i haven’t been writing here

(surprise)

but today i need to write somewhere, and this will do.

burying my uncle was exhausting and overwhelming and scary.

he’s the first of his generation to die. now only my mom and her sister are left.

yesterday morning i sat on the floor next to my aunt sandy, his wife, and she hummed with adrenaline.

but i know that today, now that we’re all gone and unpacked and her house is empty and quiet

it’s going to hit her that her husband

the father of her four kids

her love since she was 15

is gone. lost and gone forever.

and she will sleep in their creaky bed in their cape cod house

and he won’t.

i feel sad for my mom, whose big brother is gone.

i feel devastated for his four kids, whose dad was taken so suddenly.

but mostly i feel heartbroken for sandy.

my mom, dad, sister, sister’s fiance, aunt, and uncle and i all flew home on the same plane yesterday.  JP texted me ‘fly safely.’ and i responded ‘i better, since most of the people i love are on this plane.’

we were all together.

and across the country, as sandy’s kids filter back into their lives, she will not be all together.  not at all.

ever since she died i am SO NERVOUS about the people in my life who have depression.

people aren’t that fragile.

people aren’t that fragile.

people aren’t that fragile.

i’m saying it until i believe it.

because one was.

she was that fragile.

i don’t know how to go back to the time before my suspension of disbelief imploded.

anytime we were driving

JF’s dad would signal every single turn with his hand.

turn right, point-point-point.

yes, i knew the way by heart.

but he would still signal, point-point-point, even into a garage i’d driven into a hundred times.

just in case.

…

i was just out with the dog and after a frustrating day, i was walking quickly.

maybe more quickly than was fair to his little legs.

he was lagging.

but the moment we got near things he recognized, he would split.

the park!  our street!  my car!

and i would look at the flash in front of me, a burst of white on a chilly night

and i admired his certainty about which way he wanted to go.

so i’m his girlfriend.

he asked, and i accepted.

so far this has been so easy

that now i’m scared.

(classic).

the higher you are, the farther you have to fall.

and right now, i’m up there.

will i let it change how i act with him?

no.

i like him, being with him, too much to let this create stormy waters.

but i have to wonder about human elasticity.

somewhere in the back of my mind i am secretly certain that there is a limit to the number of times you can be hurt

before you just stop.

completely.

unless

maybe

you get wiser, better at seeing things as being as big (or small) as they are.

after elliot when asked if i was ok i had to say yes, i always am.

but i’m tired of being ok after being hurt.

i wish i didn’t have reason to scrape it all back together after an implosion.

when he said, on the very last day of a very hard year, will you be my girlfriend?

i thought yes.

i will.

and i said it out loud.

today i’m angry. 

angry that i’m having to write here, instead of where i should be able to write, back at the old site.

angry that i don’t sound like myself in my writing right now.

because my writing hasn’t sounded like me since i quit the blog.

and i’m angry that the chief complaint by all of that crew of mean girls was that i am different in person than i was on my blog.

bullshit, friends.

i was nothing if not authentic on there.

and it doesn’t feel fair that the outlet was snatched from me.

i miss it.

and i miss the connectivity it represented.

and i miss trusting people as much as i did before this all happened!

and i resent the fact that the mean girls continue to blog and i can’t.

that is all.

nothing revolutionary.

it’s the definitive #whitegirlproblem

but there it is.

and that is authentic.

i would have so much more faith in humanity if people did not hock loogies on the street.

i saw JF last night.

…

it was a dream.

but it was very vivid!

in the dream he was how he was at the beginning.

i recognized the guy i fell in love with.

we were at his hospital, and he was parading me around.

and it felt safe.

and i was happy to see him.

and i was shocked when i woke up to find that it hadn’t happened at all.

dreams can always have the potential to be fairly ghostly

but this one was especially jarring because the guy i fell in love with

who i saw last night

disappeared years ago, never to be spotted again.

i’ve got to write

like i used to.

it doesn’t sound like me otherwise.

I have a lot to say and it feels like I have nowhere to say it.  I have this, I know, but I am not sure. I am not sure I am ready to do this. To write here. To put it out here.

2010 has been a hard, tiring year. When I look to where I was as 2010 began, it is a sad place. I don’t recognize myself from December 2009. I was still with JF. I felt trapped. I assumed I should just settle, just stay, give up on anything else.

2010 is the year I decided to go. Get up, put on shoes, walk out door, keep going, clear eyes looking forward NOT to the side NOT back. It might seem like this is the year I gave up on JF and me, but it’s not. That happened gradually from the moment we fell in love. The very moment is when it started to die, I can see that clearly now. This is the year I decided to actually be happy.

It’s not that easy, though.

I moved on and out.  Up, actually. But the pain of it is still there, in some measure. Ultimately it was a rejection. He fell out of love with me. It was only after he did that I followed suit. There is a loud part of me that thinks it is my fault he lost interest. Some flaw. Something insidious that will cause everything in the future to unravel in similar fashion.

We don’t talk. I haven’t heard his voice since July. I don’t miss him. But I AM curious. All the things he started during our years together-did he finish them? Did he follow through?

He wasn’t nice to me.  Period. Full stop. He put me 11th on a list of 11 things.  I did right by myself by leaving.

In 2011 I will not settle. And I will endeavor not to be scared of being hurt again. It’s a tall order but it’s a fresh year and such things are possible and attainable and right around the corner, maybe. So I keep moving.

He wants to go away in January.  Somewhere warm.

I like this.

I Initiated the somewhat scary “listen I’m not 22” conversation.  About what I want. He said I’ve been very clear, and he knows what my priorities are, and we may not be on the same exact page right this instant but we’re in the same chapter and he’s creeping up on me. And that feels good.