Allow me today to sit and talk, while sipping on my cherry Kool-Aid – which by the way, tastes just fine to wash down my prescribed addiction,

I sit and relax today, I so rarely do – well, in truth, I have sat in boredom for months while life, people and chaos have come and gone, only to all visit again over and over and over…

I have focused so much on what is ideal that I know nothing about what actually is.

I have listened to sirens beneath my window, the ambulances, the fire trucks, searing into my brain a desire to be able to ignore them as they pass all while holding good thoughts for those who the sirens attend to,

My dog and I sit, he by me, me by him – along with the cat, sitting day in and day out – wondering.

Wondering – what if I wasn’t sick?

What if I had been a writer like I wanted to be?

What if I had learned to play the violin?

What if I hadn’t been molested as a child?

I write these words because there is no one.  No one with whom I can converse.  My dog – in his antsy fervor – has yet to utter a single word in contribution to my many attempts at conversation.

I don’t know where things changed.  I hear that people don’t like to be around people who are depressed.   I don’t want to be around me much either.  

Suicide, though an answer, I don’t have much courage for.  My mother always said suicide was a sin and you’ll go “straight to Hell” for doing it, then followed that up with “don’t even think such things!”  Rest In Peace mom but I think of it every day – but it’s a good thing I never learned to have courage in life.

The ice in my Kool-Aid is melting. Perhaps it’s a metaphor – a representation of what is happening in my life.
The bright red of life is watered down, becoming pink if the Kool-Aid to ice ratio is just right.

My heart is broken – again.  I continue to believe that somehow the one that I love will love me wholly without the need for sordid little rifts in the back seats of cars that sit far off in a parking lot, not under the lights – maybe under a tree that hangs over the last spot in the corner.

And where am I when this happens?  Home.  With the dog and the cat.  Cooking dinner, I imagine.  Knowing and oblivious.  Intuitive and in denial.

You used to love me so.  On our hours long bike rides through St. Petersburg – never venturing to Tampa because I didn’t want to ride on the Gandy bridge.  We sat time and time again at Mirror Lake contemplating our future together.  Happiness ensued and you were beautiful.  It felt as though our souls fused each and every time. And then I began to wonder.

Wondering – will I always be enough?

Will our lives be happy together?

Nine years into our relationship, will you still see me the same way?

I have changed – through no fault of my own – a series of strokes can change a person.  They can leave you blind on more than a physical level – but that too.  I didn’t mean to be different.  I didn’t choose to be cross-eyed and wounded.  I wanted to be more for you.  I, for some reason, need you to believe in me, for me to be better.  Are you still here?

Somehow, though, I knew that I would not always be enough for you.  It came as no real surprise when it was confirmed the other day.  The question is: what do I do now? (Oh, and… are you in love?)

I have no self-esteem.  I have no one around me to help pull me from the clutches of happiness turned sad.  Social media and a telephone are no replacement for a hug or a hushed conversation in a coffee shop – where I embarrassingly admit the emotionally crippling downward spiral of what I have allowed for myself to endure – the shame.

I deserved to be loved too.  I deserved more than cherry Kool-Aid, a prescription addiction and time spent wondering who you’re with.

Mom, are you sure you were right? Just wondering.