I Don't Want To

I don't want to write about my life anymore.  I'm trying very hard to stay healthy in body and spirit, but I'm not.  Yesterday. . . well, today, too. . . I'm just not "here."  And one day I won't be.  

I hope I go quickly.  That is how we all imagine we will go if we imagine that we will go at all.  We don't imagine some long, horrible death.  We think that one moment we'll be here and the next moment. . . wherever.  What you need to do is visit a "rehab" facility.  That should keep you up at night.  

I can't do this alone anymore.  

I want to go back to the misery of living in an America I see going in the wrong direction.  Christ. . .. those were happier times.  

Yesterday, I got away for a moment.  I felt like shit and hung around my mother's house until noon.  When I started getting ready to go, my mother began to whine.  She does that anytime I am not serving her.  She is miserable, but she feels better when I am around, she says.  I understand.  All she can do is sit in a chair now.  She can't pick up a half gallon of milk, can't open a can or most boxes.  

But she says she wants to drive. 

I told her I'd give her the keys and take an Uber home.  

Yea. . . judge me.  

I was dizzy.  I felt that I might have had a minor stroke in the night.  There were reasons, I feared.  I need to stop some things I am doing to cope with my situation.  Every morning I am determined to do that.  Each night my resolve fails.  Another festive holiday Friday night spent in front of a television in a house not my own with a woman in audible and visual misery.  My way of coping is not a healthy one.  

I needed air.  I needed to walk.  I needed to do ANYTHING other than sit inside my mother's house at her beck and call.  

When I got back to my house, it was afternoon.  I put on my walking things, grabbed a camera, and headed out the door.  I limped slowly on, determined. 

As I rounded the corner, I was on Lakeshore.  A block from my house on the lake are the "mansions."  They are minimal "mansions," not the Palm Beach sort, but of a kind.  Many of the old places are being replaced now by newer, larger ones.  The old rich are not rich enough anymore.  

The house in the photograph just had that palm tree installed.  It took most of the day, cranes and crews working to get it upright and into the ground.  I asked my builder buddy how much a tree like that costs, and he said 15-20 thousand.  But the thing isn't looking so good.  The leaves are brown and wilted.  What do you do if your twenty-thousand dollar tree dies?  There must be some plan.  

The house is fun, though, always sporting some anti-Trump or anti-republican party sign.  This one, however, broke me up.  Having the "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" sign in front of your "mansion" with a dying 20K tree with all the states that voted Trump highlighted just seemed too ironic.  

And so I limped on.  Coming back down the Boulevard, I felt O.K. The holiday crowd was out on a Saturday afternoon eating and shopping.  The world didn't look miserable here.  It looked fine.  It looked fun.  

Across the street, I saw a familiar form.  Tennessee was with his wife and son walking the Boulevard.  I sped up my limp, almost falling as I crossed the street, and snuck up behind him.  I put my camera to my eye and started snapping away.  His son sensed me and turned around, then back, then around again as he recognized me.  

Fun!  I was standing on the Boulevard talking to friends.  We chatted for a bit and T's wife asked me to come over for one of his homemade pizzas.  

"I can come by this afternoon for a bit, but I have to get home and cook dinner for my mother," I said. 

"We'll be back home by three."

"I'll text you," I said.  

I got there at three-thirty.  They had a spread of cheese and olives and peppers and crackers laid out.  T was making pizzas.  His wife was making Old Fashioneds.  The dogs were excited to see me.  

"Oh, I can only stay for a bit," I said.  I snacked.  I had a drink.  Then, not to be rude, a little pizza.  And then another drink.  I was having too much fun.  

"What time is it?"

Holy shit.  I needed to go to the grocery store and get the fixings for the chicken soup I had promised my mother.  

"Take her some lasagna," T's wife said.  It was from the night before.  She put big squares of it into a container.  She bagged some of the Caesar's Salad we were having with the pizza.  What the hell, I thought, O.K.  I ate another square of pizza.  

When I got back to my mother's house, she was sitting in a chair with cotton in her ears, something wrapped around her neck, Vicks smeared all over herself.  She was in a housecoat wrapped up like she was living in the arctic.  The kitchen air was warm.  I had walked into a picture of pure misery.  

"Do you want some lasagna?" I offered.  

"No. . . I can't.  My stomach isn't good."

The internal collapse.  I was falling. . . ten floors. . . twenty. . . thirty. . . . 

"What do you want me to do?"

The television was blasting.  I couldn't take it.  I poured a whiskey and went outside.  Dusk.  The neighborhood Christmas lights were twinkling.  The visiting kids across the street were playing in the yard.  Stars were coming visible.  I felt myself drifting, remembering all the nights I had spent alone sitting on my sailboat, melancholy but happy.  I sat a long while. 

Feeling guilty, I stepped back into the house.  

"I think I'm going to have some of the lasagna," I said.  

"I'll try some, too."

She ate the whole piece.  

I know she doesn't want to be alone. 

Last night, I woke up in a panic.  Three o'clock.  I would die here in this guest bed.  I could feel myself dying.  

I got up, peed, drank some water.  I did this again and again,  The hours went by, and I guess I finally fell asleep. . . until there was a banging on my door.  

"Are you awake?" 

Shit piss fuck goddamn.  I've made the coffee and given her her meds.  The t.v. blasts something inane.  A hundred, a thousand commercials.  My nerves go jingle jangle jingle.  Now I need to make her breakfast.  

I don't want to write about my life anymore.  I want to go back to those happier times when Trump and his allies were tearing apart the country.  

I'm certain I will beat her to the grave.