Dear K-
I apologize for my lack-luster performance at New Year’s. The only reason I really even bothered to venture out that evening was to say hello to you and also so I wouldn’t be “that girl” who spent her New Year’s Eve tucked under a comforter on her futon watching television by herself. In my defense, I did feel fairly miserable, with the lymph nodes in my neck swollen like golf balls and voice that rasped in and out of audition, but I still wanted to make an appearance. I was interested to see how I would get along with people of my past.
In honesty, I discovered that I don’t get along well, or at least not as well as I perhaps used to socialize with these friends. Granted, we haven’t seen each other in a long time, we’ve all moved along to our various new lives, and I was understandably not at my best. But still, I felt out of place. Not terribly or uncomfortably so, but I could tell that something just wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, except possibly my own. Even so, it was nice to have the night out and see old acquaintances, especially you. I could have spent seventy-five dollars on cover to get into a crowded bar where I knew no one’s name and wouldn’t remember anyone regardless, but I had a much better time playing board games in a cluttered apartment with a group of familiars.
Things have been better here. Having returned to the city I feel much better. Illinois brought only insomnia and self-imposed introversion. I am still physically unwell but emotionally much better, slowly recovering a bit more with each day. Not only have there been many friends in town to socialize with but I have actually felt compelled to go out and meet with them. It has been enjoyable.
Unfortunately, with all this new-found excitement there looms the knowledge that the winter intercession is creeping to a close, and soon I will return to my coursework and once again be lost to the world.
Ephemerally,
-K
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Hold Up
Listen lady,
I will prove to you that even in these dark and desperate depths of winter there is still hope for the new. Hope for the future is essential. Stay in St Louis for New Years, and we will meet up. And I will provide you with all the hope and whiskey rants you'll need to get through and over this jackass who is ignoring you.
Love,
K
I will prove to you that even in these dark and desperate depths of winter there is still hope for the new. Hope for the future is essential. Stay in St Louis for New Years, and we will meet up. And I will provide you with all the hope and whiskey rants you'll need to get through and over this jackass who is ignoring you.
Love,
K
Thursday, December 22, 2011
sobriety up and left
Dear K-
He hasn’t kissed me since the day we met. I have an awful habit of pursuing those whom have no interest in me. Perhaps he doesn’t find me physically attractive, or perhaps I bore him. I’ve seen the way his eyes get dull when I try to tell a story or relate a facet of my life. He hardly spares a kind word my way beyond his usual ribbing. Why do I continue to waste my time and energy on unhealthy pursuits?
I have no reason to be so melancholy about such frivolous affairs. My mother writes to tell me that an old acquaintance has died. She pleads with me to come home to attend the funeral, but I can’t bring myself to leave this city. I spend the afternoon alone in my apartment, drinking whiskey and wondering what keeps me here. Is it the possibility that he may call, may suddenly change his ways and invite me out with him? Or am I simply avoiding the depressing task of having to confront mortality. Memento mori. Once they told me I had two weeks to live. Sometimes I am reminded of that fact when I feel my heart go faint in my chest.
So why am I still here, drinking manhattans by myself in a lonely apartment and waiting? I shake like a willow whenever I hear my phone ring. Every year seems to end the same way- with a buildup of hopes and wishes for my social life to succeed, and then every year it comes crashing down like the ball in Times Square. I have yet to have a “good” New Years Eve. For 2012 I am not holding my breath.
I am going to leave tomorrow.
-K
He hasn’t kissed me since the day we met. I have an awful habit of pursuing those whom have no interest in me. Perhaps he doesn’t find me physically attractive, or perhaps I bore him. I’ve seen the way his eyes get dull when I try to tell a story or relate a facet of my life. He hardly spares a kind word my way beyond his usual ribbing. Why do I continue to waste my time and energy on unhealthy pursuits?
I have no reason to be so melancholy about such frivolous affairs. My mother writes to tell me that an old acquaintance has died. She pleads with me to come home to attend the funeral, but I can’t bring myself to leave this city. I spend the afternoon alone in my apartment, drinking whiskey and wondering what keeps me here. Is it the possibility that he may call, may suddenly change his ways and invite me out with him? Or am I simply avoiding the depressing task of having to confront mortality. Memento mori. Once they told me I had two weeks to live. Sometimes I am reminded of that fact when I feel my heart go faint in my chest.
So why am I still here, drinking manhattans by myself in a lonely apartment and waiting? I shake like a willow whenever I hear my phone ring. Every year seems to end the same way- with a buildup of hopes and wishes for my social life to succeed, and then every year it comes crashing down like the ball in Times Square. I have yet to have a “good” New Years Eve. For 2012 I am not holding my breath.
I am going to leave tomorrow.
-K
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Get Wherever We're Going Before Me
Dear K,
My life isn't the great romance I thought it was going to be. I have all these quiet moments of loneliness and doubt. I've spent the last couple of weeks going through the motions. Working hard, eating frozen dinners, taking long baths and reading books I've read a hundred times. Some days I don't talk to anyone, except for the odd manager at work who comes over to ask how I am doing.
Oh, but then there are those nights. Those cold frozen nights when the stars come right down to our feet. Our breath hangs just above our heads, stopped by the cold, afraid to get too far away from us. That's the sort of night I like best, quiet, still, and cold. If there was a God, I would think that he spent a lot of time in a quiet still cold place before he made the world. It is the walk from your car to the party. All your friends are waiting and you know you'll have a good time and smile and tell old stories and make new memories, but there is that moment out in the cold, when you see them all inside together and they look complete without you. In the cold air you can hear their voices echoing. That moment is bliss, simple melancholy bliss. It is the clarinet's glissando at the start of Gershwin's Rhapsody and it is melancholy Shostakovich violin, calling out to the future.
When I see you in two weeks, not even two weeks, I will fill the room with my laughter. I will burst the joints at their seems, and we will tell stories and make new memories, if we feel like it we'll dance. But do me a favor and get wherever we're going before me.
Yours,
K
My life isn't the great romance I thought it was going to be. I have all these quiet moments of loneliness and doubt. I've spent the last couple of weeks going through the motions. Working hard, eating frozen dinners, taking long baths and reading books I've read a hundred times. Some days I don't talk to anyone, except for the odd manager at work who comes over to ask how I am doing.
Oh, but then there are those nights. Those cold frozen nights when the stars come right down to our feet. Our breath hangs just above our heads, stopped by the cold, afraid to get too far away from us. That's the sort of night I like best, quiet, still, and cold. If there was a God, I would think that he spent a lot of time in a quiet still cold place before he made the world. It is the walk from your car to the party. All your friends are waiting and you know you'll have a good time and smile and tell old stories and make new memories, but there is that moment out in the cold, when you see them all inside together and they look complete without you. In the cold air you can hear their voices echoing. That moment is bliss, simple melancholy bliss. It is the clarinet's glissando at the start of Gershwin's Rhapsody and it is melancholy Shostakovich violin, calling out to the future.
When I see you in two weeks, not even two weeks, I will fill the room with my laughter. I will burst the joints at their seems, and we will tell stories and make new memories, if we feel like it we'll dance. But do me a favor and get wherever we're going before me.
Yours,
K
broadripple is burning
Dear K-
I faded with the winter, once again. I spent endless hours in miserably mainstream coffee shops, nursing expensive yet unsatisfying quantities of coffee while hammering my brain senseless with the accumulated knowledge of an entire semester. It was lonely and I'm not sure how many more weeks I can spend in such a state.
But now I'm at break and just as lonely. So does it really get any better? No. The answer is no. I'm too busy shunning society during the semester just so I can eek by with satisfactory grades that when I finally do come to a period where I do have time available for socialization, no one is there for me. And so I get up in the morning and go to work, come home and night and watch television until I fall asleep, praying the next day will bring more adventure, friends, excitement, but knowing deep down that it won't ever change.
One of the doctor's I work for has a laugh like yours. I realized it the other day, when he found a patient's comment humorous. It's that same spontaneous guffaw, a hearty deep chortle that rebounds off the walls, feeling much too large for such a little space. Just a few loud barks and then back to silence, with a wry grin remaining upon his lips, still slightly parted from the effort. It reminded me of you.
I hope you are doing well these days. I know I shouldn't be so low, that I should move on an find happiness where I can. But sometimes we all just feel a little at a lost that all our hard work in one aspect of our lives leaves the other sectors withering away.
We can never have it all.
-K
I faded with the winter, once again. I spent endless hours in miserably mainstream coffee shops, nursing expensive yet unsatisfying quantities of coffee while hammering my brain senseless with the accumulated knowledge of an entire semester. It was lonely and I'm not sure how many more weeks I can spend in such a state.
But now I'm at break and just as lonely. So does it really get any better? No. The answer is no. I'm too busy shunning society during the semester just so I can eek by with satisfactory grades that when I finally do come to a period where I do have time available for socialization, no one is there for me. And so I get up in the morning and go to work, come home and night and watch television until I fall asleep, praying the next day will bring more adventure, friends, excitement, but knowing deep down that it won't ever change.
One of the doctor's I work for has a laugh like yours. I realized it the other day, when he found a patient's comment humorous. It's that same spontaneous guffaw, a hearty deep chortle that rebounds off the walls, feeling much too large for such a little space. Just a few loud barks and then back to silence, with a wry grin remaining upon his lips, still slightly parted from the effort. It reminded me of you.
I hope you are doing well these days. I know I shouldn't be so low, that I should move on an find happiness where I can. But sometimes we all just feel a little at a lost that all our hard work in one aspect of our lives leaves the other sectors withering away.
We can never have it all.
-K
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Place A Flower On My Grave In Winter
Dear K
This is true: from ages seventeen to twenty-three I had a recurring dream. I was driving in the rain somewhere in the suburbs. I drove through an intersection and was hit by a red car. I was thirty years old. Six years, and I dreamt a version of that at least twice a week.
But that's a form of bullshit. A spin on the truth.
I believed in visions and prophecies then, of an afterlife, Elysian Fields and plains unending.
I'm not that person any more. Part of me, a big part of me, still believes in my doom. I'm going to die alone. I'll push everyone away when I know it is coming. I'll wander out alone into the woods like a family dog that knows it is dying.
I feel like I haven't felt anything in a long time. I feel hollow.
Today my Grandfather was diagnosed with liver cancer, we're still waiting on the biopsy to confirm it, but the CAT-Scans left little doubt.
I stood in the hospital room, with my Mother and Sister and family around me, everyone else was fighting back the tears. I could only think about the next six months, when he wastes away. He's already a shell of himself. He is three inches shorter than he should be from back surgery, one Teflon knee and diabetes.
I want to feel the pain, but it isn't coming. It is like forcing yourself to vomit, but your fingers aren't triggering the gag reflex.
This year has been a hard one. I've lost half my grandparents. After one of the funerals, I was sitting on the couch with my sister, and she said to me "I don't know how I am going to get through the rest of these". I think it was then I realised the inevitability of it. Everyone I love is going to die, and all we can do is remember them.
Do you think someone will remember me?
Place A Flower On My Grave In Winter
-K
This is true: from ages seventeen to twenty-three I had a recurring dream. I was driving in the rain somewhere in the suburbs. I drove through an intersection and was hit by a red car. I was thirty years old. Six years, and I dreamt a version of that at least twice a week.
But that's a form of bullshit. A spin on the truth.
I believed in visions and prophecies then, of an afterlife, Elysian Fields and plains unending.
I'm not that person any more. Part of me, a big part of me, still believes in my doom. I'm going to die alone. I'll push everyone away when I know it is coming. I'll wander out alone into the woods like a family dog that knows it is dying.
I feel like I haven't felt anything in a long time. I feel hollow.
Today my Grandfather was diagnosed with liver cancer, we're still waiting on the biopsy to confirm it, but the CAT-Scans left little doubt.
I stood in the hospital room, with my Mother and Sister and family around me, everyone else was fighting back the tears. I could only think about the next six months, when he wastes away. He's already a shell of himself. He is three inches shorter than he should be from back surgery, one Teflon knee and diabetes.
I want to feel the pain, but it isn't coming. It is like forcing yourself to vomit, but your fingers aren't triggering the gag reflex.
This year has been a hard one. I've lost half my grandparents. After one of the funerals, I was sitting on the couch with my sister, and she said to me "I don't know how I am going to get through the rest of these". I think it was then I realised the inevitability of it. Everyone I love is going to die, and all we can do is remember them.
Do you think someone will remember me?
Place A Flower On My Grave In Winter
-K
Friday, November 18, 2011
and i am not singing for you
Dear K-
It is hard to accept getting older. The act of getting older, in itself, is really quite simple. But coming to be able to accept that there’s nothing you can do to slow time, reverse it, or alter it in any way, shape, or form can be an incredibly frustrating concept. Even with everything I’ve been through, I don’t think I have any regrets. I am the person I am today due to a very complex and muddled sequence of events and experiences, and if I were to trade any of them, even the miserable ones, I would not be the person I am today. I don’t know, maybe I would be better, but perhaps I could be worse. Maybe if I hadn’t spent the summer of my freshman year in a musty hospital ward, tied up to computers and heavily medicated with the prediction that I had 2 weeks to live, I would probably be a different person than I am today. Even though that was probably one of the lowest points of my life, it gives one a pretty fantastic perspective upon the things that matter most. I had two weeks to live. I was given a second chance.
I should possibly apologize for the last response. It was uncharacteristically enthusiastic and optimistic for me. The truth is that I found a purpose in this crowded city and it made me feel good. It felt good to feel loved and to be attracted to someone, to feel like I found a person who synced well. When you called me, I had to excuse myself before the full extent of our conversation, because I was meeting him. I believe what I like the best about our meetings is that we can either have stimulating conversations or are content to sit quietly with our own thoughts. The words are not forced; there is no fear of silence. That night we spoke of circles. He argued that circles do not exist. At first I supported the contrary, but by the end of the night I am certain that I have never seen a true circle. Circles do not exist for me anymore.
And so it goes.
-K
It is hard to accept getting older. The act of getting older, in itself, is really quite simple. But coming to be able to accept that there’s nothing you can do to slow time, reverse it, or alter it in any way, shape, or form can be an incredibly frustrating concept. Even with everything I’ve been through, I don’t think I have any regrets. I am the person I am today due to a very complex and muddled sequence of events and experiences, and if I were to trade any of them, even the miserable ones, I would not be the person I am today. I don’t know, maybe I would be better, but perhaps I could be worse. Maybe if I hadn’t spent the summer of my freshman year in a musty hospital ward, tied up to computers and heavily medicated with the prediction that I had 2 weeks to live, I would probably be a different person than I am today. Even though that was probably one of the lowest points of my life, it gives one a pretty fantastic perspective upon the things that matter most. I had two weeks to live. I was given a second chance.
I should possibly apologize for the last response. It was uncharacteristically enthusiastic and optimistic for me. The truth is that I found a purpose in this crowded city and it made me feel good. It felt good to feel loved and to be attracted to someone, to feel like I found a person who synced well. When you called me, I had to excuse myself before the full extent of our conversation, because I was meeting him. I believe what I like the best about our meetings is that we can either have stimulating conversations or are content to sit quietly with our own thoughts. The words are not forced; there is no fear of silence. That night we spoke of circles. He argued that circles do not exist. At first I supported the contrary, but by the end of the night I am certain that I have never seen a true circle. Circles do not exist for me anymore.
And so it goes.
-K
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
