pasando

I can be okay with music alone, with alcohol alone, with one emotion-tapping stimulus at a time. But put ‘em together, even in moderate amounts, and estoy perdida. I’m lost. Meltdown.

Went to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with B and E, and spent most of the not-even-particularly-great opening act crying, trying not to cry. In the middle of the crowd, the all-ages crowd. B and E took turns hugging me, hugging me like I was a falling-down building and they could hold me up with the sheer force of their love. B kept tugging out the hem of his black t-shirt and holding it out for me to wipe my face on, like a little hammock for sorrow. And B kept saying, Be here with me, be here now.

Karen O had her fingers dipped in something shiny and black, and her hair in a short kinda slick little Dorothy Hammill cut, and this Cheshire grin, and her arms swung and swayed out in these elegant slow little poses, but the best was every so often the elegance would just slip from her like a shawl and she’d bounce and dance and windmill her slim little arms over her head and she looked about ten years old for a minute or two, then stomp and wail like a factory machine stamping stainless steel parts. And then it was back to all vampy glam.

You’re leaving. You’re never gonna come back.
C’mon, I’m gonna come back.
(Sure, sometime, but maybe not to live. And maybe not. I won’t be able to talk to you or see you whenever I want, and maybe you won’t be at our Bible meeting every week anymore, and you won’t sit at the kitchen table while I cook dinner anymore, and maybe B won’t have someone to play Madden with anymore, just like that.)
(K, you won’t be there to tell me to have some tea, to go to sleep, to go put on some sparkly eyeshadow. Maybe no one will tell me what I should say the next time that mean person bothers me, maybe no one will help teach me to take care of myself.)
(We help each other feel more human, all of us.)
(I’m afraid.)

R?
R_grace?
Be here.
Be here, now.

You Do

She said that when they moved away and she gave up all that work, she felt awful at first, “Like less of a person.” And she said her sister told her, “Do you hear the words that you are saying? Less of a person?” And she acknowledged how fucked up that was, how she was working through this, how that was                                                                                                                                   years                                                                                                                                          and                                                                                                                                          years                                                                                                                                         ago.                                                                                                                                                                                                     And then I thought, It’s giving up work that made you feel like less of a person? Not giving up time with your family? Not giving up time with yourself?                                                                         And I thought, Do you want me to be that? Even a little bit?                                                          You do, don’t you? You would say no, but you do.