makes you stronger

Min is not actually my dog. No matter how much I loved her the very most more than anything, and no matter how much she loved me greater than pies and ham, she does not actually belong to me, and I do not actually belong to her, except in our hearts. She belongs to E’s brother and now that A has moved to SLC where his job, his school and his fiancee all are, he has taken his dog with him–which means my stewardship is over.

A came and got her Friday night, while I was out. I stumbled home kind of tipsy, was confused when no dog came exploding with joy to see me, limbs akimbo, tongue lolling, stub of a tail beating back and forth in a wild blur. She is supposed to circle around and around me and through my legs and push her face into my knees and cover me with love when I sit down to scratch her butt and then climb on my lap and sigh and put her head down like everything is finally right with the world and she couldn’t imagine anything being any better than it was right there and then, forever.

Hey, look at that. You wait long enough, and the seasons will go and change on you. It won’t say a word of apology for how long it took, how delayed it is, how it didn’t call and let you know what was going on, how it showed up smelling like smoke and with lipstick on its collar and looking a little crosseyed, but you don’t care because it’s spring and it’s finally here and you are just glad that it’s safe and not tied up in the brig of a Somalian pirate ship somewhere getting the pollen beat right out of it.

Spring. Hi. I missed you. You’re cute. Let’s not ever fight again, okay? Because I really did miss you. I missed bare legs and pink collarbones and giant blue skies that seem much closer and clouds that are so much cuddlier. I missed the sun creeping closer and closer and getting goldener and goldener.

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.