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September 27, 2006
pack up your bleeding heart
I suppose acrimony will only take you so far, and I'm at the end of the line.
When I was a kid, it seemed to me that my parents never had any doubts about what they were doing in the world. They had it down--being a grown-up and living a grown-up life. It was almost impossible for me to imagine my parents as children; they seemed to have always been ... well ... parents. Or at least middle-aged adults.
So, I'm fifty years old and I still don't have any idea what's going on. Every day is a big ol' question mark. Two years ago the world went topsy-turvy and I've spent all my energy since then trying to get used to hanging upside down with my head in space. I can't be the only middle-aged woman who wakes up every day and says "what the fuck happened?" But that's how I feel. And I hate feeling this way.
I'm tired of being heartbroken and I'm tired of being angry, mostly because neither has brought me anything useful, so I guess I ought to try something different. Have I said that before? I think I have. But quitting miserableness is hard to do once you realize how good you are at it.
Still, I need to try to let some of it go. So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to start doing something different, and maybe I will be able to be different.
First, I'm going to stop being angry at Miss Saigon. The objective truth is that being angry with Miss Saigon has helped me not be so angry with The Husband. Easier to be angry with somebody who can't help being the person they are than be angry with the person who said to me, "I'll never leave you." But you know what? I don't feel like being angry with The Husband any more, either. It's time to stop whoring myself out to what's easy.
What the hell; it's worth a try.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2006
"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that.
I think of the things I'm ashamed of having done, and I can't say that any of them make especially riveting copy. I screamed at the Comcast customer service rep last week. Does that sound like anything you'd like to hear about? No, it doesn't even interest me, although I wish I hadn't done it.
People are ashamed of strange things. Being fat. Being gay. Liking fast food. Enjoying country music.
It's a mystery.
I was going to go to a craft fair with a friend today. Other friends had asked me to go with them on Saturday, but since I had made plans with Friend A, who couldn't go on Saturady, I demurred. Today is overcast and humid, and the forecast is for it to get more cloudy and more humid until a cool front comes crashing through, bringing with it strong thunderstorms and wind. The chance of this happening is, according to weather.com, 80 percent throughout the afternoon. So much for crafts!
Although it is still early ... and now that I have called and cancelled plans with my friend, my strongest desire is to sneak out of the house and go to the fair by myself. Should I be embarrassed? Or should I get up from the keyboard and put on my shoes.
Posted by JudyLa at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2006
and many more.
Miss Saigon's birthday party is tomorrow. Miss Saigon may be the only person on the planet who started out as a baby and grew up to be an abortion.
In 2004, to attend Miss Saigon's twenty-first birthday party, The Husband left our house at 7:30 on Sunday morning and returned at 1:00 on Monday morning. The next day, I asked him to move out.
It irks me that Miss Saigon's birthday is so close to mine, but what can I do. I expect Miss Saigon gets better birthday presents than I do (for my fiftieth birthday last year: nothing), but I try not to dwell on it; except, of course, here.
There is nothing I can do about the fact of Miss Saigon, and there is no way to undo the damage done by Miss Saigon's presence in our lives via The Husband. The only solution is to go on. Herself suggested that we make Miss Saigon a cake and put exploding candles on it, which made us laugh when we pictured Miss Saigon attempting to blow them out. Kaboom. The end.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2006
take a break, driver 8
So yesterday, Moo took the test to get his driving learner's permit, and failed it. He has to wait two weeks before he can take the test again, and went to school today with loins girded for the inevitable wise-ass barrage from his classmates. Up until the failing-the-test part of the experience, it really hadn't been so bad. We went to the new DMV a couple of miles from here; it's big and well-lit and everybody gets a number and the lines seem to move very quickly. Most of the assembled seemed to be parents of teenagers.
"Mom," Moo said, nudging me, "When I look at that woman"--the one with the phone earpiece in her ear--"I know I'm in Virginia."
"Moo," I said back, nudging him, "When I look at that guy"--the one with the t-shirt that said I'm Not Mr. Right, But I'll Fuck You Until He Gets Here--"I know I'm in Virginia."
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2006
the clean-up woman
Tonight is the elementary school's open house, all parents invited. Through the kitchen window as I put dinner on the table I see The Husband arrive, driving the BMW Z4. The top is down. The car is ostensibly Miss Saigon's, though I expect that Miss Saigon's mother bought it for The Husband to drive. His reward for a Job Well Done.
What is my problem with the car, is The Husband's opinion. And it is a beautiful car, and the sight of it makes my stomach clench, as usual. Always something there to remind me, I hum to myself.
The Husband comes into the kitchen. He radiates cold; it's chilly this afternoon. He's in the kind of good mood that you get into when you drive a sportscar and you only have to play Suburban Dad for a few hours.
"What, no hug?" he says to me. Seeing the look on my face, he rolls his eyes and says, exasperated, "Whatever." I know that at some point during the evening to come, I will hear a variation on the theme of "Why can't anything ever just be about us?" in response to my small-mindedness.
It doesn't ever stop surprising me that he constantly tracks shit into my house and then criticizes me for smelling it.
No, no hug.
Posted by JudyLa at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2006
u & me 4ever, Tony
And The Men
want back in:
all the Dougs and the Michaels, the Darnells, the Erics and Josés,
they're standing by the off-ramp of the interstate
holding up cardboard signs that say WILL WORK FOR RELATIONSHIP.
Their love-mobiles are rusty.
Their Shaggin' Wagons are up on cinderblocks.
They're reading self-help books and practicing abstinence,
taking out Personals ads that say
"Good listener would like to meet lesbian ladies,
for purposes of friendship only."
In short, they've changed their minds, the men:
they want another shot at the collaborative enterprise.
Want to do fifty-fifty housework and childcare;
They want commitment renewal weekends and couples therapy.
Because being a man was finally too sad—
In spite of the perks, the lifetime membership benefits.
And it got old,
telling the joke about the hooker and the priest
at the company barbeque, praising the vintage of the beer and
punching the shoulders of a bud
in a little overflow of homosocial bonhomie—
Always holding the fear inside
like a tipsy glass of water—
Now they're ready to talk, really talk about their feelings,
in fact they're ready to make you sick with revelations of
their vulnerability—
A pool of testosterone is spreading from around their feet,
it's draining out of them like radiator fluid,
like history, like an experiment that failed.
So here they come on their hands and knees, the men:
Here they come. They're really beaten. No tricks this time.
No fine print.
Please, they're begging you. Look out.
TONY HOAGLAND from Hard Rain: A Chapbook. © Hollyridge Press.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
How to be grateful for coincidence
There was a vulture in the road yesterday when I drove down the hill onto our road. I have seen them in the sky but never on the ground, and this one stood in the middle of the street, pecking at a squirrel carcass. It was uninterested in my car or me, though it did move onto the grass when I drove up next to it, a flap of squirrel hanging from its beak.
When I got home I told Moo and Herself, who were just as uninterested in me as the bird had been. But really, it was pretty cool seeing one of those things up close.
I had to work last night and after I tried to excite my children about the Wonders of Nature, I headed upstairs to change into my gym clothes. No air ever moves on the top floor of our house, and yesterday was warm and humid. I turned on the floor fan in my bedroom. Bob brushed my legs and sniffed the fan. I bent down to turn the fan higher. There was a snap and a hiss, and the fan sparked and burst into flames. I jumped back. Bob jumped back. I grabbed the cord and yanked it out of the wall, and the snapping sounds stopped; the fire died down into plastic-scented smoke.
Every day during the summer that fan was on while I was at work. Except for yesterday, because I had forgotten to turn it on before I left the house.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2006
there's got to be something better than in the middle
Oh, for God's sake--I apologize to my audience for the horseshit in my last entry, small as it (the audience, not the shit) might be. "I'm afraid of being abandoned," and blah blah blah. Come on. Who falls for that crap? Here's the deal.
What I am really afraid of is that I am wrong, that I have been wrong, and that I will continue to be wrong, on purpose. Jumping vs. falling, in other words.
I am afraid that I have wasted, and am wasting, my time and my love and my (considerable) energy on a situation and a person that/who are, in the end, going to bear out that fear.
There is something in me who insists that the people I love have the qualities I want them to have. In the case of The Husband, I want him to be a noble but flawed, tortured individual, striving to do the right thing (love me) but falling victim to the lowest common denominator (Miss Saigon).
In reality, The Husband is good looking and charming and funny and wonderful to be out on a date with, or at a party with, or doing something with; but his best, amazing-because-it-always-works talent is for getting what he wants and having things his way. He is for Himself.
In reality, The Husband loves it that I want to hang around and love him and be there when he wants to talk, and take care of the kids and the mundane necessities of life, like bills and insurance and such, while he lives with Miss Saigon, whose talents, I know, lie elsewhere.
In reality, The Husband would like for us all to live together under one roof. This he has told me more than once.
I am afraid that, if it was not for my perseverence, it would have been Over between The Husband and me the weekend he left, which would have made him sad, probably, but which would also have been okay, I believe.
I am afraid that, if it were not for my perseverence now, we would have no relationship except through our children, and given the type of father he is (interested but not involved), it would be a distant one.
Over the months I have seen him drift further and further away, gently, as if he's going out with the tide. Sometimes he answers my phone calls and sometimes he doesn't. He has stopped reading my letters. Ditto for emails. I guess they're too emotional. He wants "peace," by which I assume he means "for you to leave me alone for a change."
I want to think that his relationship with Miss Saigon sucks, which actually I think it does. But I want that it sucks to matter to him, which I think it does not. It only matters to me, and who am I? I am the person left behind, which also sucks, and which matters only, I think, to me.
I am not afraid of being alone, but I am afraid of being alone forever. I am afraid of deliberately choosing the wrong men to love, of having done it since I was a little girl and had no choice.
I am afraid of believing The Husband when he hints around that he will be home, eventually. Just like I believed him the other times he said to me, regarding Miss Saigon, "It's over, I swear it."
I am afraid when I think about how rarely we see him, and how when he deigns to make an appearance it's for only a few hours, for dinner or to lie on the couch and doze.
I am afraid to stop making an effort because I am afraid that my effort is the only thing between us and nothing.
I am afraid because even knowing this, I still choose to jump.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2006
I turn the engine but the engine doesn't turn
Last night I dreamed about teeth. My dream-dentist was very attractive. I was having work done ... I don't remember what, exactly ... I just remember having my mouth open (hmm) ... and then I met a coworker in the waiting room who had had her front teeth knocked out while she was on vacation. In real life, the coworker is in her 20s and totally cute and nice, with shining, youthful skin and hair that makes me feel like I'm about one hundred years old. In my dream, her smile had disintegrated into broken and jagged brown tooth stumps.
Not very subtle, huh?
So The Husband is sick again, and in bed. To my mind, he has been sick ever since he moved out of our house. I sometimes think of him as an orphan, all alone in the world, living with somebody as cold and narcissistic as he is; somebody who couldn't care less, or even take notice of, the fact that he's basically been living his life lying down for a couple of years. Of course, Miss Saigon is his caretaker of choice, so I guess my image of The Husband as Oliver Twist doesn't exactly hold up.
When I think about seeing The Husband lately, for a few weeks now, my primary emotion is dread. There are a lot of reasons for this, I suppose--maybe I am the orphan in my mind, not him, and dread is fear of being abandoned again. I am afraid of a lot of things, I've discovered in the past two years.
Husband Number One said to me on the phone a couple of days ago, "Remember how frightened you were of falling into the Grand Canyon?" I remember. I remember how frightened I was that I'd jump into the Grand Canyon. Falling and jumping are not the same thing, right?
At this point in time I am afraid of the jump I have already taken. In my fear scenario, The Husband says to me, "Thanks for waiting around. Now meet Miss Saigon's replacement, and it's not you."
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2006
This is what you want; this is what you get instead
Sometimes during the past two years, back when I was crazy but pretending not to be, I would go Up North to the apartment of The Husband and Miss Saigon when The Husband was alone. I would tell myself to be on my best behavior, but once I started I couldn't stop: pointless, random acts of vandalism.
The Husband went into the kitchen to make Wonderful Vietnamese Coffee and I took all the little decorative candles from the table on the deck and tossed them one by one into the woods in back.
The Husband was changing clothes so we could go out someplace and I flicked all the little model airplanes into the corner behind the television.
I used the bathroom and swished Miss Saigon's toothbrush in the--no, not the toilet; I wasn't that mean--in the water the bamboo plant was growing in.
I surreptitiously unplugged all the Plug-Ins (in a one-bedroom apartment roughly the size of my car, there were six) and hid them.
I stole magnets off the refrigerator and threw them out when I got home.
I put the photo of The Husband and Miss Saigon face down behind some books.
Stuff like that. I don't know why I mention it now, except that I think about the person who did those things and I know why she did them, and I forgive her for being so petty, even though Miss Saigon probably wouldn't.
Last night I dreamed that I bought a little, one-room house. It sat in a field surrounded by woods. The walls were white, and the room was almost perfectly square. At first it looked a little squalid and run-down, but as the dream went on and I thought about how it was mine, my own house, I liked it more and more. There was already furniture in the house, and I rearranged it to suit me. I put the crib in the corner opposite the wall, next to the bookshelves. And I moved my bed so it was adjacent to the front door, so I could see the crib and so if anybody broke in I'd know it right away instead of at the last minute.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2006
To a Terrorist
For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem
without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.
Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefullness that makes you fall
in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.
Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.
The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
STEPHEN DUNN
Posted by JudyLa at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2006
Bi, hunny
I can't help it; I made myself laugh. Gosh, I love word play.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2006
Buy, honey
When you walk into a Target store the first thing you see are two aisles full of stuff that costs one dollar. I don’t know about you, but there is something about merchandise that cheap that makes me need it like crazy.
Tuesday night I went to Target to get a sketchbook for Herself and got trapped in the one-dollar aisles. All the women next to me had the same glazed stare that I probably had. Ooooh. There was a whole new crop of junk to buy. I did manage to stop myself before I bought more refrigerator magnets (they were REALLY CUTE), or a miniature teapot and tea/sake cups (in case I change over to Asian decor), or a couple of sets of chopsticks in satin bags (ditto, for the kids), but not before I picked up yet another tube of sparkly pink lip gloss for Herself. I think that with the addition of this one, she's now got about sixty.
I am broke this week, having shelled out for a new tooth ($250.00) and for car repairs ($1,750.00). Actually the parts to repair the car probably came to about $50.00; it was the labor that screwed me into the ground. You know what I mean.
“The bulbs you need to replace are a buck-fifty each; with the labor, that comes to …” I could hear the calculator keys clicking. “ … mmm … $365.00.”
More actual conversations:
“Mom, I need $175.00 for Driver’s Ed.”
“Mommy, I need to rent a violin for Strings Class.”
“She’ll need braces. It’s going to be around $4,100.”
Wah.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2006
Bye, honey
"When are you going to start dating?" said DrAF to me yesterday. "How are you?" I tell him to read anything I have written to him in the past two years: I'm like that, still. Nothing seems to have changed appreciably. What do people in prison for years write about, if they write letters? "Hey, it's me--just want to let you know I'm still here, in prison."
It's cloudy today, the second day of school. The geese are restless on the lake and I can hear acorns falling on the docks. Izzy, the new kitten, curls on my lap and purrs. She is a lap cat and seems to like nothing better than to be held and petted--a change from Spike, who imperiously demands affection and stalks off the moment he's had enough; and Bob, who meows until he gets attention but struggles desperately if you try to pick him up.
So here's my story.
Last Christmas the kids and I were at my sister's house in Connecticut at the same time The Husband and Spooky Girlfriend were in Connecticut. I didn't call The Husband, since he was on vacation with SG, visiting one of SG's innumerable relatives, but The Husband called me quite a bit and called one evening when my sister was having a party. Moo answered my phone and told The Husband "Mom can't talk to you because she's drinking and talking."
That I did not talk to him made The Husband furious. So furious that he brought it up in almost every argument for the next six months, how he'd tried to reach me and couldn't, how he'd needed to talk to me. Last week I found out why. The Husband had had a fight with Spooky Girlfriend and wanted to ride home with me and the kids.
You know what? For all these months I had thought how mysterious, but sweet, it was--well, maybe not sweet but touching somehow--that The Husband wanted to talk to me so badly. Can you believe that? When all he wanted was a taxi to Alexandria. Fuck me for a fool.
The Husband is in Tennessee this week, on vacation with SG once again. I hope that it is raining poisonous frogs in Tennessee this week.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2006
180 and counting
Are there many things more sad than the last day of summer vacation? Everything about the summer is old except for the new clothes and notebooks you got at the beginning of August; you don't want to swim because it's too depressing to think about putting on a bathing suit, which is looking kind of sprung and faded anyway; there's nothing on television except for the Jerry Lewis Telethon, and if ever summer had a death knell, that's it.
And tomorrow it will be back to the same old grind. A scheduled life where consciousness comes way, way too early every morning when the alarm's awful buzz forces your eyes open. Homework, and crowded school corridors, and the leaves falling off the trees, and no more hanging out or sleeping until two in the afternoon and forgetting what day of the week it is.
Moo's alarm went off this morning while it was still dark out. It's raining--pouring, really, and it will rain all day.
"Good morning sweetie," I said.
"Ugh."
His hair was in his face. He poured himself the biggest bowl of Raisin Bran I've ever seen anybody eat (is there something I should know about his digestion?). Sat down at the kitchen table, sighed. I showed him the article in the Post about how teenagers should not listen to their iPods or talk on the phone or watch TV while they do homework, got a snort. Hair still in his face, shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops on, he barely caught the bus in time after racing around trying to find a pen before I drove him to the end of the road, where all the other kids' moms were parked. One down.
Herself got out of bed at 7:00, sniffing from her summer cold, which just keeps hanging on. She smells sweet, like shampoo and soap, and is too nervous, she says, to eat breakfast. She asks me to fix her hair. The boy she has liked since first grade is in her class this year, and she needs to look good.
"Mom, do you think I'm pretty?"
I answer in the affirmative.
"Do you think somebody'd be crazy not to think I'm pretty?"
I look at her. She's serious. I can't think how to answer. While the cats chase each other around upstairs, she is laying out her first-day-of-school outfit.
It's raining even harder than it was before. I ought to be working but instead I'm doing this, and looking out the window thinking about how hideous the commute will be for the next couple of weeks. Summer vacation is over.
Posted by JudyLa at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2006
borne back against the ceaseless tide
September 3, 2006
Dear --,
This is what I did on Saturday night (in case you don’t remember, you went to the Black Cat): I put in a sad DVD so I could cry without making Herself suspicious.
When it was over I went to bed with a glass of wine and two Tylenol P.M. tablets, wishing I had the courage to take twenty, or thirty, or however many I needed.
Intellectually, I realized that I had no idea how many I would need to take for them to kill me instead of just making me very sick, so I took two and went to sleep instead.
You come down for a few hours on a Saturday or whenever and you’re a husband for that period of time, or maybe not, I don’t know. Maybe you’re just waiting to go back home to do some more laundry. At any rate, you didn’t even say good-bye to Herself or Moo when you left today.
Here is the problem: I don’t know how to do this any more. The first year, okay, it was all just getting used to it—you and Spooky Girlfriend and you and me and you and Spooky Girlfriend and me. The second year it was just concentrating on not being crazy any more and coming to terms.
I don’t want a third year. When I think about a third year my mind refuses to. I can’t figure out what I would be for a third year, and the only role I see for myself is that of “WRONGED PARTY.” That’s not who I want to be! The person I’m turning into—or who I have already turned into—is not who I want to be. I don’t like her very much, and I feel sorry for her. I don’t know which of those is worse.
You want to call somebody else “honey,” by all means, be my guest. You want to sleep with somebody else, I guess I can’t stop you. You want to live with somebody else, but not really. Or something. But where is my place? I see you less and less, which is what I was afraid would happen, and I behave more and more badly; ditto.
Am I your very own Greek chorus—always watching the action and commenting on it but never getting to play a part. Always on the sidelines. And no, I don’t know how to be less dramatic than this. I really don’t.
Can’t you just do what you need to do without dragging me into it and telling me, while you do that, that I have no business—or I should say ‘no fucking business’—being dragged into it?
Here is my truth: I think that Spooky Girlfriend is a worthless piece of shit.
It offends me—you can’t even imagine how much—that you could go from me to that. How you could is, as the saying goes, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. But hey, SG's your worthless piece of shit, right, honey?
No matter how much I love you and would like to think the best of you, this phrase comes to mind: When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
I’m sure I had a point, back when I was sober; I just don’t remember what it was.
I want you to come home.
I want you to feel about me the way I feel about you.
I want to not have wasted my life on you.
I want to not be a failure.
I want to be left alone until you work it all out.
To be honest, I really don’t think this is going to go in my favor. It’s part of why my emotions are so out of control lately. You make it seem that you want to be here—well, shit, it’s what you say—and all the while you make sure you are as far from here as possible, one way or the other.
But believe it or not I am still shocked, even at this late date, that this won’t end up the way I want it to. Bummer.
I hate this.
You’re going to have to take it on faith that I love you and that I’ll wait.
I’ll wait until you tell me to stop waiting.
But all this nonsense, and me getting hurt all the time, must stop.
p.s. Yes, I do realize this excess of emotion might all be because the medication I’ve been on for the past few years has left my bloodstream. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Monday
I didn’t hear the phone ringing last night, but I heard it beep as I went to bed. I stopped listening to your message once it got to “I’m bored,” so I hope you weren’t asking me to come up and water your plants while you're gone, after that point.
Last night I dreamed I was driving a car in some kind of cave on a narrow stretch of road over water. The road was smooth and slick, as if water had worn it glassy. There was a groove in the side of the road and the driver’s side tires got caught in it. No matter how hard I tried to steer out of the groove, going over the side into the freezing cold water was inevitable, and that’s exactly what happened. When I woke up today this phrase of the old song was playing in the background of my mind, “How in the heck will I wash my neck, when it ain’t gonna rain no more.”
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2006
Strongoo than yesterday
"September ... a fresh start" (O Magazine)
"[Life] is demanding of me, 'Start again. Begin new things. Again set to work to build your world.' " (Jean Toomer)
What I really want for my life is for it to be different from what it is now. Now that I'm not taking Cymbalta any more I realize how much I thought about ending my life; I thought about it every day, practically. The thought of not having to do anything, ever again, was like a beautiful song in my brain that I couldn't get rid of. But, of course, I got rid of it with the drug, and here I still am.
But here I still am.
What I really want for my life is for it to be different. I want something different. I feel overwhelmed by my house with its messes, and the decks that need replacing, and the paint that needs touching up, and the carpeting that needs cleaning, and the kitchen that seems to always be have dirty dishes everywhere in it. I feel overwhelmed by how bad a job I'm doing with Moo and Herself, Herself has a cold and Moo is an insomniac, and nothing I do seems to help, and Herself wants to make a cake, not peach pie, she hates peach pie, so what am I going to do with the five pounds of peaches getting wrinkly in the refrigerator?, and how I'm always too busy to pay real attention to them, and how I dread the school year more than they do, probably, because of the arguments about homework, and the inevitable science project, and the teacher conferences, and coaxing Herself through mathematics.
Two years ago The Husband moved out and I'm a bit surprised to find that I still want to be married to him, no matter what else I might say or try to make myself mean when I say it; that's the bald, ridiculous truth of it, the awful, exhausting truth. I still love The Husband, and I still want him, and I can't seem to stop waiting around for him to come to his senses. God, I hate that. This yearning, ridiculous, which nobody else understands how I can still feel, sucks everything into it, and meanwhile there are the bills and the car and the back-to-school supplies, and the rest of the world, all walking around like things are normal, and the peaches, unloved by everybody but me.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)