December 31, 2005

new years eve

today is my 21st birthday, im in miami, mischief and mayhem are about to abound, more on this later

December 27, 2005

i'm still alive

i have't posted in awhile and that last post was kinda scary and im sure that some of you may have thought i would have rushed upon some sword at how terribly sad i was. well it got a lot worse before it got better and now its about to get even stranger im sure. today i leave for miami for my birthday... i dont want to go but it will be good to get away probably. im going with my ex boy friend i broke up with a little over a month ago, we havent seen eachother since and only talked briefly about the trip. i dont know how much blogging will come of the trip as i dont know if the condo has internet or anything. and im leaving behind the previous ex who i have recently decided i really do love and all that comes with that, however hes dating someone else so i am leaving him and her to only become closer as i go to some place i dont even want to be. wish me luck, i'll make the best of this opportunity. and thanks for all the encouraging words.

December 21, 2005

the sound of silence

Sh listen, listen carefully, sh can you hear it? If your quiet enough just quiet enough you can hear the creaking, hear my heart breaking again ripping at the scars that are its seams. Apparently you can see it in my eyes too, sadness, that’s what he tells me, the breaker, said he could see the sorrow in my eyes. I’m doing my best not to chastise him and not to fall into told guilt trip habits that I used to give him as I did have one of those “if you love them let them go” revelations a couple days ago and just as I was warming up to the idea he dropped the bomb. I didn’t see it coming but I’m almost sure it had sought out my heat of comfortability and now I am blown to pieces, left to pull it together and not make a scene in the midst of it all, a scene I will not make for I have learned that guilt and scenes only ruin my on paths. And so I must trust that nothing will change and in the mean time hide that sorrow in my eyes with some kind of substance.

December 14, 2005

nothing

My stomach turns and I’m not sure if it’s at the thought of you, the thought of drugs or the thought of growing up. These mini anxiety attacks have taken over my day and my night, staying up looking into the glow of the screen trying to find myself, my future. I don’t think it’s hiding there, its like playing hide and go seek alone. An only child, playing multiple player games alone, chess, checkers, cats cradle and house. My thoughts are broken as is my mother’s heart. I didn’t wake up to answer the phone because I knew what she would say, if I was her I wouldn’t really have wanted to talk to anyone on the phone, we all knew that this call was on the horizon. I don’t know what to say. If its affected me its been sub-consciously and its given me stomach aches and nausea, but I don think it did.

“'I’m the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral can’t understand what I mean? Well, you soon will”

My thoughts are all over the place and I came upstairs to write the last paper of the semester an hour ago and I’ve done everything I can to stall, I even wrote a to do list of things I have to do tomorrow before I can go home. I may have gone crazy.

Here to live, here today, here to die.

December 12, 2005

won't you be my neighbor?

Sometimes if I’m quiet enough I can near him through the wall leaving voicemails. Its very intimate sharing a wall with someone you barely know. I can hear his music, sometimes techno sometimes reggae. My roommate told me that there is a parallel poster of Bob Marley on his side to my poster of Marilyn Monroe. It’s interesting to me to listen to him. There used to be this screeching noise that would come from his room and it took me weeks to figure out what it was until one day I finally realized it was the hangers in his closet screeching as he moved them about. The times I have seen him he seemed nice enough, asking me how my day was going? Inquiring if it was me he had seen earlier in the laundry room. It did seem as if he may have bit of a staring problem but I guess I am the one enthralled by every pencil drop I can overhear on the other side of the wall. I have built up this image of his room, it fairly clean buts that probably from the OCD because I would like things to be clean. I can imagine exactly where everything is, the layout, but I’m sure if I ever actually saw it I would be incredibly wrong, that’s why I never really want to see inside. He kind of looks like this girl from my high school that I greatly disliked for no real reason, guess I did that in high school, but it makes seeing him quite strange cause I probably just stare at his nose and how much it looks exactly like hers. I guess I’m the weird one but strangers are often intriguing.

December 05, 2005

Frank and Mary

My grandparents have been married for over 60 years, to me this is unfathomable I can barely begin to conceive the idea of living for 60 years much less living with someone else for 60 years. They have had an amazing life, my grandfather being in the Navy they moved all over the country, even Hawaii and had 5 beautiful children that amassed into the most fantastic extended family one could imagine. However their romance seems to be coming to a bump in the road, I say bump not end because theirs is a love that knows no restrictions.

My grandfather has Parkinson’s, which is a form of Alzheimer’s, so his mind comes and goes as well as half of his body shaking almost constantly. My grandma was diagnosed with dementia earlier this year. Their health has descended so quickly that it has become hard for me to visit them and see them in their current shells that were not so long ago jovial bodies. Each has been in and out of the hospital or a home at various times and everyday the “free” one would go and visit the other, every day. They so wanted to be together in their home but their conditions no longer warranted privacy or the romantic seclusion they yearned for. I often question how my grandfather put up with her. She was crazy and bossy and downright mean, especially to him, hitting him with her cane and often picking on him or making fun of him for peeing his pants, because he also has a bladder control problem. But he did he put up with her; he loved her through it all. I often chalked this up to the fact that for a good part of their marriage he was probably away on leave in the Navy but I can’t really be sure. When asked about his wife, Mary, Frank would say, “ It’s a great, great love.” My Grandfather as I know him is stoic and a man of little words and soft spoken. Those words that he did utter were always of great importance to me and I always took great care in what he had to say. I think he was this way because Mary never shut up, constantly talking especially to strangers about anything and everything, I guess maybe this was why they worked so well together. Was he quiet because she talked or did she talk because he was quiet?

On Friday night my grandmother had a stroke. That same night I dreamt of her, she was her usual self, ornery and naughty, with a hat on, she always wore hats. She had no unsolved mystery kind of message, she was just there talking to me, I woke up feeling something had happened to her and didn’t find out until later that day that she had the stroke. Yesterday I went with my parents to visit her. No one prepared me for the fact that she was incoherent and paralyzed on half her body and stuck in a twisted position or that she would be gurgling because she could barely swallow on her own. Her shell was hanging on, barely. I held her hand and talked to her and told her that I had done my hair the way she liked, she loved my hair a certain way and would often tell me when it was wrong. The doctors have told the family to make a plan and that she may pass by the end of the week. The five children are taking it hard, as this will be the first death of someone in our close-knit extended family. Personally I feel like she has lead an amazing life and that its just about her time.

They have taken my grandfather to see her everyday as is the usual accustomed and if they didn’t take him the day would be full of questions as to where his Mary was. At first he thought that the doctors would fix her, he didn’t understand the brevity of his love’s condition. My mother went with him today and said he stood and touched her face and wiped her brow as minutes passed and was silent, as my mother sobbed in the corner. After he looked up and asked, “ where is Mary?” when told this was Mary he chuckled to himself and said “oh right” came back to her and petted her more. Then came to my mother and stood close to her and said in three days something will happen. No doctor or nurse had told him, Mary had told him. In three days we will see if his oracle is correct and then we can only assume that he will be leaving to join Mary and their romance will only grow deeper. They are too close and too deeply in love to be in other worlds.

My Mother on my grandparents love:
“A certain mystery between the two of them that no man can figure out”

As I waited for my parents outside the hospital yesterday this song came on my ipod, it is their love, it is Frank singing to Mary.

Love of mine some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It's nothing to cry about
Cause we'll hold each other soon
The blackest of rooms

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Then I'll follow you into the dark

--- edited version of I will follow you into the dark
Death Cab for Cutie