They Say...

As if to prove to myself that time doesn't heal...today was nothing that I expected. I awaited the arrival of this day with a strange complacence. I knew it would be hard, but not hard like this. I wanted to throw things, to break things. To hear the satisfactory thud and crash of something other than my heart hitting the floor and shattering into a thousand unmanageable pieces. I wanted to cry. But I suppose somewhere deep inside I knew that none of those things would make me feel better, or make the pain go away. Because I have done it all before, and the pain is still there, always there. So instead of being angry I was just numb. Strangely numb all day. And I hate myself for that. I should be crying. I should be sad. I should not be able to drive to work and take phone calls and send text messages and shop and eat and shower and live. How can I just live? I should be fucking angry. But instead I am just broken, still broken, like I have been ever since that day so long ago, five years ago today, on Wednesday, October 27th, 2004, when my father died too early from a disease that has mercy for no one. They say time heals a broken heart...but in a way, time only adds weight to the fracture.

They Say...

They say that time heals a broken heart. Well, I'll be the first one to tell you, that isn't true. Certainly, time manages to fade the memory a bit. Enough to cope...but I don't think that there is really any amount of healing - you're still the proud owner of an ugly wound. And there is simply either the willingness and ability to move on, or the lack thereof. But even years after moving on, part of you still remains inextricably broken in some small way that may not be visible to others, but is very much noticeable to you. Certainly if you skin your knee while rollerskating when you're seven years old, it doesn't haunt your dreams and every waking moment of your life, but even a decade later, if you throw on rollerskates, that memory wakes up, aches a little in some small place, affects your behavior...affects how careful you are not to get hurt again. But inevitably, you always get hurt again...

i'm broken on the inside
though the outside doesnt show
the pain inside thats breaking me
somehow you'll never know
i can talk until i'm blue in the face
and still you have no clue
how this anomaly came to be
although the pain comes from you

Every place is our place. We weave gracefully through crowds like seasoned tourists and navigate deserted highways like its all we've ever known. And as lonely souls drift by us, maybe we infect them with our sickening happiness, if only just a little. I can only hope.

Chances Are...

Sometimes you reach so far it hurts. Sometimes you ache for it until every bone in your body resonates with need. Sometimes you search until you cannot seem to hold your eyes open. And sometimes, just sometimes, you find exactly what you were looking for. The world isn't against you.

I'm Sorry Dad.

It was your birthday Sunday...I didn't even remember. I hate myself for that. How ironic that I was tromping around in places like this, all light and shadow and darkness, all trash and rotting and death. Like it was when you were gone. Used to be home to me. To you. To us. Drove by there almost a year ago, now its home to someone else. Bet they don't know a little girl's daddy spent two years dying of cancer in there. Bet they don't know I drove nine hours straight in traffic from hell to get back there every other weekend. Bet they don't know they stole home from me. Oh well. Life goes on, right? I'm sorry, Dad.

The world is a vast place. A million unexplored nooks and crannies. Forgotten places, broken things, beauty...and magic everywhere. And I don't want to see any of it without you.