novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- everything hurts i hadn't taken my hair down. last night something was amiss and i stayed home with aching jaws and curling legs. i woke up late and tied my hair back so it would dry in curls when i took it down but i called my brother during lunch break and he told me about our grandmother so i sat on the floor of the cafe's bathroom, right next to the water heater, and i just cried and cried. the first person i saw directly thereafter was a boy who i never told i loved because i didn't admit how i felt until months after the fact and who is with someone else now. i've never told people a lot of things, i've never told you about how i've forgotten how to spell lately, how i have trouble choosing words and making sense in conversation. how i have had problems with simple housework and i never sleep and how i'll sleep for far too long for days in a row after getting sick and my anxiety is horrible. who wants to know all of this? i'm in graduate school, stress is par for the course. and it's easy on the scale of training, too. it's not like i'm pre-med. that reminds me. i told another boy i was dyslexic -- just mentioned it in conversation the other day -- and it scared him so much that he left minutes later. what is it that people need? how do you extend? but i hadn't let my hair down yet. at first it was every few minutes, after i heard. after i heard i'd just stare blankly and randomly let my thoughts drift. when they inevitably drifted to her i'd let out a wail and just lose it for a little while. it was taking a toll on me my family is all in southern california right now and i can't be with them for this she is getting cremated i have two internships a job and school and a boy i loved who i never told who won't hold me when i lose it every few minutes. so we got stoned with the neighbors and my roommate was very patient. she settled near me just like the cat, like she just happened to end up near me but we both knew how to identify when someone is doing something on purpose. i remember hearing once, on television, how loved ones have trouble speaking about those who have died in the past tense for a little while. my mother had no trouble on the phone this afternoon; she's known grandma was going to die for months now. she'd actually been by grandma's side, hovering over her when they couldn't actually touch thanks to the highly contagious shingles covering grandma's body. when grandma stopped making sense and started calling and screaming on the phone to be taken to the hospital when she was already in the hospital. mom has already moved, slid seamlessly, into past tense. but today i just let a few things down instead of my hair, and i told sj about the bean soup recipe that grandma made up based on how her family ate during the great depression and oh my god biddy the pet chicken that she had when she was a little girl and accidentally drowned and to this day she still has problems eating chicken, eighty-seven years later she will rarely if ever eat chicken and what about the quilt she made me with the scraps from fabric she'd used when making my clothes, my brother's cousin's uncle's and mother's (when my mother and her brother were children) clothes they're all there perfect squares a few gingham sixties, seventies and eighties patterns scattered together. i'm still having trouble with tenses. i'm still having trouble with what i can let go of and i still haven't let my hair down. 11:13 pm - 01.29.06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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