My Brain On Crack
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What Do You Do When You Just Want To Die?
Right now, in this moment, I want to die. While this isn’t purely hypothetical, please don’t freak out. Don’t refer me to a suicide hotline. Don’t tell me I need counseling. Because baby, I can guarantee you 100 percent that I am not the only person in the Universe who feels this way — at least sometimes. Momentarily. But I am one of a handful who is willing to talk about it. It wasn’t long ago that I first began really embracing this feeling when it comes up. Emotions, to me, are waves. They come, they go, they move through and around and beyond me. Ripples in a pond. Yeah,…
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Dear Anne LaMott
DISCLOSURE: I suspect I, uh, stole the idea for writing a letter to Anne LaMott from Andy Raskin. Oh, you don’t know Andy Raskin? I didn’t either until about a week ago when his book The Ramen King and I went home with me from the library. I suppose I would have known him if I still listened to NPR — where, apparently, Andy Raskin talks about things — but I haven’t listened to NPR since at least 2005, and in fact the listening to NPR, especially Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (though I saw the movie — was that cheating?) was ceded to the Other Side in my…
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Sitting Shiva
They say that caring for the dead body of a loved one is the most intimate act a human can perform. ~~~~ I drove home in silence today. It was two hours of after-airport surreality, the shotgun seat and the back seat now oddly silent after having been so full for the last ten days. I came home to the smell of bacon frying, the love of a man wafting to greet me at the front door, trying to fill the holes in my heart left vacant by the two who now occupied seats 27A and 27B headed back to humid-hell Pennsylvania after ten days of forest trails and waterside…
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Boxes
There’s a box I live in sometimes. My box is just my size. Like a casket. I lie inside it, feeling its smooth wooden sides, feeling safe. Inside my box it’s just me. I was nine when I found the box. Every night I’d lie awake inside it, breathing carefully through the air holes someone had put in it, feeling the rocking motion of the waves. Every night I’d lie inside the box set adrift on the ocean, always landing on an island where there was an evil wizard who did unspeakable things to me. The box lasted at least through fifth grade. That was the year my stomach hurt…
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Pink
I have a new thing for pink. No idea where this comes from. For years, pink was right up there as Most Hated Color in the Universe. Possibly because I was surrounded by it: my walls were an insipid shade of pastel pink, my ruffled bedspread was sort of a washed-out salmon color, and even my rug was pink. There’s a photo of me as a wee thing, lying on that pink rug, nose in a book, wearing something plaid. Oh yes, 1970 was a great year for interior design. Pink clothes were out. I allowed my body to be clad in drab plaidish kneelength dresses with Peter Pan collars,…
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Crisis Of Identity
I’ve been blogging here for nearly a year, and elsewhere three years before that. In this past year I’ve used this space mainly as I pleased, which is of course the whole hyper self-aware point of blogging. The 365 project was a massive FAIL. I should know better than to attempt to do anything regularly other than excrete, and you would probably rather I not mention my excretions in any sort of detail. Fine, we have a deal on that. I’m not too worried about OMG-what-should-I-do-with-this-blog? because, after all, there are only three of you reading it. That’s fine. It’s for me, anyway. Mine, all mine, except in this oddly…
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The Great Raw Experiment: Day Something Something
Let’s just say we’ve been on and off the Raw Wagon, shall we? And by “we” I mean me, and by “off the wagon” I mean WAY off, like Oreos, a tasty but absurd conglomeration of the associated evils of trans-fats and high-fructose corn syrup if I’ve ever heard of one, Oreos that haven’t crossed my threshold nor passed my lips for probably nigh unto five years, but that somehow needed to be eaten rather than all those sugar snap peas, radishes, and Rainier cherries I somehow passed by. Oh, and here’s another tidbit of absurdity: despite feeling rather awesome eating only raw foods, I managed these past couple of…
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Letting The Voices Take Over
It’s not often that we get to know, right at the moment it is happening, that the moment has come after which life will never be the same again. I live a dramatic on-the-surface life (juxtaposed with the under-the-surface what’s-she-going-to-do-next aspect, but we’ll leave that one under the surface for now, because this is my blog and I can show you what I want to, and hell, do you actually know what percentage of this (if any) is completely made up?) so I have those moments often. The first one that I recall with absolute certainty happened in the back-room semi-office where I did my work and spied on my…
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Wandering, Times Three
At 24, on weekends (when I had them off) for a while, I took to walking through the too-large, too-empty colorless high-ceilinged rooms of my new house, walking slowly past the new furniture, wondering where my soul had gone. Time stretched into frightening nothingness and it seemed that by walking — slowly, endlessly walking — I could somehow fill that void. It’s easy to find ways to fill up the void. Having a job that you take home nights and weekends, every night and every weekend. Having children. Then having more. Letting life revolve around you, propelling you round and round, always in a different direction, any direction. There are…
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Where I’ve Been Lately
Yeah, I’ve sort of missed blogging, but I’ve been busy. It’s this alternate-reality thing. No, really. A few weeks ago I discovered I can slip into this other form of reality. It’s way cool and yet sort of frightening at once, so of course I like it, I’m fascinated by it, and I can’t wait to do it again slash never want to do it again. So this is what happened: Matthew put on some music, and I became immobile. Went somewhere else. Spent an hour looking up at the skylight and the trees and whatever other little slice of outside I could see, the rain dripping on the glass…