spring comes soon

It happened with a quickness that is still a little puzzling to me, and makes me think that it was some extended practical joke that was broadcast live somewhere in a European country where smoking is still considered sexy. Things were rough, for a bit—a crazy man and threats of having my dog put down, and money woes, always the money woes, and endless, neverending, eternal fucking winter—but there was Mexico! Sunshine! Sunshine in Mexico! I will be cured! And for a week I was the happiest thing in the land.

And then I came back to a happy cat and my clean apartment and was glad to be home, except that things started to feel inexplicably bad, and badder, and the worst, until a week or so later I was up out of my bed and googling “painless suicide” in my underwear.

Googling “painless suicide” will make you feel a little bit like a dipshit; it will also, probably usefully but not in the way that you hope at three in the morning in your underwear, not provide you with the answers you’re looking for.

I didn’t realize that it had been so long.  It’s felt like forever and ever, but I thought that was just because Time Had Lost All Meaning Down Here in the Bottom of the Well So Deep That When You Look Up You Only See Night’s Endless Blackness and the Cold, Uncaring White Light of Far-Away Stars. No, it turns out that weeks and weeks have passed, without me meaning to have let them, and the fact that they are gone forever with not much to show for them is enough to make me want to start whimpering again. But I’m better, now. I really am.

Not best, but when am I ever? But it was a little scary there, for awhile.

I’ll be back shortly, for reals. I just wanted to say, in the meantime, your emails and your comments–shit, you guys. Thank you.

Since around 2001, I’ve had a online journal, which means that since 2001, I’ve chronicled the majority of my depressive cycles, sometimes in breathtaking detail, and sometimes just with one meaningful post heavy on the choking/drowning/black hole/night sky metaphors that really, you know, capture the feeling of a severe bout of depression and or despair.

Sometimes the post was to explain away an absence of posts for days or weeks or months and sometimes it was to round-about apologize to the friends in the audience who may or may not have been reading who may or may not have even been my friends any more, to say—I’m sorry I’ve been flaking. But it is hard to put on pants when you are choking in a black hole under a night sky that is drowning in sorrow, am I right? Except without the danger of possible embarrassment and potential ridicule and or doubt and or skepticism that might arise if I actually was brave enough to resurface and apologize in person.

Before, I really thought I needed a vacation. And then, after this week-and-a-bit, I really did need a vacation, really, really badly. It’s been a hell of a week-and-a-bit, and the thought that I would get out of town and away from everything, soon, sooner, in two days, in one day, tomorrow, has been the only thing that’s been keeping me upright and with my head more or less intact.

By this time tomorrow, I will be on the Mayan Riveria. I will possibly even be wearing the string bikini I bought if my courage does not fail me, and I will definitely feasting on buttery lobster that had been caught ten minutes previously. Icy, salty margaritas, hot hot sun, hot hot like the sun boyfriend, the beach. Oh, the beach. I may lie flat on the sand and not move the entire week, and it will be the best week of my life, after a week of hell. Or the hammock.

This is the time during the winter where you officially are obligated to say that’s it, I’m finished, I’m done, it’s over, another snowfall will kill me and if it doesn’t, I will kill myself, because really, winter, you’ve gone entirely too far. Really, winter.

When E and I booked our fancy vacation the hell out of winter, I thought we should go as soon as possible. No, E said sagely, as he has lived in winter climes for the entirety of his life, we should go as late in February as possible. Because that’s when we’re going to be sick of winter. That’s when we’re going to need a break. But I want to go nooooooow, I whined. Believe me, he said. You’ll be grateful at the end of February. You’ll be glad we waited.

My cat, who is named Fang, is fat and round, neurotic, a little retarded, cuddly and dog-like. My cat Fang is the greatest of all cats. He is the platonic ideal of cats, and without him I would never get any work done because he sits and supervises very carefully and puts his paw in my face if he senses I am slacking off, or if he wants to put his paw in my face.

I lucked out in the cat lottery, and because of that I am not afraid to sing the praises of my sweet little man, to acknowledge that I am a Cat Person, possibly verging on Crazy and Lady, if I’m going to be honest with you. I am crazy—about my cat (see what I did there?), to the point where I will talk about him on the internet without shame, and I will tell you also that he worries me.

For Valentine’s Day, which was very lovely and Valentiney, I made a small feast. I made steak with a rub and a nice salad and roasted garlic mashed potatoes. The steak was excellent, the salad was okay, and the garlic mashed potatoes were the stuff of creamery, buttery, garlicky perfection in a gigantic pot of potatoes and I wanted to put my face in them and fall asleep and maybe asphyxiate in potatoey, garlicky happiness. It’s a fitting end for me.

I started them first, because the garlic had to roast for awhile, and then peeling the potatoes took an age and a half and also a knuckle. I focused on my potatoes as they came together, almost like magic. Garlic-smelling magic. The boiling, the concentrated mashing, the adding the entire stick of butter and the cream, the careful seasoning, the whipping in the soft, roasted cloves, the careful adjustment of seasoning, the struggle with myself to not put my face in the pot–at every stage it came together so beautifully, I nearly cried.

I can’t keep up with whether it is cool to like Valentine’s Day now because it celebrates the universal spirit of togetherness we must embrace in order to make it through these dark times and to honor our renewed spirit of national hope and optimism, or cool in the spirit of irony and the embracing of dorky things like Care Bears and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, or uncool because it is cliched and commercial and who really needs another pair of edible panties and it is exclusionary of those not in relationships and also cheesy or lame.

My personal stance, my plank in the platform, is that I am very fond of Valentine’s Day. I am a fan of love; I am glad that there is a day that honors love, in all its forms, filial and fornicatory, penetrative and otherwise.