The Things I Left Behind..

I didn't think it would be this way. Me at 30, alone. Surrounded by tag sale items in a falling down Usher house with my mother who's so depressed she can't even kill her self correctly. Last week she filled her bathrobe pockets with stones, got in the tub and sat there waiting. She just shrugged when I asked her what she was doing. Lazy. Her depression doctors called it a gesture - suicidal ideation - but I think she just watched The Hours and was fucking with me. Bitch.

Everything used to be okay. Before 9/11. I love saying that. Everything was okay before 9/11. Fuck 9/11. Things have been falling apart for years. Everything was okay before I can't even remember when. Before 2000. I have my own cultural reference point that has nothing to do with shared tragedy. We've got our own little Apocalypse. Poor us. Waa.

Families divorce. Big fucking deal. We weren't even kids. I was 23. My brother was 27. Grown ass people. But when your father starts an Internet affair with a women who'll eventually become his wife and you watch it happen every night for months as he taps away one handed at the computer, you tend to wish for the naivete of youth. When shit unfolds and you've got your adult brain working overtime, you practically wish for a lobotomy and plan on performing one with a dental pick if you can get your hands on one. When it gets worse; the blowjob emails, the adopted kid that he insists she return to sender; when the makeup artists at your brothers job, who incidentally wants to fuck both your closeted brother and your retired firefighter father, tells everybody true gossip "She said she didn't love him anymore and that's why he left." Well that' when it became just a little too much.

This was our little Apocalypse. Each day I've been falling apart. Eight years later. But no one knows this. I get up, I go to work. I'm a good daughter. I visit my grandparents. I'm the strong one. I remember when I was eight and a neighbor called my brother a faggot and how I grabbed him by the lapels and told him to fuck off. Eight. My brother couldn't fight for himself. I fight. Everyday.