Crowbar In Hand

I read it again a second time. The bed creaked upstairs -- his habitual consumption of alcohol -- and my eyes skimmed in disbelief at the bile that his drunken hand had flung all over the pages. I don't and can't understand how a person can consistently blame other people, events, circumstances for the things in their life that are broken. No one's luck is that bad and I have only given you everything that I have to give, twice. My capacity for violence at times frightens me.

I just kept thinking that he doesn't even know how to spell. After the anger, of course. I just kept thinking, what a fucking worthless brain.

Your worst nightmare. And up I go, on final rites.

So You Get On With It.

It was 3:30 in the morning and a heavy footstep and clumsy fumbling fingers searching for zippers and buttons told me that he was at it again. His hot, damp breath on the back of my neck annoyed me enough to keep me awake and I had so much guilt about being annoyed by it that that kept me awake, too. Saddness enough for everyone. You don't remember things the way you used to.

The ice clinks into the glass and I don't want to go down with this ship.

I hate thinking back to other times; I hate the defense mechanism that wants me to look back, take stock, size up. I am the space in between wingbeats, I am no closer to figuring things out than I ever have been. What I am leaning toward believing is that there isn't anything to figure out. You just get on with it. One breath, then the next. You will have to figure out how to do this for yourself, too.

Not An Organ-Stop

We had a photo shoot scheduled for 5pm and when he came home at 4:45 and staggered I wondered, how would this have worked? Thank god they cancelled. That would have been embarrassing to try to explain.

How far

Does a life have to break

Quid Pro Quo

It's getting easier, to see myself going through with it. Every coin has its other side. I read this line last night: By being too kind I have wasted my life; they called me Saint Emily but that isn't the kind of praise I really wanted. "Why then," I thought, "do you live your entire life in that context?" I thought about Olympia and that night in the hotel room, and how it was hell. The whole next day and how I hated to look into your face. Thought about Lakewood and how I threw the coffee pot, but how I had imagined it hitting you and not the counter. Moving on is not tantamount to healing.

This has not been an easy week and Monday so far is not giving me solace.

My stomach is a pit of fire, brimstone. Why am I even considering making the sacrifice? It is too much to ask. See how the resentment has begun already. Life is the only thing that you have. You can't cut it up and reallocate it with the blind ambition that it will somehow help him. We each have our lives. You should not have to pay for the poor judgement and immaturity of someone else. If you do, you have chosen that for yourself. No one has done it to you. No fear, no regret; resolute action.

We Could Be So Good For Each Other

He gets this look in his eye that makes me think there is construction happening just beyond the glassy sheen; like an impenetrable wall is being erected, one that won't come down with words alone. There was nothing I could say, anyway. How do you argue with facts?

He came into the tomb and laid down next to me.

"I never imagined that I would have to think about leaving again. Putting a backpack on. Taking the mutt. I don't have anywhere to go. I don't even have a savings account." His face looked so old. I hate picking over those wounds because you get a feeling of complete and total helplessness in the pit of your stomach that makes you hate to be alive, makes you hate to have the capacity to love, to feel anything at all. The strong oak breaks and the reed that can bend will survive, but no one mentions what a pestilence it is to be that reed, how you will give your very life for that ability to bend. He is not what he looks like on paper. That's what I discovered.

And I wonder, would it even be a fit? I thought about Erie County and being in the courtroom with him, I thought about how small and scared and incredibly mortal he seemed. I remembered hearing him explain that he hadn't gotten the notice to appear in court because they still hadn't updated his address, I remembered how the judge scoffed. "There is no such thing as a good excuse." I listened to him give the new address on record, and later that day I stood next to him at the clerk's window while he filled out a change of address form. Thank god we got everything wrapped up that day because I checked this morning and the address they have on file for him is still the old one. It was two years ago that he filled out that form.

I looked him in the eyes and I said, "through good times and bad."

Life is choice, and change, and I don't remember ever feeling so bifurcated. He is not the moral twin of Midas but there is no possible way of explaining that without eliciting a placating look and an obvious question. And sometimes, the questions have already got answers. My fingerprints are on the blade that severed my foot. The thing to do now is to learn how to walk.

We Have A Barrel Full of Wine

"It's not about you, really. This is what I have to do." I have been practicing the ways to say it in my head. Eight hours of thinking about it and my spirit feels like a punching bag, like I've got too much carbonic acid pooling in my stomach. I don't want to have the conversation and I know there's no easy way to do it and the problem is that I have to. There are all of these thoughts swirling around the issue and the one I hate the most is: did I rush? I think about Nick and the timing of everything.

I am too quick to discount my own opinion of things. One day this career path is intriguing. The next day, that one. I need to work on winnowing down my thoughts and trusting my judgment. I am afraid, afraid, afraid. I am afraid that this is the only thing I'll love doing and that I'll never get the chance to try it because of the rips and tears in someone else's life. Fissures in the foundation. I am a tightrope walker with an ulcer and I vacillate wildly between raising the balance bar high overhead and just quitting the thing entirely. "Sorry that you were a complete and total idiot."

I remember one night being upstairs in the Feve with Anne and Libby, way before any of us were the people we are now. If possible I was less able to express myself back then. We were talking about possibility, and I remember feeling with a deterministic certainty that one day I would be a detective -- not that I had necessarily chosen that for myself at the time, but that I had realized that it was my destiny and had resolved myself to it. It was a very safe feeling. I was glad to have it. I put it in my back pocket and have never once forgotten it.

When did I become so wishy-washy?

This is what I would tell myself if I were one of the kids and had come to my office and sat in the chair in front of my desk, panic-eyed and bewildered:

Figure out what you need to do to be successful, and do it. Nothing is unattainable. If someone else was able to do it, so are you.

And I would believe it, whole-heartedly.