With the occasional ice rattling in my drink & dim lamp lighting in the main room of the upper level, I continued in what had become an invigorated read of Paul Russell’s newest, The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov. I believe it’s due out on 11/15, however a friend had lent me an advanced readers copy. This [time] - whether it be the reading, the ( Read more... )

Panic attack at Walgreens yesterday, ironically to pick up my refills for the very medications that treat this dysfunction, those magical green and blue orbs. It was bad, brought such force, a stage four hurricane raping my coastline, and I had to swallow a Xanax, the one I keep in my jeans pocket, that I touch at times to make sure it’s there, ( Read more... )

The five year old says to him, because the kid is not at all shy, “Are you here because Ben isn’t here anymore?” I cut him off before he could respond. “He’s just a friend, kiddo.” Addison is just inquisitive, as five year olds are. But it did strike me, you know, that he wants to see adults paired up, see them together, because he thinks that’s ( Read more... )

The near-half moon was only slightly muffled by the high clouds and my consumption of a few cocktails, and it was a beautiful walk. But the walk, the many walks I take here on Hilton Head Island in this summer of 2011, remind me of the same ones I took on St. Simons Island in the summer of 2008. They are cathartic, mentally refreshing, but they are ( Read more... )

If I smoked cigarettes, this would have been the time for one. It was three-thirty in the morning as I sat outside my brother’s apartment, mesmerized, perhaps hypnotized by the perpetual strikes of heat lightning. My body, prematurely, was done with sleep, and after a while I drove back to my mom’s house, following the Fathers Day binge that he and ( Read more... )

On Hilton Head Island. Her husband had a series of fuck ups and she (at last) hit the breaking point, so we’ll call this half-vacation, half-assistance. And maybe this will be good for both of us… neither have the feeling of emotional connection to the ones that should be providing it - my quasi sinking ship of a relationship states away from here ( Read more... )

Back to Asheville, and in what I hope is only a very temporary occurrence based on a factor I will soon reference, I’ve really had to increase my consumption of Benzo’s - doubling up on Klonopin use and, well, actually taking my Xanax, which has always been just an emergency fallback sitting idle in my medicine cabinet. This must cease, obviously ( Read more... )

Dealing with this rather tenuous relationship status by embarking on a protracted sojourn. This is neither surprising nor wise - in the ‘cards on the table’ sense - of me. (we’re still practicing active avoidance) This is just what I do. I go (because I do not wish to insert the much more apt word “run”). Though, I had been scheduled to be in New ( Read more... )

In that… strange state of limbo, where the relationship is [likely] on the verge of over, but we’re still living together, we’re still hanging out with friends together. Stuck on it like bubble gum on the bottom of your shoe. But we haven’t had the conversations, out of avoidance or convenience or both, and if this is what winding down looks like, ( Read more... )

I am seeing, and hearing about I suppose, a growing divergence, rift between us. But instead of sadness, it’s more of this wave of nervous relief that I feel. Like that moment in Jerry Maguire, before they end up together anyway of course, when it’s realized that they’re both too nice to say something to the other, and how that futility could go on ( Read more... )