I am tired, mostly, of all of this. I am tired. I am tired. I am tired.
Yet, that word, tired holds no weight to what I really feel.
No weight to the sadness, to the anger, to the threaded ball of tangled, dirty life that I carry on the tip of my tongue, filtering how my words come.
I've been away. Yes. Locked away in myself, locked away in a relationship that had no future and no middle: a relationship with legs to walk from point A to B but no heart and eyes and soul to carry it further. I knew that from the beginning--I was so hesitant, so wary, but always, against-my-self, I hope...
I have surrendered to medication. My therapist stops and starts, while looking at me. I impress her and worry her from one sentence to the next. Will you be all right until next week?, she asks.
Will I?
Always, I answer: that's all I can do, right?
(but we both don't believe me)
I think she may pray for me; she'd never tell me if she does.
This locked room has not been entirely bleak, for even I can't keep sunlight from dazzling.
In the last few months of winter, I began corresponding with a writer (the most simple, complex label I could give her): Lori. Over email, we have found in each other understanding of the darker sides, understanding of turning from the light, because it does become too bright, too harsh, too unforgiving in its life.
To be able to speak, without translating, overwhelms me, balances me, saddens and dispels me. It is such a little thing--to have your language understood. Now, we have extended our words to one another through lips and flesh--walking hours in the Arboretum, and reading out loud the words of others, even as the mosquitos bite.
She lives around the corner from me: for months, we wrote, not knowing how close, in concrete blocks, we were.
And also, Bruce returns from France in a week. I will be lonely without being alone--that is almost bearable.