To Remain

Notebook, February 12, 2008

The clock

            is a lie that

                        I must keep

                                    unwound

Predictability

is a lucky thing

A coin with two heads

or two tails

                        as the case may be

And yet too late

just one second too late

maybe

The joy was in

the terror of

the box

The Surface

Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?                --Robert Frost, Flower-Gathering

Do you know me in the gloaming,

Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?

Are you dumb because you know me not,

Or dumb because you know?

               --Robert Frost, Flower-Gathering

Diary entry, May 5, 2014

I feel nothing.  I will cut it out of me like a tumor, this thing in the middle of my chest.  All of the empty hallways.  Mile after mile of empty hallway.  The boy continues working on his own.  He doesn’t care if I know.  He doesn’t care if anyone knows.  He is a genius. 

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture again and again, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  It is almost as if they are in a foreign language.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing and turn written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  If you stare at words hard enough you don’t see them.  You can read words out loud and not hear them.  I can read the same pages again and again and again and not recognize them if someone read them to me.  I am a master.  I am a genius.

Draft letter, 1992

I acknowledge your request for a meeting etc.

In response to your request

I am not ready for a meeting or to have any contact with you to discuss anything.

I don’t need you to decide if I need therapy.

Away

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

--Emily Dickinson

Diary entry, March 25, 2004

Today I saw Dr. Winston and then Carrie.  They are all on the same page about the Lexapro.  I have four boxes of free samples sitting on my counter.  I am told that this is not a failure of strength or will.  Hopefully one day I’ll believe it.