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Leaving Wilmington the second time broke me in many ways. The minute and before I left, I made us promise to come back as soon as possible. I didn't want to go to LA, but we couldn't run two households and needed the money.
I'm sure I've talked/written about it. Moving to LA - fuck you think me basket case now... THAT was something to assimilate. I had cheated on my husband - not only with a body but with someone I professed to love and romanticize/admire. It was such delusion on my part created out of a desire to escape. Escape from having to imagine being away from the womb and knowing I had failed horribly. I was likely using this all as a way to eject mark from having to deal with the 'too much' of me. he confused me so much when he stayed with me.
what did I do? I am certain I wrote to you. one of my most prolific times was the adjustment to the dissolution of my first marriage. I was meant to be only married once. I saw this man in a bar and said "I'm going to marry him". He was funny. He was smart. He was attentive.
I was emotionally dysregulated and disordered for sure. All of the signs - the jealousy - it was all there from the beginning. I know when the worm turned.
and now I sit almost thirty years later sitting in the same romanticization of a town where many I still love live and to richer and more entrenched lives. I am in debt up to my eyeballs and will work until I die. I have trouble relaxing and think of death whenever I am in altered states of mind. What do I want? to talk like I used to with you but sharing more of what we've both learned. talking is what we're here for - just not to say the same thing over and over.
joy is a challenge for me. always punching holes in my paper lanterns.
when I went there in October, it was - as I've written before about it - like a puppy running to the safe corner after being dropped from a great height.
I did not think of another single thing to do, and I was going into debt more to pay for it. I didn't care. I flew right into Wilmington. Kent picked me up like he had in Charleston four months prior - and now it was all completely different beyond the reckoning of recompense. now I was a screwed pooch. At this particular juncture, I was still living in the hope that I could stay on the course of being a therapist and staying - but in my heart knowing it would all burn.
we checked out the pad as we had done in Charleston. it was so fucking
weird.
all
of
it
in chuck town, she had been a smug princess grad student. In Wilmington , she was a refugee a broken one with a piece of paper calling her a master of counseling from the exotic state of California.
the place was fine. it was white. it was across from Jersey towers. there was no backyard, but I had gotten it for the clawfoot tub that looked out onto the trees and the balcony - so different than the one in Charleston but like lives I had known before. it makes me heavy dreamy to reminisce and I love breathing it ... we set my stuff down then went to cargo town to get some beer and cbd drank. then we parted ways and I started out exploring. I might have taken a bath but I doubt it. we had walked to the place, yet castle street wasn't my jam - I was orange, princess, dock, front, 2nd, queen, Ann, third, fifth.
I subtly picked flowers to replace the garish display in the airbnb and got wine from the village markup and came "home". it was glorious like you wouldn't believe. I loved recalling the narcissi of these streets. I loved the sounds. I loved the river. I loved the familiar. I loved the sunken house. I loved the cobble streets. I loved the river walk. I loved seeing all the places I lived. I loved the gardens. I loved the coffee shops. I swooned.
then, I'm sure we had dinner at Kent's mid-century pad or happy hour on my downtown porch. it was always one or the other, and I went to bobcat goldthwaite by myself and ate at a new Waffle House that had been in the scenes of my crimes.
I felt at home.
It was a brigadoon.
twinkle star
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