born into this mess
nothing changes on New Year's day...
I've got four bloody holes where my wisdom teeth used to be. I'm starving and already sick of jello and yogurt. I'm trying to talk Tiffy into Indian buffet.
I'm SO staying home tonight.
they gave me mepergan but I don't seem to need it. I just want to stay in bed...
happy new year's.
love,
Sue
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warm beneath december blankets
I am thinking it's a sign that the freckles
In our eyes are mirror images and when
We kiss they're perfectly aligned
And I have to speculate that God himself
Did make us into corresponding shapes like
Puzzle pieces from the clay
five years ago it snowed early in the evening and by the early morning the sky and streets were white. around two we slid down the hill to the greasy diner and stayed up drinking watery coffee, legs tangled under the table.
I'm only just now able to remember the way your sudden smile broke through your beard, the translucence of the skin under your eyes, the faded bandanna that held your hair out of your face.
it was light outside even at four as we crunched up the middle of the street back to your apartment, everything soft and silent like the memory of last night's dreaming.
we stayed under the covers until the next afternoon, listening to the melting snow slide off the trees.
I've spent these last two and a half years trying to forget the person I was when I fell in love with you there, under that white sky, warm beneath december blankets.
every now and then I come across pieces of her and try to fit them together, but the shape they once formed is as elusive as the smell of the memory of snow.
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I want to marry this song
I can't stop listening to this Iron and Wine cover of the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights."
it's thoughts like this that catch my troubled
head when you're away when I am missing you to death
when you are out there on the road for
several weeks of shows...
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god is a place you will wait for the rest of your life
it was turning out to be a great xmas. I'd gone over to the Folks' and opened presents, watched the Return of the King, and gone to a 5:30 meeting.
since all of my friends were off doing family stuff, I decided to go see a movie.
the previews had just started when I saw Colin's mother and brother walk by. I stood up to hug her as the rest of the people with her filed behind her and sat down. I looked over her shoulder and stared at a face I hadn't seen since March of 2002. it took a few seconds to register in my brain as I heard Nancy's voice say "and Colin and Michelle came down too."
it was Her. the Girl He Left Me For. the one he Married. the cuckoo, the usurper, the home-wrecker. with what used to be MY family.
I sat down hard and stared straight in front of me in shock as Colin walked by and said hey.
I leaned forward, forearms on my knees, closed my eyes and bowed my head.
"oh fuck. oh god. what am I going to do? please help me. oh god oh god oh god."
hands shaking, I gathered up my coat and scarf and bag and walked out.
I called everyone I know and no one answered. I stopped for cigarettes and headed back to the AA group, where a handful of men were playing cards.
I walked over to my friend Chuck, visibly shaking, and said, "come talk to me for a second."
I then proceeded to soak the front of his shirt with loud, explosive sobs. I'd never wanted to drink so bad in my life.
After the meeting a friend called me back and I went to the Deli, site of the Thanksgiving Eve Drunken Debacle, and had some fries. my friends told me, "if you drink we will tell on you." so I didn't. amazingly.
it was so good to wake up today Over It and hangover-free.
things change. it happens. I Believe. my god, how I believe.
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expansion
When I dream, I can remember every other dream I have had. They stretch back and loop back on one another, pleating, shrinking, expanding.
Every house I inhabit is mine at age 13.
There are so many books and so many people, and I know them all.
Paint yourself in blue so that your pale skin shows in streaks like light dapples on leaves.
Ring the bell that hangs over the pond so the village's inhabitants can return soundlessly and almost instantly from the jungle.
They wear sailor suits.
We are all so very lost.
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can't wait can't wait can't wait
ENGL 3607. Fiction Writing. (3). Exploration of the creative process within the forms and traditions of fiction. Emphasis on the student’s own work.
PSYC 3101. Psychology of Personality. (3). Introduction to development and functioning of normal person; variety of representative theoretical orientations examined; emphasis on psychoanalytic theories and other 20th century theoretical viewpoints.
PSYC 3103. Child Psychology. (3). Patterns of cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral development from birth through early adolescence; psychological effects of genetic, organic and environmental influences as the child matures.
SOCI 3501. Sociology of Deviant Behavior. (3). Problems in applying definitions of deviance in everyday life; theories about causes and consequences of deviance critically reviewed; types of deviance analyzed, ranging from interpersonal violence to various forms of sexual expression.
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theorem: on dreaming
there is only one dream.
it will go on forever.
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things learned the coldest night of the year
If you add extra eggs to the chocolate chip cookie recipe you know by heart, having made them so many times, and then bake them in a muffin tin, you get mufkies.
Sometimes, when the sadness starts creeping in at the edge of the day, it helps to eat a whole lot of sugar.
There is such a thing as reprieve.
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it reminds me that it's no so bad...
I asked my therapist what she thought about the whole depression/withdrawal theory and she didn't think that was it, more like that I'd just been distracting myself with drinking. I wonder all the time if I'm an alcoholic or just so severely depressed that the alcohol has an instantly negative effect on me. Either way, I'd just as rather avoid it.
it's been rough today. I was wanting to adopt a dog, but my landlords said no. I was really looking forward to having somebody to cuddle with and teach tricks to. maybe I can change their mind.
I was bummed about it, so I went and saw the Lemony Snicket movie. little things help. the sunset was gorgeous, and my friend Ky is having a dance party tonight.
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'time spent in the shadow of the thing too big to see, rising.'
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
I hate xmas.
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they stay at the carnival, but they'll never win you back
there's something heart-wrenching about the guilelessness and purity of Christmas lights. like the shadow of a man in his bright house seen from outside through a window. like a smudge-faced baby doll lying on top of a rubbish heap on a cold Tuesday.
nights like these I miss the long gone time when the Drinking was Still Fun.
cold sharp nights when the Never Again is particularly hard to bear. the figures laughing and milling around behind windows as I drive home. what Wallace's Bruce Green, in
Infinite Jest, describes as "a moment of deep wrenching loss, of wishing getting high was still pleasurable for him so he could get high" (pg 578).
it's interesting, actually, it's horrifying, to note that this last bout of psychotic depression began almost immediately after I quit working at Stella and getting drunk on a nightly basis. I'm humbled to admit that in all likelihood I've been experiencing a very pyschically painful withdrawal. detoxing. missing oblivion so badly. it's not that Drinking made any of the Pain go away, or even seem less present. it didn't even numb it. rather, it intensified it to the point where I was unable to concentrate on anything else. what it did do, though, was remove any desire to fight it. I quite simply didn't care how much it hurt.
and now it hurts. it hurts terribly, this loss, this broken-hearted longing for the Poison.
and so I kneel next to my bed with the cats purring contentedly on the covers, and I beg for it to be taken away.
one day at a time.
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I'm shining like a new dime
aw man. I was at home and clicked "post" apparently just as my internet went down. now I'm at my parents' house, picking up my anti-teeth-grinding retainer, so I figured I'd try to recreate the glory...
lessee here. something about how I haven't posted cos my life is the same everyday.
eat work call sponsor eat go to meetings read sleep.
even though I'm going to AA meetings every day now (part of my attempt to excise all factors which bring on the Wolves and the Darkness), the depression is still pretty damned bad. It recedes down to a scratchy whisper during the brightness of the day, but once the shadows start to get longer it comes howling down out of the hills to lay waste to my half-built stockade. this is some seriously Sisyphal bullshit, man. some nights I have trouble breathing. the only thing I've ever read that really seems to adequately describe it is in David Foster Wallace's
Infinite Jest, somewhere around page 690 or so. this howling raging feral thing bashing against the inside of my skull, making me dizzy, making me see everything through a film of horror over my eyes. it's like some kind of evil inner eyelid over which I have no control.
AA helps a little, in the sense that I won't drink when I feel like this, anyway. but Jesus Christ, enough already with the aphorisms and the jargon and the Higher Power shit. I dunno. I make myself ask the ceiling for help every AM and tell it thank you every PM, but that's about all I can handle. way too wounded right now my fundamentalist upbringing to go there. I mean, shit, back when I was 15 and still believed in Jesus, I'd beg him every fucking second of consciousness to take this pain away. like some kind of litany going through my head along with the locker combinations and homework assignments and cure lyrics oh god oh god oh god please please please oh god please. and nothing. and there's not a goddamn thing makes it better. hurting myself'll make it go away for a few minutes, like vent off some of the pressure, and drinking somehow made it more intense, intense enough that I'd stop fighting it and just let the terror wash over me in waves of flapping black wings.
at AA, they say the same thing as my doctor. it'll get better, just be patient. fine. but how the fuck do I get through now? I sit on my goddamn hands as it is already. sometimes it's all I can do to go on and take my meds at like 930 and sit in bed chainsmoking and reading until they kick in and I can go to sleep til the sunlight hits my eyes again.
still, Tom Waits singing "Downtown Train" helps a little. I keep putting it on repeat.
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Poem for Monday, December 13, 2004
Things I Can't Tell You
by Michael Dennis Browne
Toward the end of a long journey
I had abandoned my car, thinking
it could not get me home.
But after some miles in the dark,
in a country I did not know
and had begun to fear, aware
of the ditches and weeds all about,
I turned back in search,
with no memory of how
I had let it go.
All the words are in it.
Awake in the night again,
I wait for the dreams to come,
the ones I rely on
to help me find it.
There is more than one car.
There is more than this one life.
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Winner of Best of Memphis in Memphis Flyer
for 7 Straight Years
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I'm thinking that yesterday was the best birthday I can remember. I got to see or talk to everyone I love, I made delecticious Indian food with Ky and it got scarfed, I got really good prezzies, AND I got to watch some Buffy.
And it was a day entirely free of alcohol, rain, drama, loneliness, painful curshing, or murder. heh.
and now I'm late to go clean my friend the baby's house. this baby is so damn cute. she scoots around from room to room watching me clean. we have long conversations about nothing.
"hey, sherbert, can you get that baseboard for me?"
"..."
"well, fine, but one day you will RUE that."
"..."
"Rue is sort of like being really sorry."
"..."
"ok, fine, when you learn to walk you can make it up to me."
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Puppet
The puppet thinks:
It's not so much
what they make me do
as their hands inside me.
-Saskia (Charles de Lint)
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sometimes I shift alone through the rain
sometimes you think of me
Arlo Guthrie
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oof. I was supposed to be at my parents' house hours ago, but between the pouring down icky winter rain, the huge muddy yard between me and my car, and the fact that I stayed up til 3:30 watching
Buffy, I'm having trouble getting out. also for some reason, probably so I would sleep late, I took extra Seroquel and now my pupils are the size of garbanzo beans.
yeah. Buffy is totally my Patron Saint. I mean, we're both skinny little girls with big mouths, and we both fight demons, right?
of course mine are mostly in my head.
still, it's been making for some hilarious phone conversations.
"omg, mom, I can't talk now, cos Faith has gone over to the mayor's side and she's trying to steal Angel's soul so he'll be evil again, except Giles got this guy to pretend that he stole Angel's soul, so it's really all just an act to get Faith to tell what the ascension is."
heh.
tuesday's my birfday. 25. holla.
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