skeletal

i read that while she was writing it. i provided commentary. i wonder if she acknowledged me the way she acknowledges everyone at the ends of her books. i told her what worked and didn't work. i didn't know she'd gotten it published. i want to be happy for her; i want to admire her as much as i originally did. somehow, thinking about her, seeing her, reading her words makes my heart a little sore. she is such a fraud. but not.
she is crazy.
like she is crazy. which is probably what spurred the attraction on my part, but i don't know what attracted her to me. that i was weird. that i was not the norm. that she thought that i could write. i needed her support. oddly, i think i still sort of do. i certainly haven't managed very well with it on my own. i wrote books with her guidance. now, i write nothing. i don't know why it all disappeared. something made me realize that she was sort of right...i almost wrote no one normal. but then i remember writing normal and considering the implications of the word and concept, wanting to demolish society's ideal. no one is normal.
show me, show me, show me. the best thing i learned from trying to love the two of them.
i need to start again. tomorrow. i need to dig out my disks, and i need to force myself to write. it will not happen on its own.
i walked by your office today and, seeing the light on, felt a pang that i couldn't readily explain. the day we saw each other when i was walking to work and you were walking home, part of me really wanted to talk to you. i need to thank you. for helping me. i am eight months pregnant now with a busy baby boy who is not mine, i am preparing to cut every conceivable cord, i am stepping off into completely uncharted territory over the next few months, and i have never felt so strong. part of that came from you and the things you gave me that you may never have realized you were giving.
and now i have some closure.
or i'm opening a giant can of worms.
the renewed interactions of the past few days have unearthed loamy parts of my past that had more or less faded into the haze. suddenly, they feel the need to reach out. and i feel the need to reach back, farther, harder. these people are not lights that have dimmed and died out in my universe...they are not slowly fading mutant glimmers. they are lights that have waned only to reemerge with a thousand times the wattage. more forceful than ever. he is somewhere on a beach. i hope he's having fun.
he is somewhere sandy, too, and it scares me to death that i haven't heard from him. the argument i had with him today only reinforces my inclination that everyone should have fled to tiajuana. god knows i would be dragging my shit across the border.
i am beetlejuice trying to cram the skeletons back in my closet, but still they slither, slippery, out. they dance about my room, seep into my skull, softshoe through my soul, making themselves at home. we're here to stay.
your past is always a part of you, however much you stifle and stifle and try your best to forget it.
i made her cry. her reply: i'm sitting here stunned. in tears. i feel half crazy - or more than half -- when it comes to you. i'm so sorry that i caused you all that trouble with Richard. i'm so so sorry.
thank you for being willing to send this message.
i hope that baby grows strong and well -- and i hope that you can find a way to let go of him when the time comes. being a surrogate mom has to be one of the most wonderful things anyone can do for another, but also one of the most difficult.
stay well, Morghan. you deserve good things. let yourself live them.
not what i expected.
she sits with her new six-legged friend and stares hard intermittently at me and her computer screen. i don't know when she got so big. or how. the picture hanging on the wall next to her office shows me with her wrapped tightly in my arms, backpack hanging off my shoulder, doinker exploding from her scalp. she was so tiny, so different not so long ago. and we always think it's corny when our parents remark about how fast we've grown and how the time slipped away while they weren't looking. i never thought i'd be one to stop rolling my eyes and admit the depth of that statement's truth. i never thought i'd find myself caught between wanting to instill independence and wanting to be able to hold onto her and braid her hair and wave at her all the way to the school door forever. the day she didn't turn to wave because she was walking with a friend almost sent me into a fitful frenzy. slowly but surely, i am losing my little girl. who i guess i should never have felt like i owned in the first place. even though she owns so much of my person, she does not belong to me.
nor does he belong to me, as much as i routinely tell him i would like to chain him in the basement, as much as i chronically feel i would like to catch him in a jar, mount him on my wall. why am i compelled to suck the very life from everything i touch? i am never satisfied with the enjoyment of existence in the present. things are always tainted with anxiety about the next step, big scary dissolution. funnily, i don't fear solitude, actually kind of crave it. and yet i can't stop myself from winding and winding and winding around everything and everyone i love, an unrelenting, merciless, spasmically clenching boa constrictor.
when we watched her story, he identified incredibly with him and i with her. although we both recognized that she was completely crazy, he attributed her insanity to things i didn't. he blamed her insanity for things i didn't. there's been too much crazy in my life to even try to say there's ever a time when it only goes one way. it's always a two-way street, and the culpability only marginally rests with the one whose craziness bubbles past the surface. the crazy that lurks below harbors the true treachery...it's so much more insidious, so much more penetrating, so much more venomous. stick your head in an oven and everyone blames it on you.
what's her diagnosis? needy, hon, that's all. needy. and he couldn't take it because he wasn't ready to be needed, which is bigger than being adored.
her mouth twitches when she plays video games just like his used to. and she called herself a chip off my old block.