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Melancholia


You know when you first wake up after a deep sleep and that cloudiness is covering your eyes or you step outside early on a cool morning after a warm rain and there’s this gauzy veil covering everything? I’m perpetually in that state. I talk, drive, cook, clean, eat, work-all while in this melancholy mist.  I don’t know how to escape it or if I could even exist without it at this point. Maybe he’s right and I need the sadness or the chaos.

Sometimes when I breathe it in, it’s heavy and I’m left gasping. Other times I can navigate through the vapor seamlessly. 

It’s getting easier to pretend it’s not there when others are around. I can still feel it enveloping me like an old, scratchy, wool blanket. But I can force a smile and meaningless conversation and ignore the itch for a little while. 

It is not so easy to reject when I’m home and vulnerable. It seems to slide across me effortlessly like paint on a canvas. No smiles, no conversations. It’s easier to not engage. I want to protect them from the sadness and negativity. But it’s winning. I have caught each of them muddling through the vagueness. I allowed this to get too close to them.

I often find myself staring off. I think I’m trying to see through the blur and find some light. 

Just a spark, a flicker and maybe we’ll be okay. 

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What It Sounds Like

Do you wanna go for a ride and listen to my new favorite song?

This is what love sounds like after 22 years. Well, it’s what our love sounds like after 22 years.

There are daily “I love you(s),” and at the end of each phone conservation. There are reminders to take my medication, and calls on the way home asking if I need anything. There are daily 4:00 AM alarms waking him so he can go to work and provide for us. There are requests to snuggle and watch movies, and of course appeals to make a grocery list so he can go food shopping. There is the sound of my car moving up the driveway in the snowy winter so I don’t have to walk too far to start it. There are even still some, “you look good today(s).”

But my favorite is, “Do you wanna go for a ride and listen to music?” It usually begins with his new favorite song, but the ride always extends into a peripatetic concert. In the confines of the front seat, as the music plays, the melodies seduce our words, feelings and struggles out of the margins of our mouths.

The music has always been there. It was song lyrics written on a desk calendar in my office. It was mix tapes and cds listened to on long drives to NY and late at night. It was/is Tom Petty, Dave Matthews and Brandi Carlile concerts. It was homemade daily calendars with purposeful lyrics handwritten on each day. It is songs “given” to me through texts. It is crackly vinyl playing while we make dinner or play cards.

This is what love sounds like after 22 years.

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Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

11/14/20

I’m sitting in the front seat of your truck watching you. You’re meticulously exploring through bins of records in some shady, industrial warehouse. The loading gate is open allowing me a glimpse inside. Your gaze is fixed. You’re not looking for anything in particular, just anything that will make you smile, remember. With each gentle flick of your finger, memories materialize. Late night trips to Newbury Comics and Tower Records fade in and out. You have coupled music to every piece of our relationship and life; a beautiful, chaotic, tumultuous soundtrack of us. You hold your discoveries as gentle as you did our babies. You protect your music, and for the first time I understand why. Those songs and melodies are proof of your past or glimpses of your future. Almost an hour has passed. I don’t mind. You’re feeding your soul while I write, listen to Fleetwood Mac, sip tea and feed my own. When we return home later, you will play your music for me, for our kids, for our neighbors (whether they like it or not) and for yourself, adding to our bitter sweet symphony.

11/20/20


I’m the dusty, mismatched batteries you find in the back of the junk drawer on Christmas morning. I work just enough to make that new toy light up or turn on and bring a smile or two. Luckily attention wanes because my charge is weak. The lights dim and the sounds become low, jumbled  and drawn out.  I need recharging. I need to plug in and unplug from schedules,homework assignments, laundry, cooking, cleaning, sports sign-ups, practices, IEPs, meetings, lesson plans, Google meets, hydrating, eating healthy, moving more, arguments, emails, text messages, social media, politicians, Covid and worrying. Too much to maintain. My energy is almost gone. Maybe if someone takes me out, spins me around and puts me back in, I’ll work for a little longer.