onlysweetpea
Bluelighter
I find myself on auto pilot today.
I woke up.
It’s stopped raining in San Francisco and it’s quite a relief for me. I don’t seem to have the appropriate materials to keep both feet dry anymore. I’ve been stumbling around in the rains with one soaking wet foot, usually the left. This is one of the only things I feel that I am lacking in my life here. Correct footware.
I skimmed the paper today searching for the poll results. Kucinich nailed 5% of the California vote, which was to be expected. I am neither enraged nor angry nor hopeless. I’m just like…whatever, today.
This morning I had a cup of coffee and I got on the bus and I blocked out the world with my headphones and tried my damndest not to take any of Ani’s lyrics to heart for it would be too much this morning. But it’s hard when someone speaks mountains of truths to you, it’s hard, too hard, not to really listen. “hold me down, i am floating away, into the overcast skies over my home town on election day…”
Yesterday was a lost cause. It was like a day that existed on some alternate universe, not here, not San Francisco, not anywhere remotely close to reality. G-love and I hand in hand in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. It would be cliché to describe the sterility of the room and how ironically crumpled, used and germ infested the magazines were scattered among the turquoise seats. Doctors pick the worst upholstery fabric ever. I hate noticing furniture details, it reminds me of work, of my job, of the hotels near and far that would have to wait while I went to get an answer I somehow already knew.
After enduring waves of lower back and lower abdominal pain Monday, it’s like I knew. I knew. My body is ridding itself of something that it just can’t handle nor contain. This whole entire time, the past month…and I wait till the end of it to know, to figure it out, to put two and two together.
5 weeks. 5 weeks and it had a heartbeat. I cried on the phone with Josh last night. ”It had hands,” I said. ”It had hands,” I repeated.
It’s like I had a deadline, a countdown to figure out what I was doing wrong before I lost the jackpot, before the buzzer, and if I didn’t come up with the right answer, Bob Barker would walk over and give me a consolatory hug and send me off with something like a Swatch Watch as a parting gift.
5 weeks. The buzzer had rung, the jackpot had been lost, the collective moan of the audience had been captured in the background and G and I walked out of the doctor’s office with a handful of pamphlets on “grief” and “recovering from your loss”.
We sat, for the most part, in silence, outside the Coffee Bean. Exhausted and still in pain, G sat me down and came back out with the largest Ice Blended Mocha with the biggest mountain of whipped cream I’d ever seen. I smiled, like a complete child, being rewarded for being so brave.
Throughout the past 48 hours, he had been the most perfect G-love he could ever be. In thinking about the situation at hand, most men would wince at the fear of responsibility, of change, of being roped to such a large albatross. Out of obligation though, they would suck it all up and wear the pants and take charge of making things right, leaving you with mountains of doubt about their intentions to be with you…obligation or love?
It was apparent in the way he looked at me though, in our conversations in bed the night before, in the strangely intimate way he slept with his head pressed to mine. He wanted this baby to be his and he wanted, maybe more than I did, to have it.
That was the shocker in general. I wanted it. I wanted it more than I led on to any of my friends. More than I led myself to believe.
When I got home from work on Monday I checked the mail to be met with letters from creditors, like an anvil on my chest, I barely made it up the stairs into my apartment before I started crying uncontrollably. I shut the door and looked at the cats, who were looking up at me.
”I can’t have a baby!” I wailed. ”I’m too fucking poor!”
I thought about names, I thought about what it would look like, I thought about election day, I thought about moving to Canada because god forbid my baby and I would have to be at the mercy of complete idiots (i.e.: Bush).
”I can’t have a baby!” I wailed on the phone later on that same Monday night to Sma. “I can’t even commit to a dog!”
G came over armed with Thai food and those hostess cupcakes he knows I love and beer…for him and not for me. He handed me a Rubik’s Cube.
“If I fall asleep, play with this,” he said knowing full well I’d be unable to sleep at all.
He eventually passed out around 2AM. By 3AM I had figured out the cube and had thrown it back into his messenger bag.
He wrapped himself precariously around me, his long limbs snaking and weaving themselves through mine. I laid there with him clinging to me like a life preserver while I matched up colored squares. When I was a child, I used to simply remove the stickers and move those around to win the game.
I think the most guilty I’ve felt through this whole thing is when I sent Greg away yesterday. Outside the coffee shop, everything was eerily silent. We weren’t speaking. He was pretending to read one of the pamphlets the Doctor gave us.
“You know what I need to do?” I finally said. I had finished my Ice Blended Mocha in record time and had begun to eat the whip cream with the straw.
“What?” He asked. He put down the brochure and gave me all his attention, like I was going to say something prophetic, something that would break the uneasiness in the air, something that would sway us out of purgatory and into tears of grief or gales of laughter. I felt the pressure weigh down on me, like I was supposed to fix the rift because I initiated the first signs of real communication.
“I think…” I paused finding it hard to speak. “I think I need to go to work.”
This, was obviously the wrong thing to say. Of course it was. Nothing would be settled or resolved by me going to work. Of course it was wrong, because we would walk away from each other not quite knowing what to do, how we felt, or where this left us and our relationship. Of course it was wrong because I would get nothing done at work and he would go home and do god knows what.
But at that moment, I needed to be alone. I needed to remove myself from all of it, G included, so I could swallow it piece meal and figure out…if there was anything to figure out really.
“You sure?” He asked. “Want me to take you-“
“That’s okay, I can hop on the bus at Sutter and it takes me right in front of the office.”
“Now? You’re gonna go now?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Slowly we gathered ourselves and got up from the table. At the corner of Sutter and Fillmore, back in front of the doctors office, we looked at each other awkwardly, like it was the end of a first date, like he didn’t know if he was allowed to kiss me or not.
I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck and he picked me up and held on. I felt his whole chest shudder and shake. I tried to pull back to look at him, but he held me there, like he didn’t want me to see, he didn’t want me to know, but I knew.
When he put me back down, he turned away quickly and started to walk away. I could see his hands go up to his face as he made his way down Fillmore.
Yeah. I went to work.
I don’t know why.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find my face wet and my pillow damp, completely unaware that a human being could cry in the deepest throes of sleep. I stared at the bright blue glow of my alarm clock. 3:28 AM. I would have to get up and put on clothes later, I thought. I have to get on the bus. I have to walk down Kearny St. to my job. I have to turn on my computer and open my Outlook and look at my Task List and check my voice mail. I have to drink 8 glasses of water. I have to eat lunch. I have to say ‘Good Morning’ to people. I have to walk…one foot in front of the other, like always, like everyday, like today is the same day as it is everyday and I am the same person I always am, and I have to look at people and have them look at me and see me and I don’t feel like me anymore but they don’t know that and I shouldn’t lead anyone on to know that because they wouldn’t understand, or they’d be sympathetic, but it wouldn’t matter any which way.
5 weeks and a heartbeat and I tried to write last night but I couldn’t find images that were less ghastly, less disgusting than the ones I owned already, the ones that were true. It had hands and I flushed it down the toilet. It had hands and I didn’t know. How do you not know? How are you supposed to know when you’re supposed to stop doing things you shouldn’t be doing? How could I not know?
All I’m left with today is advice that I know I should take, but don’t know how to swallow. All I’m left with today is a surreal yesterday and a tomorrow I just can’t quite see yet. All I’m left with is the need to stop being so goddamn selfish.
And with that thought, I’m going to walk outside and call Greg. It seems like the only thing I can think of to do right now.
”I am writing graffiti on your body, I am drawing the story of how hard we tried,
hard we tried.”
I woke up.
It’s stopped raining in San Francisco and it’s quite a relief for me. I don’t seem to have the appropriate materials to keep both feet dry anymore. I’ve been stumbling around in the rains with one soaking wet foot, usually the left. This is one of the only things I feel that I am lacking in my life here. Correct footware.
I skimmed the paper today searching for the poll results. Kucinich nailed 5% of the California vote, which was to be expected. I am neither enraged nor angry nor hopeless. I’m just like…whatever, today.
This morning I had a cup of coffee and I got on the bus and I blocked out the world with my headphones and tried my damndest not to take any of Ani’s lyrics to heart for it would be too much this morning. But it’s hard when someone speaks mountains of truths to you, it’s hard, too hard, not to really listen. “hold me down, i am floating away, into the overcast skies over my home town on election day…”
Yesterday was a lost cause. It was like a day that existed on some alternate universe, not here, not San Francisco, not anywhere remotely close to reality. G-love and I hand in hand in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. It would be cliché to describe the sterility of the room and how ironically crumpled, used and germ infested the magazines were scattered among the turquoise seats. Doctors pick the worst upholstery fabric ever. I hate noticing furniture details, it reminds me of work, of my job, of the hotels near and far that would have to wait while I went to get an answer I somehow already knew.
After enduring waves of lower back and lower abdominal pain Monday, it’s like I knew. I knew. My body is ridding itself of something that it just can’t handle nor contain. This whole entire time, the past month…and I wait till the end of it to know, to figure it out, to put two and two together.
5 weeks. 5 weeks and it had a heartbeat. I cried on the phone with Josh last night. ”It had hands,” I said. ”It had hands,” I repeated.
It’s like I had a deadline, a countdown to figure out what I was doing wrong before I lost the jackpot, before the buzzer, and if I didn’t come up with the right answer, Bob Barker would walk over and give me a consolatory hug and send me off with something like a Swatch Watch as a parting gift.
5 weeks. The buzzer had rung, the jackpot had been lost, the collective moan of the audience had been captured in the background and G and I walked out of the doctor’s office with a handful of pamphlets on “grief” and “recovering from your loss”.
We sat, for the most part, in silence, outside the Coffee Bean. Exhausted and still in pain, G sat me down and came back out with the largest Ice Blended Mocha with the biggest mountain of whipped cream I’d ever seen. I smiled, like a complete child, being rewarded for being so brave.
Throughout the past 48 hours, he had been the most perfect G-love he could ever be. In thinking about the situation at hand, most men would wince at the fear of responsibility, of change, of being roped to such a large albatross. Out of obligation though, they would suck it all up and wear the pants and take charge of making things right, leaving you with mountains of doubt about their intentions to be with you…obligation or love?
It was apparent in the way he looked at me though, in our conversations in bed the night before, in the strangely intimate way he slept with his head pressed to mine. He wanted this baby to be his and he wanted, maybe more than I did, to have it.
That was the shocker in general. I wanted it. I wanted it more than I led on to any of my friends. More than I led myself to believe.
When I got home from work on Monday I checked the mail to be met with letters from creditors, like an anvil on my chest, I barely made it up the stairs into my apartment before I started crying uncontrollably. I shut the door and looked at the cats, who were looking up at me.
”I can’t have a baby!” I wailed. ”I’m too fucking poor!”
I thought about names, I thought about what it would look like, I thought about election day, I thought about moving to Canada because god forbid my baby and I would have to be at the mercy of complete idiots (i.e.: Bush).
”I can’t have a baby!” I wailed on the phone later on that same Monday night to Sma. “I can’t even commit to a dog!”
G came over armed with Thai food and those hostess cupcakes he knows I love and beer…for him and not for me. He handed me a Rubik’s Cube.
“If I fall asleep, play with this,” he said knowing full well I’d be unable to sleep at all.
He eventually passed out around 2AM. By 3AM I had figured out the cube and had thrown it back into his messenger bag.
He wrapped himself precariously around me, his long limbs snaking and weaving themselves through mine. I laid there with him clinging to me like a life preserver while I matched up colored squares. When I was a child, I used to simply remove the stickers and move those around to win the game.
I think the most guilty I’ve felt through this whole thing is when I sent Greg away yesterday. Outside the coffee shop, everything was eerily silent. We weren’t speaking. He was pretending to read one of the pamphlets the Doctor gave us.
“You know what I need to do?” I finally said. I had finished my Ice Blended Mocha in record time and had begun to eat the whip cream with the straw.
“What?” He asked. He put down the brochure and gave me all his attention, like I was going to say something prophetic, something that would break the uneasiness in the air, something that would sway us out of purgatory and into tears of grief or gales of laughter. I felt the pressure weigh down on me, like I was supposed to fix the rift because I initiated the first signs of real communication.
“I think…” I paused finding it hard to speak. “I think I need to go to work.”
This, was obviously the wrong thing to say. Of course it was. Nothing would be settled or resolved by me going to work. Of course it was wrong, because we would walk away from each other not quite knowing what to do, how we felt, or where this left us and our relationship. Of course it was wrong because I would get nothing done at work and he would go home and do god knows what.
But at that moment, I needed to be alone. I needed to remove myself from all of it, G included, so I could swallow it piece meal and figure out…if there was anything to figure out really.
“You sure?” He asked. “Want me to take you-“
“That’s okay, I can hop on the bus at Sutter and it takes me right in front of the office.”
“Now? You’re gonna go now?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Slowly we gathered ourselves and got up from the table. At the corner of Sutter and Fillmore, back in front of the doctors office, we looked at each other awkwardly, like it was the end of a first date, like he didn’t know if he was allowed to kiss me or not.
I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck and he picked me up and held on. I felt his whole chest shudder and shake. I tried to pull back to look at him, but he held me there, like he didn’t want me to see, he didn’t want me to know, but I knew.
When he put me back down, he turned away quickly and started to walk away. I could see his hands go up to his face as he made his way down Fillmore.
Yeah. I went to work.
I don’t know why.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find my face wet and my pillow damp, completely unaware that a human being could cry in the deepest throes of sleep. I stared at the bright blue glow of my alarm clock. 3:28 AM. I would have to get up and put on clothes later, I thought. I have to get on the bus. I have to walk down Kearny St. to my job. I have to turn on my computer and open my Outlook and look at my Task List and check my voice mail. I have to drink 8 glasses of water. I have to eat lunch. I have to say ‘Good Morning’ to people. I have to walk…one foot in front of the other, like always, like everyday, like today is the same day as it is everyday and I am the same person I always am, and I have to look at people and have them look at me and see me and I don’t feel like me anymore but they don’t know that and I shouldn’t lead anyone on to know that because they wouldn’t understand, or they’d be sympathetic, but it wouldn’t matter any which way.
5 weeks and a heartbeat and I tried to write last night but I couldn’t find images that were less ghastly, less disgusting than the ones I owned already, the ones that were true. It had hands and I flushed it down the toilet. It had hands and I didn’t know. How do you not know? How are you supposed to know when you’re supposed to stop doing things you shouldn’t be doing? How could I not know?
All I’m left with today is advice that I know I should take, but don’t know how to swallow. All I’m left with today is a surreal yesterday and a tomorrow I just can’t quite see yet. All I’m left with is the need to stop being so goddamn selfish.
And with that thought, I’m going to walk outside and call Greg. It seems like the only thing I can think of to do right now.
”I am writing graffiti on your body, I am drawing the story of how hard we tried,
hard we tried.”
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
you write with such passion and honestly babe and its so hard to put words of reply into a sentence...
