When I thought you were coming over the summer, I did what I always do, I bought things. Little things, mostly, things I thought you might like, things I wanted you to have, things that I love. One of these was a bracelet. I actually got one of them for you and one for me. Leather, yours black, mine brown. Mine says "Southern Miss Man," yours just says "Louie," because you loved him first, regardless of rank or standing. I've never worn mine. I wear yours every day. I thought it might replace that piece of some girl's stockings you wear around your wrist. I thought we could replace a bad memory with a good one. A mistake with a promise.
I also bought you one of my favorite books, "Fritz and the Beautiful Horses." It's about a town whose people decide they only want beautiful horses in the city, so they drive all the others out, including a smart little pony named Fritz, who wants nothing more than to carry children around on his back and be loved. The townspeople mock him as they ride by because he's not tall and graceful. But he's sturdy and reliable and eventually he wins them all over.
I am looking at the book right now. It makes me cry every time I see it out of the corner of my eye. If you ever read this post, please, go find this book. I think you'll love it. It's waiting for you if ever you'd like.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Dear Jake,
I have a paper due tomorrow that I haven't started yet. This feels so familiar. I don't think I'll ever get my life back together sometimes. It's coming up on spring break. I don't feel we spent enough time together last year as you were going through your short-lived Theresa phase. I wish we could spend this break together. Hell, I wish we could spend every day together. I know you are going to Miami, I think with Frankie. I know you'll probably cheat on your girlfriend. It's not that big of a deal, I suppose, and it's really just your style. I wonder if that will screw you up again. I wonder if you'll lie to her, or break up with her. On the one hand, I hate her. Call it biological, call it territorial, call it jealousy. On the other hand, I feel sorry for Judith. I don't know her. I can't really hate her as a person. She's just a kid. I wonder if she loves you. I wonder if you'll hurt her, or rather, when you'll hurt her. She's young though, she'll get over it sooner rather than later. But it will still hurt her. I wonder how much it will hurt you. I wonder if every time you do this, this thing that you do, if you become less likely to find what you are looking for. I know every mistake you make makes you feel despicable, even stupid things that everyone does. I wonder if you'll go home and just settle into that life, back with all the people who weren't enough to begin with. I wonder if you'll ever be happy.
I wonder if I'll ever be happy again. Not just content, you know, like I was before there was you, but happy.
I wonder.
I wonder if I'll ever be happy again. Not just content, you know, like I was before there was you, but happy.
I wonder.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Dear Jake,
Happy birthday, I hope it was a good one. I'm sure it was. After spending nine hours at the barn, I spent your birthday eating ice cream and smoking cigarettes and having a tele-breakdown. I think it was an effective way of dealing. Louie got a good grooming as well. We have a new group of volunteers, and he's one of the few horses that I can stick in the cross-ties and leave with their fumbling. I'm really glad you picked him out, he's a weird but wonderful horse. At present, of course, he's just hanging out. Threw a shoe again, but it wouldn't matter if he hadn't. It just isn't an escape anymore.
I couldn't really sleep, no surprises there. You know it was around this time last year that Czar went down and we spent all day getting him back on his feet. I loved you that day. Not in a romantic sense, but as a person. For your strength and dedication and support. That you helped without complaining. That you cared, and about something you didn't really know anything about. It is one of my favorite things about you. Maybe I only saw what I wanted to see, but for what it's worth, thank you. It was nice to have someone to lean on if only for a while.
I couldn't really sleep, no surprises there. You know it was around this time last year that Czar went down and we spent all day getting him back on his feet. I loved you that day. Not in a romantic sense, but as a person. For your strength and dedication and support. That you helped without complaining. That you cared, and about something you didn't really know anything about. It is one of my favorite things about you. Maybe I only saw what I wanted to see, but for what it's worth, thank you. It was nice to have someone to lean on if only for a while.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Dear Jake,
As if the day couldn't get anymore exciting, I drove down to the barn around noon, intending on meeting Jim and getting Rodder's feet done (the horse the Webb's were leasing then basically abandoned--I'll tell that story another time), and when I pull up to the gate I note my check engine light is on. You know I am completely paranoid and an insane dunce when it comes to my car. In my mind that is something you should be taking care of. I mean, some man, but mainly you. I head right out the other side of the driveway and into Waldorf to have this nuisance checked out. I get to Jiffy Lube and think about getting my car serviced the day we slept in the barn, going to buy bedding that would absolutely not keep us warm...shake my head. They charge me $90 for a freaking diagnostic. I hate that. I mean, it's just wrong. The last thing you need when you know something likely needs to be fixed (and with me it's always something expensive) is being charged an arm and a leg for some jerk to take ten minutes to tell me what's wrong. I mean, $90??? That's like $540 an hour!! Are you kidding me? Are you a Lawyer? I don't make that in a week...sigh, calm down, I should have been an auto mechanic.
I am joking on the phone with Debbie that it's going to be something that costs like 25 cents but cost a hundred bucks to diagnose hahaha only then the guy comes in and tells me blah blah blah spark plugs blah blah blah engine and the total is going to come to $500!!! Holy lord! Do I look like I have...money? Let alone the price of a dead lame broken down thoroughbred? I think not. So I whip out my trusty credit card, which I tell him specifically I have no idea if it even has that much left on it, and he says Oh, yeah, it'll be two hours.
Oh, no, I don't think so. The one thing I have less of than money is time. I ask him if it'll last till the weekend. He reassures me that it will. He says something about wires and it triggers the memory that I swear I just had this done like a year and a half ago after I moved back from Dublin. He tells me to call the ford dealer where I had the work done to check and see if it's the same work and if it might still be under warranty. I really appreciate that kind of thing, he certainly didn't have to suggest I save my money and double check. I love guys like this, you know, honest guys. They are few and far between. I thought you were one, now I just think you might be one someday. Still better than the multitude of people I know will always be horrible. But this is probably all just the anger speaking because you left me and aren't here to deal with this kind of stuff.
I am joking on the phone with Debbie that it's going to be something that costs like 25 cents but cost a hundred bucks to diagnose hahaha only then the guy comes in and tells me blah blah blah spark plugs blah blah blah engine and the total is going to come to $500!!! Holy lord! Do I look like I have...money? Let alone the price of a dead lame broken down thoroughbred? I think not. So I whip out my trusty credit card, which I tell him specifically I have no idea if it even has that much left on it, and he says Oh, yeah, it'll be two hours.
Oh, no, I don't think so. The one thing I have less of than money is time. I ask him if it'll last till the weekend. He reassures me that it will. He says something about wires and it triggers the memory that I swear I just had this done like a year and a half ago after I moved back from Dublin. He tells me to call the ford dealer where I had the work done to check and see if it's the same work and if it might still be under warranty. I really appreciate that kind of thing, he certainly didn't have to suggest I save my money and double check. I love guys like this, you know, honest guys. They are few and far between. I thought you were one, now I just think you might be one someday. Still better than the multitude of people I know will always be horrible. But this is probably all just the anger speaking because you left me and aren't here to deal with this kind of stuff.
Dear Jake,
This isn't how I wanted to begin, but nothing is quite how I wanted it. It's not exactly like me, I suppose, how distracted I've been...really since last January. I wanted this first post to be the description of the purpose of this endeavor, how I should have started this long ago. But the truth is rather simple: Every day there is something I want to tell you. What happened today, things that made me laugh, things that made me mad, or sad, or scared, just...everything. But I can't.
Hopefully, the next post will be the one where I lay out my plans, but as for this post, let me just tell you what happened last night!
I got out of class last night, you know normally I stay on campus on monday nights, but last night I just couldn't be here. It's not you every day. I mean, it is, but sometimes the whole of my life here is just too much or too little and I have to run. As we've discussed, I can't run as far as I used to anymore, but I can go down and stay and the barn and sleep in our bed without you. I guess it's just my bed now, but it'll never feel that way.
Anyway, I grabbed chinese food on the way down and was so excited to watch prison break and the shitty terminator show which no one must ever know I like--especially you. I settled in, ate your favorite meal, and considered how difficult it would be to relocate myself and our horses down to Panama. Of course, then I remembered I hate being hot and living in places with terrible tropical equine diseases. But for about thirty seconds it seems like a great plan. I wonder if you are going to Australia next year. I mean, I know theoretically you are quitting school and joining the military, but I am still skeptical about this rumor. That'll be a whole new post. Moving on, even when I sit down to watch a show and am really interested in the characters and what happens, I really just can't focus. I need to be doing something at all times, so all TV minus the news is me trying to remember that I'm supposed to be paying attention, that I care. I can't tell you off the top of my head what happened in either show last night, but I do know I thought for a moment how Brian Austen Green didn't suck nearly as much as he did while he was on 90210 and I was 12. He is certainly one who's better when he's older. I'd like to think I am and will be.
I fell asleep at some point. I don't sleep well at all. I wake up in the middle of the night a lot. I didn't used to. I have bad dreams with increasing regularity. I had a nightmare featuring John Kerry last week. I can't explain that one at all. I like John Kerry.
(Barack Obama is giving his victory speech right now. I don't really care for him, but I really dislike his wife.)
Somewhere around 12.30am I awoke to what sounded like gunfire right outside my window. Four shots. It couldn't be gunfire, because how could I ever feel safe again if it was? I convinced myself that it was Ernie banging around in the garage, perhaps not realizing I was in. I mean, I have a dad who decides to undertake home improvement projects with power tools regardless of the hour or who might be sleeping. "God damn it, Ernie!" I thought, rather like writing a script to a play where he really was just messing around, "don't you know what time it is?" But when I heard the tires screech down the driveway, I knew there was someone out there. I lay in bed when the police arrived shortly thereafter and listened to Ernie explain the pick-up that had pulled into the driveway and fired a gun into the field.
Likely hunters trying to spotlight deer on our property, and the four subsequent shots were Ernie firing at them.
I think about it the phone call we got last week about a pony whose owner shot it in the head, my friend Kim going out into their field when we were kids and finding her horse vivisected, every story on the news about home invasions and robberies gone wrong. I hope they were only hunting deer. I feel unprotected alone in our bed. I'm sleeping in your t-shirt, I do most nights at the barn, but that can't protect me from everything. I think about your having dreams about shooting me and how hard it must have been to share that. How scary it must be to have those thoughts.
I hear Ernie tell the cops that I live up above the garage and how he worries about me being up there alone. I hear Debbie go out and head down to the barn to check on the horses in the field. Crazy Gwendolyn wants her horses out all the time. I know they care about me, I know a lot of people care about me, but it can only do so much to alleviate the loneliness and nothing to eliminate the fear of waking up to gun shots in the middle of the night. I wish you were there.
Hopefully, the next post will be the one where I lay out my plans, but as for this post, let me just tell you what happened last night!
I got out of class last night, you know normally I stay on campus on monday nights, but last night I just couldn't be here. It's not you every day. I mean, it is, but sometimes the whole of my life here is just too much or too little and I have to run. As we've discussed, I can't run as far as I used to anymore, but I can go down and stay and the barn and sleep in our bed without you. I guess it's just my bed now, but it'll never feel that way.
Anyway, I grabbed chinese food on the way down and was so excited to watch prison break and the shitty terminator show which no one must ever know I like--especially you. I settled in, ate your favorite meal, and considered how difficult it would be to relocate myself and our horses down to Panama. Of course, then I remembered I hate being hot and living in places with terrible tropical equine diseases. But for about thirty seconds it seems like a great plan. I wonder if you are going to Australia next year. I mean, I know theoretically you are quitting school and joining the military, but I am still skeptical about this rumor. That'll be a whole new post. Moving on, even when I sit down to watch a show and am really interested in the characters and what happens, I really just can't focus. I need to be doing something at all times, so all TV minus the news is me trying to remember that I'm supposed to be paying attention, that I care. I can't tell you off the top of my head what happened in either show last night, but I do know I thought for a moment how Brian Austen Green didn't suck nearly as much as he did while he was on 90210 and I was 12. He is certainly one who's better when he's older. I'd like to think I am and will be.
I fell asleep at some point. I don't sleep well at all. I wake up in the middle of the night a lot. I didn't used to. I have bad dreams with increasing regularity. I had a nightmare featuring John Kerry last week. I can't explain that one at all. I like John Kerry.
(Barack Obama is giving his victory speech right now. I don't really care for him, but I really dislike his wife.)
Somewhere around 12.30am I awoke to what sounded like gunfire right outside my window. Four shots. It couldn't be gunfire, because how could I ever feel safe again if it was? I convinced myself that it was Ernie banging around in the garage, perhaps not realizing I was in. I mean, I have a dad who decides to undertake home improvement projects with power tools regardless of the hour or who might be sleeping. "God damn it, Ernie!" I thought, rather like writing a script to a play where he really was just messing around, "don't you know what time it is?" But when I heard the tires screech down the driveway, I knew there was someone out there. I lay in bed when the police arrived shortly thereafter and listened to Ernie explain the pick-up that had pulled into the driveway and fired a gun into the field.
Likely hunters trying to spotlight deer on our property, and the four subsequent shots were Ernie firing at them.
I think about it the phone call we got last week about a pony whose owner shot it in the head, my friend Kim going out into their field when we were kids and finding her horse vivisected, every story on the news about home invasions and robberies gone wrong. I hope they were only hunting deer. I feel unprotected alone in our bed. I'm sleeping in your t-shirt, I do most nights at the barn, but that can't protect me from everything. I think about your having dreams about shooting me and how hard it must have been to share that. How scary it must be to have those thoughts.
I hear Ernie tell the cops that I live up above the garage and how he worries about me being up there alone. I hear Debbie go out and head down to the barn to check on the horses in the field. Crazy Gwendolyn wants her horses out all the time. I know they care about me, I know a lot of people care about me, but it can only do so much to alleviate the loneliness and nothing to eliminate the fear of waking up to gun shots in the middle of the night. I wish you were there.
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