Edrie

The Proposal

2009-01-24T11:46:00.001-05:00

A little piece I wrote this morning after sleeping for 10 hours in a fevered state and dreaming about dirty bathrooms and heroin needles (neither of which appear in this story or really have anything to do with this story at all - that I know of anyway...)

The Proposal

We each took a bite of the shiny green apple before throwing it over the cliff. My stomach flip-flopped as the apple hit tree branches and brush and disappeared into the rushing stream. The proposal was sealed. He had pocked the apple from the fancy grocery store that I only hoped to be able to shop in one day. We were driving, aimlessly across the country and stopped to pee in a nice place where we could also manage a few pieces of food into a bag, a pocket. We had driven away from that place with its perfect fruit and crunchy shop keepers, acting normal, driving not too fast or slow, getting away with food to last for two, maybe three days. Those places were always better then trying to lift at a place in the city. Convenience store clerks were alert, suspicions, but the kids with their dreadlocks and brown earth shoes didn’t suspect us to be lifting right from under their nose. We looked clean, uncomplicated.

The proposal was dramatic. He liked drama and acted upon it, even though he said he abhorred it. We had emptied our pockets at the next rest area. The inventory was good, mostly fruit as that was easy to spirit, but I had managed a bag of all natural nitrate free beef jerky as well as a huge soft orange lump of some kind of cheese I couldn’t pronounce the name of. He had gotten olives and crackers. We had what he called an “anti-pasta” feast ready for us. He was holding something back, but I couldn't tell what and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I hoped it was tampons, Ever since my mom had figured out I was a “grown up girl” I was allowed to use hers. I was always afraid I’d have to go back to using wadded toilet paper like I had been using before she figured it out, but I wasn’t even sure fancy stores like that carried tampons. I thought maybe they had bad stuff in them, maybe even nitrates.

We drove on, getting off the highway before it turned into a toll rode. It was mid-afternoon, a clear January day where the sun hung in the sky like a left over Christmas ornament. We were in Massachusetts, someplace I had barely even heard of except in history class where we had just learned it was one of the thirteen original colonies. We were headed south to warmer places where sleeping in the car wouldn’t mean certain death. We had been in Maine staying at a seemingly abandoned summer cabin. We had been there, chopping firewood and eating the store of canned goods for a while before the owner showed up for an ice fishing trip. We gave him two stories simultaneously, but he wasn’t the kind to believe anything, not even the truth. He didn’t call the police but he did say that if he ever saw us again he would shoot us on sight. I think he was softened a bit by my wood chopping. I had stacked enough wood for three winters. I had always loved chopping wood. It was my job at home; my little brother couldn’t manage the axe like I could. The hard rhythmic motion and growing pile of accomplishment made me feel grown up. He never chopped wood; he never did anything remotely close work. I was chopping wood when he took me. If I had been doing anything else I might have been saved.

He shouted at me at me as he pulled the car over about how great this place was he was going to show me, his voice strident and impatient. He had grown up near here, the view was great. I had to think hard to see him as anything other then what he was now. He was so big and hard, so intense. I got tired trying to imagine him as a little boy. The shoulder was wide, snow pushed off the road into the ditch. We left the car, being careful to lock it. I looked back at it as we tromped through the woods. I didn’t want to leave it there, it looked so lost, but he dragged me forward, urging me along with words and force. The trees broke and we were standing at the top of a cliff, a wide-open valley one hundred feet below us. Stunted trees and low brush clung to the side of the rocky face, a stream rushed by below swirling around chunks of rock covered by snow. He pulled on my hand and I thought he meant for us to jump. I would have too, without any urging, I would have closed my eyes and leapt right from where we were standing. I didn’t see any point not to, but he wasn’t jumping he was on one knee holding out to me a shiny green apple, store sticker still on it, I remember the tiny white sticker had a red boarder and said “Extra Fancy”. His face was even with mine and I tried to loose my gaze in that sticker instead of look into his brown, red-rimmed eyes.

He said things which I don’t remember, things that seemed both sweet and scary and out of touch. He talked about love and how I had changed him, how he could count on me and I on him. He said it all while holding the apple close to my lips, holding it up like a torch, a torch I almost felt the heat of against the pressing January air. He demanded I take a bite and I did and then he did and together we threw the apple off the cliff. I thought about how hungry I was for that apple and now it was gone. It seemed sacrilege to throw it over the edge; we might not be able to eat an apple for a long long time, if ever. In spite of my hunger for it, I could not chew or swallow the piece I had bitten off, instead, I quietly spit it into my hand and put it in my pocket as he was hugging me and crying and saying he would make this world our world and give me everything I ever wanted. He would buy me as many apples as I could eat. Hell, he would buy me an apple farm that would grow a thousand different kinds of apples and we would have apple pie and applesauce. He repeated all of the apple dishes he could think of as we trudged back to the car. I thought of the movie where a man repeated all of the different things you could make with shrimp until he was killed. I thought about dying a lot.

We could see the car when he stopped and pushed me against a tree, lifting me into a better position so that his knees wouldn’t strain and creek while he pumped into me. He had brought me to Wal-Mart right after he took me and bought me two skirts a plaid one and a black one and I wasn’t allowed to wear anything else. No underwear, not even the tattered training bra my mother had bought me two years ago, which was too small anyway but it was the only thing I had. I thought about the piece of apple in my pocket and how cold the air was on my thighs. The tree was warmer then the air but scrapped me up and down.

I always kept my eyes open but I had never looked into his eyes before, mostly I stared at his chest or at the sheets or floor depending on how he did it. But today I looked into his eyes, his doughy face slightly red from the cold and the exertion. I saw the blackheads littering his nose and a scar on his check I didn’t know he had. I think it unnerved him that I was staring at him. At first he was joyful, triumphant but that quickly turned to contempt and perhaps a little fear. He threw me roughly to the ground where I crumpled and lay unresisting as he finished himself off onto my face and into my hair. He shoved himself back into his brown wool pants and hauled me to the car dragging me by my stringy hair complaining that I wasn’t tight enough for him when I should have been the tightest I’d ever been considering the special day. He threw me against the car and let me drag myself into the back seat and lay down. He threatened to try the other hole next time as I lay there watching the tops of the trees pierce the transparent blue sky. He peeled out too fast, bumping us back onto the road, doing a tight fast u-turn. I didn’t bother to wipe my face or ask why we were going back the way we came. He had done this before in the weeks I had been with him, suddenly changing his mind. He didn’t keep me in his counsel. I stuck my hand in my coat pocket and fingered the bit of apple that was there feeling the pulpy wet side and the cool slick side. West, he said after several miles, West to find you that apple farm.

I, the Divine, Rabih Alameddine

2009-01-23T05:54:00.002-05:00

In grad school we had to produce 3-5 pages of critical writing a week on a book we were assigned. This meant that we read a book a week and handed in a small critical papers about each work. I like the idea of this because it turns that fluffy novel you are reading into something important and you tend to gravitate towards books that you can actually say something about. When I look back on the vast amount of critical writing I did (which is a very structured style so different from my personal writing or fiction writing) I remember the books quite fondly and the different levels at which I had to read them. Since most of the papers are quite short and focus on one theme within the book, they don't give a good clue to the emotional connection I had to that book.

There are a few stand out books that I read in order to produce these papers and "I, the Divine" was one of them. This book of beginnings came at a time where I was, possibly for only the second time ever, doing something completely my own and for me. I did not realize what emotional upheaval this would cause and I was literally in the middle of it when I read this book. I remember thinking when I read it that my life too was a series of first chapters - beginnings - I just didn't realize at the time how very close together those beginnings would be.

Here is the paper I wrote - a little dry, wholly unemotional (as, I am told, good critical papers should be) and a bit mediocre as they go (can't hit a home run with ever grad school diatribe)

Please go out and read this book - actually read all of his books

I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine

A juxtaposition of form against content is how Alameddine experiments in I, the Divine. By giving the reader successive first chapters in a supposed failed attempt by the subject and fictitious author, Sarah Nour el-Din to write her memoir, Alameddine gives the reader a cunning story within a story while propelling the novel with partially revealed substance. I, the Divine subtly states information by mentioning items in one chapter, but leaving them out in the next. However, even though this information is missing, the reader is still aware of the prior chapters, which leads to a deeper understanding of the novel.
The novel opens, as all novels do, with Chapter One. However, each succeeding chapter is similarly named. For the first few chapters the content really does feel like a Chapter One might feel. The old content is either discarded or expounded upon for subsequent chapters. The reader gets newly pulled into each Chapter as though they were opening a fresh new title. What the reader learns, however, becomes subtlety more important as the book proceeds. The form of the successive first chapters gives way to the emotional and physical content of the narrative and to what is retained by the reader allowing the “First Chapters” to become much more then an introduction.
A good example of what the reader learns and retains, which makes for greater understanding later, is the story of how the author Sarah, born in Lebanon, gets such an unusual name. This story also gives insight into her family and her own character. Chapter One on page one starts “My grandfather named me for the great Sarah Bernhardt. He considered having met her in person the most important event of his life.” This seems like a relatively benign start though it is the very first First Chapter and the reader does learn that one of the most important things in her grandfather’s life becomes somewhat of a definition of her life as well. Then in Chapter One on page fifty-nine the reader, though this is also a first chapter, finds out a bit more. “I grew up infatuated with Sarah Bernhardt, having been named after her by my grandfather. My stepmother considered this obsession, for what is was, to be dangerous. She objected to my grandfather filling my head with stories of the great actress, thinking they would lead me astray.” This tells the reader that the stepmother is somewhat at odds with the grandfather. That information is more resonant with the reader because they have also found out that the grandfather finds that meeting to be a defining moment in his life. This sets tension that would, if these really were first chapters, would not be present in the same way. The reader is then treated with further knowledge of the author Sarah’s standing with her grandfather in Chapter One on page seventy-seven “My grandfather, Hammoud, named me for the great Sarah Bernhardt. He was infatuated with her. Since he chose my name, stamped me, I immediately became his favorite granddaughter.” This information sets the stage for even further tension and conflict within the family unit. Other first chapters go on to teach the reader that the stepmother is a true outsider to the family and that the grandfather, who is her father’s father, is somewhat tyrannical and mean to everyone except the granddaughter he named which gives her a special place in the family but one that is not appreciated by her stepmother or her sisters.
The primary interest in the form of first chapters is that the content is not only constantly changing but also building upon itself. Even though the story of how the author Sarah got her name begins the novel and is interspersed throughout the text as First Chapters on their own and parts of other chapters, there are several other important stories that the reader is reintroduced to in succeeding chapters but still learns something different with every “first”. Not just the content but also the form itself gives further insight into the character. A sense she has had many false starts. Perhaps a sense she is not sure where her life is going or that she is unable to tie her disparate feelings together.
The penultimate First Chapter starting on page 277, like the first First Chapter is a story about her name and ties both the form and content together in a neat package allowing the reader to feel like they’ve come full circle within the narrative. It brings in each of the major aspects brought up in each successive naming chapter plus new details that let the reader look at the incident in a new way but a way informed by the previous content. “When my grandfather saw me for the first time … he greeted me with. ‘Welcome to my world, my little Sarah.’”
These successive first chapters successfully weave content through the form allowing the reader to gather meaning while still being confronted with new substance. Propelled by substance yet immersed on form I, the Divine is a perfect balance of a story within a story.

Secret Playground

2009-01-20T08:13:00.003-05:00

I have the urge to go to the secret playground today - rather strange, but perhaps this stillness that I feel would be extended out if I were there.

I can see what it is like - feel the cold air on my face as I swing back and forth. the crunch of the snow (which must be several inches thick by now) is a sweet sound.

Nothing profound - likely I am just missing home

One year after he left

2007-03-12T06:09:00.000-04:00

1 year later - I still wake up crying sometimes. I still think of the sweet things and the scary things. I can't get 100% righted in my own mind. I think of "I" too much and also not enough.

Bill collectors call - and no matter how many times I say - he left me, we're divorced - stop calling me at work, they keep right on. They tell me things I don't want to know. If I hang up, they call right back. One guy named "Paul" told me his story, his wife did the same thing. Took off one day and didn't call him for days. When she did call she was in Atlantic City (They lived in Colorado at the time). He hadn't slept, thought she had been kidnapped or worse. She was laughing when she called. "right out of a movie" he said "She tells me, she's gone to do something for herself for once." He hears her talking in hushed tones to someone. He is frantic, like I was and sometimes still am. It was the same for him. he saw her once after that, in the office of a lawyer just like me.

Paul, I am sorry for you. I am sorry that you became a bill collector to find her. It's a story I will write after I am done writing my own. I am sorry she moved in with that man, had his children when she didn't want yours. I am sorry it was really about him when she said over and over again it was for herself. Paul - read last year, how desperate I was, how sad and blind sided. Read that and know there are others for whom pain becomes a blanket. Then throw that off, it's no good - they don't think of you like you think of them. The longing is not there for them. They have a dark spot, a blind spot a spot with no feeling towards you. It eats up all of that energy you send to them and turns it around, crunches it in teeth made of glittery broken glass and swallows it down.

Of course I can't take my own advice - I still spend too much energy on him on them

I asked the Tarot reader if his life was better now - if he had made the right decisions - Looks like neither was really right - but - as the tarot reader said - Honey this is your life, you can't be doing Tarot for someone else. Let go

Here's hoping that this is the year of letting go, of finding my own path rather then following that of his. Taking what I've learned being Edrie and molding it into a stroang and creative force that will drive the rest of my life.

The Tarot reader laid down these cards - they are for him, but they could have been for me too:

	The Two Paths spread provides insight into an important decision the possible outcomes, and the forces that draw you towards each of these outcomes. The Curious Tarot is the rarest and most unusual of modern decks. The cards form a surreal collage of American consumer imagery, eerily capturing the archetypes of the atomic age. It is the deck of those who seek to harness the ancient tribal energy that courses through the modern urban world.
	The top left card represents the first possible outcome. Queen of Cups, when reversed: The dark essence of water, such as a deep and foreboding lake: Discomfort with the worlds of mind and matter, leading to a retreat to the spiritual. The embrace of negative relationships, driven by the desperate fear of being alone. Devotion to fantasies and daydreams, to the exclusion of practical skills or the pursuit of knowledge. Insecurity leading to dishonor, vice, and undue susceptibility to outside influences.
	The top right card represents the second possible outcome. The Star, when reversed: Lost hopes, doubt and failure. Physical health and mental outlook lost in the outer darkness. Desperation leading to blind faith in false solutions.
	The middle left card represents the force drawing you towards the first possible outcome. Page of Swords: The essence of air behaving as earth, such as a steady wind: The approach of an unexpected challenge, to be met with clear thought and just action. A person filled with an eager appetite for all matters of mind and logic. The gathering of information through unfaltering vigilance, careful examination, and subtle spycraft. The use of reason or eloquent speech to penetrate the veil of confusion and cut to the heart of the matter.
	The middle right card represents the force drawing you towards the second possible outcome. The Emperor, when reversed: Weakness in character leading to tyranny and abuse of worldly power. Loss of confidence and ambition, coupled with the cold execution of the unthinkable. The inability to carry out plans or command respect. Being unreasonable and prone to fits of rage. A deceiver or demagogue.
	The bottom card represents the critical factor that decides what will come to pass. The Fool, when reversed: Apathy, negligence, and dangerous carelessness. Unquenchable wanderlust. Obsession with someone or something. Losing all sense of proportion. Foolhardy adventuring and lack of interest in critical matters. Immature or unrealistic ideals. Strange impulses and desires coming from unexpected sources. Vanity, delirium, folly, and oblivion.

MySpace

2007-02-04T09:15:00.000-05:00

So most of my recent posts have been on MySpace! Find me there if your curious about the preset - this is mostly past

For all we have been through and all that is to come

2006-12-31T07:40:00.001-05:00

For all we have been through and all that is to come

I am typing up the script for the wedding of two of my favorite people in the world. Never underestimate the joy of a wedding. Even though it was incredibly hard for me to attend my sister’s wedding – I got over my own personal issues and looked at the joy of the moment rather then the baggage I was brining to the situation. I never thought I would even say the word wedding again, much less attend and be joyous at two of them in the same year.

Both the wedding of my sister and the wedding of these two kind and courageous people are “non-traditional”. My sister had a “festivis spectacular” at the renaissance fair. All costumed and corseted the guests reveled amongst the merry folk while we celebrated a love and engagement that was longer then both of my marriages (oops, that one was about me again – sorry) But seriously. My sister’s wedding was beautiful and perfect for them. Their wedding represented them as a couple and it made the guests feel the joy of a wedding and the joy of their relationship.

The wedding I will be officiating tonight (yes, I have the power vested in me!!!) is similar in the fact that the love is strong and the family supportive and that it is also “non-traditional” but it is different as well. This wedding will be catered by the bride herself (lucky for all of us as she is an incredible cook and hostess). It will also take place at the furtive hour, or rather the stroke after since legally it must be performed on 1/1/07. And the wedding will be in the apartment they will share with each other. But this wedding is no less about joy and no less about celebrating the joy of the relationship of this couple. It will be as sweet and as beautiful because love is like that as are the ways we show each other that love.

Someone said to me yesterday that she often felt too old to learn. Granted it was in the context of learning highly complex post-grad level data crunching (which frankly I’m not too old to learn, I just never could). But the truth is if we want to learn, we will. And actually sometimes even if we don’t want to, we will. Take weddings. After the two failed ones I have had, in truth, even before the latest one to fail really failed… I said I would never get married again. And in fact I (as short sighted and emotionally damaged people often do – and man am I one of those) swore off relationships all together.

But slowly – and thanks to these two weddings and seeing people I love very much bond their love to each other with a show to the world of their seriousness… I am slowly getting back to the idea that a relationship is a good thing. The jury is still out on actual weddings (in relation to having one of my own), but if my Tarot card readings of the past few weeks are correct – I should have one again and perhaps prove the “3rd time’s a charm” adage.

I’m not saying I will run out tomorrow and hitch up with the next person I see – I have just decided I will leave the possibility open and if it happens, perhaps I won’t run away just because of the context of what I view as my own failings in my last two relationships. Everyone and every situation is different and humans can justify them selves into or out of a paper bag, but perhaps that is what we are meant to do. To justify our new follies with the learning of the past and to move forward hopefully not blindly. I wish that I had gotten it right before now. That I had had one single and good for me relationship that has lasted for years. That that relationship was bonded by marriage and that the trappings of that were ours and we reveled in them. But I do not have that. Instead I have some good years and some years spent in pain. Not that I would not have that if I had remained married either time (Not that I had a choice in the second having been threatened in all kinds of ways to make sure I went through with the divorce). Perhaps that is the point. That married or not you go through life learning a bit about yourself at every stage and you either choose to use that knowledge or not. Marriage is different for everyone and different even in meaning for in the actual couple to be married. But that does not mean you should dismiss it out of hand.

There is a book called “The Essential Rumi” translated by Coleman Barks. I have a copy of that book with this inscription “For all we have been through and all that is to come”. The book was given to me out of love and I read it now knowing this but knowing too that the love that it holds is different now. But in the spirit of Rumi - t is not the thing that holds the love but the universe and it is not the universe that gives the love but yourself – open yourself to your own love so that you may receive it from others and from the universe and in turn know the thing and yourself and the universe and the love.

Lesson = never say never and don’t let your own bitterness get in the way of your own future. “For all we have been through and all that is to come” is as true now as it was when I, as a blushing bride (times two…), first received it. It is just true in a different way.

Now back to the script!

The end of 2006

2006-12-25T07:06:00.000-05:00

The compulsion to blog or even write, for that matter, has been low. The reason? I think it must have something to do with the very little time I have been spending alone with my thoughts. I’ve been washing my thoughts clean in my waking hours with TV, wine, hanging out with friends, practice, work-work-work. This is not necessarily the best thing for a writer to do, but it does help avoid confronting all those feelings.

Everyone does an end-of-year round up so I shall too. This time last year I was looking forward to graduation. After an emotionally wrenching two years, I would finally have my diploma in hand and be able to really call myself a writer. Graduation was magical, though it was somewhat hijacked by drama via the Robot. But in my life, then, what wasn’t? (Funny I say then and even now I spend energy thinking about him every day, those rare days I don’t are a gift) I loved him and expected it; maybe I even needed that drama.

After graduation things get murky until the next big event in February. A show by the Collective. This show was monumental and drove the nail in the coffin of our relationship, though I didn’t know it then. I had so much fun that night. One month later, almost exactly – disaster. You can read my past blog to feel that pain. I’ve put so much time into thinking about it – clearly more time then he has. Even still, to this day, neither of them has come to me in person to say anything useful about it. I expect that will never happen now and I am OK with not knowing, because I know that by now, the real reasons are buried so deep in excuses that none of us would really know the truth with a capital “T”. It has been something each of us has had to find for ourselves.

Let’s leave behind the defining moment of my year for a minute and look at the results of that moment.

I am different. In a profound way, in a way I can’t even begin to explain.
- Am I happier? Yes and no, I feel afloat still, not like myself still. Like I am a new being still figuring out its place. Perhaps I was never myself. I am still discovering. Who am I? What am I? Should I be here or elsewhere?

I am expressing myself in a new way.
- I am in a band that plays often and we are doing well. I am thankful for this outlet and thankful that in doing this Walter and I can help each other redefine our lives without the people we spent so many years invested in. I hope he is finding himself as much as I am. We were both so broken, but the support and encouragement we’ve received has been so great and so overwhelming. I never knew so much good. So many people banded together to hold us and to listen. Thank you.

Death is the fate of the turning of the days.
- Bogart is no longer with us. As is the fate with each passing year, someone close moves on to whatever is next. Death is one of those things that just happens and I feel I know who the next will be and that it will be entirely too soon and I hope beyond all hope that I am wrong. That moment in March was like a death, I went through official grief counseling where in the counselor said more then once, sometimes it’s easier if they just die. She was equating what happened to me to what happens to people with parents or spouses with Alzheimer’s or some other degenerative disease or a severe injury that leaves them not the person they were. It was a more true comparison then I wished to contemplate. Let me tell you though, death is not easier – no matter what. The truth is, nothing that causes that much pain is particularly easy.

I have found love even though I am actively pushing it away in my mind.
- I am not sure what to say about this except that I know it has happened. Just like all of my relationships, it is a surprise yet seems so inevitable. How will I make sure this one is different? Perhaps I am too tired to make it work, too bitter and hurt to trust. My tactic has been, what happens happens, no plan no goal, let’s just see. For the first time in my life I have no path forward for myself, no goal for this. I am letting life unfold. It is both magical and scary but affords those sweet moments you only find if you have no expectations beyond being decent and honest with each other.

I miss my family.
- Ever since moving here leaving my only family over two thousand miles away, I have missed them. But this year I see the years I have been here stretched out behind me like a long flowing scarf. Time seems so short. Have I wasted much of it by being so far away? What could have been different if I had gone home? Should I go home still? The answers to these questions are complicated, but perhaps they only seem that way.

I realize that this post is very internal and contemplative. Mostly I have things that have happened that have no real answers for them. The right and wrong are still unclear and my path is murky. Over all, I am doing better then I have in years, at least on the inside. I have people who actually care about me. I have good friends who have stuck through years and years with me and been kind and sweet and honest and loving all at once. I have a family who is open and loving and I have a person in my life who loves me for just who I am and has no grand illusions or swinging feelings or scenes. I am a part of a musical expression that is really connecting with people. That makes my soul fly and my heart warm. Even complete strangers in a strange city found time and energy to come see us and complement us and share in our emotions. I got a hug from a girl who said, “That was me once too, thank you” One doesn’t expect a hug in NYC.

Perhaps that is the moral of the story of my year. The unexpected. I should embrace that more. Live life more forward. Perhaps that should be my resolution. Before I see what Santa brought me I should resolve to come into things open and unexpectant. Hope for the best and expect nothing.

Here is to a new year. Thank you all for helping me move into it looking back only a little. Time to hope for the best and to not expect.

Thoughts on death

2006-12-17T07:33:00.000-05:00

My thoughts are all mixed up this morning

Universally death is an event that brings up the memories of and emotions surrounding past death. When I heard of my best friend’s pain when her beautiful kitty died at the age of 15, all I could think of was the yearning. The feeling early in the morning or when you’ve forgotten for a minute and expect to see someone around a corner or coming home. I’ve been dreaming of my father for the past week; having those same feelings, like I should be able to call home and he will pick up the phone.
My friend was very good to me when my father died. She cooked for me leaving me freezer food for my return, knowing I would not want to make food. She sent flowers and a card and was just there, not in my house (for she wanted to give me space) but in my heart. When I called my mother quite late last evening and told her about Bogart kitty, she cried as I had done, knowing, even as we are farmwomen, that this death is equal to that of a human (I never knew why some would feel otherwise), that the hole it will leave has ragged edges and will seep.
People tell you it will get better with time and the truth of it is that some of it will get better but it is not what you want to hear. They also mention other pets with time and yes, other pets help, but the truth of that is it is not something you want to hear. One cannot have another father and there will never be another Bogart.
See I told you my thoughts were mixed up… the point I think is I am sad not only for the death but for my friend and I want to hug her and be with her and tell her how much I love her and how much appreciation I have for Bogart, for the life he had and how I know he was a completely blissful cat and gave his entire life to her because it was her who gave him his life. And also that he was so much his own cat and as much a physical and emotional being as any human is. His spark, his being, lives on all around us, in the air, in memory and forms whole whenever he is needed. That is how it is with my father, if I need him, he is there. Perhaps his physical self will not be rounding the next corner or ever again be on the other end of the phone, but I know that he is with me.
May your body rest in peace Bogart now that your spirit is free.

What happens when I don’t dream?

2006-12-10T16:03:00.000-05:00

Birthdays are an odd thing. Most people find them to be a death march after a certain age, just the clock telling you how much closer you are to being gone. I’m not there yet and am not sure if I ever will be, but I am at an odd place in my life. I’ve had one of the best birthday’s anyone could hope for. I’ve gotten tons of good wishes from friends, acquaintances, family and strangers. In Fact I think this year I was wished Happy Birthday by more people then I have been in all the years up until this point. I received thoughtful gifts from those I love and a quiet dinner made by the hands of someone I love. But today I am unsettled. This happens occasionally. That feeling that things are not quite 100%. That something is amiss and you are not exactly sure what or that someone is whispering something very important to you and you can’t quite hear it. Usually when I have this feeling something bad happens. Not always to me, in fact mostly not to me. I also dream of horses. Usually when someone is going to be hurt or killed.
The first time I dreamed of them one kicked my uncle the next day, hard enough to cause a good bit of damage. “An inch to the left” the doctor said “and he would have been done fore”. I also dreamed of horses the night before my father was to die. That dream is clear even still so many years later. One lone red colored horse in a field with hailstones falling all around it. The horse was calm, standing in the sunshine as softball sized hail beat the ground. It wasn’t a scary dream. I was beautiful actually. But it meant death as certain as any other I have had.
I dreamed of horses last night and the night before. Both dreams involved being very close to very large brown horses. They were soft and warm and keeping me in the middle of the heard. Nothing happened in the dream on either night, but I was surrounded by large, soft bodies the color of dust smelling like wind and grass. It could be nothing, but it has happened so many times that I can’t shake the feeling.
This birthday is so much different for the others I have had in recent years. So many things are different. March was a real truing point for me and December feels like another. I never use January first to make resolutions; I make them on my birthday instead. I use it as my new year. Last year I resolved to keep off the weight I had lost the year before, and I have. The year before I resolved to stay in my writing program and graduate rather then quite because of the personal relationship trauma I was having. That worked too. This year I am not sure what to resolve. I want to lose 20 more pounds, but after losing nearly 80, it doesn’t seem like I need to resolve to do it, I just need to do it… I want to make a resolution about my writing, but I am not sure what it should be. I have a novel I am happy with and I want to write another, but should I focus on the recent events and try to write something about that? I have something in the works for that already, but is it the right thing to do? Should I make a resolution about the music? Probably not, I feel safer if Walter does that. This is our project so we must make the resolutions about tit together. Perhaps I will think on this, let the birthday pass and get a few days of perspective, see if the dreams of horses come to anything before resolving. Perhaps, if I don’t dream, my mind will focus more and I will feel less unsettled.
Here’s to the future and to birthday and resolutions and to good wishes for the next year – here is to all of you who have been so kind to me over the last 9+ months. I think you – I could not have gotten this far without you and your kindness gives me hope to keep going and hoping.

Thank you

The Standard Disclaimer

2006-11-15T14:22:00.000-05:00

Re-Post

Writing, for me, is all about healing. It is about describing an action, event or moment in time from my point of view (after all, I am no empath, what other point of view do I have?).

I post here so that the people *I* know can read it and anyone else who wonders here can as well. This is not a public forum but rather a place in the world where I can keep thoughts and feelings.

Yes, granted, anyone could see this, but for the most part people who do are searching it out for a reason and perhaps know the people involved. Like any memoir it is full of truth but that truth is my own and only my own. I do not pretend to speak for anyone else or how they see things or feel about things or people who might be represented here.

If you do not agree with the portrayal of an event, simply ignore mine and do not come back or speak of it, it is the right and sane thing to do.

I have the right to my story just as you have the right to yours. I am portrayed in not-so-nice terms in many venues just as I am portrayed in overly nice terms in others. I figure it all works out for everyone in the end if we keep in mind that writing is a form of truth that is only truth for a moment then moves beyond itself and gets read into and out of and over... over and over again.

Do I still feel the same way I did 6 months ago? For some things yes, for some things no. Do I see things differently now then I did then? For some things yes, for some no. Is it true that everything is true here? Yes, emphatically and also no emphatically

That is the reality of reality.

It can change in an instant, a phone call, a heart beat, a plane ride....

A bit of randomness for your Sunday Morning

2006-10-15T08:13:00.000-04:00

I had a meltdown yesterday, one of those spectacular crying episodes that come out of nowhere. The kind where you start off crying about something little, silly even, and then all of a sudden it becomes a waterfall and those things you cried about months ago seem to have happened yesterday and need fresh tissues and a space to be heard. I am sure it was brought on by all sorts of things and the fact that I could not control it was somewhat scary at the time but given a few hours of perspective (and some cold pizza – ahh self-medication) it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal now. The big deal comes now.
What do I do from here? Essentially everything is finished yet I still feel somewhat in limbo. Work has finally calmed down (though I say that and will probably need to knock on wood to avoid another upheaval – Ok done.). The divorce is really and truly final and I can now say, for good or ill, I have been twice divorced. Though the second one was executed like a back alley kidney robbing in Thailand. I lived but it still hurts like hell and the lingering infection weakens me, but it is done and I can never go back. Someone else has my kidney now and I paid for it. I have no children. I have no family here (though my self-made family of friends is very comforting and I am so glad to know people so kind and selfless).
I suppose it is a quiet Sunday morning of questions. The sun is bright the air is cold my winter pajamas are more then warm and comfy and I look forward to a day in the West with friends who are fun and funny and have great hair ;-)
I need to make some tea and get over myself. Do some reading and writing. Quit cleaning to take my mind off things (yes I live in a very neat apartment, I have a cleaning problem – when I am agitated I clean. You should have me over sometime; I am really good at it).
Things to state for the record before I go for tea:
1. Walter is a very wise man and no one in my life has ever listened so hard to me and figured me out so well – thank you to whomever it was that brought him here
2. I miss my family terribly and wish like hell I was closer to them, but I know I will probably never live in North Dakota again. Which is really sad because part of me wants to very much but it is not financially possible. Everyone should experience the open like one can experience it in North Dakota. It makes you breath differently.
3. The Man From Snowy River is my favorite movie; I don’t have a favorite book because I can’t choose.
4. I have lived here since 1992 and have more close friends then I’ve ever had. They make being here bearable.
5. I miss Goddard and my friends from there. They are scattered and busy and I wish we could all live in a commune together because they are magic for my mind and for my heart
6. CBS Sunday morning is my favorite show. The Robot once described it as morning news for the geriatric, but I still like it and always will. I’ve been watching it since it went on the air 26 years ago. Same for This Old House. It reminds me of my dad and I won’t miss an episode.
7. I love tea and toast in the morning because of my life-changing trip to London with friends I have now known for 12 years. I think of them every single Sunday morning when I have tea and toast.
8. I am homesick for places I have never been

Up too early

2006-10-13T06:38:00.000-04:00

This is one of those days where I am up WAYYYYY too early for the amount of sleep I got. Went to bed past midnight and was up at 5am (the usual time). I don’t know what it is about me that doesn’t allow me to sleep in. Maybe it was the years of chores I had to do, but even then my father wasn’t a task master – if I wasn’t up, he just did them, which I guess made me feel guilty so I made sure I was up, but regardless – I’ve been off the farm for a good long time now and I still keep the farm girl schedule – what gives?

A few important things:

My mom is OK!!!!!!! She went through the heart procedure yesterday and all of the times I talked to her after she sounded very much like herself (perhaps a bit more surly, but who wouldn’t be after being forced to lay still for over 8 hours). They will likely let her out of the hospital today into the care of one of my siblings for a few days. It was so awful having to carry the cell phone in my hand all day long. I hated being so far away.

The band is going to Amsterdam!!!! How much fun will THAT be! Suggestions for touristy things are welcomeJ

It is Walter’s Birthday today. Friday the 13th. He made it through one of the toughest years imaginable and I am so very proud of all that he has done the last few months. He took a terrible thing and turned it around into something positive for himself. I know he is still sad about Mary and what she and the Robot did, but he doesn’t talk about it much. I think he’s been dealing with it through music and art – which seems like a good way to go. I am trying to be as good as he has been about dealing with it. I have to admit I still have very dark thoughts and sleepless nights and cry a good deal. I think if we had not become friends after all of this I would have been lost. He and the music and my family and friends kept me from killing myself. If you listen to The Long Wait – you will hear that pain of loss. Funny thing is that he wrote that only a couple of weeks before the whole thing happened. (Little did we know it was happening already)? He has premonitions like that all of the time – a little scary actually. He seems touched in some way.

Read a few articles on Chuck Klosterman that were written by Boston based mags after his reading the other day. Poor Chuck, he’s going through personal stuff too, which sucks. His book is good if you like his essays, he certainly has an open and breezy no-nonsense style common to those who tell stories in North Dakota. I am glad he can translate that out to the world. Could North Dakota become a cool place to be from rather then just a cold as hell place to be from?

There is cool band news on the horizon – I can’t talk about some of the things, but we have TWO shows left in October. Monday the 23rd at Club Passim (Which is also an art opening. Should be pretty darn cool – that show is FREE

Also on Oct 29th we’re playing mass Morgue – if you want tickets get them NOWISH, I think I have 1 left but I can get a few more!!! We also have a ton of shows in December (some ion NYC) and some in January. So far Nov is mostly free – but you never know ;-)
Is a move to NYC or Portland or LA or San Francisco in the cards to the Broken Toys – we’ll let you know!!!

I’m off for a long soaking bath before work. I love my new tub!!!

Happy BD and D day

2006-10-10T06:59:00.000-04:00

It has been a strange and exciting few days. So many good things are happening it is almost hard to believe. The only thing I really need is some more down time to write and relax.

We played the Stone Pony in NJ with a band called Soil Work (MTV video, European tour and the whole deal) odd to play a metal show with the kind of act we have. And I was the only chick, which meant my normally outlandish costume was made even more so by the fact hat every man in the place was staring at my boobs since they were the ONLY ones around.... But I screamed obscenities and compared tattoos with the rest of them. Soil Work was very nice as were everyone at the Stone Pony and Max Cruise. I don't know how many of you have been to this famous club, but it is in a really odd and surreal place in NJ. It looks as if the area once was very beautiful - over the top gorgeous and now it is trying to be that way again but has quite a few years to go.

Also other exciting news we are going to be on NPR!!!! Yes my friends, it is happening!!!!! I can't say much now, but to be sure I will be giving full details when I contractually can!

ALSO!!!!! We are going to AMSTERDAM!!! Check back for show details (there may be some, there may not) - can the dollies survive customs? Wait and see!!!!

So those were the exciting bits, the strange bit comes now... It is a weird day. One of those days you are unsure you want to do anything about. Today is simultaneously the day I am officially divorced and is the birthday of the person I am officially divorced from. I know many of you know this as I have already gotten a few emails today wishing me well and hoping I am moving on. I wish him well also. I hope that this new relationship he has brings him the kind of joy he was searching for and meaning through honesty, integrity and love. No vinegar here only hope. But a simultaneous divorce/birthday is not really the oddest part. The most weird is I received his teeth in the mail. OK, not really his teeth but a panoramic x-ray of his oral cavity. His ghost teeth smiling as me, suspended in black with silver fillings shining bright. It was certainly a bit of a shock to pull that out of a nondescript envelope. Granted, it was not entirely unexpected that I would be receiving an x-ray in the mail, but what I had expected was my own teeth. Now I am wholly unsure of what to do with this artifact. He is currently enjoying the benefits of health care that I am paying for (much to the distaste of my lawyer who advised me over an over again to save my money for something more useful - but I was insistent he have the option of taking care of himself - probably stupid of me but I always did have rose coloured glasses) So should I send him his teeth, would he want them? They are the only copy... it is certainly an odd dilemma. I have one more thing for him too, something I know for sure he would want, but haven't had the strength to send. I'll get to it I suppose.

Now this next thing isn't weird, but I have to admit it is quite worrying. My mother is ill. She has to have a procedure done on her heart. Anyone who knows my past knows my father died of a stroke after two heart attacks so I am not unfamiliar with the tragedy of heart problems. The comfort is she is doing something about it, but it is still a scary prospect. Sometime I think Robot left because of all of the pain he might have had to go through and finding someone younger whose family she was more then willing to forget makes things easier. Dealing with just one person - one who will not have health problems for years and one who does not have a family makes it far easier to focus on yourself. But that is an aside and probably one with no basis in anyone's reality but mine, but I am so good at that ;-) Anyway, this Thursday my mother will be in the hospital. I am 2000 miles away from her and I do not feel that distance more then at times like these. I know things will be fine, she will come out of it healthier then she was before and the recovery will be relatively short, but I still want to sit at her bedside. I want to be there at the hospital. I feel far away and scared and inadequate.

I look forward to Thursday night and hearing that my mother is OK and better then she was.

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

2006-10-01T14:26:00.000-04:00

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

The last four books I have read in the last four weeks are (in this order)

1. Genealogy: A Novel by Maud Casey
2. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir by Debra Marquart
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman IV

Seems like a weird combination when you think of it, though three of the four have a directly connection to me in some way and the fourth ended up making me feel like I had a direct connection to it.

First, Maud’s book. This came out a few months ago, but I did not read it when it came out, nor did I go hear her read parts of it in NYC when she was there – The reason – because I knew it would make me fall apart. Maud writes about mental illness in this book, specifically bi-polar disorder. This illness is something that we both have experienced intimately though from completely separate vantage points. When I worked with her (she as my advisor at Goddard) I knew about this connection at first only by instinct, then later after a little research through her writing about herself and her experiences. We never verbalized this connection between the two of us, but I have a few letters from her (ones that were writing to me about my writing during the course of stuffy at Goddard.) She actually helped me not quit Goddard when things became particularly bad. During one of my residencies I was getting phone calls every few minutes and crying a great deal, my heart split in two with my desire to hold and comfort my husband in his time of breakdown and my equal and seemingly opposite desire to stay and be a student and learn. My now Ex-husband sent me the mixed messages that bi-polarity brings into a relationship so I was constantly unsure and overly sensitive to not going to be glued to his side. He had his family and ways to work through tings but neither of us were confident he could make it without me. He ultimately did (though he did come to visit) and I ultimately made it through the residency (which I have to mention here is only 8 short days but seemed like an eternity). Maud helped with her attentiveness and kindness and, believe it or not, reading assignments for class that dealt directly and openly with aspects of the relationship people have to their own mental illness.
I know I haven’t actually talked about the book here. All I can say is read it. I marked several sections where there were lines that I had to read over and over again because the sentiment was so beautiful or the words and the way they sounded together were so visceral. I love Maud’s writing. It is intimate and fully realized and makes one weep with the context of all of the pain and promise rolled up into one.

My connection to the Horizontal World by Debra Marquart is a physical one. I grew up very close to where she did, though, it seems, about ten years later then she did and a bit more our of the cultural loop then she was. It was amazing to me to read this memoir, which is partly told in story form and partly told with historical and cultural context. Some of the things she said rang so true it could have been me. Particularly the working parts. Butchering chickens and castrating calves and some of the other things (town girls verses farm girls) did not enter my life at all. I love seeing how people who grow up in literally the same place can have such different views on things. The decade makes the difference in some cases, but in others it is a matter of personality and perspective. She does, however, talk about her father in the same way I talk about mine. A kind of longing reverence that hints at a closeness not really discussed or physical, but one of mutual respect realized after the heart attack. It did drive home one thing though, my mother really does know everyone. She knows Debra’s sister who owns a bar on Main Street in Napoleon. She knew of her family and talked to her mother at some meeting or another (I think maybe the electric cooperative meeting, but verifying this would mean calling my mother). When I write the memoir I plan on writing about my life in North Dakota – aspects of it will be the same. How I am now a stranger in my own community, though I have to admit I felt that way much of my kid-life. Also, my perspective on how I will always be drawn back there. Something about the people and the landscape IS in you, always. Perhaps it is the wind that always blows, it pushes the dust straight into your cells to bond with your DNA. This book is not really about North Dakota – it is about being a special person from a special place and trying to connect all the parts of your life together into something that makes sense – and each one of us can identify with that.

Now it is truth time… I picked up The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger at the airport wanting one of those “plane ride” books that you can breezily read on the plane and leave at wherever your destination is without guilt because the book was candy for your brain and didn’t make you think at all and you left it on the table at the B&B after finishing it without a second glance. But that is not what happened. What happened was an instant and searing connection to this book. It doesn’t really need help from me to sell it, but I have to tell you to buy it and read it. It will be one of those books you keep on your shelf and look at from time to time (after reading it) and remember how it made you feel. For me it was like reading the book “She’s Come Undone”. The author found some way to tell a story really foreign to my own experience (or anyone’s I would think) but tell it in such a way as to make you believe it and sympathize with it and hope beyond hope that time will bend, just this once, for these people and the inevitable will not happen. I think that is what the connection was. The inevitability of time and of being and of what will happen in your life are so starkly illustrated here that you can’t help but see your own lifetime rolled out in a single line like a heart monitor print out with the steady and rhythmic peaks and valleys getting scattered and messy near the end and finally stopping all together. Such a wrenching book that I cried several times and hand to have tissues within easy reach for all of the last four chapters.

So why, after that roller coaster of a ride that was the Time Traveler’s Wife did I pick up the new Chuck Klosterman book? Because he was coming to read and I really wanted to see him and get him to sign a copy of the book for me. I actually wanted him to sign my hardcover of Fargo rock City (which is a book that is funny as hell – as they would say in my home state) but that hard cover is at my sisters house and I literally found out he was reading near me the day before it was to happen, so there was no time to get that book to me from North Dakota. Chuck’s reading was fantastic. Filled with Emo kids that he constantly made fun of without them knowing. I love seeing how he has changed over his years of living in the cities and writing. I met him once when I was younger. I hadn’t realized that he was actually a SENIOER when I was a 7th grader; I thought he was a freshman that is how awkward he was. But I have a friend whose older brother was his friend and we went to a football game and I met him. I didn’t actually remember this, but when his first book came out, my friend called me and said “OMG that’s Chuck – I haven’t thought about him since we met him at that football game.” So I had to read the book. This new book is a collection of pieces he’s published with extra commentary for context or things that got left our of the original piece or updates on things that have happened since the essay (article) was published. It also has a piece of fiction in the back. I’ve read this book mostly in the bathtub. My singed copy now sports curled pages from the humidity of a steamy bathroom. Now Chuck, don’t take offense – I read in the bath thing I really want to pay attention to and absorb. Your book is like bath salts that soften the water of my brain and make the ideas flow into the soft cells like softness into soaked skin.
It was weird to get him to sing a copy of the book. I waited inline with all of the kids and actually talked to him about where I was from etc. I know I am one of the slew of people he will see during his singing tour and he will not in anyway remember me or our encounter, but he doesn’t have to, because I will and I will write about it and it will affect me and he will go on with his NYC writing life. I did, however, give him a copy of my CD. He will probably not listen to it, but I had to do it. Who else is a rock writer for famous magazines that I once met at a high school football game and grew up in the very same small rural state that I did. Right – you guessed it, no one.

These four books seem to be emblematic (sorry about the over used word) of my life at the moment. At once looking to my roots and my past. Dealing with what happened to me and the ramifications of mental illness, looking to the future of my band and where I want my life to go and connecting with different experiences with that one thin filament of emotion. I think anyone could read any of these books in any order and feel how similar they are and how, in spite of the subject matter, they connect to each other and to the world in similar ways.

Thinking about this makes me excited for what is next – suggestions welcome.

Weddings and Other Sacred Events

2006-09-17T19:29:00.000-04:00

My sister’s wedding was beautiful, spiritual, and full of love and hope much like my two must have been. I remember the first one fondly and have for some time. Even when things were the worst between us, I never hated any of the memories of him or of what we did. But the second, the one closest to heart, is also the most painful to remember. I find myself loathing those memories as they pop up. And I don’t want to. I want them to remain, as they are, sweet and pristine and full of the laughing and fun that filled that second time around. Like the fact we almost got run over by a train on the way back from picking up the flowers because he was so nervous to be married. It was the second time around for both of us and the wedding was exactly what each of us wanted. Small. Simple. Beautiful. But we acted as a couple that had not been around the block. Perhaps marriage does that to you. Makes you sweet and innocent again. I want that memory to be forever wonderful. Protected under a glass done. The taste of the cake with its raspberry crème filling, the vows he said to me, his voice strong in spite of being so nervous his hands were shaking. The cigar he and my mother shared.

But it is difficult not to color the distant past with the recent past. Perhaps it is because of the way things happened. How he chose to implode so rapidly and without warning. Removing himself from our lives so utterly that the void was as vast as an ocean. Didn’t he understand that an implosion of that magnitude warranted an equal and opposite explosion in my life. Something had to fill the void and what did was pain and sadness, loneliness beyond anything ever felt and all the while him, running and laughing as if it were his wedding night. Spending on fancy places to stay, good things to eat, going to those places with her that I had always wanted to go. The crash and reverberation was so fast and large that I felt as if I would never recover.

Things are still exploding, expanding to fill that void. This hole that he left threatens to chew up all of the good memories, falling into it like a sinkhole, flowing to the bottom to collect and drown in each other as if it is only the hole that is important anymore. Is it the same for him? Has this disaster touched him, made him see that this was not the right way to do things? Is it stupid of me to think that someday he will face me in person and explain himself?

I think to some of our recent correspondences where he asks for a trade of equipment he thinks I might still have (stuff, I have to write here, that he left behind and told me on several occasions was my replacement for what he did and for him). It was true, he did have something I wanted and I wanted to give him everything I had left even the hole in my heart and the burring memories of our good times. But when it came down to money I knew I was lost. I thought about all of the money I have spent over the past few months to clean up the mess he has left. I got too tired to continue the talk and stopped. I came up with things like; well I am paying 126 a month to keep you in health insurance because I wanted to make sure you were OK. The lack of appreciation for that is deafening in its silence. I don’t want it to get petty because it so easily can. I want to hold onto the memories that were good and remember him as we were and as we loved and push the thing that he did aside, bury and burn it as I have the person he is now so that it won’t negatively affect me for the rest of my life. He is still a person, not dead, still out there being somewhat who I thought he was, but he is not my person, he is not my husband or friend. He belongs only to himself, not even to that other woman who helped him in his implosion, not to the other woman who claimed to love me and wrote me love notes, the one I was desperate to be friends with not realizing that for her, friendship was just a disguise like a Halloween mask warn at Easter.

I took pictures at my sister’s wedding. Smiling faces, tear streaked cheeks. Hands held across emotions. People bathed in and held together by the feelings that weddings bring up. There were some there like me. Happy for the couple but tinged with sadness at their own misfortune. None of us can help but feel that. My own mother, I could see, missed my dad at that moment. Looking across the isle at the mother and father of the groom, able to be next to each other at this event she had to attend alone. If my father were still alive I would not talk to him about what had happened to me. He would hear what happened and be sad and angry in the only way a Norwegian farmer can be, with silence. We wouldn’t discuss it, instead he would tell me stories and say odd things and be more himself then himself to make me feel better. Some of that connection between us had been lost over the years that I was away from home. He had grown closer to my sister, the one he knew would stay, but my father and I were so alike it was impossible for us not to communicate our feelings to each other, even if it wasn’t through words.

I talk to him still. I think of him many mornings, as I get up early to write, knowing he was his best self early in the morning when the sun started to color the eastern edge of our land. Even in his later years, living in town, napping often, the bones and blood refusing to spring awake as they once did when he was young, He was more himself at six in the morning then at any other time of day. I should have called him more, visited more often, made more time to just be with him. The last occasion I spent time alone with him was my first wedding, which is now so many years ago I have a hared time believing it. I had friends staying out at the farm and he wanted to take a ride out there. I was busy with wedding preparation but for some reason I decided to go.

We started off from the house in town, not taking the road over the big hill the one that gives you a panoramic view of my hometown from the top, but going straight. It was my favorite way, more windy with a little bridge and a tree, but we did not turn at the regular turn, instead we kept going straight past McCully’s place and truing down the section line that held the dam where we fished for bullheads a few times. I am not sure why we stopped there. Maybe Dad just wanted to be with me at a place he knew I liked. Where he remembered me as a girl, where I was dependent on him to get the fish of the hook. It took me years to realize that no one can really see into your heart unless you let them and on that day, my dad was open. His heart was full of love for his family and for the love he knew we would have in our lives.

But he was sad too, he was wiser then I knew. I feel like he predicted that I would have a dramatic life and he took me to that fishing hole to remind me that there are safe places in the world and in ourselves that only we know and that sometime we would need to go there weather we were happy or sad. I hope the outcome for my sister is much more the conventional long and happy life with a loving and devoted partner then mine has been. I feel more akin to one of the odd cases people have in their families. The crazy auth Ethel to whom something happened and the children of the children of the siblings of aunt Ethel forever wonder how she got the moniker “crazy” and what the stories were the surrounded her life.

My soon to be second ex-husband asked me to stop writing about him or at the very least not sharing that writing, but I feel like this is the only way I will not become that crazy aunt Ethel. The one who dies in some far off place, alone with no children to tell her story. The family gets pieces of her. Her three cats need a home now; her sparkly red Dorothy shoes need to go to Good Will. Her hundreds of wigs sent somewhere for children to play dress up with. But none of the stories of those things will ever be told because Ethel, because I, did not have anyone to tell them. My cats all have names and personalities. My Dorothy shoes are beautiful and make me feel like I walk on air even though they hurt like hell. My wigs turn me into a different person each with a distinct personality. The stories of why I have those are mixed up with and because of the story of him. I can’t extract that form me. Not now and perhaps not ever. This is the explosion that is filling the implosion. My dad knew this then, at that spot and I know this now.

For the rest of my life, weather it be a car ride, a funeral, a wedding, a concert, I will have memories of him and they will make me feel and I must write them or I will forget and they will forget and everything will become nothing instead of becoming one of those sacred events that marks each of our lives.

The love I thought I had lost forever, but perhaps, never had

2006-09-11T06:48:00.000-04:00

So many things have been on my mind lately, Now that the big show is over and I have a break until I have to be in Boston again, I am back in my tiny new place leading my tiny new life. The worries: 1. The house - still the bullshit continues and I am going more and more in the hole. It is literally down to one more month and the bank gets it. I imagined I'd be able to live there - but within a few weeks it was quite clear I could not. I imagined selling it would be painful but pretty easy. It has not only been painful but perhaps the least easy process I could have gone through. I saved the Robot from much heartache for sure, but in doing so I did not save anything of myself, in fact it has made it impossible to mentally move on from the place I was in March. Every time there is a glimmer of hope I either have to deal with yet another disaster at the house (the latest is the septic is STILL a problem, in spite of every thing passing in from the town, the total bill is now 53, 175 and change and perhaps there is still a problem (that is not counting the 8K in fixes and improvements I had to make to it just to get it on the market), the other is the furnace and a leak and small fire - all happening while I'm lifetimes away. It really sucks to deal with these things yourself. I wish I could have kept the house, lived there, been happy. But they were in every room, I found so much no cuckolded wife should ever find. The notes were both forgotten and on purpose, cruel.
The second is I've been ill. I played our CD Release party with a temperature of 102. As far as temperatures go, 102 is not that bad for me. I generally run high fevers. Or should I say ran, when I was ill, before robot even came into the picture. There were hospitals, trips to the emergency room, infections without cause and cure, crazy drives to the Doctor holding my bleeding throat wishing someone would kill me or that I would have the guts to just let myself bleed on and on and be done with it. I have a diagnosis, a baby step to the big a big one some day (or not, no one can tell me - that kind is not for sure until your muscles are water and you are a brain only)- I refused the chemo, refused the drugs and I was fine. For years - now some of the symptoms are back, and I haven't let myself be scared, but at night I have a hard time sleeping the physical evidence is more and more. I need to go back to the Doctor but I know what they will say and I wish hard to not go through any of it. Robot never had to deal with this, I hid when I was ill because it made him so crazy, made him mire ill, perhaps it was good for me, perhaps not.
The saving grace is that from before, I learned not to sit too still. Sit still and feel sorry for yourself, sit still and not be able to get up again. I got up, I have to, I rest, sure someone is making sure of that and I think him because I wouldn't without that. But, like the release party, sometimes you just have to, no matter what the consequences, no matter the pain and agony. Never let it show, just keep moving.
The reality is that these things that are happening could just go away. Exercise a bit, lose some more weight be calm and slow and DON'T worry so much and the body will heal and keep this at bay. I am trying so hard to do that, trying so hard to let each little knife in this terrible six months pierce me but then heal. Don't pick at the wounds, don't get drawn into silly emails, don't say - well yes I could give your stuff back, if I had it (why don't you just sell it - he told me over and over - but I couldn't it was like selling a liver or a stomach), but you never wanted it (And I gave you so much you just left behind - what about that stuff - so I get any credit for not burning it), yes I want my domain back but what can I give you - I spend 125$ a month to keep you in health insurance because I was afraid you did not have any - is that worth the price of my domain. After several emails back and forth, nothing was resolved, still bargaining, like he always used to with others but never with me. Now I am on the other side and it hurts so much, I can barely think about it. After all those years of trying so hard for him to see me as a person and as someone who wanted to help and how loved him so deeply, it is down to bargaining about a stupid domain - yes I want it, but can't he see I've done so much and I have nothing left physically or mentally. Never let is show, just keep moving sigh it is so hard. I have to concentrate on the good stuff. In spite of yet another trip to MN with pokes and prods, there will also be a wedding - which is going to be happy in spite of me being sad and negative about weddings. But their wedding has none of the sadness and they are doing it their way. So after the poking and prodding I will be out there smiling and hugging and hoping beyond hope that things go well forever and ever for them. That they realize that each other is the important thing and you can make yourself happy for a time by ignoring those who poured heart and soul into you, but it will all come back around, eventually. I am not saying I was all good, no one is, but I did not deserve this, I did not deserve the action or the aftermath. It was cruel in the extreme. So cruel that even in his mustang and long hair and new leather duster, he could not look at me in the eye and that is and will be the last time we see each other. Some times I miss so much that person who was so funny, so talented so full of life and theory. One of those rare people who comes up with something so out there, but then can back it up, and if helped, can make it happen. This is not about what I have now, this is about he past and how it intrudes into my healing time and is making me ill. I would be dead now if it weren't for those people who have helped me thus far. So many of you and a few that have gone so far above and beyond. I love you all so much. Thank you for keeping me looking forward as much as I can, and for giving me the love I thought I had lost forever, but perhaps, never had.

Nothing and then everything

2006-08-31T06:45:00.000-04:00

Nothing and then everything

Nightmares are interesting things. Often mine are based around things I am actively trying not to think about – like selling my house. And things I caught on TV – like a helicopter made of wood and a chair. These odd things get paired up in a sheet-twisting nightmare that wakes me at 4am and doesn’t allow my brain to get back into sleep mode.
The actual dream becomes faded and unimportant the but thoughts I’ve been trying to quell then have a chance to float right above my closed eyes in the soft grey front of my brain. Did I do that math correctly? Will the offer really only lose me a few thousand dollars. Is it really worth it? What else can I do? I’m stuck in a new city trying to leave the old city behind – I need to get rid of it and him and all of the rest.
Course – I am still partly in this old city – playing a show here or there, seeing friends from before. But I am new and the friends are treating me newly. This is a good thing, I am a different person, or maybe more like the person I should have been all along.
Now I only take care of me and sometimes even get taken care of. Getting taken care of feels very good. Friends making you go out dancing feels really good. Being able to say – yes I’ll be there Friday for your show – and not have to worry that at the last minute, someone will have a breakdown and you’ll end up crying yourself to sleep instead worried about yourself and the person and how disappointed you are that those fun things are not really fun but a hollow and forced attempt at fun. But there is no guilt anymore – I can say I will be there and unless I don’t want to go, I will go and have fun and not have to worry that I will come home to disaster. It is such a strange feeling. Complete independence. Hard to get used to actually.
I invited some friends for dinner tonight – I am cooking steak (which I have not done in eons as I rarely eat meat) and I am looking forward to it, none of the worries of mood or angst. And I had coop this past Sunday. The first one I’ve had in months and months. It was GREAT. Everyone was here and there was much chatting and laughter and eating. I love cooking for people.
Why the nightmares then, well I guess you can never leave your old life completely behind.
The music doesn’t help – performing reminds me of my time with the other band. But it’s weird. This band is so different and I am different in it. I am confident, I am up front. I take my clothes off for fuck’s sake. AND the most AMAZIONG thing… I sing. And I can hardly believe it, but enough people have told me honestly and sincerely… but I sing well. Even when I was told over and over again for years that I did not sing well and my confidence in singing was so low that I could barely open my mouth to sing by myself in the car. Now I sing all of the time and it feels SO releasing. Everyone should try it.
After my last performance (where I have to admit, I hit a few clunkers) a wonderful singer and famous music teacher came up to me and told me what a sweet and clear voice I had and asked me where I had gone to school for voice. Even after I told her my only school was church choir and singing in the car growing up, she insisted I must have studied with this certain teacher in New York that she knew. “Oh no, you do his style, it’s quite clear” she gave me her email and his number and told me to contact them both. “We set things up all of the time, you’d be a good fit – please do contact us”
I try to quiet the doubts, the nightmares the “can I really do this” thoughts I have every waking moment. Everyone has them, I am no different, but I feel like I’ve gone through a war. Can you believe it’s been since March. Is the reality that it had been since much much before that? The two of hearts says yes, more journals then I care to read say yes, but for me, March was when I became nothing and then everything.

A Perfect Saturday

2006-08-20T08:07:00.000-04:00

1. Get up early – perhaps not quite as early as I did nor with as little sleep as I had, but certainly before you could go to the grocery store or run this errand or that. I’d say 6am at the latest.

2. Read – something light and fun but with enough biting with to keep it interesting. How about something like Jasper Fforde’s “The Fourth Bear”

3. Make a grocery list with all of the possibilities for lunches and dinners for the next week. It exciting to dream ahead to a grilled chicken salad adorned with tomatoes you’ve grown yourself (or picked up at the farmers market) grilled on your new back deck with its sweet little baby grill.

4. Have a lovely time at the market. If everything is not new to you, pretend it is. I walked down each isle marveling at all of the new stuff I could buy.

5. Arrange your new purchases in your cupboards. This is not yet habit for me. I am still deciding where things go and how to put things.

6. Have tea and toast with blackberry jam or, if you are feeling decadent – and I always am- with nutella. Nothing is better then sitting in your new little sitting room in your new comfy chair and reading that last chapter of the book you’ve loved from page one.

7. OK< Now you’ve pampered yourself and you’ve done your shopping. It’s still quite early. Ten am even. I went to run another errand. Pick up a few things for the new place at a local store. A brushed metal coat rack for the hall, a new set of sheets, perhaps a knickknack or two. Take them home and arrange them. I cleaned a bit as well and “finished” unpacking (are you ever really finished?).

8. Now it is noon. Time for a quick nip of a shower and a bite of lunch (Left over pizza from the night before) and off to a Belly Dancing class.

9. I highly recommend belly dancing, esp. with a friend. This was an introductory course. Having a friend along will allow you to laugh at yourself rather then take yourself so seriously. The instructor was marvelous. And marvelously six months pregnant. If belly dancing gives you that body, I am in, even pregnant she was tight and lean and sensual. I learned a few things in the 3 hours of class. It certainly made me want to take more. I am no dancer for certain, but feeling your body move to music centers you and belly dancing makes you pay attention.

10. After that class, hang out with that friend. Do some errands with her. Chat.

11. Dinnertime, already? But of course. Pick up a few small bites at the local organic grocery store. Don’t bother making dinner; you’ve had a full day.

12. Share dinner with another friend, one that doesn’t care if you are sweaty from dance class. One that will arrange the supper, pour you a big glass of wine and serve your dinner to you on the couch. This friend will also clean up after dinner while.

13. His cleaning up will allow you to take a long hot bath with a new book and a glass of wine. I chose to read Frances Mayes “A Year in the World”. What a better way to get to know a travel book then a hot soak. She describes a year of adventure she had while traveling to places she had always wanted to go. It’s your basic travel book. Describing places and food but this one hits closer to home. TO the elemental travel need that I have and the realization that my own journey, although it started 6 months ago now – almost to the day - is really as long as I make it and starts when I want it to. So I decided August 1st of this year was the beginning and it will run for 1 year. I will travel my own life and write about the new person that I am. Oh, there will be history thrown in, there has to be, it reflects and informs whom you are, but the history will not be the journey.

14. Dry off from your bath and move to the bed. Bring your book, but tonight you won’t need it, instead you will have long and slow sex many times over until the combination of the early hour you awoke, your dancing, drinking and soaking all catch up with you and lull you into a land filled, for the first time n months, with lovely dreams full of women dancing and yourself being free and floating. Taking control of yourself and your own world. This is your year. Your year to do as you please be, as you want to be. You are no in the world, you are the world.

The dreams are worse

2006-08-15T08:13:00.000-04:00

I thought starting this new phase this new city would keep the dreams at bay. Perhaps it is the illness or [perhaps the mojo of this place but the dreams are more vivid and more upsetting.

Night before last it was a swimming pool. I was trying to keep it clean and show it to people and then finally sell it, but he kept blocking all of my actions. Once, having an all night sex party that I wanted to attend but wasn’t told about – but watched from a high high window.

Last night was a house, full of rooms that were unused. The house had a swamp outside of it. It looked rather like that Club in Portland – all dark and hot, but beautiful at the same time. There were people there. He was playing music again, but this time just for me; just him and a guitar. Though I know he is making music again (I’ve been dreaming of that for over a month) I doubt it is just him and a guitar, that is not his style.

The house was broken inside. I had to go through drawers to find something. The drawers were filled with maps. I should have taken one of those maps and followed it to where ever it told me to go. I sort of did, in real life. I chose a city and moved to it and now I am a stranger among strangers. But haven’t I always been.

I must go, shake off the death grip of that dream, have a shower in my blue bathtub, have cereal at my cozy kitchen nook, look over my balcony at this strange city – Maybe my dreams will change to those before the war – those that for told a quiet life filled with flowers and walks to the river.

The Standard Disclaimer

2006-08-09T00:43:00.000-04:00

Writing, for me, is all about healing. It is about describing an action, event or moment in time from my point of view (after all, I am no empath, what other point of view do I have?).

I post here so that the people *I* know can read it and anyone else who wonders here can as well. This is not a public forum but rather a place in the world where I can keep thoughts and feelings.

Yes, granted, anyone could see this, but for the most part people who do are searching it out for a reason and perhaps know the people involved. Like any memoir it is full of truth but that truth is my own and only my own. I do not pretend to speak for anyone else or how they see things or feel about things or people who might be represented here.

If you do not agree with the portrayal of an event, simply ignore mine and do not come back or speak of it, it is the right and sane thing to do.

I have the right to my story just as you have the right to yours. I am portrayed in not-so-nice terms in many venues just as I am portrayed in overly nice terms in others. I figure it all works out for everyone in the end if we keep in mind that writing is a form of truth that is only truth for a moment then moves beyond itself and gets read into and out of and over... over and over again.

Do I still feel the same way I did 6 months ago? For some things yes, for some things no. Do I see things differently now then I did then? For some things yes, for some no. Is it true that everything is true here? Yes, emphatically and also no emphatically

That is the reality of reality.

It can change in an instant, a phone call, a heart beat, a plane ride....

Dreaming of Spain

2006-08-08T08:24:00.000-04:00

Spain seems like a long way away from here – but with this beach and this body of water – I can almost imagine myself being there again. Barcelona was life changing. I think, perhaps for the very first time, I actually got that feeling of happy relaxation when I visited there. It was a rainy Sunday morning. In Spain, Sunday is family day. Most everything is closed except the church and we had four within walking distance of us. Four HUGE catholic cathedrals replete with robed men to lead you into a holy state. I had wanted to go to one of these services. Dip my fingers in the cool stone basin, dribble the water on my head, kneel and genuflect, but my traveling partner (who had been my partner as well) was not so much into that anymore. Memory of his past kept him from being excited by actually going to a service. Instead, he lay in bed through the morning, sleeping on an off, slightly feverish. I bathed. One of my favorite things to do is to light a few candles and draw a seeringly hot bath and read while submerged in the water. The bathtub we had in the room was square and deep and perfect. I have not found the like again. The cloud filled sky gave way to a steady and pattering rain against the brick and stone outside of our room. The quiet of his sleep leant itself to the quiet of my bath.

Submerged up to the chin in sweet smelling water I read of a time in Spain when Federico ruled and women who had visions were shunned at best, killed at worst. I had waking dreams of living there, perusing books stores, writing in a turret on top of a grand old building, eating chocolate con Churros everyday. It was then that the feeling happened. Slowly, starting from just under my breastbone and spreading out until even the tips of my fingers and toes were tingling with relaxation and possibility.

I feel that here even though I have no desire to move here like I had to move to Spain. It is a combination of the quiet, the water and the company. Being totally free to express yourself however you may choose. No schedule, no worries, do what you want when you want if you want.

Right now I am on the deck, early grey in hand (thank you David) and watching the ducks play in the glass calm water. I almost wish for rain to complete the mood, but instead a brilliant sun in promising to top the buildings and rule the day. I resolve to go back to Spain, to find that feeling again there and in all of the other place I am. Even in my real life, the daily life of a person chained to reality as we all are. Find that spot in myself that is in total peace and quiet and wonder at the world.

Domestic Details

2006-08-08T00:09:00.000-04:00

I washed clothes today – normally not something one would write about, but laying here reading a story about travel in a vacation home thousands of miles from my own, wearing the shirt I washed to bed… all I can think of is home. Not only my new home, the home full of love and hope and promise, but my first home, my family home, my mother.

I was wondering why I was thinking about her when I realized it was the fabric softener. I don’t use it when I wash normally, but here, they have it, Snuggle. The smell of it reminds me of the farm, of Saturdays when I would do the wash. I usually put too much in (just as I did today) but the smell, like rain or flowers, is worth that little bit extra.

I wish I could live close to my family and my friends, but they are all scattered. I wish I could have a job where I could have several places that I lived – or maybe one place but the leisure enough to travel to those other places and be completely free. I miss my family terribly. They don’t really know the person I turned out to be and it makes me sad to think of that. I doubt I could live in the state where I grew up. Though maybe I could, maybe if I could manage to keep mostly to myself, my ideas anyway – too liberal. I would likely offend people, get in trouble and unfortunately I am not quite brave enough not to care. I know some people who can live that way and I admire them, but I have not yet grown to that point.

I wonder what my old classmates would think of me now, of what I do and how I am. I don’t know any of them anymore. I’ve lost track of my best friend, the one who got me through much of high school and ended up so different from myself. We used to say we would be Kate and Alley – perhaps we still will be. It will be me without the kid though.

Washing clothes is essentially a domestic task, but the domestic details of daily life are what keep us grounded. I quite enjoy cleaning and doing laundry – one of those few tasks you can start and complete and know you have accomplished something. Admittedly, it does get to be a chore, something you have to do even when you don’t feel like it, but on days like today when the simple scent of fabric softener can bring you memories of a happy time long past – it seems well worth it.

Vacation

2006-08-07T17:47:00.000-04:00

Vacation

For the first time in years I am relaxed. I have had a few days off from work and have done (and this IS rare) absolutely nothing but lie around, read, swim, and cook… Usually I must do something all day long with only short breaks to indulge in such activities. Those things are usually mindless things, cleaning, arranging, running errands, and making plans, working on stuff for work. But this week, so far, I have done nothing but sloth. It feels good, good to be dependent on no one, good to know that I am being encouraged to do this by everyone, supported and not guilted.

I have had a lot of guilt in the last six years. You don’t realize how much it envelops your life until it is magically gone. Of course the leaving of that guilt was not magic, in fact it was a hard reality that I would wish on no person. A reality full of disrespect. Oh, I believe he loves me, believe that I love him (yes, still, I love him) but he stopped respecting me and that is a fate worse then stopping loving me.

He knows where I am now, if he cares to remember. This trip was to be with him too, all of us together, have a chance to have a good time and to connect again. There is a strong connection with these people. A surprising one considering my age. I am, though, still the outsider. Maybe not as much as I was, but certainly still a bit on the fence. Not of anyone’s specific doing, it just happens that way – it is a combination of my distance, life experience, personality. It was apparent when they asked me not to go to SF when I so clearly needed to. I think that there was fear I would ruin a vacation, make it all about me. But I never had before and I wouldn’t have then, but I understand the sentiment, why have someone damaged when you are trying to relax. But it did hurt. I needed proximity to people who would not mar me, I needed to do and see different things then I was seeing. I needed to be out of my element so I could have some distance from that thing that damaged me. But I could articulate none of that and I have never told them how much they’re asking me not to come hurt me.

But that is over, past and done. I muddled through without that, found escape and support without a trip. It was probably arbitrary anyway. And things have moved so far past it that it is not even worth mentioning or talking about. Certainly things are good now. Not the best, not back to being ultimately happy, but was I truly ever. Even now I wonder. I spent so many years wondering if I was happy and I still don’t know. Now I am though. Partly because of the things that have happened since the divorce and partly because I am a different person.

This is the truth; I will never be that person again. I fundamentally changed the day he left me at the airport. At first it was for the worst. I have never felt like I did. I wanted to shoot myself, to drive into a truck to tear my eyes out and to wound ever part of me. Pierce my body in places where they couldn’t’ save me. I tried some things, but I was saved too many times by too many people. Why did I become so self-mutilating? I guess I believed the best part of myself was gone. No warning, nothing to tell me that he would do that. Not until I looked back did I even realize what had been happening. She too was a clue, but one I didn’t see. I have changed so much. I am not sure others can really see the difference, not the ones that know me from work or the cursory acquaintances, but the ones that know my inner self know that I am not the person I was. I will forever be damaged, but I hope, and maybe this is naive, that this damage will make me stronger and make that hurt something that cannot occur again. A piece of my soul was ripped out and stolen and nothing will give it back, it is forever missing. Some part of me will always love him. The him that I loved is still there somewhere, perhaps buried forever, but there nonetheless. I see glimpses of it when he writes to me of things he things matter to me, or matter to him. But I also see the new him, the him that I saw only glimpses of when we were together, the him others got full force but was never directed at me. I get those emails now, the ones he used to send to others. They confuse and frighten me and make me wish I wasn’t me and didn’t have to read them, but because of who I am, I do. Someday they will stop hurting, but it may take a while, perhaps seventy is a good age to look forward too.

If it wasn’t for the people I have in my life, I would still be that person who walked all night with two phones in her hand and the computer two feet away, obsessively calling and texting and che4cking email. Calling the police every three hours for word, calling everyone I knew, emailing everyone I knew for some word, any word of how he was doing, where he was, if he was still alive. I lost 20 pounds in two weeks being that person. I never knew that person was inside of me, could take me over. I fear that happening again. God help me it doesn’t.

I started off talking about vacation and rambled on to what happened 6 months ago. 6 months that dominated and ruined what I thought was a life. I am slowly getting it back, that life. This time I hope it is better; that it will treat me more nicely and that I will come out with a better out look a better future.

For now, it is back to napping and reading and swimming and thinking about the possibilities of that life and of who am I am want to be.

The first day

2006-08-01T06:18:00.000-04:00

Last night my mother called today “The first day of your new life”. In reality that day happened almost 6 months ago now when the Robot decided this his life should begin anew and my life (as a consequence and nothing more) should as well.

I have to say – for a new life – most parts of this have really sucked. Not since my father died have I cried so much, I have NEVER had to figure so much stuff out before – so many set back and kicks in the teeth, just another one the other day. A bill for yet another thing relating to selling a house I am a stranger too.

I calculated how much the divorce has cost me over all in the unexpected expenses and it is topping out at a whopping 64,000. The 50 for the septic but the rest – god the list is so long and poised to get longer.

There have been good things though. The band is doing very well and it is probably the most fun I have had working with another person on a project. Also getting a few movies made with has been really cool – esp. since I can’t wait to see what the Diva does with the dialogue and music and her own vision.

I am so tired though – no the kind of tired that is normal “oh I didn’t sleep well” tired, but a tired that comes straight from inside and permeate my bones and brain and makes me sit for hours listening and watching nothing but the voices and pictures in my head.

So many what if’s and now – today – there is so much that will change. SO much that will be entirely new. A part of me wants to stay in bed, thinking about this and writing about this, but I know that staying in bed never got anything done – I had a very good example of that.

I am excited for my new life. (Well, "Excited and scared" to quote a musical - oh God did *I* just quite a musical???)I am hoping the still open soars of the old one don’t do anything to jeopardize the good parts. As we all no, even if you run away – life finds you. I would never do that, never just run - no matter how tempting- I cannot be cruel, but it is a romantic thought. Instead I will try very hard to let go, burn some sage against eh black oil seeping from my eyes. Do a prayer and emit white light to protect myself from those evil influences. Start my new life with only a shadow of the past. Shadows can’t hurt you unless you let them, and I won’t let them

Bring on the new life – Mom was right – today, it all starts over.

The last day

2006-07-27T09:01:00.000-04:00

The street was exploding. This street, the street I have walked every morning while here, with no destination only direction is now, at this early hour, filled with flowers. People setting up stands – long rows of pure summer colors and smells. I stop, not being able t help myself. Here you do not touch. Point and they hold it up. Yes, I want those. Perfect new potatoes with skin as delicate and transparent as a new born. I have no kitchen here, no stove, and no way to cook them. But I get them anyway and slip them into my bag with the large headed sunflowers from my childhood. Heads as big as my own. I’ve always felt like a sunflower. Fringes with color that draws the eye away from the inside. But I you did look, it wouldn’t just be a slick black swirl, but a complicated spiral indicating the trajectory of life.
The chef at the café I’ve been frequenting is beside me.
“What would you fancy for breakfast this morning?” His emphasis on this in his lightly accented English which dances over the display of dusty hued fruit. I reach into my bag and pull out a perfect new potato, round and still wrapped in a light dusting of soil like a receiving blanked protecting its delicate skin. He turns and his green eyes look just like leaves in spring, newly furled and unprotected.
“Perfect.”
A half hour and two cups of tea later, a plate of lemon ricotta pancakes, faces as big as the yellow fringes ones poking out of my bag, arrives with a side of fried new potatoes and some sort of spicy smelling sausage. The chef brought it all himself pointing out all of the ingredients he bought at the market that morning.
“The lemon made me think of your sunshine” He said pointing to my hair and then to the flowers. The pancakes are good. Lemon and ricotta not heavy but rather like the ocean. Smooth waves of flavor complemented by the tea and fruit. The potatoes and spicy sausage do not go with this meal, but he knew I wanted them. The crisp potatoes have a flavor I can’t quite put my finger on. Something like the taste of a warm kiss but more salty. Maybe something of the earth, perhaps they were grown near the ocean. I think of them growing in that dark secret place I have never been and envy the silence they grew up in.
Other people are here now. Drawn, perhaps, by my breakfast. Highlighted so perfectly in the window. I think to myself, “This is my best time. I am the most perfect self I will ever be.” Radian, redolent. Full of summer fruit and love for myself, yet the oily black swirl is still inside. It cannot be drowned out by the brilliant yellow fringe.
Pink Floyd is playing and I think for a moment that it is inside my head.

And all that you are
And all that you miss
And all that you love
And all that you kiss

Those are probably not the words, but that is what I hear along with the "ahhh" of the back up singers raising like mist off of pine trees. It is not in my head, but all around us. Voices lifted over our breakfasts. Each of us eating, consumed as we consume and now pressed by the weight of the just-too-loud music out lives and the future near and empty plate, far an empty life.
Anyone who knows me and read this will wonder – really? Pink Floyd? Yes. It is one of those surreal moments. The ones you look back on and think “Ah, it was then that the direction changed.”

A City That is not my own

2006-07-24T23:05:00.000-04:00

Being in a city foreign to your own is so odd. Even this one – one I have visted before – but before is so long ago – I can barely remember what I was like then much less what this city was like.

I went to dinner and had churros con chocolate for dessert – I loved to order it, loved to dip the sweet hot cinnamon pastry into the thick dark chocolate. You know it is good when the pastry stands up in the chocolate – at least that is what the guide book says.

I saw a movie too – it was sweet and made me cry a little

Walking back to the hotel I was asked for change 4 times and then a man followed me when I ignored his plea. I had borrowed a large umbrella from the hotel and was carrying it. After three blocks I stopped and waited for him to catch up and told him if he followed me any farther I w0ould have him killed. It was stated like a fact.

He stopped following – I wasn’t scared – I didn’t think he would really do anything – but I certainly scared him. He held up his hands “I jus thought you were pretty” or some such thing – it was hard to understand his accent – esp. with all of the alcohol. Not mine of course, his.

I looked at myself in the hotel mirror for a long time when I got in. I am so much older then I was. I don’t really think I look like I do, but of course this is me, how I am how people see me. Wrinkles. White hair coming in – There are so many things that could have been different. What if I had had children – would I be a different person – have a different life. What if I move to this city – learn this culture – what would I do if that man had followed me in my city?

We all make choices, even the ones that are seemingly made for us. What will my choices be? How will I decide who I am to be from now on?

I'm not sure I trust - but it probably doesn't matter

2006-07-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

So I decided a few days ago to post here again - but then I read a few of my earlier posts and almost deleted the whole thing.

So much has happened since this blog started I start to get sad just thinking about it. Not the actual things that happened but the time - the long long years and how they went so fast and how things that happened in those year seem not to matter that much.

I asked the Robot to stop reading this blog and to stop looking at my MySpace

www.myspace.com/edrie
www.myspace.com/armyoftoys

So I have to trust he will do that, though I know, in my heart – that he will probably look at everything I post publicly because he is that kind of person – someday he will search the internet for me because of something inside of him that makes him wish to tie up loose ends (like the T girl who will never talk to him again)

I will be a loose end and he will search and I will be easy for him to find. Though I know I will never find him online if he doesn’t want me too (beaker?) Though I don’t need too since I keep getting not so mysterious emails from someone giving me updates… Who could that be I wonder…

So I am going to stop wondering about others, do things that make me happy in whatever way I can be.

I made a resolution to myself this morning - to make thing matter more. To try not to do any throw away things or things that other people want me to do or I feel I have to do unless I want to do them, unless (for some reason) it is the right thing to do for me. I have never been selfish and never really protected myself in that way - I have always felt obligated to others. I was brought up to care more for others then for myself and to not account for my own feelings in a situation before I account for how I might be making others feel.

This is, in essence, why the Robot ran away. I think I was very good for him for a time. He was good for me too, in way I will write about some day, but when he realized that I would always make him feel - and he didn't want to feel those things anymore - he went with a person who made him feel like when we first met. Which was wonderful for the most part, but also bad in some ways. I loved those days, but not more then I loved getting to know what our future would be - could have been.

The funny thing is hindsight - as it always is, you see things that you don't see while you are going through it. In the movies and books I can always guess what I am supposed to be paying attention to and can guess what will happen to those characters because of it, but in my life, my real life, I can never see those things or guess them. I see them for others - all of the time and want to tell them to not do things because I know how it will turn out - but I found out early that is not a good way to keep friends...

So anyway - the thing I should have paid attention to - which in a move or book would have been very clear to me and even cliché... was a report on NPR that I heard while The Robot was sleeping in the car on our drive to Boston (as he almost always did)

It was a report on the fact that out of everyone who got divorced (and that is over 50% of people) 90% of those divorces are within the first 5 years. Coming up fast on our 5-year anniversary. This made my ears prick up. I had no indication we would not be together in just a few weeks. That my whole world would be suddenly and cruelly changed - but he did - he knew - somewhere in the sleepy recesses he was already gone. I just didn't know. I told him of the report and he took too much of an interested. An interest in the way he always took when something was bothering him, but I didn't notice, I thought it was something else, something about work, something about the collective or the band...

But that, as most things, does not matter anymore.

Other things that don’t matter anymore…

All people who have relationships have things they have to work out. I always did more house work then the Robot – I felt bad, he felt guilty, but nothing much came if it, not for lack of trying though – I made a list of chores, he made a list – we tried – it didn’t matter

Look at this

TIME FRAME DATE DATE DATE

Fri 7-9
Sat 11-1
Sun 12-2
Mon 7-9

CHORES
Basement
Vacuumed
Cat Liter
Sun Room Sweep
Dust Table
Wash Floor
Hallway Dust Table
Sweep
Wash Floor
Living Room Vacuumed Rug
Sweep
Wash Floor
Dining Room Dust Table
Sweep
Wash Floor
Kitchen Clean out Fridge
Clean off Counters
Clean Stove
Sweep
Wash Floor
Dishes/dishwasher
Shake out rugs
Laundry Room Shake out rugs
Clean Surfaces
Clean Toilet
Sweep
Wash Floor
Stairs Up Sweep
Wash
Hallway Sweep
Wash
Master Bedroom Dust
Vacuumed
Spare Bedroom Dust
Vacuumed
Bathroom Shake out rugs
Sweep
Wash Floor
Clean Surfaces
Clean Toilet
Clean Bathtub

It is a crazy list – and something I would do almost every week – the idea of writing it out was to get him to help – we even put timeframes there because we were going to do the chores “together” it never happened – to my recollection we did a few of the things a few of the times and then went back to our old ways. And now – the house is for sale, our life is not ours and I never do the chores unless the real-estate agent says she needs to come over.

See how much we do that doesn’t really matter? Things can be messy – they will be cleaned – relax, don’t worry about what time he goes to bed, just worry about yourself and being happy

Post where you want – consequences are in consequential

Last Post

2006-06-01T13:11:00.000-04:00

This may be my last post in this blog - I have made a new one, if you would like the URL - please email me - anyone who reads this will know my email

I may post again here sometime 'cause I like the name - it is mine after all, but for now - this is over

So hot and tired

2006-05-30T23:09:00.000-04:00

The house is a furnace and I am really tired - I think I got 4 hours of sleep last night

All of the changes at work are really hard to take - so is not knowing if I will have a job in a few weeks or not...

Why do all of these changes have to happen at once?

I am having very bad anxiety dreams again, but I will not take any of that stuff anymore - I think it makes me sad.

The therapist is a riot though - I see her every other week now. I really hate talking about myself, but she makes me and it is good I suppose. I never back out of a promise and I made this one to my sister. So I have to go - it will be good for me in the end.

And no interest in the house at all - I am going to make flyers and post them this weekend. I hope it works.

I also got the first bill for the loan for the septic system (which isn't in yet and wont be for a few more weeks)- OMG is all I have to say - and I am paying interest only -please sell house, please sell and let me break even on that.

My consolidation went through for my student loan so the payment is just under $500 a month - but in 10 years (10 really wow) I'll have that paid off

I could defere for hard ship - I could also get a credit card, but why fuck myself even more finaincially. it's not worth it, just don't eat or drive or go out and I'm fine. And I'm not helping anymore - though I would if asked.

Of course I took the max student loan for both years (40 K in total) because I used the 20K extra to pay the credit card debt (discover and Amex Blu and a good chunk of citi bank) 'cause in the long run the student loan was less interest. I hadn't anticipated what happened - I thought it was good for us to do this. But there is no us, and he has his own problems

Then he goes and says - how can your student loan payment be so high? Um right, like you don't remember the conversations and the fact we paid off SO Much $ in just two years. fickel memory

I am not getting a divorce though. He'll have to figure that one out

The farmer's market is back - so saturday I will go get yummy bread and have that and tea. It makes me happy to do those little things

And my sister is still coming - no matter what. I told her I wanted to go to NY that weekend and then come back sunday and hope that he was there to pick us up, so that we could start over. She didn't think anything good would come of it, but I thought it might be nice to at least pretend. But pretending doesn't get you very far in real life.

Ahh well - I have a show anyway and that will be much more fun then pretending

Finding Neverland

2006-05-27T09:25:00.000-04:00

I was hopelessly naive when I married you. I thought brilliant people went to some secret place where brilliant ideas floated around like leaves in autumn.

I never anticipated that instead those people experienced for a short time then moved on. And often that moving could be cruel

2006-05-25T07:38:00.000-04:00

I have decided not to get a divorce

2006-05-25T07:33:00.000-04:00

A dream I had

Last night I had a dream where S and I wanted to not be living where we were living anymore. He told me he couldn't sleep and we needed to get away.

We picked a house in our neighborhood that we thought the people were not at home. We snuck in but there were tons of people there. It was a party actually. We went upstairs to a little girl’s room (she was not there) and feel asleep on the bed in there. But that didn’t' last long. S panicked and we had to sneak out of the house.

We got out with no one at the party seeing us, but I had left the car keys upstairs - so he went back to get them. The party goers then came outside to dance; I was grabbed buy a very tall guy who looked like this guy Mark that I went to Idaho with in High school. We tied our feet together and danced, just as everyone else did. We danced into the middle of the lake and he held me under the water.

When I opened my eyes I expected to be under water - that is how I woke

2006-05-24T16:17:00.000-04:00

I want to keep my name - it is mine, has been for almost 5 years. I don't want to be forced to be a different person just becuase he said I should be.

Changing your name means that person you were is dead

Should that person I have been for this long be dead?

but then the questions come, the unexpected ones. the ones that were funny when he was here

You don't look blah blah blah - right *i'm* not - he is

What am I?

Am I dead?

2006-05-23T07:49:00.000-04:00

no movement on the house - so far everyone who has made an appointment to see it, has cancelled before coming out

The septic should go in the first or second week of June, though the guy is a bit sketchy on the start date since we've had so much rain

My sister is coming out for my court date - which will be both nice and embarassing

I still have a ton of Steve's stuff - not sure what to do with it. I want to drop it off or send it to him or have him pick it up - but not sure where he is or if he even wants it

2006-05-20T09:06:00.000-04:00

The Sun

She hadn't seen the sun for days. Walking as she had, through the woods. Through the wet and cold and rain, she hadn't even thought about the sun. Now that it was up she wasn't glad. The time wihtout the sun had been cleansing for her.

She stood at the top of the mountain letting the sun sear her eyes, burn her skin, smoke through her and burn out what reamined of heart.

WIthout it, she felt, the sun wouldn't matter.

She walked on, empty and burned

2006-05-19T09:33:00.000-04:00

I don't like the term "yeast infection"

It's not an infection, it is an over taking

The doctor told me today that it is common

When you lose someone your body goes back to is base state. Its chemistry changes to suite your needs only. When we are with someone the body holds the memory of that person. Their chemistry combines with yours. It makes reproduction easier. Makes sex less hurtful to the body. His body retains that memory as well, undoubtedly his chemistry is changing

If you switch partners quickly there is a time when the body holds the memory of both, not sure which one will win out.

So Mary has some of me in her thanks to Steve. How long does the process take? A few weeks for men a few months for women. Women are the holders. Their body retains more information about the partner(s)

Oh so more likely S and W are together in Mary just as there is nothing in me

I am now my own person, my body taking back itself

I wonder how many men I can hold the memory of? Perhaps it could be a contest

More likely I will end up like Ms U - unfufilled.

At least they have cream for the infection, there is nothing that will let me retain the chemical memory and no cream for filling someone's soul

2006-05-19T07:39:00.000-04:00

This is what I want to remember

Leaving him at work that friday and getting that big hug and him wispering in my ear. I love you, have fun, everything is great. Don't worry about anything.

Then the phone call later - are you having fun - I love you
and the first text message - I still have it
Don't worry - have fun - you are amazing

2006-05-19T07:30:00.000-04:00

Stoeln Identity

Well someone has opened a Credit Card under my name

Is it him, trying to get back at me - doesn't seem to be his style

Is it her - the 2 of hearts - probably not

Either way I have to file a police report

I'll leave their names out of it, I only wish them to move on - I hope it is not them, it can't be.

Though I did find out I will have to contact him again, funny how many integration paoints there are after so many years. I am finding new ones all of the time

Mortgage problem - yay
Insurance Policy
My sarahedrie domain (I would like to keep it and learn how to manage it) He can have the rest

He never contacted me about forwarding his mail. Not sure what to do there - but I'll send another box when I have enough stuff. I hope he got the first one

My therapist said I was being too caring - I was concerned that he go see his therapist now that he is back (at least I assume he is) and he has an appointment with his Dr soon. he'll figure it out - I'm still his wife but not really. Maybe I never was

Also - both the CIO and our head of Engineering resinged so I might not have a job for very long - The shock was yesterday, the fall out starts today

Two people went home early they were so upset - I would have too if home made me feel better. These days home is my car - that is where I carry everything I care about.

It's reorg time - for everyone it seems

2006-05-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

My Doctor told me today that I need to take someone with me to the divorce

She suggested my sister or Walter

She also suggested a restraining order

will it come to that?

2006-05-17T21:27:00.000-04:00

Ahhh secrets - there were so many. And I am finding out more and more

two of hearts

note books

touching

Love before love

is anyone honest anymore - even to themselves?

2006-05-16T11:53:00.000-04:00

Plan approved, but now I can't get any of the contractors to call me back....

2006-05-11T13:56:00.000-04:00

A story for the dead - The Torch

The Torch
Three days ago she had sent him a funny email, one where she opened herself up and was the person she used to be. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, maybe she hoped that the person he used to be would read it and respond. That didn’t happen, instead she got the person he was now, pointing out all of the ways she could have done things better and should give him credit for the things he did do right.

She didn't feel like giving him credit for anything, she didn't feel he deserved credit for fucking up what they had had and making her realize that true love was a lie that he told her over and over again because he needed her, not because he really loved her.

She told him to sign the paper, the one last thing that bound them legally, and to send it to her. She decided to wait until she got that to even think about paying his bills, after all she didn't really have to anymore - she hadn't really had to from the start, from that Sunday when he didn't show up, from that Friday when he went to get that other woman and fuck her in their bed and feed her at the restaurants they had gone to and buy her the clothes that she herself had always wanted to buy.

He emailed today - why hadn't you paid the Citi card? I need to know if you will do this ASAP so I can figure something out. She was tired of answering, tired of helping him figure things out. She was tired of bankrolling that other woman and all of her wants and needs on a trip she was not invited on. She was going to do it on the 11th, as soon as the loan check cleared, if he cared, he would have asked if she was OK not if she would pay.

She printed our all of his emails and stood on her back porch crumpling them and filling her pockets with them, then she used the lighter fluid meant for the grill and turned herself into a torch taking all of his emails with her.

2006-05-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

How many days has it been, she knows, down to the hour, but this morning, she almost forgot - I suppose that is a good thing

2006-05-09T18:41:00.000-04:00

Ahh The Board of Health

You should give out free valium to anyone who has to deal with you

2006-05-07T12:25:00.000-04:00

Calico & Creme opened yesterday - I went down to have some ice cream.

I might pick up extra work on the weekends baking pies to try and make ends meet.

I can bake 4 days a week after work (for 2 hours each) and one day a week (saturday) from 4am to 6am for $6 an hour

I could make $60 a week. Too bad it wouldn't be under the table.

2006-05-07T09:41:00.000-04:00

Sunday's are usually my favorite - but not this sunday.

At least I wrote about it

The novel will not be published

2006-05-06T08:46:00.000-04:00

oh boy is it ever fun to wakt up screaming

I have to go back on the anti-anxiety meds

2006-05-04T11:23:00.000-04:00

Does there ALWAYS have to be drama - can't things calm down for ONE second???

Today
- Engineer plan for septic - needs the pump - additional cost 10K
- Check by FedEx from House equity line - first of all it is 3 days late because she "couldn't read the lawyers handwriting" and didn't bother to call to ask what my address was... SECONDLY the check was made out to Steve... Oh yeah *I* am the one on the loan and on the house and the check is made out to HIM - why you ask - Oh - he's "head of household" delay delay dealy
- Real-estate agent - must drop house price by 10K - oh wait I just got a bigger bill then expected then I need to loose 10K more - great
- and last but not least - Steve (and I assume Mary too) are coming back to MA to have some time to find a job. What about your idea of working in a bookstore and renting a room until you could find a real job? That makes way more sense then wasting 1-3 more months with no $ - unless you are going to file for unemployment like I TOLD you you should in the first place

- feeling bitter today - at least I had fun last night at the Thylacine set and am going to see SSD tonight. Maybe drinking and driving DOES help.

2006-05-02T22:36:00.000-04:00

what I wouldn't give for a bath right now

2006-05-02T09:19:00.000-04:00

Took a few days off to have some fun and get my head straight. No red mustang for me though.

now back to reality - still no septic - still have to sell the house - still need one more piece of paper signed - still need to wait for the court - WAY behind at work. I have to stay at the house until I get the court papers and that could be 4 weeks. I have a check coming to pay for all of this and all I can think of is... HOW am I going to pay off that check

Please PLEASE let the house sell SOON and for a good amount of MONEY - I CAN'T shoulder this debt and have a 500 school loan payment too. If I had known all of this would happen, I probably would not have gone to grad school.

Why are things still so scary. I was always my own person, but now I feel different. Like I am not me. I am not confident, I worry all of the time. I have a really hard time getting out of bed. I am sleeping more then I ever have - and there is so much to do.

I am glad he reconnected with his family - I told him over and over again to do it, and he finally did. Maybe he'll reconnect with the rest of life too. Maybe Mary will finally thank me for going thourgh all of that trash to save those most important pieces of her life. Is that too much to ask, a heartfelt thank you? I have gotten NOTHING from her - and she took EVERYTHING from me.

it seems it is everthing I did not need though. But still when I think of it, I feel ill, I sleep, I wake crying

Thank god for the one good thing I have, it keeps me going.

2006-04-20T17:59:00.000-04:00

It has been years (at least 10 I think) since I have been to Club Cafe. Infact - If I even did go it would have been with Lydia and her friend Stevie (I've lost contact with both of them)

I did somehow expect to see Stevie there. Not sure why.

I went home at a decent hour, but I did not really sleep. Today I worked really hard. I got more done in one morning then I have for the past 3 weeks.

But I was burnt by 3pm - so I went to T's house to let the dog out and nap. Now I am up again - I am going to go out tonight too. Maybe Friday night too, who knows.

I looked at an apartment I could not afford today - it made me very sad. I do like my house - could I not just move the parts I like somewhere. Or maybe I should just walk away from it. Leave it sitting empty and abandon like he did to me.

At least my closing is on Monday for the loan to pay the septic. That is VERy good as I owe people $ right now and I REALLY don't want to ask anyone for it. It is HUMILIATING enough to ask for so much help otherwise.

Any way - off to a bath

2006-04-20T08:24:00.000-04:00

I had nightmares all night last night. When will this be over - I'm not sleeping well again. For the last three nights I've gotten a total of 12 hours of sleep. And I am an 8 hour a night person.

I've only sen two people this morning and both mentioned I had sunkin eye - ahh skull head. That is me.

Tonight will be fun though

Last night I went to Kareoke at Club Cafe with S and J from work. It was fun - but I didn't go all out. We also went to an Irish Pub just before hand - to get good and sloshed before going to sing... I didn't stay late enough to sing. But I DO have to work today and be out again tonight

at least it is nice out. Such a blessing in that way - I tookt he dog out this mornign and just sat by the lake in the sun on a bench. The water was dead calm and there was almost no sound. I almost felt like I wasn't there. That would be nice - being not there, or here or anywhere.

But I *am* here and must deal and move on. The loan should come thoruhg - thanks to some paperwork signing. I will be able to pay the contractors for the work they did last week (was only able to give the last guy 1/2) and to get the Engineer paid when he gives me the plans (He won't give them to me unless I pay him)

Oh and to pay the town for the second permit which costs $700. Nice lot ehhhh. $200 for the original test (would have been 650 if it had passed - actually he should have charged me 650 anyway - but he didn't - this is the guy who hugged me...)

Then 125 for the town to do a perk test. For the perk test... 400 for the digging guy and 360 for the engineer

That is only a drop to start with. The plans will then cost me another 6K (when all is said and done) and the town another $700 as I mentioned above. And then the replacement of the system... Hopefully we can go with a gravity fed (I hear this is the way to NOT get one of those plastic pipes in your front yard) as the gravity fed is about 10K cheaper then the pump system. But I have to move pipes in my house (UGH!!!)

ANyway - I just need some $ now so I can pay these people and get this moving...

I feel so stuck - why did we have to have this horrible event on top of everything else that was ALREADY unbearable.

It is really unfair that so many bad things can happen at once...

I need a break - something lucky that will change my life for the better

2006-04-18T22:25:00.000-04:00

My baby is dying... what should I do?

This is the only computer I have actually fallen in love with and slowly, piece by piece... it is failing

Is there any good news?

How do I find my apple protection agreement?

Is it even in m name?

*sigh* don't you leave me too, OK - I need you

I wrote my first book on you - I poured out my heart into you. I cried all over you... Oh maybe that is it. I flooded it with tears...

2006-04-18T21:53:00.000-04:00

You promised me an email - I need one

2006-04-18T21:32:00.000-04:00

What a day

So so so bad

And now I am watching House where a very sick woman lied to her girlfriend of 8 years (before she got sick of course) about being alergic to a dog her GF got her for her birthday, because she was tired of the girlfriend and she was thinking of leaving her..

Tired of her - how cruel

It was a very upsetting day - my worst fears for the septic system slowly unfolded over a matter if 4.5 hours. Three man standing in my yard by 2 huge holes telling me very bad news. I had to excuse myself and cry in my closet for a few minutes. When I got back the guy who will most likely eventually replace my system gave me a hug. It is small things that can make you feel better.

I got to talk to someone on the way home (home - ha - I meant T's though I heard today that home is where i lay my head...) and when i got here... I can't beleive how lucky I am sometimes - luck in the face of such terrible sorrow.

Who am I and what should I do...

Do what you must, the thing that you should do for you. But remember it is not just you - there are so many more people you affect every single day. Not to mention you brought her on your adventure - eventhough you have said it is not about her - it does affect her. not that I should care about any of it. I have to take care of me now - you siad so, everyone said so - so why do I still try? 'cause it doesn;t do any good to hate - hate makes you bitter. I learned that from the first divorce

I found a note today - something he wrote while he was DJing my graduation (literally while he was up there giving me what I thought was a present to me for doing what I had done). Two weeks ago it would have put me in the closet. But when I read it all I thought was... wow - how could I not have known, but really I can't know what he doesn't tell me. And he tricked me into thinking it was about S and really it was about us all along.

Or maybe it was never about us - maybe I was never really a part of the us... I guess I just don't know now.

He told me today that it would only be a matter of time before I hated him. He seemed to not only expect it, but want it. He wants to think I hate him - sorry too bad. I guess I never can give you what you want. No matter my intentions... Which were good, but not right for you (at least that is what you said in your note)

I rambeled... didn't make sense... ahh Tuesday - I feel like I have never been normal and won't ever be

I hope I can keep this love

2006-04-17T09:31:00.000-04:00

Thank you for calling last night

I wonder constantly where you are and what you are doing - probably unhealthy actually. Actually I don't wonder much while I am awake, but I dream of what you are doing all of the time.

I dream of her too - she is not a cook, but she is always cooking in my kitchen - very meaningful I am sure - much like the knife she stabbed me with in the kitchen

I do want to know what your plans are - I hope I get the email sometime soon

I have to make plans too... Not sure what they will be though.

2006-04-16T11:28:00.000-04:00

It's easter - this is one of thos holidays that I always looked forward too, but not for the reasons one would think. I'm not really into Zombie Jesus, but I am into spring and renewal and making a lovely dinner for someone I love. This year Spring came, but there will be no dinner.

For quite a few years we've gotten a honey baked ham and made a lovely easter dinner together. I always found it fun and exciting. This year I am sitting in T's house keeping her dog company. Someone did get me a chocolate bunny (2 actually!!!)- my favorite kind - the hollow ones that cost $.89.... And I can't tell you how wonderful it was to eat it for breakfast. it made me feel so special that that person would even think of getting me something so heart warming.

I am sad though. Spring is renwal - spring is hope - and I am (5 weeks later) almost there?

I had a really good conversation about the future last night (ok early this morning) - how I might move on and what the possibilites are. It's pretty scary - but I can't continue like I am. Floating, wondering. I have to keep moving forward, not looking back over and over again.

It will cost so much money and so many tears - far more tears then I thought I had. I cried again today - watching a makeover show - one he said he liked but I found out (as you do when people are changing their minds about you) that he hated. Trinny and Suzannahhhhhh helped two women whose husbands left them - helped them look differnt so they would feel different.

I am going to try it Thursday night - look differnt, be differnt, do something I would never have considered doing before. I've already done some of this. Some of the things I have done in the last couple of days surprized even me.

Still though I must be the respoinsible one - taking care of T's house and dog. Thinking about how I will care for Steve's cat and for my own. Thinking what I will do in the future - who will fix this, who will pay for that.

I have to write a check to the commonwealth of MA for 210. And I don;t have the $. I don't have the cash to file for divorce - how heart breaking - but my sister sent me a check - just for "fun" $ she said - it will be fun to pay for the divorce with that.

My mom had a dream that I would win the lottery - I bought a ticket - If this can happen to me, I guess anything can.

Does marraige really mean anything to anyone? Marriage is the opposite of selfish.
Should I do it again, and if I did or didn't would it matter?

There are good things today - warm and sunny day with a REALLY nice view of the lake and people sailing. A long walk with Willy - who loves to walk. And the Easter Movie Marathon - food that I am looking forward to, friends that I am looking forward to.

I need to start writing again - make that time - I need to be by myself though - after this week I am not sure what I am going to do... I don't really want to stay with people, but out there by myself - I go back wards in time. I cry and can't concentrait, though this past saturday, with L there cleaning with me... It was OK, she said what I was thinking, wow this doesn't even look like your house anymore...

It is stipped of me, of us, it is a show house with only things in it that will sell. The personal stuff is hidden away...And soon his stuff will be gone, the only thing of his still left is what he left in my body, my cells.

How long will it take to make me new? No trinny or suze here (actually I can't even watch it at my house since I have shut off most things - including BBC)

one more thing I was thinking about yesterday was the L word. How the character I hated took off for the "experaince" she was a writer- she needed something to write about. She betrayed her stability to have experainces. Did I hate her so much because of the character, or because I feared what she did would happen to me? It was such a bright thought I had to pull over to consider it.

Why didn't I do it first - why do I have to be the one left

I want to be the one who is free - ro at least feels free - the lesson is, noone is ever free - because we always bring ourselves with us.

2006-04-14T14:28:00.000-04:00

I had the loveliest lunch with Teru and her office mate. Ate too much, talked just enough, hugged not quite enough.

Still though, what a sad time this is. I had to put a note on my phone to not call his extension just to chat - how sad is that. He's been gone a month and still after I got back from lunch I called him to tell him I stopped for tea and got him a tea...

yes, I got him a tea - even though he is not here. Must be the Tinto talking.

Why would you do that, you know he is gone. He can get his own tea. You waited on him too much and not enough on yourself - that is what people say. People also say - what is wrong with her... he left, must have been a reason - I say that too, wonder what is wrong with me, why I am broken.

Can I tell them I was too good to him, my intensions were not what he wanted, they don't care, he doesn't care - do I even care anymore

he said to me - why is it now OK to hurt yourself

I had no answer - cause I still don't know why - nor do I much care

All I want is a real love that you can count on for all time. Not something that was convenient, something taken away on a spring breeze. She always wanted to live in SF. SO he tried it, doesn't like it. Funny that it is the rainiest spring they have had in 20 years, funny that they are expecting an earthquake any day. Funny that he now has a plan. I wish I had one but I don't. I don't know what I should or even can do. I never wanted to start over. I said I would never get married again, and I did. How stupid was I to give myself to someone again. Just like that, my whole heart. And I did love him, still do, can't help it. I still want to love him, want to call him Big Bunny want him to appreciate all that I did. Appreciate me now for who I am. We lost intimacy - he said - but he didn't know what that was, not really. If he did he would know he doesn�t have it with Mary. She doesn't have intimacy with herself - so how can she give herself to someone else.
Actually he told me he isn�t in love with her. I hope she knows that. Maybe he was lying; maybe he is in love with her. I don�t know, for her sake I hope she can accept what that means, I hope I can.

Ahhh there I go again, jealous and judging. I covet her youth and her free spirit, though not her debts and her family. I covet her face and body, but not her insecurity. I covet her free spirit but not her soul. She had everything I always wanted and now she has what I had. She left something behind though, not knowing what she had� Not knowing I would get the better end of the deal.

It is not age that is not a factor - it is reality - it is truth

One saving grace is lunch, the other is an hour drive to spend 5 minute with someone you love the last is friends who want to take care of you.

I have all of this and I have to remind myself of that on those night when I am alone and having nightmares and want to find the sword under my bed and run myself through. Why didn�t you just do it for me? It would have been far less painful then this slow death.

I sleep with it under my bed now, that sword you were so proud of. I sleep with it there incase that man comes back, incase you come back incase I can�t take it anymore. It is sharp � I�ve tried it, it works. Would a Japanese style be too dramatic? I saw it is Sho Gun � I am confident I would have the courage.

Do you remember that Apple Steve? I took a bit and so did you- what happened to it? Its rotting flesh not good enough anymore? I thought it grew into a tree, one with flowers and bees. But I guess it just died and rotted and you expected that all along, longed for it, waited for the time when you could be free of its promise.

Am I in love again? There is no apple, there are no strings. If I had known before what it should be like, would I have taken a bite?

Stop reading this, I am no longer yours � you no longer care what happens to me. You left me on the tarmac. You ran over my heart in the Ben Franklin cab. You only felt bad when you though you made me into you. And you did, isn�t� that funny, I am now you.

You but not yours, not anymore

Stop crying � stop crying � stop crying � dammit Sarah � stop it.

2006-04-13T22:35:00.000-04:00

It has been one month and one day

No more Big Bunny
No more little bunny

no Easter dinner

- But it is Spring and love is in the air

2006-04-05T08:20:00.000-04:00

You Left My Heart in Pieces
- A story

When I went to the lawyers office, in that fancy federal street building all glass and gold, I passed the downtown church where bums sit outside and ask for money and go inside once a day for food and blessing.

On the way to the office I did not pause, did not even look at the priest outside or the woman whose teeth she held in her hand hoping the priest could put them back for her � He didn�t mean it, she slurred.

On the way back from the office, after hearing the straight and scary story and after writing a check for the retainer (what am I retaining?) I did pause. I paused so long the homeless men stopped asking me for change, stopped telling me to have a nice day. There are 4 doors, all open; I held the handle of one as if it were holding me up. I meant to go, to turn back to Summer street and the T, but the young priest opened it, beaconed me inside.

I was familiar with the chapel, I had been there once before � with Steve � when he needed to dip his fingers in holy water and to genuflect at the alter. I remember being scared to do it myself. Not this time, this time I needed to. I ran my fingers in the bowl of water; cool, somewhat slimy (should holy water feel slimy?). I brought my damp fingers to my head and then to my heart and then back to my head. God, please stop this dream � I whispered to myself.

When I had been in NYC the Sunday (or was it 2 Sundays now) before, I had lit a candle at that famous cathedral and said � God please let everyone be happy. I had no idea that that prayer and candle would bring so much unhappiness. Was there a reason? And now I was asking God to stop this dream, let me out of my life. I lit another candle and simply said � I mean it this time.

On the way home that night to a house full of stuff that I did not want, I thought about all what had happened. Why did I work so hard at things only to have them go so badly? Some people don�t work at all at relationships and they go on for years and years. I remember being so happy to go to NYC. He told me (texted me actually � I still have it in the phone he had shut off but I don�t carry it around because I can�t bear to look at it) that I should not worry � that I was to have fun � that everything would be happy.

I drove and thought about God and about the candles I had lit. About my life and where it had gone, about the house full of meaningless everything, about Steve and what he had done and what he was doing and about the fact he probably wasn�t thinking the same of me. I thought about the fact I had two friends coming over Sunday to help me clean out the house and a dumpster coming the following Friday to get rid of the rest of my life. Why wait I thought and I did what I longed to do which was drive into oncoming traffic under the wheels of a semi.

In situations like that you are not thinking clearly. You think that all you have to do is turn the wheel and magically a truck will appear on the other side of the road. Rt 2 is two way and I turned the wheel and no one was there. No one but the other side of the road and the ditch and a ruined car and a nearly broken wrist.

I was avoiding a crazy driver I said � I was crying so hard and so loudly the police didn�t ask questions. The ambulance took me the short ride to Emerson. I cried the whole time. No one asked me much of anything, not even how it happened. I was afraid they would keep me, take me to that ward and not let me out. Perhaps that would be safe; perhaps I would feel safe from this situation, safe from myself. But I knew that wasn�t me, I could not be there, in there. I lied over and over until I believed it myself, some guy, cut me off � going so fast � I had no time to think. They just nodded, asked me about medication, drugs, alcohol. X-rayed my wrist and ribs, checked me for concussion, was I tired did I know the date? The president (that poser � a smile at least). Hours later � Who can you call to get you? I called the insurance company. No rental car until the next day � no way home. I called a taxi company � sorry we don�t go that far in, here are some more numbers. I called everyone who was not associated with me until there was no one left. I was discharged. I could wait until the next afternoon and the insurance company would send a car there, but that was hours. Who would drive to get me at midnight and take me home so I could get into my bed and finish the crying I had started two weeks ago.

I didn�t want to tell anyone. They would look into my eyes and figure out the real story. They would know it had not been some other crazy driver � it had been me and I had failed yet again. Though I did find out that the exploding airbag would not break my nose in an accident as I had always feared. Irrational fear disproved.

That was the first time I called him for help. I knew he did not have a car, but maybe he would talk to me, he would understand. I found him at work, closing the store after his promotion. He borrowed something, left there and came directly to me. He didn�t speak, just picked up my affects and brought me to the truck. Took me home without asking for directions, put me in my bed, made me tea. He knew the pain too. He watched over me for two days, called in sick for me, checked messages and made phone calls. I was OK, no I was just a little banged up, I just wanted to rest � I couldn�t talk very well. I�m just a friend.

By the time I thought to thank him, he was gone and my friends were about to arrive to help clean out the house. I could not lift anything with my right arm, which made that cleaning ridiculous, but they were OK with me just directing � probably better one step removed. Did you want this porn? One of them brought her kids; they took the games and movies I did not want. They took some of the books I could not bear to look at. We donated or tossed the rest � it�s all in the garage awaiting the dumpster.

It would make a nice book if this story ended with the happy clean out, but I still felt the same inside. None of this would really matter. I could clean and try and start over, but every time I thought of it, the world would get black. I was waiting for one more thing to happen, it always does, but would it be just one more thing. Why hadn�t that truck been there like God had promised. I so want everything to be over.

You cannot sell a house without a septic system inspection. I told everyone of the inspection on that Monday morning when I went to work. I said � cross your fingers for me � a failure is very expensive and I don�t have the $. I dreamed of starting over. The only thing I had left was that possibility � of taking some of that cash and moving somewhere. Tuesday morning all hope of anything but burden was returned. A failure. Could he show me � I could live there forever and he wouldn�t tell anyone but if I had to sell, I had to fix. Oh expensive, I couldn't even say. Low 20K high 50K - it all depends... Why was God trying to keep me in that empty house with all of those empty feelings? I wrote Steve a letter. Desperate now, but what can he do? Ultimately I will have to do this. He did call his sister - said we could split the loan. I made me feel both better and worse.

Tuesday night I had to call again, he was sick with a soar throat, not at work. He told me not to do it, that no matter what I was to remain alive because there was good in the world even if I would have to wait a long time for it. I talked to him while I was immersed in the bath, thinking of all of those movies and cop shows where they find the victim in cold red water, pickled fingers and toes, blue lips, closed eyes. The finders always looked sad, but the findees never did.

Write about this Edrie. Don�t let it overwhelm you. They don�t think about what they did, only you are thinking these things and you said he will help you, take that help, why not. Even if it costs you money � it will be over.

But I don�t want it to cost me anything, my heart is in pieces, my soul is gone everything I thought was true was a lie � were all those cards I found written to me over the years lies? Was his secret heart always hidden to me, even at the most connected times?

None of that matters Edrie. The truth is now � you have to take what that was and put it in a secret place where it can only make you stronger. Now you have to do this, please don�t take yourself away from the world, it�s not worth it. Think of all of the things you like and will miss. Those things we will miss without you.

He stayed on the phone with me for hours. Convincing, talking, and napping. Several people called during that time. My mother three times, Steve�s sister twice, my sister, my brother a friend from Texas. I didn�t answer any of them; I watched the caller ID flash and waited for the message beep and then switched to hear them say one thing or another.

He was always there when I returned. Finally the sun rose and I felt I could hang up. And I am doing this now. I am not healed or cured, I am not feeling much better, but I made it. One more night at a time. One more obstacle to put behind me � though this one is so big.

Before he hung up.

Edrie � Listen, first get some sleep, second leave that house, and third always know you can call me. I might not have the right thing to say but I can be very quiet and let you talk. You deserve to talk and you deserve to work through this and look forward to what you want. It might not come right away, but it will come. Look at me, you and I share this pain, perhaps we can spread it out in a thin layer and break through it.

Get the system fixed, take whatever loan you need and hope that you make at least that back on the house � breaking even is not bad. You will figure it out. This is not all your burden.

2006-03-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday and today my heart hurts

I think things are really coming down to reality - the first two weeks were so surreal (thanks in part to not eating or sleeping) and this week I've tried to keep things very practical and moving forward.

Granted, I've had ALOT of emotional help (you know who you are my dears!)

but still, walking to the car yesterday I though for a fleeting minute that I would wait for Robot in the rotary and that the weather was so nice maybe he'd like to go to central square to that yummy food place and to Bukaroo... Then I remembered

It happened today too. Sitting in my office trying to do my first real work in 3 weeks... I have the window open and I looked out and it was so nice, I picked up the phone to dial his extenation (as I used to every day several times a day for 5 years...) to see if he wanted to have lunch in the square and get a boba tea.... Then I remembered

Why does your mind play tricks on you like that?

I saw the Dr. last night - he is still very concerend that I not be alone and I am trying very hard - but I sat in the car last night for over an hour in the parking lot of his office just sitting and sitting. Alone

I did get to go to T's house and drink wine and eat food and be a little normal - even recorded something for the pod cast, but still - there is so much heart ache and sadness

People are helping but I wish time would move forward faster

I am desperate to get this house sold and to get the other paper work done - I never wanted a divorce but it is clear that is the only way - why does it come to this

I bit the apple, and so did he - the time we spent together wasn't a lie - right? Those feelings, he really felt them too - right?

I am still scarred, still empty, still hoping - but for what I do not know as it is clear that no matter what I do or what I want - I have to find something that is me to move forward with

Please don't let me make a mistake - or always think of Robot as a mistake. At the moment I don't - I still feel like it was real and that this reality is just altered and doesn't negate the one we had... But I still wonder.

I gave him the best I had - I was my best for him. And he told me it was both too good and not good enough. Is he being the best for himself now - I hope so, that is what I will try to do, bet eh best me and hope that someday someone can appreciate that long-term and not just for stabalization before their next life adventure - I'm through being the in between person. I want to be a forever person
for me.

2006-03-25T22:11:00.000-05:00

it is not fair that I have to end this relationship over email

Where is the justice in that?

2006-03-25T22:05:00.000-05:00

Everytime the phone rings my heart stops. It's been 2 weeks and still this happens.

he is going to email me his "plans" tonight

I took drugs so that I didnt lie awake and wait for the plans, I couldn;'t get my heart to stop racing and me to stop sweating. I have to get up at 4:15 to take my sister home

i want to get on a plan and go get an explanation - I dreampt where they are. If i hang out there long enough, maybe I will see them

It is one of the places I always thought it would be

Probably not the final destination, but then who knows what that will be

I guess I will in a few hours

when will the pain stop

Sorry about breakfast teru - I'l be over soon

2006-03-25T19:19:00.000-05:00

I know where they are - I saw it in a dream during my nap this afternoon

Should I get on a plane?

2006-03-25T14:31:00.000-05:00

Back at the house now - here for a few days trying to figure out what to do

I can barely stand one second here - it is good I have the medication.

I spend 1/2 an hour crying in the garage before I could even go in

I hate it here

Had a very nice night last night - felt not only normal but special and loved

If this was meant to be, then that was too and I am greatful for it. Even small things do so much right now

I feel so lost - but perhaps someone will find me before it is too late

2006-03-24T07:34:00.000-05:00

friday - has it really been two weeks

When will I wake up

I think I must have been in a plane crash and am now in a coma

You are sitting next to me, reading me my favorite book, holding my hand, hoping I'll wake

Please let that be true

2006-03-24T05:47:00.000-05:00

i woke up with my hands not working again today

It made me think - did he leave me becasue someday he would have had to take care of me

he knew this could degenerate. he know about everything - and still he left.

I've always wanted someone I could count on, someone to take care of me. I saw him as that person, but it is obvious now he never wanted to be.

We went to see Eve Ensler's The Good Body - it wasn't as good as the vagina monologoues

The part that bothered me was when she talked about how her lover LOVED her belly, but she hated it. That was the same for Steve and I - it's funny that other people have that too.

But it is weird because I loved all of him unconditionally (even if I hated parts of myself) - every bit of it, from when he was small to when he gained weight. His body always turned me on. His way of being was always sexy

I have to find someone someday that feels that way about me

I know he did. Even when I weighed 220 he loved me. I wonder, does he love me less at 145 - course he hasn't seen me at 145 - only at 162 (which is what I was that sunday)

This is my last night in the hotel, then one night at home with sis then....

then.... indeed

2006-03-23T22:24:00.000-05:00

I really miss getting my back scratched

he was the best back scratcher

but where is he now?

I still miss him

I wondered today - is he wearing his wedding ring?

BIG BUNNY are you wearing your ring?

Do you really just not love me any more - did you just stop loving me

2006-03-23T14:48:00.000-05:00

I was finally able to do more then just sit and stare at the screen today

I went through all of my emails and then sent a status update to my boss.

I am going to spend Mon-Wed trying to figure out what to do about the house.

The cats are going to my friend S's house. I hate to do that, but I have no choice. I don't think I can take care of them right now.

I have realestate agents coming over. I've been going through my finances and I have 2 months TOPS and then I will be screwed if I don't get rid of the thing

My feelings about this are so mixed I can't even articulate them.

I have to sort - figure out what to sell, toss, give away, keep

I think whatever *I* keep except for a a suite case full... will go into storage until I figure out life again

I wish there was a free storage place - everythign is SO expensive..

and We didn't have any savings - *sigh*

Ahh for the freedome of the open road - maybe I should just take off and drive

My harry potter CD is still in the other car. I wanted to listen to Harry Potter today to comfort myself and totally lost it when I realized it was gone

I have all the rest, just the first one is missing

Why would that make a person cry so hard and so long - such a trivial thing, but it shows such a lack of understanding

Oh well, someday

2006-03-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

I don't want to take the pills again, but I am having another panick attack

why is this happening to me

he has a cold - all i could think was, I wish he had taken that cough medicine with him

but he didn't, he didnt take anything important

At least he wrote to me - that does make me feel a bit better. Knwoing he is alive even if I don't know where he is

But where is mary?

2006-03-22T22:29:00.000-05:00

Thank you Teru - your blog after our dinner was wonderful (painful but wonderful)

We are all sad - but it will get better someday (who knows when)

Someday he will face me and give me what I deserve - respect, decency etc.

I hope he is not loosing his mind. I really really hope so - but if he isn't, if he is sane - then what am I supposed to think?

I can't write out everything that Harmony said, but I will tell you and I will go back to her.

2006-03-22T22:14:00.000-05:00

I have started to dream again - not the frantic dreams I was having. These are sad. The images don't make sense. I woke myself up last night whimpering. Swirling images of a smoky car. A seedy hotel. mary in black, steve with Black hair. My friend C told me they called and she freaked out, it was unexpected and made her very sad. She wished she would have said something different, but she didn't know what to say - she waited for 2 days to tell me about it.

What good does it do really? he won't come back, eventhough he needs to. I have to start cleaning up my life. I was in the house by myself today and I couldn't cope. Could not deal with it all weighing down on me. Is this how Steve felt? Why did he feel he had the luxury to run from it?

He must be having a terrible time. I am the only one who ever really understood him, his thoughts, feelings, moods. Now people are trying to grasp meaning where there is none. C for example, she wanted to hug him to tell him to stay with her, but the words would not come. Then an angry email and she felt sad and angry. They are leaving for a week tomorrow and she can't fix it and told me today she waited to call cause she felt like vomiting every time she contemplated talking to me.

Return to where you were meant to be. See things from other's points of view. Someone asked me today what I did to make you angry enough to leave and I had nothing to say about it. I just went into my office and cried. What indeed?

Perhaps that is why we were so good together. Did he forget? i haven't. I never will.

But I am going to have an adventure too.

I wanted to go to CA with C and S to visit E and the gang, but S acted weird when I told her and C asked me not to come. This made me really angry and sad. I thought they were my friends but they are going to be in "vacation" mode and can't "take care of me". I dn't want to be taken care of, I want to forget. But they don't want me around. See Steve, even people you trust and who are your friends can only be friends on thier own terms. That is what was good about our relationship - we were in it for you and I.

I hope yu find that again - find someone you can treuly be one with.

Call me, if you can find a way to call C - you can call me

I start cleaning the house Monday - I took the day off. things will never be the same and it makes me sad

2006-03-22T15:49:00.000-05:00

A little bit each day

So I left work early - am doing laundry now and packing to be away from the house for 4 days

Coming back by myself felt so odd - I see things so differently now

I am much more OK when I am not here, but when I view the sheer enormity of the STUFFF

and this STUFFFFF

No wonder he took off taking almost nothing, the STUFF weights you down.

He really should come back and help me deal with this, I just don't understand what he is so afraid of. it's just wrong to leave such a mess. I took care of him for so long and he promised to take care of me and now when I need it the most, he is not here. How could he feel it was OK to not do the responsible thing?

Look me in the eye and tell me why - or at least call so I can hear your voice. Why can't things be different

And where is Mary in all of this = silent = nowhere. Is she really there with him? Or is she dropped along the way. Did she even exist?

I don;t even feel like I exist. J told me today (when he took me to lunch) that I seemed like a different person, like a shell of who I was, none of the radiance of happy - none of the confidence. Just none of me. He felt so bad. I feel bad, very bad. But what can I do, he won't ever come back. We could rebuild if he wanted. We've done it before, but he chose to not face me.

2006-03-22T08:52:00.000-05:00

No email from him today, no call

I've started calling realestate people, and I called the fence people

practical stuff has to happen eventhough every time I think about it, my heart rips from my chest

Teru gave me flowers last night, they are beautiful and healing and made me cry a little

WHy don't I know what he is feeling?

His last email said so much, but still didn't tel my why - it did, but I still feel there is somthing missing

Look into my eyes whisper this into my ear - why why why

2006-03-22T08:41:00.000-05:00

Harmony Dawn

I had my very first professional reading last night from a person I know through the music scene called Harmony.

She saw me at the Thylacine show the other night and gave me a big hug. She didn't know what had happned and noone told her but she could see that I was sad.

We went to her resturant and she told me things that made the hair raise on the back of my neck.

I will leave most of it private for me in my heart, but alot of what she said made sense and made me feel like not everything was broken.

Most of all she said that he would eventually be back (april) but I had to choose my life path and if I would choose to let him in or not. And that May 31st was an imporatnat day for me.

She also kept calling me "little bunny", which made me so sad. How would she know that name?

She also told me to have sex with someone who has a pony tail - which was a riot

I guess I better keep my eyes open

2006-03-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

I wish I could look into his eyes and see what was inside there

My friend from Chicago called, it was everything I could do not to get in a plane and go there, try and find him

But what good would it do

Why has he isolated me from him life

Maybe I didn't do everything right, but do I deserve this mental torture

Why call others and not me

I am the little bunny

me, noone else really ever got to know him and now he has pushed me off a cliff and I'll never stop falling

why didn't he just kill me

Ther eis so much out there for you Steve - I wish you had let me keep coming along with you

2006-03-21T09:07:00.000-05:00

YET another Fing house thing to worry about

The alarm broke yesterday - I had to rush home. My hope was that it was actually Steve comeing home and had just made a mistake, but it was the alarm itself. I had to have a technition out this morning to fix it and nothing is the same as it was before

I also cancelled the calbe access, but left the internet

Can you BELEIVE they charge you $50 to do that WTF at least that will save me $60 a month (after I pay that 50 that is) but I have to have a technition come to the house next Monday

I hate being here alone with those people, maybe someone will come saty with me for the day

I am also going to ask the fence company to come out and put up that new fence - $$$$$$ but I feel I'll loose a ton of $ on the house if I don't, I mean who wants to live next to a junk yard

I am also cashing in my amex points and getting a new stove and dishwasher - that should add value to the house

I hate to have to do this alone I really hate hate hate it

if he would just come back and deal with this stuff too, esp since most of the stuff in the house is actually his - I was surprised actually that that was the case, but when I was going through the bedroom, I literally have 2 boxes of stuff but he had 12 black garbage bags

I didn't get rid of the clothes though, this is not a "divorce house"

Sigh

what am I going to do, this is a nightmare

2006-03-21T07:01:00.000-05:00

Here is a weird thing about me - I was never able to have an ograsm while masturbating until Robot showed me how.

This morning , for the first time since this whole thing, I tried to masturbate - nothing, just tired and then crying - remembering the last time we made love and how sweet and loving it was.

************

Then my mind turns on me and I think these aweful things like

Are they using condoms (there were none in the garbage)
Is marie on the pill now - she wasn't a few weeks ago, she told me

Maybe they are not having sex at all - but if they are - what if there is a baby

2006-03-21T06:30:00.000-05:00

I am still going to write out everything that has happened - but I think I need a quiet saturday morning for that

I got a call lat night but it was from private... was it him> I didnt make it in time and when I realized, I cried and cried. it was 1am or so (I thin) and I cursed the srugs that were making me sleep

but I know withut them I would be crazy. Lat week they tried twice to put me in the hosptial. I can;t let that happen

I have convinced them that I am eating - it makes people happy to think that

But how can I eat when all I want to do is vomit

Tonight I am going to harmony t get my future told. She begged me the other night, soaid I needed it and gave me a hug. "Please don't hurt yourself dear one. the hurt came from outside not in." How dies she know I want to rip the skin from myu body that he once exlaimed during sex
"you skin is so tight" integrated with your body

Does he care about my feelings. Dont hide from all of this

I want to see him so much I want him to show me in his black pools of eye that this is the right thing

Why do I have to start over just becaue he wasnts to. With this promise of marrage he said i would nvere have to be ithout him. Now its been more then a week

I constantly feel itt. I cant stand this

help me clean up what used to be our life - it is not fair to leave me with the pieces - even Ana said this was the most cruel way

2006-03-20T22:06:00.000-05:00

He said he would read this because he cares about me and what I am going though

What do I get from him to tell me what he is going through?

I care too, deeply. I love him

Maybe he is rightk, he can't return, but it is NOT fair to make me go through this stuff

this was his life - he needs to put it away, not run away like a teenager

Why am I left with this, why am I so empty

I wish the house would just burn down and take me with it

2006-03-20T22:04:00.000-05:00

How many times can I respond to "how are you"

do peole want the truth - I am destroyed. The person you knew is not inside this body. part of the 14 lbs I lost was my soul

2006-03-20T07:10:00.000-05:00

Clonazepam

That is what they gave me help me sleep - silly me it;s not a sleeping aid 9but boy did it work) but an anti anxiety pill

Workd for that too, I've stopped shaking and my thoughs have stopped racing

Am I normal - no
but I do feel a bit more in control

2006-03-20T07:02:00.000-05:00

I talked to Steve's sister-on-law last night

She was saying on how she couldn't imagion that his person, doing this to all of us was actually her brother-in-law

She said

"Steve would never do this, it just doesnt make sense. Granted he is capabale of huge change, but its never been change that was cruel"

She said even when she talked to his first wife during his first divorce that it was hard for that woman, but Steve always made her feel loved and like he was going to support her and do the right thing.

Here that is just not the case

What changed? Why would he become the person he hates. Someone with no thought for others

This is not steve

2006-03-19T20:29:00.000-05:00

I found another pony

My sister wanted to make cookies and we were looking for stuff and one of the Pony cards was in a drawer.

I love you forever Edrie - love Marie

That along with the dreadlock I found near the bed - oh man

I wish you did love me Mary - I wish Steve did too

2006-03-19T18:42:00.000-05:00

why didn't you take me on your adventure

2006-03-19T18:38:00.000-05:00

How could this have happened to me

Last time I was divorced it was hard - there was emotional distress but it wasn't like this.

Steve and I were connected, we depended on each other. I needed him and he took care of me like I took care of him

And now - nothing, empty and left with everything again

What is wrong with me? Everyone says I am a rock star, beautiful woman who is so nice and gives and gives, but if the person who is closest to you in the world can betray you like this, what is left?

My sister is leaving soon - then I will be here, by myself with this stuff and all of these memories

This house is nolonger safe for me. If I had a rope I would hang myself from the beams

2006-03-19T17:29:00.000-05:00

A song he wrote for me to sing, but one he always sang better - I wish I would have listened then. I am not even sure now what he wanted me to know

Seldome do we see
Our passions realized
Seldome do we free
These visions is disguise
Often it will seem
That floating is like flying
Often it will be
That living is just lying

Tell me what you mean
When you say you are dying
ask me if I trust
The stories that I'm minding
Often it will feel
Like I had perfect timing
Often it will be
The I was only climbing

{Chorus:
If I
Could take away
Every sinfle word
I can't
Say for sure
That I think I could]

Seldome do we pay
the debts of our sins
Seldome do our lives
Give up and let us in
Often it is gray
On the other side of town
Often it will be
We'll never make a sound

If you pay me now
I'll never let it go
And remember that I tried
To realize things I know
Often it had felt
Like I had perfect timing
But really what is was
That I was only climbing...

2006-03-19T17:28:00.000-05:00

The realestate agent guessed that he left me and warned me not to get rid of too much stuff, esp the clothes

"people don't want to move into a DIVORCE house" she said

I hadn't considered divorce before she said that and I started to cry - My poor sister - she cries so much too

2006-03-19T17:02:00.000-05:00

I wanted to throw out the bunnies, but I couldn't do it

I think I am having a break down

I have never felt like this before

Is there anyone there to help me

Why is my life partner gone - this was forever

it is a very dark time

2006-03-19T16:48:00.000-05:00

I think I should not email him anymore. Granted I need him to sign papers and to deal with his stuff, but I am guessing that he has turned a cold hard mind to anything I say. He is so good at it that it is chilling. I tried to help him today, warn him that he might not get back from where he had gone if he was not careful. I knew where he was and didn't tell anyone.
But I should tell everyone, I should hire a private investigator and find him

But what good will it do, I lost him to himself and his mind and his cold heart. I would take him back in a second if he changed his mind, but he won't.

I am cleaning out my bedroom right now - I found this and it hurts so much

A birthday card I wrote him for his 30th birthday

10/10/2004

Steve,

There is so much I have already said, yet still, every second breeds more. More Truth, more Beauty, more Love. As a man of 30 years you have explored much of these in turn and yet the Ultimate Knowledge of each is still a quest. I see this quest as ours to share, ours to map out, ours to complete.

On your bithday I wanted to give you something that you wanted but didn't expect. The surprise party was all about the Truth of friendship, the Beauty of the unknown and my Love for a man who has changed my way of being and living in this "age of (the) empty mind".

For the next 30 I don't want you to "wondeer where the years have gone and if we could have gone along". Instead we will be on that journey with open minds, hearts and souls.

Now the cleche of need - only us, only me only you.

I love you Steve. I wish a satisfying and completeing journey, Remember to stop along the way for hugs, kisses, naked napping and Big/little B(b)unny cuddling

- Sarah

2006-03-19T08:21:00.000-05:00

You said it was hard for you to leave your stuff and your family and friends and to do something just for you.

I understand hardship. it does not have to be the way you think it does. People are more forgiving then you ever thought.

Everyone loves you and wants to help you. I wish you had seen that before you left. I wish you had seen the possabilities because they were there. You could have had help.

The reality is... you still can

Come home, call me

2006-03-19T08:20:00.000-05:00

3/19/06 � Comment

I decided that all of the stuff in my head needs to get out on paper. Because of the funny way time moves forward. Some of the things in here are true only for the time I have written them (today) and some are true only for when they happened. Because my feelings are constantly changing and what I remember is more or less emotional, I have tried to write the facts as I know them. I only have my side and random emails Steve has sent. I would say I have history as well, the history of our relationship to draw on, but I can�t say that the history matters to this story because is seemed to not matter to him. If it did, would this have happened? It doesn�t feel inevitable, but maybe after I write our life out... I will see it that way.

The bottom line in all of this is that no matter what, I still love him and have a safe place for him to come to. He hurt me very badly and if he can live with himself, I can forgive him.

Come home Steve, Face this. Rule your life like you say you want to, like you say this was for. Face up to it and make it yours. Right now it is something you started but have not followed through on. You are better then that. You know it. You have learned so much. Don�t throw it away out of fear.

***************
What I remember

Steve always wants to feel very closely connected to people. If he doesn�t he gets depressed and doubts his relationship with them. It happened with his first wife and then with me. Here is what I remember of the incident. This is from my point of view, which is the only one I have since Steve left and won�t talk to me on the phone or in person and I do not know where he is.

Steve and I have been through alot he is bipolar and tends towards the depressed. I w3as very happy in the relationship, but it was a challenging one filled with constant work making sure he was ok. He worked too, not just me. He worked to feel better.

We started talking about what he wanted to do in life. Graduate school seemed a distinct possibility. I was encouraging. Happy he wanted to try. He seemed more dedicated to that then he had to anything in a really long time. Steve tends to go overboard when he wants to get into something. Grad school was no different. It was emotional for him. He did tons of research and bought a great number of books and online aids. He was narrowing down his choices. But he was scared I now he was. Nervous he would not get in even if he did his best. I think that fear of failure had a lot to do with him running away. He was faced with a life-changing event and he couldn�t face the fact that he might have to work really hard and still not get what he wanted. I told him to try. That this fear is normal. I had it. But Steve was no confident in his secret heart he thought he would fail. I knew that he wouldn�t if he went into action instead of into emotion.

Then there was the job. He really hated it and was constantly disappointed by his work and his boss and the general way things were done. He tried so hard. But nothing worked. We talked for a long time and he resigned. It really was the best thing but then he got scarred. Now that he wasn�t working he had no excuse but to buckle down on grad school. And maybe that is not what he wanted in life? But what did he want? Then came Mary

Mary is energy in black clothing. She is light and darkness and fun with razors. She excited Steve from the second he knew her. We�ve been friends with her and Walter for over a year but Steve needed a closer connection. He tried several others. Several more safe options before the night Walter and Mary came over.

Mary was self-destructive that night. She gave me a tarot reading that predicted the future that she wanted. Living with me loving me having sex with me. But I was scarred. I wanted her too, but I knew that would destroy Steve and Walter. So I went to bed. She came in with me, tried to convince me, but I said no. I could not ruin what I had. Even if I wanted t o go in that direction I was not fair unless I was open with both Steve and Walter. Mary was not open. She was closed and would never tell Walter her true feelings. Mary drank and Walter went to bed. I stayed in bed. Steve got sucked in and stayed up with her all night. It affected his stability. He was worried and neurotic. She had him. She was inside his head. There was the connection.

He tried to fight it off but it just got stronger. She was everything I was not. Spontaneous where I was a planner. Crazy where I was careful. Young where I was ancient. I love Mary, but she wanted this to happen and it did. She is more powerful then I am. Then we went to their house to hang out. I didn�t want to go. 1/4 of the way there I told Steve this was a bad idea and that I felt ill. He laughed at me. Told me I was silly. We went and had a really fun time. I watched a movie with Walter while Steve and Mary did a bass lesion in the barn. The bass lesion was not all music. It turned out to be furtive passion. Walter and I did not know, we were so relieved that things seemed to be OK again, that Mary and Steve were just friends. We had no idea of the pain to come.

Mary hugged me and kissed me on the lips before we left. Steve shook Walter�s hand. We drove home and Steve was tired. Could not talk. This happens often, but I should have known. I should have seen this coming. The next day I was staying home from work as a treat to myself. I should not have done this, looking back now. But it seems inevitable. Steve took a 2-minute shower. I thought he was acting strangely, but that maybe he was just worried about driving in (he had always hated doing that so I had taken over for the last 2 years). In reality had had taken a bunch of pain pills and a huge knife and out them in his backpack. He was falling over the edge of sanity and I didn�t know. He lied to me, to my face. Told me he was happy I was staying home and to have a fun day free of worry. He told me not to call his cell phone. I had no idea why, but why question your husband whom you love. I am not sure of the exact sequence of events. But he did go to work that Monday (3/6) but left quickly and went to see Teru at her work (10amish). He stayed for along time telling her about things. She urged him to go home to talk to me. She thought he would. He told her about the pills but not about the knife. She did not call or email me until 4pm to tell me. In the mean time I had called Steve at work a few times with no response. I did get a message saying he had quite a few meetings and would be unavailable until 2pm. It was a lie. He was already gone from the office when he left that message. I finally got a call at 4pm from Steve. I knew instantly NOTHING was right. I freaked a little. He tried to tell me everything was OK, but I could tell. He was talking like he used to when he was in the hospital. All disconnected and vague.

I got an email from Teru at the same time. It made my heart sink. I showered and drove in to meet Steve for 6pm in Central Square. He was gregarious but sad. He wanted to meet in public. I freaked out. He told me he had almost killed himself and that he had almost run away with Mary. She didn�t know about the knife or the pills. He lied to her by omission as well. He kissed her, touched her. Told her he loved her. It hurt me so much. I am a clam and rational person, I rarely let anything out, but that night in the restaurant I cried, I yelled I screamed. He had almost hurt himself and he had lied lied lied to me. And now he thought him choosing to come home would instantly make it better. I was so hurt. We went to our favorite hotel. Stayed the night to make it better. He missed a counseling session with his therapist. I wish I had made him go. We bathed together, I felt odd being naked with him. We slept but I was so sad. So angry at myself at him at Mary. I asked him to give me time and he seemed to want to, but in classic Steve fashion, he couldn�t wait as long as I needed.

We talked alot, Mary sent me email. I was jealous at first and then I was sad. Sad for them and sad for me. I thought things would get better. I told him they could still be friends if she was honest with Walter and if STEVE himself faced Walter. She did not want him to, but Steve did not know it was because she wasn't telling Walter the whole truth, just a small part of the resemblance of the truth. (I hope she gets over that - or it will hurt Steve a great deal in the long run)I wish he had done that because Mary wasn�t as honest with Walter as she told Steve she was being. I wish I had called Walter and told him everything I knew because he thought it was a crush. He didn�t know the extent. He was left in the dark. He didn�t deserve that because I have come to find out he is sensitive and sweet and would not hurt a fly (or even a 1/2 dead mouse).

Timing is everything. My sister was coming to visit me for 2 weeks. The First time in 5 years that we would get to hang with each other by ourselves a bit. We decided on a NY trip long before any of this happened. She came on Thursday of that week. We left for NY the morning for Friday the 10th. Steve stayed behind. He told me to have fun, sent me email and text messages assuring me not to worry. I am not sure if it was the beginning of the lies or if that was the truth and because he won�t talk to me in person, I will not know.

Friday night he met Mary at a coffee shop and then took her to dinner at our favorite sushi place (a place I will never eat at again). What he told me of the meeting was that he pushed her away. He stood up for our relationship, told her he didn�t love her in that way and that it could not work between them. He left her to go home and I talked to him that night. He was sad but relieved things had gone OK. He told me to have fun. It was Over he would be seeing his friend in Ct the next night.

Saturday morning I got an email from Walter. Had I seen Mary, did I know where she was? She had told him she would meet him after work on Friday, after going out with her friends. She was supposed to be there at 11 to pick him up. He waited at Applebee�s until they kicked him out at 2am. He had to leave his license because he had no money. He had to call his father to get him. He thought she was in a crash. She never met her friends.
I told Steve all of this over the phone and then in email. Looking back I feel I should not have, but what else could I do? Steve was the last to see her.

This is where the lies really start and I do not know Steve�s truth from Steve reality. I now that he at some point on Saturday got a hold of Mary and that she came over. What he told me he was doing was going to Springfield to see his friend from NY. I found out later that he did not see her. That was a lie to me. What he did do that night I am not sure of. When we talked on the phone he was happy and excited and he said his friend from NY was fun but annoying and that the restaurant in Springfield was crowded. I know he was with Mary then but I do not know the truth of what they did. Nor do I know when they decided to run away. I do know that over the next few hours they made plans.

They packed a few things, they bought toiletries, and they died Steve�s hair. They had sex in our bed and on the couch and perhaps other places. I am not sure. They concocted an elaborate plan to get me my car and to �explain� themselves. Mary was not as thoughtful as Steve. She took the only transportation that she and Walter had. She took all of his money and his guitar. She sent him a 2-line email saying that it was over, but not explaining anything.
Steve was odd on the phone on Sunday. I thought he was sad about Mary, worried about her. I told him to keep calling her, trying to find her. Making sure she was OK. I was worried too. He said he had not heard from her. He told me he would be at the airport, that he could not wait for me to get home (this was hard later, remembering those three conversations � him saying he could not wait for me to get home and me thinking then it was because he missed me, but then realizing it was because he wanted me to find out and for him to stop talking to me like nothing was wrong). There are two details I must mention here. They are probably not important but I think of them now and wonder if I had a clue and did not know it. At 3:03 Sunday morning I woke up crying. I wanted to email Steve or call home, I wanted to go to the airport or have him come get us. But I told myself I was being silly and to just forget it and enjoy my sister's company. At 3:03 that afternoon I began to panic. I am not sure why. I thought I was nervous to get to the airport, but looking back I wonder if it was more. Our plane was really late and when we finally landed I got a text message from Steve. It just said that there was a problem and that I was to get my car at school and gave me instructions on how to do that. I passed out. They wanted to call the hospital. My sister was worried, confused. Made jokes. Did not know whey Steve was not coming to pick us up. Just thought he was too nervous to drive in the airport. Our cab driver was Ben Franklin. He kept me from screaming the whole way to the car. The car had an ID and note in the gas cap. The key to the car was in his office, but not HIS office the outer office. This caused me anguish. His office was dark and locked and it was final, just like I felt. I died a bit when I saw that. Almost passed out again. I gave my sister the note and she read it to herself as we walked back to the car. She cried like I was crying, hurting for me and for what was done. She asked if she could drive but neither of us knew what to do. I almost didn�t make it home. If she had not been there I would have killed myself.

Getting home was the worst thing. Things were packed the bed was unmade. I could smell where they had had sex. He washed the sheets and the cover to the bed. I found a dread lock of hers in our room. I found her hair in my towel. I could see their trash. I could see the things he left including his bass. I could not make out what he took. But it seemed to me he took nothing except things he could sell later if he had too. I had been up since three on Sunday and now it was 11pm. I was so worried. I did not have Walters phone number but I emailed him and asked him to call. He was so upset. I was so upset. I stayed up for nearly 48 hours panicking, not knowing anything reading and rereading that note and catching words here and there.

That fist night I just texted and called his phone and sent him emails. I did not tell anyone but Walter. It wasn�t until 7am Monday morning that I called his brother. And then started emailing and calling everyone I thought he might get into contact with. I was so afraid he was manic. That he would do something. It was a classic manic episode. This very one was written out in an essay online. A man described how his wife did the very same thing. Seemed completely sane but had done all of this elaborate planning and left him at the airport and drive around the country pretending to be someone else. Everyone told me to call the police, but I did not want to. Steve loved me. He would not leave me and he would not hurt Mary or do anything crazy. But I thought he would not leave too so I was confused. Hurt. Unsure. Who was this man, did I even know him? What was he doing and where was he?

Things get foggy here on Monday because of all of the crying and worry and lack of sleep. I will try to say what I did and in what order things happened, but I honestly could have strangled someone and not remembered because I was insane with grief. My mother said it was like I was dieing a little at a time starting with the place in my heart and body and mind where Steve could hurt me worst and extending out from there. Cells slowly sloughing off not to be reborn. I spent all of my time walking around the house with both my cell phone and regular phone in my hands. I checked my email all of the time. I called people. I was like a shell only worried about one thing� contact. I did not get it. I got contact through others, but not directly, it is the cruelest way. The most painful thing anyone can do to you. They said they loved you, but can�t respect you enough to call you. Or was it fear. What did he have to fear from me? Anger? > I wasn�t angry. I was sad. I was anguished. I was broken. Did he fear what he had done? What it was doing to me? Did he fear guilt? How could he not know that after all of these years, this would destroy me? I was angry on Monday. Angry that he wasn�t honest with me. But anger was long gone and all that was left was destruction. Perhaps he hoped for that. Was he trying to be mean? He kept saying it was better for him this way that the supportive way had been painful for both of them in his last marriage. But I think he thought only of himself in this one. He did not remember that I was a person. His Ex called and emailed. He had called her on Sunday. She told me she was so sorry. That this was the cruelest way to break something off. That once Steve made up his mind, no one could talk him out of if. That had never been the case with us. But here I was, on her side, with her hurt. She was still sore after all of this time and he had done it the hard way with her. But both she and I agreed. This was much more hard and cruel. This was inexcusable. But Still I was not angry. I only wanted him safe and home and in contact. I was not even angry with Mary. I knew that if something was wrong and he crashed, she would not be able to figure out what to do.

Even today, 1 week later. I still worry. Still hope he will call and come home. I love him so much and need him and perhaps it is stupid, but I know this would make our relationship so much stronger and give us that connection he so desperately wanted. The one he thought he lost with me. The truth is, he hasn�t. It is still here. I am still here and I love him. I will write more details about the rest of the days, but this is all I can do for now.

Steve, if you read this. Come home. Call home. Start over, but with me. Don�t do what you think you need to do. DO what you want to do, in your heart. Take me along with you on this ride. This is what I am here for. What I was created to do. Take this to the next level. Don�t hide in your head and in Mary�s arms. If this is really not about her like you said and if this is really something you need to do, then it is unfair to bring her along. You have lied to her too and she is lying to you. Don�t make her sadder. Her life has been hard. Be honest. Look at her and look at what you are doing. Could it possibly be the right thing?

I love you. Come home.

Remember � this is Sunday and the story is not even 1/4 told nor is it finished. The bottom line is that I love you Steve and I want you to come home. To talk to me. To make things right

2006-03-17T23:45:00.000-05:00

I was asleep for less then 1/2 an hour when I started having a dream that hands were holding me to the bed. I tried to yell and actually I woke up a little and could hear myself yell, but the hands kept holding me, the arms wrapping around me.

My heart is pounding and my mouth is dry

Something will have to change soon - I can't keep this up

2006-03-17T23:00:00.000-05:00

I still jump up and run to the window whenever a car goes by, and I know they are nowhere near here. They are in a different state, mentally and physically - sowhy do I hope?

2006-03-17T22:48:00.000-05:00

So many feelings thoughts and emotions. It's hard to just be me right now. I can't sleep or eat. I have a hard time being out and a harder time being in. I want to get out of bed and I want to stay in bed. I want to do something crazy and I want to do nothing at all.

You can understand what this is like, I know you can.

Why does it have to be so hard?

2006-03-17T05:22:00.000-05:00

They have stolen sleep from me

I finlly went to bed at 3am - only to be awakend just now by this dream:

I am at work, stnding inline for a meeting that has food. Doc is making fun of me, teasing me in a good natured way. I get into line with him and then notice steve is not getting food.

Where is steve? I say. Everything gets dark and Doc says - He's in church. THen Mary runs thorugh the building and I try to follow, but there are students in the way and i can't get to her and I cy so hard and scream so loud that I wake myself here in our bed alone after only 2 hours and 20 minutes of sleep.

My sister told me yesterday - you haven't stopped crying since Sunday, I am afriad for you, do you need a doctor. I don't know, I think I do, I am broken

It would have been less painfulk almost any other way.

You know, he did take off once, at work. He got upset over something and never showed up to a meeting. I had no idea where he was, I just got a tearful message that I could not understand. He had driven somewhere, was thinking things over, doing something not drastic, I am still in control he said.

I am so scared

2006-03-17T02:44:00.000-05:00

This is why I can't sleep

My sister and I were trying to watch Howls Moving Castle to get my mind off things

I wrapped the blanket around me and closed my eyes. I must have been asleep but the dream, so real and so scary. I was in my bosses office and trying to talk to a coworker about a problem he is having.

Suddenly I just started to leak blood from my mouth and eyes and he handed me a tissue. I tried to pretend nothing was wrong but it just keep happening, then I got really scarred that I ways dying and tried to excuse myself without giving a clue, but I started to cry really hard and scream and everything was getting black - then I was actually awake, with my sister touching my leg asking me if I was OK. I had been crying in my sleep and was yelling

and my heart was pounding and I was so scared. Will this just keep getting worse like this? What is happening to me?

2006-03-16T07:32:00.000-05:00

I feel so many things it is hard to pick them out into one emotion. Mostly I am sad and desperate.

I don't know how a person can do this to another

The foundation of our relationship is communication and he is cut that off totally

I have never been without talking to him for this long. It is ripping me apart. I feel like not even the same person I was. I am so little now, in so much pain. I shake and am unsure. I cry all of the time. Will this get any better? Please, don't leave me this empty shell. Fill me again. Make me whole like I was with you.

You don't have to choose at least don't choose for me

I have slept about 8 hours since Sunday. I keep waking up hoping I can cuddle up next to him and hug him and have him hug me. My heart beats to hard in my chest. It hurts so much and everything is empty. This is worse then death would be. Worse then anything I have ever had to go through.

When my first husband and I divorced it was all about stuff and I was very very angry. But I have none of that anger. I don't care about any of the stuff. I just want him. I would literally drop everything and drive to where he is if he would just tell me. I don't care about money or bills or stuff or work or school or anything.

This is the most important, us, him. Please call me. Don't hide. Tell me everything is for the best and help me get through this. You are the only one who really knows me Robot. You are the only one I have ever shown myself to.

You know me, I wake up happy in the morning, ready to get us up and out and into the world, supporting and helping us. But I have not smiled since Sunday. I have not felt like life was worth going on with. The sun is not a friend, it just means one more day without you.

Please lessen this hurt, help me stop the pain

2006-03-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Oh Robot, I love you so much

2006-03-16T00:20:00.000-05:00

I get the urge to text you about 600 times a day. Should I keep doing this or is it making you mad? Are you ignoring all of the emails and texting? Do you wish I would just go away? I can't go away. You have unfinished business. You can't expect the rest of us to dissapear just because you want to.

Dr. Gault said to me today (I went to see him after he called to see how I was doing) that reality would set in for you. The reality of what a good relationship and life actually is. Do you know he has had hundreds of bi-polar patients over the years and I was the ONLY spouse who ever cared to come in to an appointment. That was shocking, but see where it got me. I hope that the reality is soon. I miss you so much. I know you want adventure, but does it have to be without me?

Mary - bring him home or at least let us make a home