I've been struggling to find anything positive to say.
The possible house thing fell through, the 'friend' hasn't really spoken to me since I made it clear I wouldn't be repaying the favor of a couch in any physical or sexual way...
The thing I was most excited about that possibility for was the chance that I could eventually get my pup back, but Dad never responded to the email where I asked him if it would be possible, which gives me nightmares involving the train tracks which are less than 100 feet from his door.
I'm living in an area where there is nothing of a potential job nature within a reasonable walking distance, the nearest gas station is something like 3-5 miles away. I don't have a car, and there is no public transport in this area. The part of Cocoa I'm in is kind of out of the way and me being a city girl feels completely isolated and rural. I've yet to find anyone that I know in Orlando who will let me crash on a couch long enough to find a job and pay them back for the kindness... so right now I have zero chance of finding a job.
Of course, since there's no money to put minutes on my Go phone, and a friend wasted my last couple of dollars on it by sending me random "I'm Bored" text messages... I have no way of getting job calls even if by miracle I should find someplace thats hiring and that I could somehow manage to get myself to. Well, no thats an exaggeration, my roommate lets me use her number and if I do get a call she's willing to come home during her lunch break so I can use her phone to call back. Still, not being directly contactable is a difficulty.
Speaking of my roommate, I love my Candy and she's a life saver but.. I'm a burden. She can barely manage her own bills without also having to support me, she's on her last string as far as stress over money issues... but insists that its okay, that she loves having me here because I play housewife and take care of what I can to help out. Its a lie though, the white kind that tells a girl that her favorite pants don't make her look fat, but no less harmful or untrue. I need to find somewhere else to be so that I can take that weight off of her shoulders.
But I have no options, not unless I'm willing to 'put out' in exchange for a place to sleep for a couple of months.
An old friend from when I lived in Orlando last year, he wants to get an apartment but that can't happen until August or September when he gets his financial aid money. Until then he's sleeping on his mom's couch, so he can't offer a place to crash until then... Plus, I need to be living in the city and have a job there so that I can get the place with him at all.
All I get are empty and insincere "Wow I wish I could help" comments. Not to mention my 'friends' here? A very small number of them seem at all happy to see me back. There's nothing more depressing than walking into a room and not having a single person smile when they notice you've arrived.
Also. I haven't been sleeping well for the last couple of weeks. Insomnia, being awake for 24-48 hours and then managing to doze off for barely an hour, 3 on the good days. At least there haven't been nightmares this time, and the last couple of days I've gotten 10-12 hours, so hopefully I'm pushing through the other side.
On top of it all, May was an extremely hard month. May 15th was the 1 year anniversary of the day that an old jr high friend committed suicide with my permission. He had AIDS. Before I left Arizona a few months previously, he and I had gone out to the hot wells one night and talked, he needed someone to know, to understand, and to forgive.
He came to me because he knew that I've had difficulties of my own, attempts when I was younger, depression, cutting, burning... Self Injury has gotten me through a lot of bad patches and suicide has at various points in my life been a comforting thought that helped me get through the worst of things. Deciding that if things got too bad I could just end it, somehow that gave me the strength to find my way through.
Tony, my friend, didn't want his loved ones to watch him suffer through the worst of it. He didn't want to be a burden, didn't want them to suffer with him, didn't want to linger. He had no chance of surviving and it seemed to him that making them watch him deteriorate and eventually fade away... that would be the greatest cruelty of all. There were other reasons, his fear of the suffering and pain that would come with it of course... But I told him that we would understand. We would hurt and we would miss him, but eventually everyone would understand.
When I got the message I was a wreck... but I felt as much relief that he was free of it all as I felt guilt for having given him permission to go through with it. I was told he didn't leave a note, but that nobody doubted his reasons.
All of May this year it was on my mind and appearing in my life in strange ways. I did a google search for "Love Notes" and the results included several sites about suicide notes. I would be channel surfing and land on a tv show or movie about someone who killed themself. Even listening to music brought up songs about suicide. And many times it was brought up to me in casual conversation, someone just happening to mention the word, the idea...
Its given me something to focus on in my depression, the fact that it keeps popping up. Never in any way that involves me considering it. I haven't cut or burned or otherwise harmed myself. Just.. the thought always floating just at the surface.
I've decided to scrap the serial killer that I was working on and start over with a new project, write a novel involving the theme. A girl who decides that she has nothing to live for and takes some time to distance herself from the ones she loves so that they'll hurt less when she kills herself. A series of adventures, bucket list (things she wants to do before she dies) and a sense of freedom that she experiences in the last months because she throws away the idea of guilt or consequence.
Part of the catalyst for her decision will be something very close if not completely identical to what happened with Tony, and if I ever do manage to publish he'll be the main dedication.
I don't believe that the story will have a happy ending, though one could develop in the process of writing. My characters tend to decide that for themselves without discussing the matter with me, heh... I believe that the story will end with her note and final thoughts... but I believe the journey, if it flows onto the page the way it plays in my mind, will be important and educational for the reader to find understanding and perhaps a bit of healing in the words.
I wasn't sure until this morning whether I intended to actually write this novel, or just keep the idea in my file for the amorphous maybe... but then today it happened again. On PostSecret there was a postcard, well... You should see it at the top of this post. It led me to To Write Love On Her Arms and I've come to terms with the fact that this idea isn't going to let me go until I've put it to writing.
So. I write, and perhaps in the process I'll bleed a bit of myself into the pages. I know I will, and that some secrets revealed will be uncomfortable for those who never saw when they should have but... Maybe thats just as important a part of this as the possibility that it could do some good to someone else who lingers at the edge and flirts with self destruction.
No comments:
Post a Comment