Author: Anonymous

I mean, yeah, it’s all well and good that you APPARENTLY “adore” me. According to one of the male support workers, but then you try to control me. I can only take you with a pinch of salt, because I don’t TRULY know how you feel about me. It’s nice that you “adore” me, but I did hear that from someone else’s mouth. It’s not like you said it to my face, so I’m never quite sure whether to believe that. What’s irks me, is that you saw me staying up with Rachel and Ben, and you then said to me “What are you still doing awake this time of night?”. Seriously? You’re not my parent. What gives you any right to question what time I go to bed, what time I get up? Etc. I’ve never had a friend say that to me. Ever. That was quite controlling of you. Nothing gives you the right to question my life choices. I never question you on what time you go to bed or anything, so it shouldn’t honestly matter yo you anyway. Why would it? This is what I can’t understand. It’s not normal for any friend to ask me those kind software questions. What’s it to you anyway? It’s got nothing to do with you. You never even apologized for it, and then you stopped talking to me altogether. You’re very confusing and very complicated. Have a nice life. Hell, you didn’t even bother inviting me to your birthday party in 2021. The one you told me I was invited to, but looking back on that, you didn’t give me much detail about it, so you can’t have even been that serious about inviting me. I don’t even know when your birthday is. And you don’t know when MY birthday is. So we can’t be proper friends. What gives? And wtf? Goodbye. 😕

In truth, I miss you more than life itself

But drinking won’t change it, and

Sleeping with this dude won’t change the facts.

I miss you more than any one else who has left my life

But I have learned there is no point in missing someone

Who doesn’t miss you back.

So what am I doing when I am left in shambles?

How do I fix the broken pieces?

How do I stop missing you?

My neighbors down at the dead end of the street invited me to one and it was yesterday and man, that was just wild. We drove about three hours into the middle of nowhere to this old farmhouse by a lake with big open fields as well as some wooded areas. There were maybe 25 or 30 people there that had driven in from all over the place. Apparently they do this twice a year, once in winter and once in summer.

Upon arrival and after exchanging hellos we all sat down around this big wooden picnic table for a lunch of beans on toast. The only thing to drink was grain alcohol mixed with pure rainwater. There was a fiddle band playing on a Bluetooth speaker and when they weren’t eating people were dancing around slapping their knees and hooting. They would also lean their heads back and let out wolf howls too. Eventually someone brought out a box with a bunch of colored bandanas, red yellow and green. You took a bandana and tied it around your arm, that was how we got separated into three roughly equal-sized teams.

Then the actual skunk-holler portion began. We learned that six skunks had been released on the property and it was up to us to catch them using nothing but our hands and our “skunk-hollerin’ technique” which is similar to the wolf howl but lower in pitch. The skunks had been trained to respond to this sound by spraying their skunk juice all over the place so it stunk to high heaven. When you eventually caught a skunk you made sure that it sprayed you directly in the face before you brought it back to the picnic area and dropped it into the holding pen. Whichever team brought in the most skunks won, and the prize was that you got to spend an hour in the pen with the agitated spraying skunks.

Even though I was a newbie I was actually pretty good at skunk-hollerin’ and I caught two of them on my own, and another member of our team caught two more. We won easily and each got to spend time in the pen with the agitated skunks. I got bitten several times and the skunk also sprayed into my open wounds. I made sure to hold my eyes and mouth wide open as much as I could in order to get the full experience. Man what a day!

You’re not them. You’ll never be them. The men I think I loved, the ones who had no interest in me, clearly. I wish you were. I wish my heart jumped at the sight of you, I wish you made me think thoughts of our future. I wish i felt something when you were with me. But I felt nothing, I felt numb, like they took all that from me. I couldn’t give myself to you, like I foolishly gave myself to them. Even though you were willing. Maybe that was the problem.

I understand why you’re so standoffish. It makes sense after all. No one could fault you, really. Don’t ever worry you’re making the wrong decision. Priorities, after all.

I know you love your Doggo. And we both know he’d love me more. Why? Because sitting next to him for hours on the couch, watching some animal planet or whatever just hippos and giraffes and kangaroos doing their thing for hours on end with constant nice pets on Doggo’s head, and belly too if he wants, there’s probably nothing I’d enjoy more other than sex with you.

And foodwise, I’m not feeding your Doggo the crap you probably buy. Think about how much you love Doggo, how he gets so excited EVERY SINGLE TIME you come home, no matter how long you’ve been gone. Now look at the kibbles you give him for his daily sustenance. I’m not saying you buy shitty dog food, I’m saying dog food is shitty. Just look at it. “Why don’t you eat it?” That’s what Doggo is thinking. If I’m making food for myself or us, I’m making food for Doggo as well. Hmmmm, tonight I’m feeling like chicken marsala with risotto. Guess what Doggo is getting: a nice unseasoned bowl of white rice with some small cuts of chicken breast, and I top it with a little peanut butter, cause you know, I love Doggo too. When I have some chips and salsa during the football games, Doggo, of course wearing our (as in me and Doggo’s) favorite team jersey, gets some nice carrot sticks that also clean his teeth!

All in all Doggo will love me more, it is a certainty. So I understand why you are so apprehensive towards me.

My kids had pneumonia for the last week and I’ve been housebound, at least I have some sweet toons. Keith F. is that you? Always sneaking up in unexpected places to remind me. It really is a wild frontier.

He was young, so how could he had been so fat. Nobody was *that* overweight in the ‘50s. And that excess of his never looked natural; with his bulbous face shaped by untrained, supple skin. For so long it made the kind of sense that didn’t, but the unease about it was largely unconscious since he wasn’t—and hadn’t ever been—around to make anyone really care about what exactly had been up with him. But within that something-is-off-here heft, he looked like he had been a decent and gentle man, like grandma had always said. And we didn’t have to share the genes of the asshole who came later—the one who we actually knew and for that reason did not get a funeral.

I never thought about it too much until she came home and said 30%. And then I still didn’t think about it through the ER visits, the precipitous surgeries collection, the marathon years of dialysis, the hopelessness of fixed incomes and never-worthy world views. And all of the medical people—except for the nephrologist—offered the generic treatment and contempt reserved for type II diabetics. Maybe it doesn’t really matter at the end of an organ’s service life; the aftermarket parts listing is the same for everyone. It changed her life all the same. It is what it is. Rather, it was what it was. And unlike with him, life could go on.

I’m not a good snowboarder. I’d just figured out the toe edge and pathetically toddled my way down the mountain thereon as people half my age lapped me time and again. I took one fall, two falls, three falls, to perhaps a total of six falls? The mountain had become sooooooo icy that day. I preferred to fall on my left side. So afterwards, that side was the one that hurt. But I managed to sleep. And the next night it still hurt. And I managed to sleep, get up, go to work, come home.

Then I couldn’t sleep.

I went in and pointed to the left flank. They took pictures. And that night I found out that in patient reporting, a radiologist’s interpretation and perspective is typically summarized by the word ‘unremarkable.’ But when it’s the first time ever hearing a doctor say “You have the most remarkable scan I’ve ever seen,” your 4-in-the-morning mind immediately questions whether you might have superpowers. The reality is, of course, far more boring.

“Did you know you have cysts? You ruptured several of them,” and the brief moment I had in the CT tube thinking ‘maybe this is when I find out for sure’ is then a premonition. A really boring one.

I came home and looked at late granddad’s picture.

Oh, it’s fluid.

God that must have been miserable.

I still think about you, and how you are doing. I miss the love we had for each other. It was very real. Although I’m in love with another man, I can’t help but think he doesn’t love me the way you did. He doesn’t love me as much as you did.

You and I would have never worked out even if we tried again. I still think the time I had with you, I was truly the happiest I have ever been. This is because I had loved you as much as you loved me.

It’s too late for us now, but maybe in another lifetime. I hope you’ve found your happiness.