i'll let you know when i get there

gosh the holidays hurt with expectation hopes wrapped too tightly santa is not real not in the way we talk now and no one has any idea what they are doing and everyone's too busy to ask wouldn't the magic come more honestly if it had less to do with this stuff

People were here that aren't now.  Celeste.  Theresa. Who knows the names to come.  I remember a cacophony of gentle and unkind things I thought and said at times- thinking we would go on being people together forever I suppose.  The beauty I witnessed in them.  The things I judged.  The weight of that now.  How heavy the petty can be.  It's just not time yet. What is any of this, actually?

I need to tell you something in a hushed tone about the man in the wheelchair with only one shoe hunched over  openly weeping in the rain and how I walked by him.   What do we do?  What can we do?  How is it that a whole crowd of us can stand and wait for the light to change and pretend not to notice a human being openly weeping only ten feet away? What must it feel like to be the person in that chair- invisible.  Worse than invisible.  And at the same time-  What can be done?  What could I possibly do?  And if I started doing something, would it ever end?

When it's very cold outside  but warm inside and I'm a little bit sad but safe.  That's my favorite part of living.

did that happen? did I almost drown in the ocean, unaware that I was at risk until the lifeguard was swimming toward me? do all of the contents of your life feel more and more like this as you get older?  like a story that happened to someone else.  like a scene from a movie, remembered hazily?  near death experiences remembered apatheicaly through a fog.  where does it go-  the feeling of living?

Sometimes when I'm writing something, a letter or a text or a post or a newsletter that only like 10 people read, I think "what if something happened to me and these are the last words that people would scrutinize and dwell on, reading them over and mining for great meaning in every possible symbol and sign?" Then I remember that my mom, after watching Ladybird with me, didn't see us there at all.  Instead, the whole thing reminded her of her and grandma.  Missing the point entirely.   (or did she?  It hardly matters.  I can still feel my quiet, resigned disappointment at her reaction- twisted like a dull knife) I guess the point is, there's no guarantee that anyone in this life will actually understand you.  Not even if you share blood or a roof or trauma or years.   Sometimes- most times- you're just writing for yourself.  

What if, instead of becoming paralyzed whenever I think of starting to write more again, what if I just stop not  writing?  For some of the most important years of my life, I couldn't help but document.  The need hasn't gone anywhere.  It's been channeled and diffused, but I still feel compelled to slow living down in order to look at it and mold it... to see it instead of just experiencing it.  What if I got myself a little notebook?  The physicality of those little notebooks might have been the link that kept me red blood alive.   When I considered the disconnect between me and mom the other day (moments before drifting off, naturally), I felt a flash of fear that maybe she would give or throw away the crate of my journals and diaries that have been kept in her basemen for twenty years.  She's hinted at what a nuisance my storage has been for nearly as long... and has even given some of my old things away without asking.  Who's to say somed...