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›comments[0] ›all comments ›post #902 ›bio: kristen ›perma-link ›6/15/2026 ›19:18 ›archives ›first post ›that week
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she could say it again y'all... (oh god, she was writing again.) ...she could describe how pathetic it feels to be so old and weeping over another ship that has definitely sailed. But it was such a fine ride...She was quite a fixture apparently. She brought her tea thermos (it wasn't tea) and iPhone every night and looked out at the horizon maybe wondering what she was going to do - what she was really going to do when she accepted that there was no signal - nothing. It wasn't turning around. dead. done. finito. but she thought they were all just negative nellies. they didn't feel what she felt. they lacked faith. she was going to look harder just one more night (always just one more)... she didn't have an answer yet for what she'd do when she'd stop. Maybe she'd learn origami. She almost tripped on the seaweed coming back from peeing on the ocean waves. Ah! she wants to remember something mundane again because it makes her feel him still. She knows it's all she has left, and she's fine with it. World peace can fucking wait. She wafted in memories of some dude - by now some mythic barge - who did something to her - who made her flirt, made her cliche, made her remember. picture it. macon. a Saturday. football season: college. it was her first tropicalia ipa (of many many). she was at a new bar they never went to named after money and men and the food order was easy - junkyard fries, but their drink menu was ...very sports bar and she wasn't sure of what to get. He was fucking great at decisions although he claimed he liked to take a break from it. "You want a Tropicalia. Get that. you'll like it. It's practically the town beer of Athens." She did like it. It looked like sunshine. They were there to watch sports. She laughed at dating a sports guy of all things - if the world could only see her now - supporting bread and circuses again. She thought it was exotic and fresh - watching football - it reminded her of chuck and grandma and the statistics thing so it felt familiar - and of course she was the only person in her family that wasn't sports mad. yadda yadda. baga.yaga. Leon (oh his fucking name again) wasn't a douchebag about it. He wasn't a douchbag about anything. He was ... gone. it shocked her shockingly. she couldn't remember what she had done the last time - tom waits asked her. Oh yeah, she had lost the plot, raged, wept, screamed at god, and picked herself apart savagely relentlessly. She had rebounded to abusive charmers. She cried and was confused existentially and it was strategically easy to be numb 3,600 miles away from the familiar society that judged you - a private numbing. Breaking in exile. ah then torpor. then... It was awesome to be wiser now - to break with just good old depression and body uglifying self-destructive. Simply awesome. (or was it just the repetition). Sitting in it all. Waiting to understand. Waiting to solve it. Trying trying trying every day like that Dr. Who episode with the glass or the definition of a kapha. Sisyphussi rocking the roll up. She input information - choosing from the library of memories she had tried to document. Oh she had so many more to look forward to. She was planning a piece about forests. kind of. Her house felt always 40% trashed (and full of undesired cats). She continually muttered back "I'm depressed, I was dumped. I'm tragic. give me another break." She was reminded of Uncle Scott who killed himself and they always said "the outside looked perfect - he kept that yard up and house and everything. the inside was a hoarders junk pit." She understood though -that urge to not stick out - not look fucked up. It was something she had failed at so many times. For criminy's fucking sake, she wrote a column on the public internet telling scandalous truth about using her father's poison trying to go to another state - numb - ecstasy - whatever - something that felt safe (gagging that voice that told her how they love you until they really know you - always darling always) to be someone who could ask, "If I start being more me now, is that going to trigger you to leave? I know you can't answer, but that's what I'll expect so just know that. ok. so do you want to be pink or green?" Y'all, she thought she was brave to write. That's the way she saw it at first: if I say it first, they can't hurt me. If I say the most fucked up thing taboo, someone else will think their fucked up thing is OK. She was very odd. For some reason, it always had to be authentic with her, but she was the fakest person she knew. (well, that actually makes sense narcissi) it hurt so much if she was still - especially at night. oh well. o lass. (he's gone) an old lady same fucking longing. She sat and stared and wondered. in a repetitive - always repetitive cycling of the evidence she had (what did you do to make this happen). She hadn't been wanting to get married (she didn't not want to). She hadn't wanted a ring. She hadn't wanted blood lockets. She had been cool. She had played as cool as she could. She hadn't wanted so many things - hadn't demanded - had held back. She was different. she was special. she was a genius. blah fucking blah. She had thought she was the fucking coolest standing before him - "they must have been driven crazy by your stoicism. I'm going to be the one who stays and I'll read my book and make picnics for the seals while I wait for you to trust me. just one more..." She wasn't fucking cool. She was ... and everyone was so bored. what would make her stop this inebriated waiting? She remembered her mother saying once - or rather it was one of her mother's myth stories she wheeled out, "oh I was the same way. I cried every day for a month when your father left, and my friend was like 'why are you in here crying all the time - get out - date people - do you think he's sitting there crying over you?" "well, I apologize for taking longer than a month? I guess. mother, your first husband was a raging narcissist who got off on ... oh I'm not going to say it again." "oh you don't understand". "ok." "besides, I didn't like Leon much anyway. He never talked to me." "well, he talked to me, and I loved talking to him and am disconsolate because I never had the fucking balls to believe I was fucking worth anything anymore. I wanted to so badly, but I think I fucked up because I suspected something I thought everyone (your spouse #2 and mine) thought about me and it was like shit stuck to my hope... I thought I was some fucking loser - some laughably delusional loser who tricked him or was tricking him, and so I expected him to leave from the first moment he smirked at me, and it haunts me. All of it haunts me. I loved him Mommy. It doesn't matter though to anyone else. It hurts so much to realize that you can feel so much, and they ... don't." "You're so weird and sensitive. You're just like your father." "Do you think he loved you?" "I know he loved me." Narcissi bitterly laughed. what she wanted more than anything in the entire entire entire world was to .... she couldn't even write it well but maybe it was something like - being in a room with other people, you get her attention and say something for just the two of you - and make her laugh. She remembers her aunt, "he likes you" and Narcissi asking how she could tell, "he talks to you like he does. it's easy to tell." she the daughter of narcissists that she loved like gods and trip guides. he never let her in. (She never let him in then.) she could say it five million more times. god pray to all the fairies she gets bored with it and gets off that cross. Leon Leon Leon. He was a player. He loved to play. fuck him. mythologize him. he was great. he was interesting. he was a cool dude - a smart guy - a companion. he left. coincidentally, he left directly after you showed him - your limit, your voice - your art - your need that he say "I'll try with you." he left me...with silence. Oh that got you didn't it? the ghosting. a writer being ghosted. it stung. He should have admired all the thoughts you expressed about him wrapped in your own attachments wounds. You gave him gifts like they were about him. It was all about you and your fucking fantasy. You never even believed he liked you. You never allowed it to be safe and real. You asked like a fucking beggar. You regressed into someone small. You believed assholes. You didn't like yourself, and you were hoping he'd care. or even see. now you get to decide when you'll get up and stop staring at the wall. you told your professor to do it. you have to do it too. open your eyes. turn around. he is gone cry all you want, but frankly I'm getting bored with the repetition. can you believe it? I know I've said it before. But I'm really looking forward to reading something besides five thousand prisms of "dude showed up. dude stopped showing up." and I'll listen to you for five million other rants if you want narcissi. but I beg you. I beg you. I beg you. please don't let him take it. my love. my dear dear me, I very much suspect because I'm not allowed to presume anything that Leon feels - I'm not allowing myself to conjecture anymore - and bust me any time - but I very very very very much suspect love - whatever in the world you think it is he doesn't want it. He is NOT going to wake up in five weeks and go "Brenda dumped me, so I guess I'll reach out to that intense crazy bitch that lives two hours away from me and notices every fucking hair on my mole but doesn't notice that I'm not even into her." ouch. now go take a walk you beautiful mess I think you're fucking awesome. I swear to all gods and the one. put one foot in front of the other.... fuck socks with shoes unless you want them. it's your Light I promise you - you still have it. It doesn't need him. It doesn't need any of them, but it's just often nice to have them around. I fucking promise. now go. I'll stay and watch the horizon for you. Promise. (she didn't. there was no point. he's gone delta dawn). "They love you until they get to know you, right?" "Did I never give him a chance to really even like me? every nice gesture was tabbed in the temporary column, every ambiguous one tagged for evidence in the pending case." "what am I to do knowing this?" "what choice?" To be or not to be. "you need to quote that darling." "I thought it first." "wait, is that I light I see on yonder horizon" Narcissi lifted her beer to her psyche "good one. fuck this has been stupid hasn't it." "you didn't know any better. now you do." "did he love me?" "I'm going to torture you with - it doesn't matter" "but is it really no" "know". Narcissi stuck her tongue out, "like I'm really going to accept that." "I know." They got drunk in a bar by a seaside shore and traded stories of her childhood up until the dawn. "Do you remember when I used to bite my arm so I could feel something? I would leave bite marks on my arm?" "yes of course." "Dude, I have one right now. I still do it every once in a while." "I love you." "I wish I could believe you, but you don't really know me." "bullshit, I've definitely read every word you've ever written." "oh, that's all just ..."
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