Lap band blues

In August 2010, I got a lap band and dropped 40 pounds. By Thanksgiving 2011, I was overfilled and unable to eat. I wound up in the ER and they took all the fluid out. I've gained the weight back and am disgusted with myself. I'm going back to my surgeon today to get another fill and I know I have a lot of explaining to do. I hope I can make it through.

The era of sleep

I sleep all the time these days. It's as if I can't get enough and maybe I can't. I feel shrouded, covered in something I can't name and can barely fight. It's not depression. It's not anxiety. It's just this feeling of resignation that I don't like, and I don't accept, and I need and want to change.

Today's writing

The pleasure comes not in waves, but in stabs. The short, sharp intakes of breath are punctuated by sensations of separation, of a journey to somewhere else. It’s a patchwork of departure and return, of absence and presence.

Leigh is lying on her back, naked from the waist down. She’s braless and wearing a t-shirt that says MIZZOU. She closes her eyes, then slits them open, then closes them again, more tightly this time. Behind her eyelids she can see spirals, a laser show of sorts. Her fingers find the head that is between her legs and they squeeze, first lightly and then with increasing force, feeling the skull that lies beneath the hair, the fragility of bone.

She thinks of demolition, the kind she saw just yesterday in downtown. They were taking down a hotel, one that hadn’t hosted a guest in well over a year. She’d paused on the sidewalk and watched the crane yawn and chew, the construction workers stand idly by with their cigarettes, not even acknowledging the destruction. Were you supposed to smoke at a demolition site? Wasn’t there some risk involved?

By the time she was done watching, the crane was lowered as if in embarassment. One of the smokers had put out his cigarette and was watering the debris with a long orange hose. She felt a sick and sorry fascination, a dull ache at the idea that at one minute something can exist and the next moment can reduce it to nothing.

Sharp pleasure undercuts her thoughts. She bites her lower lip, bites it hard. Brooke, she thinks, lingering over the double o’s. The head responds by moving faster, the tongue by making its movements even more precise. Brooke, she thinks again but for some reason doesn’t say. Instead she presses her fingers against the head’s face, feeling – stubble?

Evan. It is her husband, Evan, who is going down on her. Her husband of 13 years, her partner in life. Remember, Leigh? Remember?

The crane stood out against the bright blue winter sky. That she remembers.

Two years

It's been two years since my buddy Oliver died. I miss him terribly and in a way it gets harder, not easier, every day. He was 21 and 3/4 years old when he died. He was robust as hell up until the end. Who could ask for more? But I do. I love you, Bear.

This should be interesting ...

On Wednesday I'm going to see a friend. There's been a bit of a rift between us. No formal fights, just silence. Silence doesn't sit well with me when it comes to relationships. Things don't resolve themselves in a vacuum. And yes, I just relied on Blogger's spelling correct feature to figure out how to spell vacuum.

Basically, my friend can't figure out why I don't like this particular person. I don't like this particular person because I find them completely self-obsessed and self-serving. I'm not sure how much I'm going to be called upon to explain this and I'm not sure how much I'm even going to want to do that.

Fact is, who I like is who I like. I am so past the point of pretending. Why waste my time with people who I consider toxic to be around?

Then there is my friend. We have been friends for more than a decade now. This is pretty much the first point of confrontation we've ever had. I knew something was up and I was right. I barely heard from him when I was in Missouri and then when I came back it was silent, not even a welcome-back. Writing that hurts, actually. It pisses me off.

I usually try to use situations to illustrate themes, to look at a bigger picture rather than focusing on the drama. I'm sure there is a bigger picture here, but today I'm thinking a bit small.