i used to be desperate for readership

hmmm... she says. it is 12:24, she has been to the grocery store. there is too much creepiness in her neighborhood to attempt to do laundry now, to go next door. she should sleep, but she's afraid of the feeling of not being able to do it again. of that desperation. of being here and not knowing where there is. the whole coming or going thing. she wishes she had christmas lights up but feels wrong to make such a commitment. she appreciates that others have. but wonders about their commitment anyway.

an old friend of her sister and brother's has facebooked her "it looks like something's up. take a look at pictures of my pets. they never fail to make me happy."

that friend doesn't know that she had pets of her own. she had six cats and a dog and a house and a husband who cared about her. maybe he didn't get her fully. should anybody expect that? someone could get you and then not be there for you. so what is the importance of all that?

were the pets important? appreciating and loving another being feels important. it can be entertaining. with pets, the worst shit you deal with is that very thing. there isn't much else to confuse. the whole loyalty thing. a pet may run away, but if they do, you know it's their nature. you know it's not likely to be a rejection. though that would hurt, too. i miss kyla or at least the idea of her. i wonder if i will ever get my dog back. i will not get my life back as it was. but i left it because i thought there was something more. was i wrong?

life can be anything you make it. you just have to have the energy for it. supposedly, the body has the energy for what it wants. it's interesting, though, how the body can be pulled in different and opposing directions. as i write this, i have no idea what i'm going to say next, and yet here it goes, it flows.

i was walking in the grocery store thinking that i did not know if i would ever write again. i could find the paper towels but not the toilet paper. i was doing something practical. i was considering cookies. i didn't really feel like buying them, but i thought how cookies seem like the best thing in the world to a kid. and maybe they are. that's as far as the meaning resides. i also had the smurfs. fruit roll-ups. my dog. walks in the snow. i liked that stuff.

i know there will be more meaning again. the fact that i don't know my current meaning, or at least i don't know what it means, well, maybe it's beautiful. maybe it's just tired. maybe the right side of me isn't another person, it's me. it's my frustration. it's the part of me that isn't free. no one can bind me. only i can do that by choice. only i can do that by feeling. but i think i get to choose which feelings i want to have on some level. i think that's what monique's saying.

my right sides feels in many ways paralyzed. i want to implicate another person. i want to implicate myself, but i don't know how to do it. i feel like there's nothing left for me to do but wait, move, or sleep. they are so basic. there is a job search. there is therapy. there is laundry. there is the nefarious moving on. there is the pain. there is the love. there is the constriction. there is the freedom. the freedom to drive around and around and around waiting for the hours to pass, wondering if the goal of my sight would see me.

it is something missing sharing a bed with someone. it something having had that and losing that. it is something getting a brief taste of that and then being alone all over again. it is some kind of pain. the noise my neighbor makes becomes less bearable. the sarcasm of know-nothing 7th graders becomes too much. the incessant squeaking of the door to the portable as the kids think of nothing but going to the bathroom, throwing wads of paper makes me know why people say migraine. i have not had one, i don't think. i never want to have one. i never want to need sleeping pills. i never know what comes next. every day is a different call from an automated system. i write no lesson plans. i write emails. i try to write something that captures my life, that creates it, and yet as soon as you've invited another participant, as soon as you've opened, you've re-invited the uncertainty.

i was not happy with the security i had. it did not feel right after a time. it did not feel right after exposure to what seemed something more. my decisions made sense. they did. do they now?

i see myself and think i like who i see. i think that the person i see reflects just fine whoever this decision-maker is inside. i think we can be friends. there's more to work out. but i think she is going to be alright. we've just got to do something about that right side, that paralysis. we've got to sleep. we've got to do more than powerade and the occasional morning.