I really wasted my extra day. I said happy birthday in my head to that girl Julie I used to work with. I did what I had to do, but bare minimum. We had a panel of practitioners chat about lawyer life today, and one abruptly told a story about a client who committed suicide. And then he started to cry a bit. Then I cried a bit.
Trauma is so weird, like instantly I get really affected by deaths on television too. Or when fictional characters start to act all sad, even in books, I can't take it. My friend wasn't in class the other day and I got really worried. I keep telling all my friends "you're not allowed to die, so wear some seatbelts, please". I'm not joking, they're not allowed to die right now. Nope.
I spoke with my mom and said I was so sad, I thought of just wanting to die too (like, once it's in your head, it's a sickly seductive idea), and then I said "of course I can never do that because of I couldn't do that to you." Then she told me "oh if you did that I'd probably just follow you there." Then what about my brother, my dad, etc. What about all the other fucking people!! I was thinking today, she must have known we'd all be devastated. That must be part of the calculation, but that what? We'd just get over it? That is was still the best option, all things considered? Fuck that shit.
I need to spend more time with horses again, or something. I accosted my neighbour's dog and started petting him insanely just now, the snow smacking all around us and my neighbour's irritation just like nothing. I wonder if it's like that when you have babies? I suppose people don't ask to pet your baby, but when they talk to it and stuff. Oh, I do that. Baby rabies. They should spay and neuter people too, maybe someday that will be cool. I bet we'd all be a little more relaxed. My cat was so chill without her uterus.
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
She took her own life
I mostly can't tolerate euphemisms. That makes me an asshole sometimes. While I was sponging myself with pools of self-absorption and pity during that last post? At almost the exact same moment, a friend of my youth was googling ways to die. She was reading about the Japanese, the painless lonely exits. The things you can do in a condo building, by yourself, where the firemen will find you and the rest of us only hear on facebook. The worst voicemails you can hear.
I was supposed to go to a party with her the night before she did it. I didn't call. She didn't call. This isn't totally unusual, but you never know which decision is the one that'll maybe change everything. If I called? And said, I'm not doing well. Would she have answered, I'm not doing well either. Maybe we would have had seven or eight martinis between us and told each other the wise things we only came up with in concert. Because she was so smart.
Because we had no secrets. There are fewer than three or four people in the whole wide grey sphere that know me, from every angle, all my bits. She did. I never knew anyone who saw things so clearly. If this is the friend that commits suicide, it's obviously a rupture in the way of everything.
I didn't know I could cry so much that my skin would hurt, on the outside of my face. That my neck would ache stiff and that someone I could call, I can never call again.
She really was the centre of a tiny galaxy. I could see everything spiralling out from her tiny wrists. Planets and moons bobbing lightly from her fingers. I wish you could have known her too. I wish to Christ she wasn't gone.
I used to worry about blackholes, and then one appeared, right in the centre of my chest. I miss her. She was there last week, she was there when I was sixteen. Telling me on my birthday to skip class with her, and go downtown for piercings. We did, me the navel, her the tongue. Watching each other fill up with tears, and happy on a June bus home.
It's a loss so limiting. It's the feeling when they cut too much from my hair, and my hands keep reaching for it, slipping off the empty space. It's that, but in my heart.
I was supposed to go to a party with her the night before she did it. I didn't call. She didn't call. This isn't totally unusual, but you never know which decision is the one that'll maybe change everything. If I called? And said, I'm not doing well. Would she have answered, I'm not doing well either. Maybe we would have had seven or eight martinis between us and told each other the wise things we only came up with in concert. Because she was so smart.
Because we had no secrets. There are fewer than three or four people in the whole wide grey sphere that know me, from every angle, all my bits. She did. I never knew anyone who saw things so clearly. If this is the friend that commits suicide, it's obviously a rupture in the way of everything.
I didn't know I could cry so much that my skin would hurt, on the outside of my face. That my neck would ache stiff and that someone I could call, I can never call again.
She really was the centre of a tiny galaxy. I could see everything spiralling out from her tiny wrists. Planets and moons bobbing lightly from her fingers. I wish you could have known her too. I wish to Christ she wasn't gone.
I used to worry about blackholes, and then one appeared, right in the centre of my chest. I miss her. She was there last week, she was there when I was sixteen. Telling me on my birthday to skip class with her, and go downtown for piercings. We did, me the navel, her the tongue. Watching each other fill up with tears, and happy on a June bus home.
It's a loss so limiting. It's the feeling when they cut too much from my hair, and my hands keep reaching for it, slipping off the empty space. It's that, but in my heart.
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Let the universe decide
I'm in a huge, immaculate space. Tasteful leather furnishings, TV's bigger than my car, shiny wood and rugs from Dubai. My parents' house, but they're in Mexico.
Also, my apartment has ants and I have to wait for them to die. There's snow everywhere, but ants in my apartment. Ew. Reason to move? Yes, but I'm going to Toronto for the summer anyway, and then after that who knows. And April I will be in California and/ or Europe. High class problems for some girl desperately trying to drown out the noise of impending mediocrity.
Updike said, what you don't do before thirty, you'll never do. What you have done, you'll do lots more. It's creepy to think this way when you're a few months shy of 27 and amazed to realize you have the same weird life you were always going to have...but not fun weird. Circuitous, ironically funny, ezcematous...
I found myself weirded up, calling my Nova Scotia friend who recently had a baby with a fisherman. A funny thing happened, where she was the one ending the call, promising to call me back later, and I was the one like, no! wait! more! What does that mean? Don't do drugs alone. Also, do I want a baby? I asked her "but, tell me more about you! what else are you up to?" Nothing else. Baby, baby, baby. But what about me? I'd be lying if I said more than "half my homework".
Like Jennifer Egan said, TIME IS A GOON. And my brilliant idea of running away to Ireland is dissolving, into the damp, the vanishing act of an ocean, and dog-shit sidewalk-- reality of everything.
Also, my apartment has ants and I have to wait for them to die. There's snow everywhere, but ants in my apartment. Ew. Reason to move? Yes, but I'm going to Toronto for the summer anyway, and then after that who knows. And April I will be in California and/ or Europe. High class problems for some girl desperately trying to drown out the noise of impending mediocrity.
Updike said, what you don't do before thirty, you'll never do. What you have done, you'll do lots more. It's creepy to think this way when you're a few months shy of 27 and amazed to realize you have the same weird life you were always going to have...but not fun weird. Circuitous, ironically funny, ezcematous...
I found myself weirded up, calling my Nova Scotia friend who recently had a baby with a fisherman. A funny thing happened, where she was the one ending the call, promising to call me back later, and I was the one like, no! wait! more! What does that mean? Don't do drugs alone. Also, do I want a baby? I asked her "but, tell me more about you! what else are you up to?" Nothing else. Baby, baby, baby. But what about me? I'd be lying if I said more than "half my homework".
Like Jennifer Egan said, TIME IS A GOON. And my brilliant idea of running away to Ireland is dissolving, into the damp, the vanishing act of an ocean, and dog-shit sidewalk-- reality of everything.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)