August 2011
but I think it’s just aging and too much sitting in a chair every day. I woke up with twinges, and the walk to and from school to drop Lila off was mostly fine, but there were warning pings. Then I went food shopping, and when I lifted the box of cat litter into the cart, I almost fell on my face. Loading all of the bags into the truck was murder, and I had to stop three times to sit. When I got home, I had to get Tyler to unload because just lifting the bag with the loaf of bread and bag of corn chips was agony. Thank goodness he wasn’t working today, or we’d have some spoiled milk and a stinky truck by now.
Still, we gotta eat and I have everything to make red pepper–piñon enchiladas from The Border Cookbook, including locally grown poblanos, corn, zucchini, and yeah, I’m an idiot. If you hear screaming and crying on your way through Ohio, Michele and Lisa, it’s just me rolling tortillas and wishing for stronger drugs.
with a bag of frozen lima beans shoved down the back of my jeans, icing my royally horked lower back. I can’t stand up straight at all right now, and am still too hungover from Saturday’s tequilafest to even think about a shot of anything to kill the pain. I’m really hoping the Vicodin in the cabinet from three years ago still has a little oomph left in it, because this hurts so fucking bad and ibuprofen isn’t touching the pain.
I want ALL of the ice cream and hot caramel and hot fudge and toasted almonds and JIMMIES.
NOW.
I want something. It’s causing me to grind my teeth and squint my eyes. My thighs feel cold and disconnected from the rest of my body. Longing is such a strange thing, especially when you can’t give what you’re longing for a name. It’s interesting to watch, but I’m afraid to go to the dentist.
So frustrated I actually just said “thank you so much for sucking every last little ounce of joy out of the day,” to my eight year-old.
And I meant it.
STEVE JOBS, in a commencement address at Stanford, 2005.
(via the Wall Street Journal)
Maybe it’s school starting tomorrow. Maybe it’s the smell of burning in the air every evening. Maybe it’s how little time I gave to my writing this summer. Probably it’s all of that and more, but the upshot is I am one melancholy mufudder right now. I need a good cry and a month alone. Guess which one is more feasible?
Why am I still awake?
Ran into an old friend tonight and we hugged. I now apparently need to burn myself down to get the cheesy cologne stank off of me. My head is killing from the reek. WTF, old friend.
Aimee Mann ~ This is How it Goes ~ Lost in Space
In the year before I physically left, he stayed up every night in the home office, drinking between 8-10 bottles of Bass Ale and surfing the internet for Maude only knows what. Our recycle bin was always overflowing with stinking brown bottles. I tried to sleep in the bedroom next door, a pillow pressed against my ear to block out the sound of his fingers stabbing at the keys with a violence that gives me pause now. I lay there in a fog of fear and self-loathing. I watched and waited, listening always for a syllable of forgiveness.
That year is his yeasty, sad and angry breath that filled the house. It’s scrounging in the empty pantry of my heart for crumbs of love to feed to our son. It’s longing for space enough to exhale without being told that my slightest expansion is an intrusion and an insult. It’s a constant fear of words and inflection. Accusation below the surface of every conversation. It’s aching for another man in another state who had never (and still has never) spoken a cruel word to me. Who wanted to learn about himself in the place where our shadows overlapped. Who still does.
I bought this album sometime after I moved into my own apartment. The drugs she sings about are the beer and the shame, the anger and the resentment that I now only had to deal with during drop-off and pickup. The hateful words during our divorce mediation. The late-night phone calls when he’d had so much to drink he would call me and cry. I know you made the right choice, why would you want to be with me, I’m so lost. But I hate you for it. I will never forgive you. Ty will never forgive you. I’m not a bad person. Don’t ever say I’m like your father - I’m nothing like him. I’m so much better than you are. I didn’t cheat. I wish I never met you. So much better not having to live inside his energy every day. Still, its effect lingered.
I listened to this song a million times as I worked on letting go of my feelings of guilt for loving another man, and shame for not ignoring my feelings and putting my head down and plowing through to make that marriage healthier. Anger at myself for listening to his awful words more than once. For taking them in at all. For not shutting it down sooner. For believing any of it for even a second.
This is how it goes
You’ll get angry at yourself
And think you can think of something else
And I’ll hear the clanging of the bells
Cause I can’t stop you baby
Cause I don’t have a bribery in place
No bright shining surface to my face
So I won’t go near the market place
With what I’m selling lately
Cause this is how it goes
Three hours of tossing and turning in bed this morning has me feeling like my eyeballs are glazed with sand. If only I had used that time to take care of the dozen things I lay there worrying about, maybe I’d feel less monkey on my back.
