Winter, a reflection/Pretty in Pink (Partially music)

 Have you ever considered the lyrics to Pretty in Pink? Here they are if you haven't.

Caroline laughs, and it's raining all day
Loves to be one of the girls
She lives in the place in the side of our lives
Where nothing is ever put straight

She turns herself 'round
And she smiles and she says
"This is it, that's the end of the joke"
And loses herself in her
Dreaming and sleep, and her
Lovers walk through in their coats

Pretty in pink, isn't she?
Pretty in pink, isn't she?

All of her lovers all
Talk of her notes and the
Flowers that they never sent
And wasn't she easy
Isn't she pretty in pink?

The one who insists he was
First in the line is the
Last to remember her name
He's walking around in this
Dress that she wore
She is gone, but the
Joke's the same

Pretty in pink, isn't she?
Pretty in pink, isn't she?

Caroline talks to you
Softly sometimes, she says,
"I love you" and "Too much"
She doesn't have anything
You want to steal
Well, nothing you can touch

She waves
She buttons your shirt
The traffic is waiting outside
She hands you this coat
She give you her clothes
These cars collide

Pretty in pink, isn't she?
Pretty in pink, isn't she?

I feel this. I've always felt easy to leave. I've always felt like I live just to the side of other people's lives, not really a part of anything. I know I can be seen as cold and distant, but I love too easily, so I stay away. I'm not sure anyone really knows me, which is my fault. The people who knew me best are gone, and I don't meet new people easily. The person who knows me best, currently, the most attached I am to anyone, is...complicated, to say the least. I've lost quite a few people throughout the quarantine, most have walked away. I get it. It's fine, mostly. I do care. I just don't know how to change it. A couple have died. A friend from Atlanta left this world. Maybe friend is too strong of a word? I helped move a washing machine for her once. She was friends with my ex for many years. She always smiled and hugged me. She used to grab my face and look into my eyes and tell me I was beautiful. I was warned about her when I first moved there. Drama, constant drama, she lies, she's untrustworthy, she just wants attention, attention, attention. She'll never "have it together." Many people doubted how sick she was before she died. I hadn't talked to her in a while, the last time I saw her she was neither sober nor exactly...clean. I hugged her just the same. She looked in my eyes, holding my face, and told me I was beautiful, and kissed me on the lips. Once upon a time, she organized events in Atlanta. Love her or hate her, almost everyone knew her, in certain scenes. She never caused me any drama, but her passing has made me think, very hard, about how I'll be remembered, and it makes me very sad. I think I'll mostly be remembered as whining about a broken heart or stumbling drunk in a dark bar. I don't even drink often. Only in bars. Makes me hurt (physically) less so I can dance more. But I know that's how people see me. I'm more than that, I promise. I wish I could say I've had a positive impact on anyone, but I don't think I have. I'm not particularly good at anything useful. I like making things, but they are generally mediocre at best. I live in the space at the side of your life, where nothing is ever put straight.

I wish I had kept in touch with her better. I know she found some happiness in the last few years. I wish I could tell her that I smile when I picture her face, so much closer to mine than I usually let people get. 

I hope you smile when you think of me. I hope I made you feel beautiful, even for a moment. 

* This isn't a goodbye, it's a reflection. I don't know how I feel right now. Re starting or starting psychiatric meds, there's always and adjustment period when you sometimes get worse, before the benefits start. Going through an emotional time while two weeks in is confusing. I don't know what feelings are real. I'm not sure that I am real. I'm a mostly rational crazy person. 

End of the night dancing with her memory song. Not a memory unique to me, by any means. 

She's Gone

  My time being a caregiver for my grandmother is done. She's gone. She started having a pain in her right arm in February, she died May 19, 2019. I spent a lot of April and May by her bedside in different hospital rooms. Despite my best efforts, she died alone. I'm pretty sure I haven't told anyone that, at all, in this process. She wasn't aware. She hadn't been aware since Friday, she died at 2:45 on a Sunday afternoon. She had been moaning that morning, so they gave her a morphine drip. The moaning stopped, then so did she.

  I'm not handling this well, at all. A lot of my stuff has been moved, but I still live in her house for now, for complicated reasons. There are things that I should be doing, that I'm not. I'm just, not. Right now, I'm sitting in the den where she spent most of her time. Sitting where I would sit on the couch, reading or playing with my phone. Her recliner is in front of me, to the right. Where she would sit and watch TV, and do the crossword puzzle from the paper every morning. I still start everyday by making coffee, and getting the paper from the paper box at the end of the driveway. I bring it in and sit it on the arm of her chair, then I pick it up and wander around aimlessly with it. There's a TV table in front of her chair. There's a pair of shoes under it, from the last time she walked in and sat down and took them off. That would have been in April.

  I'm looking for a job. I don't know what I want to do. Well, that's not true. I know what I really want to do, fairly passionately, but it requires some learning and a trade school degree. That's not really possible right now, money wise. Groceries are barely possible money wise right now. I haven't gotten paid the entire time I took care of her, I'll figure it out. I need to be making stuff to sell, but my jewelry stuff has already made the move that I haven't, including the already made stuff. The candle stuff is here. I just, haven't. I don't know why I can't just do the things that I need to. I'm such a fucking wreck. I fake being okay pretty well in public, though, so, no, I'm probably not going to cry on you or be a big drag.

  About this blog, it's kind of a diary. I write more than is public. I do know people that follow it, because I'm not this communicative in "real life." Well, usually not. Also, while I am a wreck, not everything sucks. I do smile. I do write. I do see a couple of people kind of regularly. One of those has brought more comfort and patience and steadiness into my life in the past few weeks than I could ever have imagined, and I am imminently grateful. No words can express it, really. And no, this isn't passive communication, they know damn well how much I appreciate them, or I hope so. I say it a lot. Probably not enough. I'm interested in actually taking pictures again. I'm interested in other things that I haven't been interested in a while. My life is a little less flat than it has been in a long time.

  I've had a few people ask if I'm moving back to Atlanta, since I moved back to take care of Gramma. Right now, I couldn't even if I wanted to. Which I don't. Other than people, I can count the things I miss about Atlanta on one fucking hand. One is pretty big, though. I miss having good dance events to go to, more often than they are here. There are awesome events here, don't get me wrong, but there isn't one night of any week that I know that I can get that release. I'm pretty much a Don Henley song, all I want to do is dance. All of the weekly nights here have failed, due to disinterest, older goths, I don't know. This literally causes me pain. I guess it evens out to maybe twice a month, but still. Given my choice, I'd dance five hours a night, twice a week in a club. Yes, I know I can dance alone, at home. I do. It's different. In Atlanta, I know that at least each Saturday I could be wherever VJ Anthony is spinning. Well, it's the same place each Saturday, just the theme changes. I miss Coffin Classics night, like, whoa. So much. NC has a more Industrial crowd, for the most part. Even though I'm an introvert, and I don't like to be touched, dance floor energy feeds me, even on slower nights. I also miss really good bagels, though my very favorite place there is gone, now. I miss being able to see the whale sharks whenever I wanted. I spent so many hours just sitting there, staring. I miss Community Q BBQ, though the recipe for the best mac and cheese ever, from there, is hysterically readily available, and super easy. I don't miss traffic, hand gun fire (we get rifle and shotgun fire pretty often, here in the sticks), or the chance of running into someone with whom I have quite a bit of common interests. At least I used to, anyway. Who knows, anymore? Some people shift with their company more than others. So, probably not. I do wish I could visit more, say, every Coffin Classics Saturday, say, but I can't right now. Ha, just the two times a year I'm guaranteed to run into the aforementioned soul for twelve hours a day or so. I'm giving all of that some thought, too.

Enough for now. I will leave you with the eulogy I read for my Gramma, though some of you have seen it.

Dorothy Lee Whitley
3/14/1931-5/19/2019

My Gramma loved a lot of things.
She loved people and laughing and talking.
She loved tigers, especially white ones.
She loved gardening and all plants and flowers.
She loved country music and dancing.
She loved her family, her mama and her sisters.
I heard her say, more than once, that Big Mama was too good for this world.
She loved her kids, her grandkids, and her great grandkids.
Heaven help anyone standing between her and Avery.
She loved coloring books and crossword puzzles and chocolate.

I could stand here all day and tell you the things she loved.
I could even tell you the things that she hated,
But this probably isn’t the time for that.

The truth is, everyone you meet takes away with them a different version of you.
No matter how consistent you are, people will view you through the filter of their own views,
Personality, experiences, and even mood.

So, I’m going to tell you some of the things that I took from her,
Some of the things that make me, me.
I would not be who I am, without her.

I worked in photo labs inside of camera stores for almost twenty years.
Photography has always been a passion of mine.
By the time I was 10, Gramma had taught me f-stops and shutter speeds and framing a scene.
I could selectively focus a manual camera.
She taught me the right combinations of factors, and then taught me that the “right” way
Was not always the best way to achieve the image you wanted.

I am an intensely geeky individual, with a deep love of science fiction.
Gramma loved PBS, so I grew up watching Doctor Who and Dark Shadows on summer afternoons.
When Doctor Who restarted in 2005, I knew the stories, the incarnations of the Doctor, and the old villains.
I grew up with a Gramma who watched with me, and then chase me around the yard with a whisk in one hand and a sink plunger in the other, imitating one of the robot villains.

I love the sky, day or night.
I always know the phase of the moon.
Because of Gramma, I can look at the stars and point out Cassiopeia, seated on her throne, or the Pleiades, and tell you their stories.
She taught me to always look up.
She loved satellites crossing the sky every bit as much as she loved shooting stars.
She taught me about space and space exploration.
During the day, she always looked for shapes in the clouds, and would make up little stories about them.
I still do.
On days like today, she would say that God had pulled a blanket across the sky.
I can’t tell you how many hours I spent with her, when I was young, laying on our backs on the pier at Bath Creek, looking at the stars or clouds, and listening to the water lapping at the pilings.
It’s still one of my favorite sounds, to this day.

About that pier.
She taught me the joy of running, full speed, down the lawn and right off the end of it.
Just jump.
From this I learned that you don’t have to always see what is waiting for you clearly.
I also learned that the pain of jellyfish stings is temporary, and will be followed by ice cold watermelon from the cooler, always with a sprinkle of salt.
Just like hers.

I might not dress like anyone else, or make the same choices, but I’ve always known that Gramma loved and supported me, no matter how strange I might be.

She taught me to argue, just to get a better understanding of a situation.

It was a privilege to be able to spend the last two and a half years with her.

She was simply the best Gramma for me, and I will miss her forever,
And always carry her in my heart.

New Year's Day

2018 sucked, no doubt about it. I’m in a very dark place, and I have no idea how to get out. One of the biggest mental problems I’m having makes me feel beyond selfish. One of my oldest friends is dying, which makes all my suicidal ideation feel even worse. He is amazing and revered, and so very loved, in big loud ways. He’s a giant in body and spirit. He’s handling death far more gracefully than I’m handling life. I am having a stupidly hard time with the fact that I’m about to turn 45. My heart is still broken. That man took all of my ability to believe that I’m worth, well, any kind of relationship. Which is complicated by the fact that I have a crush. Or two. One is easy. It’s physical and involves a friend, who knows quite well. One of the biggest, shiny, bright spots of my year, was a completely unexpected, vigorous and thorough kiss. We were friends before. Friends we will remain. They’ve done a lot for my self-esteem, just for the fact that before that kiss, they are pretty much the shiniest thing in any room, to me, a smile like a son. The other is far more complicated but still seems to be happening. It would be a completely different thing if it were even possible. I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. Or if I should. Or if I’m prepared for the rejection. Or if I’m prepared for not being rejected. Not right now, I guess, anyway. Right now I'm just a wee spot completely out of control.