eeyore. august 7th.

i haven't been writing.

and what is ironic is that yesterday, while holding eight seats for my sister's graduation, i took the fresh blank journal i bought specifically for the purpose of starting over, putting that boy behind me, and having pages to fill in florida, and i took at stab at a first entry.

i got one page into it, front only, before my family showed up to take their saved seats. an hour to write a page?

because i don't succeed at putting things behind me (or even aside), that page was all about him. and after the ceremony, and after the subsequent party, i took it outside with me and wrote the backside of the page in the dark on my parents' porch. and then got into bed, and made it a few lines into the second page.

my eyes were tired, i wasn't nearly finished, but i gave up. i had nothing bright to say anyways, so i wasn't that disappointed in myself. it's hard work, trying to give up on something on paper. trying to give up on having hope in a physical way. trying to give up on someone.

and i closed the journal, turned off the light, and put on my sleep mask around one. and laying in forced blackness, i thought about returning to my house, which i still debate mentally referring to as my 'home'. and thought about how aubree's bike is going to be standing in the dining room, where it lives when she's not riding it. and i thought about how it's going to be a psych out. that it's not that she beat me home from work and parked her bike there. that it's going to collect dust when there's a lack of out-of-town visitors.

i wondered how many times i'd see her bike and call upstairs to see what she was doing. and i wondered how many times i'd look for her without thinking about what i was doing.

that succession of thoughts made me cry, tears welling up underneath my sleep mask. and i stubbornly didn't move the mask to wipe them away, and went to sleep instead.


the point of the story is, at the halfway point in my vacation, it's not that i want to stay here, it's that i don't want to go back.


i started back with my worrying a couple days ago. the first few days, i bragged that i wasn't worrying, didn't have to pop a pill, and didn't resort to drinking three beers a day. things were easy, and i appreciated the lack of stress.

my only worry then was how on earth i was going to last two whole weeks here.


but around thursday, i think, work worries crept back, and i didn't sleep well for two nights.

and last night, after writing for the first time in about a week, i guess it dredged up enough subconsciously to make me dream of that boy, which has really only happened a couple times since i met him.

it wasn't a nightmare, but it was a bad dream. he had withered into a frame consisting of skin and bones, which isn't far from what he's made up of. he agreed to see me, and we spent time separated physically, as friends. but at a point, i came up behind him to kiss the back of his neck while hugging him from behind, when the separation became more than i was comfortable with, when i couldn't be 'just friends', and his neck was all skin and tendons, and i woke up.

i woke up sad, in an empty bed, because aubree didn't sleep with me last night, and fell back asleep to have a bad dream about trying to catch a flight on southwest, where the lady at the counter tagged my bag that was a carryon, that had everything i needed in it, and had to re-sort everything instead of just taking the tag off. and while doing that, realized that i'd parked in short term parking, and that my bill would be $8000 if i didn't move my car before leaving town. wendy was in it, catching a flight before me with our old coworker from boston, and was busy being mad that i'm not making the trip to see her for her fortieth birthday as i'd promised, because i spent all of my vacation for the year between april and august this time.


i got out of bed to make coffee, and when i climbed back in, to wait until it was done brewing, i had a good cry out of nowhere.


today is supposed to be a fun day. we're going to my cousin's lake house to have fun in the sun, with beer, i've looked forward to it the whole time i've been here.

and it reminds me of last summer, the fourth of july, when kit was there with me, and spent the day with us before flying back to phila. last summer was so much fun. it was the best summer since the go-to summer of age nineteen.

i wanted this summer to be that way. and thinking that it would top it, when i met that boy and made all those plans, along with the plans to come home and try for a round two repeater. it has made this trip feel so much further from that.


this trip, the trip filled with nursing home visits, and aging grandparents, a funeral thrown into the mix, and only happily accented with aubree's graduation yesterday, has made me muted and sad, and not wanting to talk about it to anyone, or write about it for everyone.

it's made me check out, silent and heady. and when aubree's around, it is punctuated with laughing and giggle fits, but otherwise not so much.


getting away to nina's for two days and a night is going to be something that makes me feel better. and the drive back to phila with brownies is going to be fantastic, catching up by talking incessantly and sharing music for the better part of a day. but i still worry about the drive, and how we're going to make it back, and how i can possibly cram everything awesome about my city into one and a half short worn out from driving back days.

i hope she has fun. it's my goal to make it so.


this morning is quiet. everyone is at church except for me. and it makes me feel like an awful daughter. i just didn't have it in me, and i woke up too late to make it anyway. church feels like some great conspiracy that i want no part of. mass mindcontrol that makes me sad for my family and the majority of their friends, for getting sucked in, and putting so much time and money and energy into it, and furthering the cause of spreading hate and intolerance about people who don't line their lives up with their version of what will get them into heaven.


on the porch, writing now, the only sounds are a lawn mower in the distance, a plane flying overhead, and the low hum of the ceiling fan that draws the smoke of two cigarettes away from me and pushes the smell of stale butts in an ashtray closer to me.


i do feel a little better after a shower, but maybe that's because aubree came home, and pointed to the spot on the couch next to her, for me to sit in.

and i sat, and said, 'what is it?'

and she put her leg against mine and said, 'i just needed to touch you. it's been too long.'

oh, my sister. it's a big relief that she insinuates she'll be back to my house in a month or two. but like the mindfuck with the boy, i'm afraid she'll do the smarter thing, and work here and stay here. because it's what i did to my family. getting their hopes up that i'd return, and disappointing them epically.


all i want to listen to is jose gonzalez. because his sad voice and sad songs about love lost make me think about his problems instead of mine.

it's strange to me that, despite all those in-love feelings i was having so briefly, i don't feel love for him. i would have, i know. it was just a matter of time. i'm glad that i wasn't there, or this would be next to impossible to try to kick.

i'm disappointed that i can't leave that broken part of my heart here with my family and just get over it. i simply cannot go back to cry-all-day-in-bed tea when i return. i'm going to need hobbies and a set of friends who will take me out of my bed and into society, so i can fake it publicly, until i finally feel better about things.


my sister had a good cry on the way to graduation yesterday, and seeing her cry made me cry a little. we were talking about our own mortality, and that of our friends and family, thinking about the funeral, and whose will be next. what we want when we die, and what would be said about us when we do. that's never a good thing to think about, but it didn't bother me so much.

what bothers me more is believing fully that the next trip home will be an unplanned one. that someone will die before i come home for my brother's wedding in january. that i can't come home for christmas like i did last year.

it's just a feeling. from being overwhelmed with people saying they want to die while i'm sitting next to them.

what did bother me about thinking about my own mortality was that i don't know what my funeral would be like. i don't want a religious 'homecoming' sendoff. and i don't know anyone who would speak at my funeral. i wouldn't want one. i want to be burnt into ashes. and in lieu of a $10k funeral, i'd want everyone to go to paris instead, and toss my ashes over there. or some other place i say i'd like to go, but probably won't make it to in my lifetime.

or better yet, turn me into a diamond and wear me. but that's too sad.

but yeah. i can't imagine what would happen. and i guess we aren't supposed to when we're 33 years old. but shit happens. and let's face it... i lay in the sun as much as i can, smoke half a pack a day, drink like a fish, and don't eat vegetables. at the rate i'm going, it won't be too far off. and i have no will to change my deadly ways, so there's that.

my recent setback makes me think i'll never find that special one again. someone so ideally matched. the one i belong with. my partner for life. the one to procreate and get old with. i still think about the odds of finding it once, but not having it. finding it a second time, and it being stolen from me before i even got to enjoy it fully. is the third time the charm? will i be 60 when i find it again? or 45?


i had to hold a baby again. a three month old. and i had to leave the room again. to cry a little for taking away my mom's hopes of becoming a grandparent. again. it's a maddening cycle. at least it only crops up once or twice a year. i'm grateful for that. who's to say if i'd even want it or have it, even if the possibility arose? i'm not, that's for sure. not now anyway. and the way i see it, i've got about seven years to pull it together and luck out.


this feels like writing fiction, it's a different style than i ever use, and i don't know why or where it's coming from. but i'm pretty much over it. and you probably are, too.

today was a three beer day. and i feel whatever about it. i feel whatever about everything.

maybe what i miss most from the prospect is the lust for life that iggy sang about all those years ago. feeling like there's so much i want to do and see and learn and experience. i had it for a minute. and that is gone from me now.

for now, i'll take a two day with my best friend, a few more days with my sister, a road trip with a dear rekindled friend, and the ebb and flow of a working existence after all of that is a thing of the past. beyond that, i could give a shit. and wish time away, in hopes that it brings me one day closer to a more final finality with that boy who is so grown up and good that he tells me he won't put me through his own underlying eeyore.

i wish he was selfish and careless sometimes. and much less silent. even though i'm supposed to not be waiting. for a response. or for anything else.