introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K
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purge 6:41 p.m. - twenty fifth of april, 2005
"and so it is."~damien rice what's it been? weeks since i sat down and read anything besides a few pages before bed...months since i wrote anything at all...and ungodly amount of time since i wrote anything meaningful. toby left for school about a month ago. well, let's see...since we're keeping a sort of record (however full of long gaps it may be) for posterity...it has been 28 days. Precisely. 28 days, 12 hours, and 45 minutes, even more precisely. We packed up the girly red Sunfire rental car in the rain on the sunday night before. we were soaking wet and tired and it was late and he was to leave as i woke in the morning, but we lay together and spoke silently with our troubled breath and aching hearts.
i didn't expect it to go so well. the rain was relentless even by morning and he made a few more trips as i slept, quietly tiptoeing in to steal the alarm clock. his skin was freezing cold and his coat, puffy and parka-esque as it is offered my naked skin no warmth as he held me and hugged me goodbye. our kisses felt nothing like the kisses we'd kissed over the last few years but they didn't feel quite like the kisses we'd known before...as i stepped on airplanes to head home to my city.
he left, and it was like he was going to the store or off to work. i went about my morning ritual. i took a shower and climbed back into bed for a bit while my hair dried some. i got up again and got ready for work, taking my time in the grey of morning. i let my dog out and she looked at me as if to ask when it might stop raining. she hates to get wet in the rain.
i drove to work in our ricketty car. the seat next to me was empty but i sang along with the songs on the radio and flipped to the news when the music didn't fit with the weather.
i got through the day at work like any other, worrying more about going home to the empty house than anything.
when i got home, i did dishes. i cooked dinner for one, my old standy of macaroni and cheese, only different than years ago....now, i eat organic and it tastes better.
he called when he got in. he is going to culinary school in hyde park, new york. his dorm room looks out over the hudson river and he's nestled in the foothills of the catskills.
as a kid, i'd gone camping in the catskills and the adirondaks many times but i still can't picture exacty where he is. it's not like he's at his mothers in nashville. it's not like he's gone home for a visit.
and somehow, i got through the first night....and the subsequent nights since.
my friends, the few that still live in this city, have been wonderful. i've met with them each friday night with a new sort of religion. i miss my friends in other cities, still. his absence seems to magnifiy all that has moved on or has been forcibly taken from me.
this newfound independance has given me so many things already. with my parent's help, i've been able to secure a brand new car: a suzuki forenza wagon. it'll be a perfect road trip car with room for the dog in the back and the canoe on the top. i've procured a new computer, to keep myself entertained and to find some contact outside of this five room house. i've rekindled old friendships that i thought were lost and i've been seeing my old friend mark again. i have been very open to any experience that can come my way.
the weekends get planned away quickly and the days between go equally as fast...i am slipping into a routine that feels something like adulthood.
he calls after nine each night and we talk and i worry that we're running out of things to talk about but it isn't so. there is an ease with him that i have always loved and that i've only come to remember to appreciate again in his absence.
i sleep in the center of the bed, a gifted sleepnumber that is like sleeping on a cloud. i am split sentimental between having the whole thing to myself, one giant fluff of air and cotton...and still missing his body rising and falling in sleep. i wake each morning to the sunrise, the heavy winter blankets that we used for insulation taken down from the windows.
spring is here, though it snowed just yesterday, to everyone's irritation. nature just likes to show off, i think...all of those half-flakes falling over those little pink flowers from the cherry trees and the white dogwood...
so this will be a new chapter that i have nothing but motivation to document...
there are old habits i've broken and that i'm thankful to have put behind me, but there are those that i wish to reclaim and what better time have i to do just that?
the sleep hasn't been coming as easily as it did in the beginning because my head runs so fast with thoughts of things to do and things to tell him that i forgot and the things that must be taken care of. my teeth hurt from clenching them tightly in my sleep, says the dentist. my tongue is ridged with my bite when i wake in the morning and i poke it with my finger because it looks so unreal. my teeth are bruised inside from my set jaw...days go by without so much as a handful of spoken words to people for whom i don't care. a half hour phone conversation after nine at night isn't excercising the jaws and mouth that used to do their aerobics so fluidly. i forget my own voice and it startles me when i hear it again. so there's this...a mental downloading that i turned to in the past so ofteni've got the music playing softly and the amber light of my bedroom warming my mood (among other mood-altering options available to me...) and i have nothing in me but this need to express my thoughts again...to get it all out.
i've got to get it all out.
i've got to purge this head of mind so i can get some sleep.
xo, meowers.
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.what came before. - .what happened next.
a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017
baseball season to football season, abbreviated - 25 september 2017
the doodles - 11 july 2017
at arm's length - 4 july 2017
like a sea-mammal needs a bicycle - 30 may 2017
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