil Gibran's famous poem when I was very young and I took it to heart.  Despite being so young when I became a parent, I knew that it was the end of youth.  Youth being the contemplation of the many yous you could become, the many paths you could take, the many people you could love and be with.  I was one thing - a mother.  Everything else was incidental.  My job was to keep still, so my son could wander freely.  And we stuck to those roles, although as he grew up he would exhort me to 'get a life' even as he never relinquished his right to eschew stability in favor of pursuing whatever struck his fancy.   That his life would end before mine, emptying mine of its purpose is, of course, the ultimate irony.

But that's not the only reason my life is barren without him.  As mundane as most of our communications were, he was the only person I know, who lived for the sublime.  In practical matters he was frustratingly inept.  He told me a few weeks before he died that he admired me, but had no idea how I do it.  How I did it is I had him as a flame I had to keep going.  At any cost, through winds and storms, through barren days and nights.  How do I do it now?