(no subject)
Today, for reasons having less to do with it being Easter (my family is Jewish so it means little to me) and more to do with it being a day off, I'm trying to take care of some chores and unfinished business. One of the items was writing this entry.
Where I last left off in terms of life narrative, I was about to go to Colorado Springs to visit Justin and Christina in late September. It was a mostly fun, if somewhat chaotic trip, made so especially by their newborn baby daughter Aria, who at the time was only nine or ten weeks old. It was good to get away from Florida for awhile. I hadn't left the state since my trip to Alpharetta, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) for the wedding of my longtime friend Jessica in late May of 2012. It was also good to see the people in my life who knew Galina best (well, much more so Christina) and were most affected by her loss. We didn't talk about her much though, except in the final day or two, when we shared some stories and I read a bunch of my writing about her from over the years, and the long entries I posted here a few months after her passing.
The area itself was gorgeous. I have a bunch of pictures which I still haven't gotten around to posting anywhere, though some have seen them. I'd like to go back again soon, maybe this summer or fall, and this time, plan the trip a bit better. I'd even consider moving there or somewhere like it one day. I really don't care for Florida. I've lived here my whole life (I just turned 30 in January) and it's incredibly tiresome. But at the moment I don't have the means to move elsewhere. When I can though, I'm getting the hell out of here. Life is elsewhere.
Anyway, after I got back to my dreary life of work, grieving, and near isolation (except for my friend Roberto, who's been good and reliable, if sometimes exhausting company), I started to become, or maybe resumed becoming, very depressed. In August I had decided to break the three months of sobriety I had accrued, by having some beer and saying "To hell with it" and in October I decided to step up the self-destructive escapism by finding a source for my favorite drug, oxycodone, the one the landed me in rehab in late 2007. I also tried a similar variant, hydromorphone (the technical name for Dilaudid), a few times. It's a little cheaper but not as good. I started smoking pot sometimes too. Oxy has gotten a lot more expensive since I was last using it, though. Because of that, and my much diminished tolerance, I usually didn't buy much at a time, but I started getting it quite frequently, sometimes as much as two or three times a week. I had dry periods off and on, occasioned by guilt and/or lack of funds. The longest so far has been 17 days in March, during which I was going to lots of AA meetings, something I think I started again in January or February. (I know I hadn't been to any at all since May or June.) I have had a lot of fun on it, and also some not so great times (the nausea immediately after, and the weird feeling and low moods in the subsequent days). I am sorry to report that I have not yet quit. I used just a few days ago. But I have gotten pretty bored with it. I know Galina, who had problems with it herself at times, would want me to stop. I don't know how or when it will happen, but I think that it will be easier once my grief mellows more, as it has done lately. My use is already less than its peak, during late fall and winter. But I cringe to think of how much money I have spent on it since mid-October. Which makes the next thing I'm about to relate especially awful.
In late February, one of my cats, Wednesday, a six year-old black shorthair with a hefty figure and a very loving personality, got sick. I had to take her to the vet, and tests showed severe kidney problems which, as I soon found, required expensive surgery. I noticed she was ill right at the beginning of a weeklong vacation I'd taken from work, and this dominated the rest of the week. My mom came up to visit me and deal with the vet with me for a couple of days. We already had to pay a lot just for the tests and for the in-hospital care (it was severe enough that she couldn't come home). At this time I had very little money, only a couple hundred or so, and therefore it was up to my parents, and more precisely my dad, who I'm not at all close with, whether to proceed with the surgery.
The vet estimated a 70% chance of success, and if she survived, she might need a changed diet and some special care for awhile, but otherwise could conceivably live out a normal life. But with all the uncertainty at many levels, and the certainty of huge costs, my parents decided she should just be put to sleep. And so it was done, on Friday, February 28th. I was able to visit her each day for a few days as tests were being done, since I was off from work and the vet's office was minutes from my house. On the last day, I played her some pretty (and meaningful) music from my phone as I pet her in my lap. I'd had her for 5 1/2 years, since late August of 2008 when Justin and Christina gave her to me right after I moved into my first apartment in this area, and they moved from Orlando to New York City. In May 2009 I wrote a poem for her in my creative writing class. It's simply called "Wednesday." I posted it here once long ago put given the occasion, I'll put it here again:
Some say little black cats like you
are bad luck
but I know better, of course.
I'm lucky to have you, so lucky.
And for all the trouble you can be,
I know I'm still blessed.
I knew it was love right away when
we met last summer at Justin's in Orlando
and you were so hyper with your
cartoonish darting about,
your curvy little claws digging into me
as you purred in my face with
your frantic feline friendliness.
Later I asked,
"How much for the cat?"
A hopeful joke, I thought.
Yet it happened he couldn't keep you
and so my secret wish
came true for free, no less!
Until I got you spayed
you kept me up each night
with your wailing and your wauling.
And even now, each morning
at some unpleasant hour
you swat and scratch my arms and head
until such time as you are fed,
which is the first of countless times each day:
you'll get so fat you'll break my bed!
You have a wonderful way, my Wennyday,
of making sure the litter box is always full.
In one hand I arm myself with a scooper,
the other with Febreze, because I love you but
I also like to breathe.
But it's all worthwhile when we quietly cuddle,
when I'm curled up with a book and you in bed,
or we frolic in the living room,
playing with catnip-laced and jingling toys.
I don't always wish to be me,
but often I wish I were you.
(end)
She's survived by Luanne (or Lulu), an adorable tuxedo cat who I got in July 2009 when I was with my then-girlfriend Margot, and Lulu was only a few weeks old. She and I had already been getting closer, with her staying in my bed much more often, but now that it's just me and her, we've gotten even closer. I'm thinking of getting another cat one day, probably a year old or younger, but maybe not too young, since kittens are accident prone and I don't have anyone else here to supervise. I'm not in a rush though. I felt guilty about Wednesday for awhile, that I should have fought my parents harder for the surgery, and especially the counterfactual that had I not been recklessly abusing drugs for the past few months, I may have had a lot more money to have a say in it. But knowing myself, it's likely I'd have spent a good part of that money on other (though still far more worthwhile) things. And sick cats hide it very well. I've read that kidney disease can manifest very suddenly and acutely. So, of course for about a week I was crying a lot and hating myself and feeling hopeless. In a letter I wrote to Galina right afterward I told her I was entrusting Wednesday in her care. (Galina was a longtime cat lover herself, and her cat Trixy, who's around nine years old by now, still lives with the family.) She had met Wednesday at least once or twice, once for sure when she was here briefly in late 2012, and possibly also on visits to Orlando when Justin and Christina still had her. She got to know her best through my many pictures and stories of her, though. The image in my mind of the two of them now, beautiful as it is, breaks my heart, and seems to sum up this time in my life.
In some ways the huge loss of Galina has made this easier to bear. I don't want to say it's simply desensitized or hardened me, but it has acquainted me intimately with the ways of grief. It helps that, aside from the money thing, which is indirect anyway, I don't have regrets about Wednesday. Sure, I could have played with her more often, as I did when she was young. But even though I became lazy about this, I was never negligent, and indeed, anyone who knows me will attest I am quite a fawning and doting cat owner. I still miss her a lot though, and it's quieter here without her. She was not a noisy cat at all, but her interaction with Lulu made both of them noisier in the most delightful (and yes, sometimes annoying) way. A week and a half ago I went to the Humane Society by my house to look at other adoptable cats. There were some nice ones, but none that really stood out. However, there was one black shorthair in its own individual cage who reminded me a lot of Wednesday, so much that it made me tear up a bit. When I get another cat it likely won't be a black one. I don't want to confuse Lulu (and in a way, myself).
I have written two new poems for Galina. The first, which is more of a draft and needs some work, I unfortunately wrote while I was high. It was in late February and I have yet to go back to that one. Some friends liked my draft but that's because they're friends. I remain unsatisfied. So, I'll post it when it's more polished and substantive. However, the second one, much longer and more elaborate, I wrote just two weeks ago, on April 6th. I spent much of the day in a park by her old neighborhood that we'd been to a few times in the early years. It was my first time going down there since July, the week after she passed. I sat in my car and listened to stuff on the mixes I'd made her, and some other music, and cried profusely. Then, I came and sat on a bench by a pond, a pond which memory told me we had one day very early on spent an exuberant afternoon walking around and talking. I started tentatively to write, and soon I had a poem, which I revised a couple times in the days right after. On Friday, April 11th, having been invited by Roberto to an open mic event at a coffeehouse in downtown Lake Worth, I brought the poem and read it. It was fairly well-received and I got a few compliments afterward, though my delivery was a bit hushed at times. I still don't feel finished with it, especially the first stanzas, but here it is in its current form:
Distance
I come now to the place you lived
To remember better what once was
And what we were, in days past
and long ago and strange
Now difficult to tell
What has endured and what has changed
So long ago it was, a different I,
a different you, a different sky
And slowly time moves so fast
I wonder what I'm doing here,
just this pen and myself and my mind
By a lake, in a park, your house near
Yet we came here so few times
One day, early on, I can't remember when
New and exciting to each other then
Around this lake in sun we sat and walked
Escapes me what we said, but with great joy we talked
Another time, much later perhaps,
In the playground nearby which still stands
We sat on swings and joked around
So close we were, by then
So far it is, just now
I can't recall much more than that
Except we called us sages of the swings
But sagacious about what things?
We said back then we'd write things down
But I chose trusting memory instead
So much laughterlove now lost,
And moments our souls were young, sublime,
Our words shaped with a grin,
Now vanished in the tides of time
Or hidden, hidden far within
And only I can dive now in that deep still sea
Where lie pieces, beautiful and broken, of you and me
I've plunged, plunged that endless blue
Yet fragments shining I have found
Still don't add up to you
And who can say what's drowned?
Or what is dross and what is true?
I'd know for sure were you around.
And memories themselves do move
They seldom keep one place
For quick as shadows do they prove
And even pictures forget your face
What hope lies then for me
To bring that old forever back to life?
Lost things, for no more eyes to see,
Mine, closed, may still decipher bright
With heart and mind set free,
In dreams of day and night,
My love's entirety
May prove the saving light.
(end)
Finally, and most unexpectedly, I got a promotion at work earlier this month. After the usual frantic blur of a holiday season, and the almost as busy January, when the tourists linger and we're deluged with returned gifts, things had settled back to the way they are the rest of the year. I was going to job hunt during that week I took off in late February, but what happened instead happened instead. Weighted as I was with new grief, a serious job search seemed out of the question for the time being, plus sobriety seemed quite urgent for awhile, frankly more than it seems now. Anyway, I had been a full-time bookseller for a long time but not a "lead" or a manager, and apparently the company is eliminating all such positions, converting them to part-time. The store manager (a woman named Randi who just took over this month, in a shuffle of different managers to different stores which I won't bother to detail here) offered me the choice of becoming either the children's department lead (hell no) or the digital sales lead. That position had been vacant for the last two years.
The alternative was to go to part-time hours and lose my full-time benefits (like health insurance), so once I learned that, and the new salary ($11.50 from my pathetic $9.25), there was really nothing to decide. The digital sales lead, briefly, has to do with the Nook e-reader devices we've had in various versions since early 2010. I'd already become more and more proficient at selling and troubleshooting the devices, while maintaining my other responsibilities (customer service, shelving, merchandising, store recovery, etc.), so it was a natural step. I'll still maintain said responsibilities too, and the same sort of hours and shifts. I'm only surprised and more than a bit annoyed that it wasn't offered to me much earlier, though I can guess why. Though I'll have a bit more money and something else to add to my resume, after over six years at this store I still want to get out of there and find a real job, outside the confines of retail hell, which would hopefully allow me to use other skills, like writing. But the urgency, for now, is diminished, so I feel more free to relax and deal with all my other problems, and the ongoing work of grief.
I may do some traveling in the next few months, to Colorado as I mentioned before, or Georgia, about an hour from Atlanta, where one of my best friends, Travis, moved from Ft. Lauderdale (and troubles of his own) in November, or New York City, where Roberto and his new girlfriend Allie (an ex-coworker of mine whom I introduced him to in February, who has become a new friend in her own right) are going this summer and have invited me to join.
In between all this, of course, a lot of books, movies, TV, music, and even a few video games. More on that later, perhaps. For now, I remain calm and intact, far from happy but not entirely not, amid so much recent drama and devastation.
Where I last left off in terms of life narrative, I was about to go to Colorado Springs to visit Justin and Christina in late September. It was a mostly fun, if somewhat chaotic trip, made so especially by their newborn baby daughter Aria, who at the time was only nine or ten weeks old. It was good to get away from Florida for awhile. I hadn't left the state since my trip to Alpharetta, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) for the wedding of my longtime friend Jessica in late May of 2012. It was also good to see the people in my life who knew Galina best (well, much more so Christina) and were most affected by her loss. We didn't talk about her much though, except in the final day or two, when we shared some stories and I read a bunch of my writing about her from over the years, and the long entries I posted here a few months after her passing.
The area itself was gorgeous. I have a bunch of pictures which I still haven't gotten around to posting anywhere, though some have seen them. I'd like to go back again soon, maybe this summer or fall, and this time, plan the trip a bit better. I'd even consider moving there or somewhere like it one day. I really don't care for Florida. I've lived here my whole life (I just turned 30 in January) and it's incredibly tiresome. But at the moment I don't have the means to move elsewhere. When I can though, I'm getting the hell out of here. Life is elsewhere.
Anyway, after I got back to my dreary life of work, grieving, and near isolation (except for my friend Roberto, who's been good and reliable, if sometimes exhausting company), I started to become, or maybe resumed becoming, very depressed. In August I had decided to break the three months of sobriety I had accrued, by having some beer and saying "To hell with it" and in October I decided to step up the self-destructive escapism by finding a source for my favorite drug, oxycodone, the one the landed me in rehab in late 2007. I also tried a similar variant, hydromorphone (the technical name for Dilaudid), a few times. It's a little cheaper but not as good. I started smoking pot sometimes too. Oxy has gotten a lot more expensive since I was last using it, though. Because of that, and my much diminished tolerance, I usually didn't buy much at a time, but I started getting it quite frequently, sometimes as much as two or three times a week. I had dry periods off and on, occasioned by guilt and/or lack of funds. The longest so far has been 17 days in March, during which I was going to lots of AA meetings, something I think I started again in January or February. (I know I hadn't been to any at all since May or June.) I have had a lot of fun on it, and also some not so great times (the nausea immediately after, and the weird feeling and low moods in the subsequent days). I am sorry to report that I have not yet quit. I used just a few days ago. But I have gotten pretty bored with it. I know Galina, who had problems with it herself at times, would want me to stop. I don't know how or when it will happen, but I think that it will be easier once my grief mellows more, as it has done lately. My use is already less than its peak, during late fall and winter. But I cringe to think of how much money I have spent on it since mid-October. Which makes the next thing I'm about to relate especially awful.
In late February, one of my cats, Wednesday, a six year-old black shorthair with a hefty figure and a very loving personality, got sick. I had to take her to the vet, and tests showed severe kidney problems which, as I soon found, required expensive surgery. I noticed she was ill right at the beginning of a weeklong vacation I'd taken from work, and this dominated the rest of the week. My mom came up to visit me and deal with the vet with me for a couple of days. We already had to pay a lot just for the tests and for the in-hospital care (it was severe enough that she couldn't come home). At this time I had very little money, only a couple hundred or so, and therefore it was up to my parents, and more precisely my dad, who I'm not at all close with, whether to proceed with the surgery.
The vet estimated a 70% chance of success, and if she survived, she might need a changed diet and some special care for awhile, but otherwise could conceivably live out a normal life. But with all the uncertainty at many levels, and the certainty of huge costs, my parents decided she should just be put to sleep. And so it was done, on Friday, February 28th. I was able to visit her each day for a few days as tests were being done, since I was off from work and the vet's office was minutes from my house. On the last day, I played her some pretty (and meaningful) music from my phone as I pet her in my lap. I'd had her for 5 1/2 years, since late August of 2008 when Justin and Christina gave her to me right after I moved into my first apartment in this area, and they moved from Orlando to New York City. In May 2009 I wrote a poem for her in my creative writing class. It's simply called "Wednesday." I posted it here once long ago put given the occasion, I'll put it here again:
Some say little black cats like you
are bad luck
but I know better, of course.
I'm lucky to have you, so lucky.
And for all the trouble you can be,
I know I'm still blessed.
I knew it was love right away when
we met last summer at Justin's in Orlando
and you were so hyper with your
cartoonish darting about,
your curvy little claws digging into me
as you purred in my face with
your frantic feline friendliness.
Later I asked,
"How much for the cat?"
A hopeful joke, I thought.
Yet it happened he couldn't keep you
and so my secret wish
came true for free, no less!
Until I got you spayed
you kept me up each night
with your wailing and your wauling.
And even now, each morning
at some unpleasant hour
you swat and scratch my arms and head
until such time as you are fed,
which is the first of countless times each day:
you'll get so fat you'll break my bed!
You have a wonderful way, my Wennyday,
of making sure the litter box is always full.
In one hand I arm myself with a scooper,
the other with Febreze, because I love you but
I also like to breathe.
But it's all worthwhile when we quietly cuddle,
when I'm curled up with a book and you in bed,
or we frolic in the living room,
playing with catnip-laced and jingling toys.
I don't always wish to be me,
but often I wish I were you.
(end)
She's survived by Luanne (or Lulu), an adorable tuxedo cat who I got in July 2009 when I was with my then-girlfriend Margot, and Lulu was only a few weeks old. She and I had already been getting closer, with her staying in my bed much more often, but now that it's just me and her, we've gotten even closer. I'm thinking of getting another cat one day, probably a year old or younger, but maybe not too young, since kittens are accident prone and I don't have anyone else here to supervise. I'm not in a rush though. I felt guilty about Wednesday for awhile, that I should have fought my parents harder for the surgery, and especially the counterfactual that had I not been recklessly abusing drugs for the past few months, I may have had a lot more money to have a say in it. But knowing myself, it's likely I'd have spent a good part of that money on other (though still far more worthwhile) things. And sick cats hide it very well. I've read that kidney disease can manifest very suddenly and acutely. So, of course for about a week I was crying a lot and hating myself and feeling hopeless. In a letter I wrote to Galina right afterward I told her I was entrusting Wednesday in her care. (Galina was a longtime cat lover herself, and her cat Trixy, who's around nine years old by now, still lives with the family.) She had met Wednesday at least once or twice, once for sure when she was here briefly in late 2012, and possibly also on visits to Orlando when Justin and Christina still had her. She got to know her best through my many pictures and stories of her, though. The image in my mind of the two of them now, beautiful as it is, breaks my heart, and seems to sum up this time in my life.
In some ways the huge loss of Galina has made this easier to bear. I don't want to say it's simply desensitized or hardened me, but it has acquainted me intimately with the ways of grief. It helps that, aside from the money thing, which is indirect anyway, I don't have regrets about Wednesday. Sure, I could have played with her more often, as I did when she was young. But even though I became lazy about this, I was never negligent, and indeed, anyone who knows me will attest I am quite a fawning and doting cat owner. I still miss her a lot though, and it's quieter here without her. She was not a noisy cat at all, but her interaction with Lulu made both of them noisier in the most delightful (and yes, sometimes annoying) way. A week and a half ago I went to the Humane Society by my house to look at other adoptable cats. There were some nice ones, but none that really stood out. However, there was one black shorthair in its own individual cage who reminded me a lot of Wednesday, so much that it made me tear up a bit. When I get another cat it likely won't be a black one. I don't want to confuse Lulu (and in a way, myself).
I have written two new poems for Galina. The first, which is more of a draft and needs some work, I unfortunately wrote while I was high. It was in late February and I have yet to go back to that one. Some friends liked my draft but that's because they're friends. I remain unsatisfied. So, I'll post it when it's more polished and substantive. However, the second one, much longer and more elaborate, I wrote just two weeks ago, on April 6th. I spent much of the day in a park by her old neighborhood that we'd been to a few times in the early years. It was my first time going down there since July, the week after she passed. I sat in my car and listened to stuff on the mixes I'd made her, and some other music, and cried profusely. Then, I came and sat on a bench by a pond, a pond which memory told me we had one day very early on spent an exuberant afternoon walking around and talking. I started tentatively to write, and soon I had a poem, which I revised a couple times in the days right after. On Friday, April 11th, having been invited by Roberto to an open mic event at a coffeehouse in downtown Lake Worth, I brought the poem and read it. It was fairly well-received and I got a few compliments afterward, though my delivery was a bit hushed at times. I still don't feel finished with it, especially the first stanzas, but here it is in its current form:
Distance
I come now to the place you lived
To remember better what once was
And what we were, in days past
and long ago and strange
Now difficult to tell
What has endured and what has changed
So long ago it was, a different I,
a different you, a different sky
And slowly time moves so fast
I wonder what I'm doing here,
just this pen and myself and my mind
By a lake, in a park, your house near
Yet we came here so few times
One day, early on, I can't remember when
New and exciting to each other then
Around this lake in sun we sat and walked
Escapes me what we said, but with great joy we talked
Another time, much later perhaps,
In the playground nearby which still stands
We sat on swings and joked around
So close we were, by then
So far it is, just now
I can't recall much more than that
Except we called us sages of the swings
But sagacious about what things?
We said back then we'd write things down
But I chose trusting memory instead
So much laughterlove now lost,
And moments our souls were young, sublime,
Our words shaped with a grin,
Now vanished in the tides of time
Or hidden, hidden far within
And only I can dive now in that deep still sea
Where lie pieces, beautiful and broken, of you and me
I've plunged, plunged that endless blue
Yet fragments shining I have found
Still don't add up to you
And who can say what's drowned?
Or what is dross and what is true?
I'd know for sure were you around.
And memories themselves do move
They seldom keep one place
For quick as shadows do they prove
And even pictures forget your face
What hope lies then for me
To bring that old forever back to life?
Lost things, for no more eyes to see,
Mine, closed, may still decipher bright
With heart and mind set free,
In dreams of day and night,
My love's entirety
May prove the saving light.
(end)
Finally, and most unexpectedly, I got a promotion at work earlier this month. After the usual frantic blur of a holiday season, and the almost as busy January, when the tourists linger and we're deluged with returned gifts, things had settled back to the way they are the rest of the year. I was going to job hunt during that week I took off in late February, but what happened instead happened instead. Weighted as I was with new grief, a serious job search seemed out of the question for the time being, plus sobriety seemed quite urgent for awhile, frankly more than it seems now. Anyway, I had been a full-time bookseller for a long time but not a "lead" or a manager, and apparently the company is eliminating all such positions, converting them to part-time. The store manager (a woman named Randi who just took over this month, in a shuffle of different managers to different stores which I won't bother to detail here) offered me the choice of becoming either the children's department lead (hell no) or the digital sales lead. That position had been vacant for the last two years.
The alternative was to go to part-time hours and lose my full-time benefits (like health insurance), so once I learned that, and the new salary ($11.50 from my pathetic $9.25), there was really nothing to decide. The digital sales lead, briefly, has to do with the Nook e-reader devices we've had in various versions since early 2010. I'd already become more and more proficient at selling and troubleshooting the devices, while maintaining my other responsibilities (customer service, shelving, merchandising, store recovery, etc.), so it was a natural step. I'll still maintain said responsibilities too, and the same sort of hours and shifts. I'm only surprised and more than a bit annoyed that it wasn't offered to me much earlier, though I can guess why. Though I'll have a bit more money and something else to add to my resume, after over six years at this store I still want to get out of there and find a real job, outside the confines of retail hell, which would hopefully allow me to use other skills, like writing. But the urgency, for now, is diminished, so I feel more free to relax and deal with all my other problems, and the ongoing work of grief.
I may do some traveling in the next few months, to Colorado as I mentioned before, or Georgia, about an hour from Atlanta, where one of my best friends, Travis, moved from Ft. Lauderdale (and troubles of his own) in November, or New York City, where Roberto and his new girlfriend Allie (an ex-coworker of mine whom I introduced him to in February, who has become a new friend in her own right) are going this summer and have invited me to join.
In between all this, of course, a lot of books, movies, TV, music, and even a few video games. More on that later, perhaps. For now, I remain calm and intact, far from happy but not entirely not, amid so much recent drama and devastation.