Category: To You

It started with something quirky. I see a stranger walking down the sidewalk from my kitchen window perch. He’s being suspicious, looking all around like he’s on guard. He takes his shirt off, and even though it’s a little warmer it’s definitely not shirtless weather warm and still mounds of snow well preserved by the chill. He looks like he’s getting ready to dispose of evidence, or maybe he’s a tweaker with a need to streak.

About an hour passes and then the shrieking starts from across the
complex way. Bad screaming, the kind when you know something is wrong I can make out some words like get back here, don’t leave me like this. The teens are just starting getting home from the high school, and I see a kid in a red hoodie running around frantically. He pulls out his phone and he’s saying there’s someone that needs medical attention. I’m about to go outside to see if I can help him but when I peak out I see the mail carrier lady is with him and I retreat because I have to go get my own kid in a matter of minutes.

As I do step out the door for the trek to school, I see a mess of first responders by our mailboxes. I fill the neighbors in and when I get back from the pickup there an officer close by that I flag down just to relay what I saw and heard. I’m not sure if there’s a correlation but it seems relevant enough to pass on for investigative purposes. As I’m talking to him, a crime scene investigator pulls up that the cop directs back through the maze of buildings.
I’d like to know what happened myself but this isn’t the space to pry. He gives me my leave and I go back to my little box to make snacks for the kid.

You know what you get from a life of trying to help people feel better? Just a steaming pile of ‘fuck you I was doing just fine on my own’. I don’t care anymore, this is all bullshit, no one appreciates me no matter what I do. I change peoples lives for the better on a daily basis but sorry I don’t have any tattoos or listen to any cool music. This is all so dumb.

I should’ve known better. Like literally the only advices about women my mother ever gave me: stay away from lesbians, they’re crazy. And you aren’t even gay, at least didn’t seem like that when you slept with me the first night we hung out (should’ve been a sign). But you are 100% batshit crazy. Like I don’t think you understand this consciously, but it’s like every single decision you make in life, your thought process is “what’s the most self destructive thing I can do rn?” And of course, like pretty much every other attractive woman I’ve ever met, you absolutely refuse to accept responsibility for any of your behavior, nothing is ever your fault. It’s just all lies and bullshit.

Am I perfect, certainly not. Could I have found a better way to react when I caught you back with your abusive ex when you were blowing me off for a couple weeks? Sure. Did I deserve for you to find every possible way to show how much you disrespect me because I wouldn’t beat you like you wanted me to? Why not, with your fucked up mentality. You would think some one who goes on and on about their history of being abused and all their trauma might actually have some sensitivity towards hurting others, but no not you. I tell you the things I have problems with, specifically trusting to women to not just use me up and move on like they always do, and you just constantly dismiss me because your pain is so much more special. You couldn’t even wait til you got what you needed from me, just another dumb decision on your part, before you start shacking up again with a guy WHO BROKE ONE OF YOUR BONES. And honestly he’s just so gross and ugly from all the meth anyways. Does numbers for my faltering confidence not that you ever gave a shit about me.

I was kind to you, patient with your immaturity and constant self-inflicted drama. I even practically adopted your dog and treated her better than even you do. I tried so many times to help you with the problems in your life, fixing our license, getting a stable housing situation, going back to school to get a degree. And this is how you repaid me, stabbing me in the back an ripping my heart out just to show what a “bad bitch” you are or whatever nonsense. No you’re just a bitch who’s responsible for all the miserable shit in your life. Why? It’s simple really.

What do you call someone who is constantly high on something and makes terrible decision when they are hi, which again is 24/7? A junkie. What do you call someone who sleeps with every guy (or girl) they get hi with? A whore. I thought you were just my little stoner princess i could save through giving you the kindness you were wrongfully deprived your whole life,

He said “I didn’t mean to love you less”
And she filled it up with “more.
More sunlight and dropped dreams
More anxiety and forced actions
More mercy and laborious forgiveness.
She became smaller than a speck
In a useless universe.
Soon she wasnt even a blimp
And he smiled because she made the universe
All about him.
She didn’t realize hers was swallowed whole
Thank goodness for other overarching themes.
More books. More chapters
Less monsters disguised as “men.”
Riveting days where the gloom came became boring days that did not relate to the quintessential purpose by the author.
She learned “more” was the right word
Just geared to the wrong
Amused character. All of a sudden she wanted more.
More sunlight. More wind
More peace. More inner, harmonious living.
Less of this silly rant
Less of counting her cyclic gains and losses.

Time catapults only a little ways.

The light dims in a life

Until there is no flame.

I’d rather see you smoldering

Than be left in the dark.

And I wonder where you fly to

Where are the crimson red floors now?

Who controls Fate and why did they decimate

My happiness?

Where do you cry to when all the world

Feels large and funny and your choices

So microscopic and fleeting?

Why did you leave me here to rot?

Time isn’t generous to anyone.

I miss your voice

I miss something you gladly wanted to get rid of.

So short is our arrival onto earth.

We barely picked our path

Before Death mocks us at

The doorstep of Life.

All we have is composed of nows

And those get thinner by

The hands of God.

The light vanishes one night.

Gone are the flames.

Didn’t you want to see me become ash?

I’m already riddled with embers.

of course i do. of course i do. of course of course but its been a year. i want to move on. i dont want to. i wanted this and i got it and now what. how could you. of course of course of course. a year too late. of course

I locked myself out of the house on the way to school this morning. Definitely not the first time, but it’s been awhile and it’s the first for a middle of winter fuck up like this.
My neighbor let’s me in the garage but her ladders to short to get to the balcony. And even if it was tall enough, I make another jarring discovery. The balcony is quite literally falling apart and on the verge of collapse from wood rot.

I gotta call in a favor from the husband and he makes the 45 minute drive back home for me. To his credit , he’s not mean or angry. I’ve had many other run ins with dad’s or a partner or two where I’d have something like this happen and they start screaming at me about all the inconvenience I bring to their lives, it’s pretty shifty. Anyway, my man does me a solid here by not making me feel bad, so I do my best to make up for the time loss by emailing hoa while I’m waiting in the garage. Because the balcony is external, they cover repairs. The lady gets back to me immediately saying to keep off of it completely and she’s got the work order taken care of, so silver lining there.
I do some deep cleaning to make sure the place is extra pretty for later, and tonight I’m cooking up a thank you steak for the guy that helped me out without making me feel like a failure at life for needing it.

I gave up. It was my third time falling hard that day already and it wasn’t even 8. The first, trying to separate a cat fight and slipped and falling on my back. Then again walking the kid to school on ice covered sidewalks that had been neglected after the last snow. The kid and I went down together, then no sooner had I stood up I went flying back to the ground face first, cracking my jaw on the ice and concrete. I’m howling in pain and struggling to stand. We’re a half block from the house and I’m giving up on the day. My phone is shattered, I’m hoping I didn’t break my ribs again and even though I felt them shift in the fall, my face definitely took the greater punishment this round. No blood though, thankfully.
We retreat to the house where I’m better able to assess how bad I got beat up. (Still not as bad as the stairs) I email the school and my kids teacher and lament about my lack grace.

I get a little respite over the weekend when my folks come up so my husband and I can attend his company holiday party. It’s at the luxury Gaylord Convention center and hotel. The one in Florida has a pirate ship inside, the one out here is themed more around our terrain and has a big waterfall, mountain cave and and train inside. It’s daunting to approach if you’ve never been to one before. Larger than Estes for sure.

An open bar and some delicious fancy food was just what I needed to take the edge off of my bruised ego and body. I always feel a little awkward but by this point in my husband’s work career I’ve done a pretty good job of making friends with the wives and remembering names. We catch up a little in the cycling conversations before being seated at our little round tables for the feast. Everyone else is wearing button up shirts and black dresses, I didn’t get the memo. I went as gaudy as possible for our dress, ordering the hubs a custom rammstein sweater, and myself a the magnificent gremlins sweater that you’ll have a hard time getting me out of this season
A pleasant evening is punctuated with me getting licked cleaner than the plates .
It’s nice to have a little respite after the last few days, especially when we don’t have to pay for it.

It started off as frustration but ended up in sadness, as I watched the bread drying out of the bread bin, and the rice drying out aside of the kitchen stove. Ive reminded my parents every other day to keep the bread in the bread bin, or to put the food in a container inside the fridge so it doesn’t dry and last longer.

As I see the food aging faster as it sits outside it reminded me my parents life is just coming to an end and there is no way to preserve them better to last longer. Their time is going to end up sooner or later and aging is revealing itself more and more in them each time. As I washed the dishes really angry and I realize this, my mood swings from being extremely angry at them to being sad, not only because they will leave this plain soon, but by the fact that im so hard on them.

I have to understand that my mom and pops arent in their 30s anymore, and that now I have to be the babysitter behind them making sure they close the door shut, turn the lights off, close the garage door, don’t leave the stove lit.

I have to change my perspective on them since today for I will not see their wrongdoings as something extremely bad but just another “oopsie”. I’m pretty sure I did lot of those when I was young, and up til my mid 20s I remember I was tornado. The tables have just turned, that is it. They are becoming babies and I have to take care of them. Mom, pops, I love you.

Sincerely
Your son.

If I could change anything about myself it would be

My mental illness.

If I didn’t have it

I’d probably still want children.

I’d still believe in marriage.

I wouldn’t have said my first two I love you’s while sick.

I’d have higher self esteem.

I wouldn’t do strange things.

I wouldn’t have wanted to die so much after recovering.

I would live more recklessly.

I would feel absolutely free.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been fired.

Maybe you would have loved me.

Maybe I would have gotten my graduate school degree.

Maybe I would have better self esteem.

If only, if only.