There Will Be Blood

And there is. I keep tasting it in my mouth.
I just don't know where it's coming from, and I am
frankly quite scared to go find out. It could as explianable
as post nasal drip. I have bloody noses. I am not throwing
up blood. I am not coughing up blood. I just taste it, so I
grab a kleenex, clear my throat and spit it out. Quite a bit
yesterday. Not so much during the night. I got so stressed
Wednesday night when my mother-in-law phoned me from
someplace in the hospital asking me to come pick her up
at the Same Day Surgery door. I knew she wasn't in her room,
but she couldn't tell me where she was. As soon as she hung
up, I called hospital security to go find her, woke my husband
up to tell him, hurriedly changed my clothes, went back in to get
my husband off the couch to go with me to the hospital only to
find him back asleep on the couch and wondering why I was
so upset. I just left without him. I don't get that at all. He just
said, Yeah, I'm worried, but what can I do? I shudder to think
what would have happened to her had she not been able to #1:
find a phon #2. remember our phone number & # 3 be easy to spot
as she was walking the halls in a hospital gown and had blood
running from her arm from the IV site (yep, of course she pulled
out her IV). I felt like my head was going to explode that night.

Ultimately, we ended up bringing her here that night. Got here
around 1. I got very little sleep. Next morning, her husband
came to get her. He's a frail, tall 86 year old man who loves her
dearly but can't physically take care of her. He had a heart attack
on Father's Day Sunday-- the first Fahter's Day after my father's
death that April of 2006. We managed to get her home and in her
bed, but again, the lack of sleep, the worrying about how he's going
to take care of her, the worrying about missing part of another
day of work (I took 4 hours off to be at the hospital during her
surgery--do you think her son even thought about that? Nope.).

Anyway, so the blood taste keeps returning. and I want to know
why and I don't. I don't want to die. I just sometimes can't get
what the point of living is. I guess more people would want to die,
would want to take their own lives, if they knew what was on the
other side and what was there was more appealing than what's here.

Oh but I do love a sunset and the ocean! Oh and I do love this earth!


I guess if a person believes that there is nothing on the other
side, perhaps they truly don't live in fear of dying. They just live for
today. I wish I could do that. I wish I could stop thinking about all
the things I've done wrong and focus on just living. But I can't.

If I did that, I would have to let go of some things and some people.
Or at least, I think I would.

I know what it is to fall in love. I do not know what it is to
grow old with the person I fell in love with. I fell in love
as a teenager, so I'm not sure that counts all that much.
I didn't know myself--what I really liked or disliked,
what my value system consisted of, what I wanted
to do with my life, what I wanted in a person for the
rest of my life.

Like most first loves, that one didn't last. And I have
never felt that way about anyone since. I married too
young and for too many wrong reasons, but I can't change
that. My marriage brought me three amazing children
and this really great little guy named Isaac--my grandson.
Life has been good to me. But I do not love the man
I live with every day. The man I am growing old with.
We are, for the most part, kind to one another. We do,
for the most part, get along fairly well. And it saddens
me to feel this way.

Now, I am 50. Even if we divorced so I could find out if
there is someone else out there better suited for me and
for him, I don't think I would want to make the effort to go
out looking. Men my age are looking for younger women.
Older men are looking for younger women (I would be
younger, but I don't have the bod or the brains or the appeal).

At this point in my life, I am not even thinking about another
man. I am just thinking I need to know what it is I am looking
for before I do something stupid or before I die. But I may
not know what it is unless I do something.

I stay conflicted. It wears me out.

I just don't want to end up "simply having visited" this life.
I wish I could be happy, dammit. I wish I knew what it was like
to get up exicted about another day. I wish I wasn't riddled
with fears, insecurities, negativity.

I don't know where I am going with all of this. Nowhere,
most likely. I was too exhausted to work today, so I took a
sick day (shoulc have done that yeaterday!) . I don't like
to miss work. I like what I am doing and I like the people
I work with, but I just had to get some sleep. And I did
sleep most of the morning.

I was dreaming about K. We were talking on the phone.
Just having a normal conversation about nothing in particular--
someone's new truck, something that happened in the hood,
something about music, something about books. I can't really
remember now. All I remember was how good it was to hear
his voice. I didn't want to wake up because then I would
no longer hear him. I could feel myself trying to awaken but
just hanging on to his voice. I just wanted him to keep talking.

I miss his voice. K was my friend. He was one of my best
friends. Strange how a person I only met once in my life
had such an impact on my life. I miss him terribly. I can't
believe he died. I don't know why he had to die. I don't know
why I navigate toward people destined to die young.

First there was C--49 years old. Then K, 54 years old.
Then D, 53 years old. Lost K in Oct. 07 and D in Feb.
08. Lost C in 99. It will be ten years this June 1st. I wonder
what she would look like now. I wonder if she would still
be crazy as hell. I wonder if we would have remained friends.
I wonder where she is. I don't miss her like I used to. I'm not
sure if that means anything. I do think about her often.

But why did I choose people to love who were doing
such damaging things to themselves? C & K may have
been thinking Here's a way to hurry this shit up and get it over with,
and hell, I can stay zoned out at the same time. I won't have
to show up too often for my own life. But D--I don't think she
was looking to die. I think she was running from her fears
for so many years. I think she just got tired of running. Her body
couldn't take it any longer. If there is any afterlife, I hope she
is at peace. I hope she's painting again and writing. She was
an artist with tremendous potential.

I guess I should go do some things. Plenty to do. I've been out
of it for a few weeks. I haven't felt good since I got sick at Dawn's.
I'd really like for a poem to gather itself in my mind and then go one
step further and spill out on the page or the screen. Maybe later.