Did it Matter?

First:  every single person in my family knows full well that I do not want them anywhere near my FB page, that it is my business and is off limits to them.  It takes no brain at all to realize that this extends to this blog.  Most of them respect that.  If you are family, stop spying on me.  Leave.  Fuck off.  I m dealing with personal shit and I do not need interference.



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(written last night.  I'm at the library right now.  I crashed hard yesterday.  Trying to pull out of it.  I'll get there but it will take a long time.)


I feel as if I'm - no, I AM mourning the loss of both my parents and Dana as well.  Dana is out there somewhere and I've lost hope of ever reaching her.  It's Thursday evening, December 28th, and I'm typing at the dining room table crying. Yeah, seriously, go fuck yourself if you're the kind of asshole that would think less of me for it, I'm crying.  I have a right to this.  It's goddamn New Year's Eve 1987 all over again with Lori Hamilton.  First time I ever cried as an adult, cried until I started laughing, and then cried again, started  after the fireworks started going off.  I'd tried to sleep through the fucking turn of the year but couldn't. 

What a joke.  I put my name on the Franklin dedication plaque that's supposed to be up, the Bric-a-Brac Buy-a-Brick campaign.  I had Dana's and Lori's names put on the plaque too.  I'd wanted it to be a happy gesture, celebratory.  I'd meant it to be a nice surprise for them someday if they ever saw it.  The joke is me, I'm the joke.  I'm a fucking joke.  My life is a joke.

I am desperate for a reason why I shouldn't be angry with Dana, any reason at all.  I'd latch onto that fucker and cling to it.  Dana, stand up for yourself, tell me I don't get it.  Tell me you're depressed, tell me anything.  Or have someone tell me, as long as I know it's from you.  Is there any reason at all why I shouldn't feel betrayed?  It's okay to not know what to say or how to say it, it's okay to not know what to do.  Just...I need some sign of humanity from you.  Dammit, Dana, I care about you.  Does that hold no value for you?  You used to be  a friend.  My great sin was wanting you to stay alive.  That was my offense.  You still won't forgive me for it. 

I wish ESP worked both ways so she could feel some of this.  "I wish i could just make you turn around, turn around and see me cry.  There's so much I need to say to you."  She liked that movie.  Copper hair, a "coppertop", dream symbolism for psychism, sending and receiving: copper is conductive.  Ironic choice.  Looks beautiful on her.

Oh, god, Dana.  Please help me.  Just as the friend you once were, please help. Please hear me.  I don't even have Facebook anymore, I can't reach out there.   It's this or nothing.  You were a friend, and I don't have the slightest idea how that went wrong, what made you turn away.  I honestly don't.  What did I do??

I acted out of fear fro your life, and that gets me banned from it.  Please explain this to me.

Please reach out to someone who will help us through this.  There's nothing more I can do.  I'm barely keeping it together for myself


***************


(written earlier)

So.  Dana has what she wants now.

Speechless.  You cause devastation to the heart of someone you claim to care about and then you just... walk away, stop looking, put it out of your head and call it over.  Because it's not your problem, right?  The people who care about you, they don't matter.

Dana could have at least given me a sign that it mattered to her...that maybe she at least felt a little bad about it.  'I Bet My Life'.  No, Dana, you bet mine.  And I lost. 

And here's  a radical thought for you, Dana, I respect you so much more if I was right than if I was wrong.  If I was wrong and THIS is your response to it??  If I was right...then you were, you ARE worth fighting for.  Dana, I wanted to marry you and I still do.  I love you and I always will.

What kind of person do you want to be, Dana?  What does compassion mean to you? 

I kept hoping someone would step in and help sort things out between us.  A couple people volunteered years ago, asked if I wanted them to approach her for me.  I didn't want to put them in the middle.  I'd have accepted this time, I'm desperate to heal, but it wouldn't have mattered.  Any approach from me, even indirect via third party,  would have been rebuffed.  She has to be the one who reaches out from now on.  And, y'know, SHE could have asked someone to do that for her if it had fucking meant something to her.  She didn't.  Anything would have helped.  "She doesn't want to lose your friendship but is having trouble knowing what to say."  "She's sorry this is hurting both of you, and she is asking for time."  "She's depressed, she is having trouble dealing with it, she didn't mean to hurt you."  (I very much don't want her to be depressed, it's  living hell.)  Anything.  It STILL would help, she could still save this situation.  It's not too late.  It's in her hands. 

I have to wonder, is there anyone she has talked about this with?  Does she confide in someone?  Does she even feel a need to?  Any heartache AT ALL over this?

Seriously, please, if one of you FBers has been in touch with her or is willing to do do, would you ask her if she at least feels bad about this?  I need to know.  It would help.

If there's any healing this, it has to come from Dana.  It can't be me.  I've tried.  She has what she wants and to hell with the people who were stupid enough to give a damn about her.  Compassion is nothing more to her than a pretty picture on her skin.

Moving to New York is not going to set me free.  I will never be free of this. 

**********
I do have another masonite board, 14x18.  If I have time, once my stuff is really ready to be moved, I'll try to use it.  There's a major drawing to finish, that must come first.  Need to see what material I have.  I want to be looser like the last, more experimental.  Masonite is perfect for the used fabric softener sheets, so that's possible.  I still have some Mod Podge to bind them to the surface.  Or I could stick with paint (possibly with crayon again).  I don't have an image in mind but then I can't start yet anyway.  

No, not the dryer sheets.  The point with those is to color them, then layer them as if they were paint.  Will take too long and I may not have enough.  (Note to self, check to see if the things are even sold anymore.)

I wonder if Dana ever saw 'Comforter'.  I hope so.  Wish I knew what she thought of it.  I meant what I said, her work gave me the courage to do that piece.  She should be proud of herself for that even if she didn't think much of my painting.  I want to talk about art with her.  I remember she said she prefers color to b&w (it wasn't a snub).

I've meant every goddamn thing I've ever said to her, the loving and the anger from hurt alike.  My heart will always be irreparably broken without at least closure from her.  I will always be of two souls, the cherishing and the hurt, coexisting but at war with each other.   I could never fall out of love with her the way things are.  If only she cared enough to give me peace I could go my way easier.  Isn't that what she wants?  Can she really care so little about the damage she leaves in her wake, the people she hurts?  Especially when the people she hurts are the ones who love her most, loyal fierce friends?  I'd have given my life for her.

And she was worried what I thought of her in '88.  Right, because trying to save someone's life means you think they're terrible.  What the fuck is she punishing me for, what did I do to her?  Can she not even tell me that?

God, Dana, what's wrong with you? 

Will anyone help??  If not me, then help her.  Help her bring this to a close she can walk away from feeling good about.

**********


I found an experiment in crayon from some years ago, her portrait.  Didn't work, all beginner's craft,  but it could be a springboard for layering with more crayon or maybe paint.  Or something.  I'll pack it to go.  I tried rubbing alcohol and the work improved some but the wax isn't fresh enough.  Plus I'm almost out and it's not worth it to buy more just now.  Maybe the dollar store will have some.  Mmph, I remember now, there's a spot where I got the dimensions wrong and overcompensated trying to fix it.  Not sure how I'll handle that.  Not gonna point it out either.

If anyone who has been talking with her is reading this, speak up. 

Goodbye, Dana

I'm at the library today for the net access and was hoping there would have been a message from you.  There can be no doubt this time that your silence is a wish and a choice you've made.  It isn't a block.   All of this, these posts, efforts to reach you, to move you have been for nothing.   You knew the one thing that would hurt me most - your silence leaving me in the dark - and nothing deterred you from it.

Like you, Scott is a believer.  He tries to console me with words about how life isn't over yet, how I may hear from you someday though it may take a lifetime.  He means well but has no idea how horrible that is - for you to come looking for me to make things right only at the ends of our lives when there s nothing left of them to share.  How I would hate you for that. I don't know what your reasons are.  It doesn't matter, it comes to the same thing: I'm damned.   I believe that if there is a God then God is a sick fucking monster who hates his creation and is only happy when we suffer. 

Goodbye, Dana.  I will not forget your unkindness to me. How many times I've wished over the years that I could finally learn how to hate you, and be done with this pain.  Maybe this time if I'm lucky.

Grace Notes (or: The Nut Before Christmas)

9 PM, Saturday December 23rd.  Just finished watching D.O.A. (1988)  Luminous poison has been absorbed into Dex Cornell's system and he has less than forty-eight hours to discover who killed him and why.  What he learns is how to feel alive again.  I saw this movie at the cinema when it came out in early '88.  I had recently come close to suicide.  I walked home from this movie in a gentle nighttime rain, feeling much the same as Dex: alive.  I've got Chaz Jankel's vibrant score in my head and in my heart.

I have no idea what the future holds for me.  I have no idea if Dana will be in it, whether I can change her mind.  It looks unlikely.

Whoever is reading this blog must be wondering what's going on in my head despite my constantly spilling it onto the screen.  (er - possibly a bad choice of imagery there...)  The simplest explanation is that I'm just goddamn venting in order to stay sane.  The secondary explanation and obvious primary motive is that it's a desperate attempt to get through to Dana.  Communication is important to me.  Ever see Close Encounters?  Communication and faith are the major themes of that movie.  Roy Neary has experienced a mystery and must know the answers.  He tries desperately to communicate this primal need but the people around him cannot understand, some of them consciously refusing to hear him.  This was something I could relate to from childhood, the inability to get anyone to take me seriously when it most mattered to me on a personal level.  In adulthood, Dana Cooper has become my Devil's Tower.  I may never make it there.

There is a third reason for this blog.  It's the reason I started the other two, and the reason I registered with Facebook to begin with.  It's the most basic thing in the world, and the truest of all of these.  I want Dana to know me as I am.  All the weaknesses, all the strengths.  I don't know that she ever has, really.  I think her view of me n the past was something else entirely.  I may not have her in my life again.  Well, then, I want to know that she left me finally knowing who it was she let go.  It's there, in my reviews, in my art, in my faults, in my passions.  For that matter, I'm okay with anyone else seeing me as I am as well.  For the moment at least, that's what this blog is.  That's all.  One simple goal.

*     *     *     *     *

December 24th, Christmas Eve, 6:30 PM.  Saw Darkest Hour with Scott a few hours ago.  I've a few movies picked out to choose from tonight but I'm listening to music instead.  Tori Amos 'Midwinter Graces', Kate Bush '50 Words for Snow',  Wyndham Hill "A Winter's Solstice III'.  'Toys' soundtrack.  It snowed today, the first of the season. 

Though my heart is full of longing, it is also at peace tonight (well, right now anyway).   I am indulging in what is probably a lie.  One of my prophecy dreams of reconciliation had Dana coming back to me at the first snow (presumably not literal).  While she won't be showing up at my door tonight, maybe in her heart she is finding tonight the inner peace she needs to turn to me as a friend once more.  While it lasts I am taking comfort in...this...this hope, this delusion, this daydream.  On the dining room table is a candle burning, scented pine berry, I am beginning to warm an oil called 'Home From a Walk in the Woods', and  a wand of frankincense is burning.   I am sitting at the front picture window with most of the house lights off or dimmed, enjoying the beauty of the snow.  Let it snow, let the world be gentled by this soft quietude.  I do love the world, the people in it.  Let me have faith in her for this one evening.

*     *     *     *     *

Christmas Day.  Nearing 10 PM.  Day was nice enough, uneventful.  Listened to The Nutcracker, watched Willy Wonka.  De-packaged a great many DVDs and slipped them into paper envelopes in hopes of saving my collection.  Sky is clearing, snow and ice are melting.  I hope for more snow soon but if it disappears it means I will get back to the library in a few days.  Dinner turned out well with a crisp green salad, stuffing, and some Euro styled bacon.  If I am awake later I'll have a piece of pumpkin pecan pie.  Falling asleep quickly now, though.  Was hoping to see another movie.

Took four melatonin pills last night to help sleep.  No dreams worth recalling - not just no appearance by Dana but none that were even interesting in their own right.  One hypnagogic flash, an icon at the bottom of my computer screen: an envelope with a pink or red heart over it, and I think there  was a white numeral '1' in its center.  One email, sent with love.  Probably just a dream, we'll see when I can get online again. 

Hypnagogia.  I love that word, very exotic.  If you look up the terms hypnagogic or hypnopompic you're going to find them defined as hallucinations.  Really, they're just the dream state breaking into the waking state when you're bordering both. 

Yesterday's state of grace won't last but it got me through the day.  I've had days like that before.  They were always self-induced hope that didn't pan out.  Dana has not appeared in my dreams or dreamlets for weeks.  I cannot sense her presence at all.  She's right there on FB but she is as unreachable as if we were in separate dimensions. 

*     *     *     *     *

December 27th, quarter after 10AM.  Looks like a snow sky again, and one of my nieces heard it was supposed to drop some freezing rain soon.  I've called her a couple of times this morning to see if she's heard the weather.  The last ice hasn't melted yet but if I don't go now it might be another week before I can get to the library.  I'm having one of those reverse-Midas days too, where everything I touch turns to shit. 

Please let there be a message waiting for me from Dana.

A question for Dana

Dana, I'm hoping against hope that you will somehow look in, because I can't reach you any other way and I have to ask this.  And it's a...it's difficult to word and still be unclear to anyone else.

A month ago I sent you a private message on Facebook, and you responded by blocking me from PMing you again.  And I don't know what it was I said that made you do that.  I can only guess it was one of two things.  It might have been the song, that you were waiting for me to figure out you weren't going to speak with me again...and when I asked if that was what you had in mind you shut me down.  Or it was me saying that you had never asked what I thought of things as they were or what I could handle or understand, if you'd been able to have a bit of faith in me.  I understand that you couldn't back then but you've had thirty years to sort things out in you head and heart.  Putting it delicately.   I don't know why me saying either of those would have made you react by blocking me.   Please help me to understand you.

So, I'm taking a wild guess that maybe something about the second thing I said shook up your understanding of things both then and now.  Maybe because it's what you've based your response to me on for thirty years, I took that away from you because it was never true.  Maybe for just a moment Shiva looked in on your world.  I do sincerely hope I've shaken your view of me, because the old one hurt me to the core. 

So.  How do I ask this? 

If I was right back then, and if...things haven't changed that much?  Please have some faith in me this time.  I want your friendship back. Is that the real reason you still refuse to speak to me?   God, I hope you look in here at some point, it's the only way I can ask this. 

If I'm wrong, if I was always wrong... I don't care any more if you find that insulting, I've lost you anyway over something that should never have cost me your friendship.  That's unreasonable, and honestly...as a friend, it's unworthy of you.  If that's what happened, I'm ashamed of having thought you were worth the fight.  I don't think I was wrong.  I'm such an idiot, I should have asked you this while I could still message you privately on FB.  Fuck, how could I let that chance slip through my fingers?  I was so close to finally having peace in my heart again. 

I think maybe in some measure you were afraid of me before  because you thought I'd get hurt and you didn't want to be responsible for it?  And that happened anyway, but not the way you anticipated.  In other words, I think maybe it's yourself you've been afraid of.  I was never afraid of you that way.  What happened instead is so much worse.

If I'm way off base...well, whose fault is that?  I can only work with what I know and you won't tell me anything. Please let me have peace, if I must say goodbye after waiting so long for reconciliation, at least let me keep some piece of my heart and sanity.  Let some part of my soul remain intact.  Show me that compassion actually means something to you.  Please put this right.

Dana, I want to forgive you.   I don't think this is even going to reach you.  It's like throwing a bottle with a message in it into the sea.

Null Christmas

I used to love Christmas.  I have warm memories of going to Mall 205 with my parents and seeing the huge animatronic displays up and down the mall, the colored lights everywhere, the aromas of the foods, the flavors, the sounds of little bells, the Christmas albums from the Fifties my parents would play.  For many years it was an informal tradition for the kids of several families to gather and watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  For you Philistine's who re unsure, that's the Gene Wilder version.

Then for a while I hated Christmas for being a reminder of another year gone by that I knew Dana would spend with her family and no thought of reaching out to me. 

And I've hated it for losing the things that made it Christmas for me, hated it for becoming something you couldn't celebrate unless you went out and bought it prepackaged from a major retailer.  Christmas used to be richer, like Halloween.  If you're my age, you can recall the great variety if candies you brought home from trick-or-treating.  They included lollipops and suckers of all flavors and sizes.  Some of the were huge orange platters made to look like pumpkins, the details painted on in white.  Today kids get the same for to eight candy bars in worthless 'Fun Sized' miniature.  The same two or three companies own Halloween and they've reduced the product to the bare minimum.  Fun, right?  That's how I feel about Christmas.  It's...so much less than it was.

The one thing I've always enjoyed every year was setting up the tree.   Until this year I'd managed to build a stockpile of ornaments and lights for many combinations of colors.  Karla has those (I'm glad they won't be thrown out), and while I have a  smaller tree and set from Jesseca those were among the first things I packed to make sure I could keep them.  My best tree might have been the year I decked it our in purple and gold.  That was gorgeous.  And  every year I'd set out the Department 51 Dickens Village houses.  Nobody bought them, they should have sold for Christmas.  My brother took them.  I couldn't have kept them anyway, I'm trying to keep too much as it is.

New Year's Eve became painful emotionally too, for the same reasons...bad memories (see the post about overcoming two blocks)...but I'd always make a cashew butter pie and have Bailey's Irish Cream with a piece.   Got a birthday coming up in January, what I want mos s a bottle of Bailey's. 

This year I can't get a handle on Christmas at all.  I'm in the house alone, and the house is a mess of boxes to sort and pack. There won't be any decorations.  My parents are gone.  Dinner will be whatever the hell I feel up to cooking, some random thing or a frozen dinner if I don't have the spirit for it.  I have a few Christmas movies to watch, some Christmas music to listen to - Oh, damn, I won't even have this posted until after Christmas most likely, just realized.   No TV anymore, so no commercialization.  No contact with friends except Scott, and we just go see movies.  I'm sure we won't be seeing the lights at the Grotto this year or attending the singers.  I feel neither happy nor sad for the holiday...I feel nothing at all.   Christmas doesn't exist this year.  I don't know if that's a loss or a blessing.  I think maybe it's a loss, but if it passes without leaving a mark maybe that's for the best.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

A year ago I bought a pack of frankincense made at one of Scott's favorite monasteries, and I've been burning a stick every few days.  It's an aroma traditional to the faith, right?  And it's Christmas. This stuff is pungent!   Getting used to it a little but not a favorite scent.   No, I've not converted, I've been doing this as a...I dunno, can't think of a good word for it but I burn them with Dana in mind.  Dana believes.  I guess in a sense I burn them for Dana like a prayer.  Don't know if it helps soothe my heart or not. 

YUH AHH TEAHH-ING ME APAAHT, DAY-NA!!
(ahem.  If you go see The Disaster Artist, stay for the post-credits scene.)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
What do I want for Christmas?  They've finally stopped putting kettle corn in those tins, it's back to buttered, cheese, and caramel.  So that's what I want.  Popcorn and a drink.  Kahlua would be great, maybe with soda and creamer.  I'll watch Rifftrax' Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, and Star Trek the Motion Picture.  I could try to describe how it felt getting the Jerry Goldsmith score from Eastport Plaza at Christmastime, all the evening snow and lights, the colorful Bob Peake artwork...but words can't sum up the quality of the moment.  ST:TMP came out Christmas of '79...it's about a family reunion of sorts, it's rated G, and the larger V'ger interior looks like a Christmas tree.  You can't get much more Christmassy than that.
Maybe I'll dig out my VHS of Willy Wonka and watch that on Christmas.  I still haven't gotten rid of that stash yet.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

I'm looking for my next image and want to do something in paint again.  I very much want to do something more loose like my last, I ended up feeling like that could be a huge step forward for me if I pursue it.  It has a little of my touch in that I focused on getting the feel of the textures, and I want to continue with that.  The colors are vibrant (go back and see the pic I added, colors much closer to true), and I ended up even really liking the final texture once the satin sealer was applied.  I still have some stuff to work with or that I could add to the paint for effect.  What I don't have yet is the masonite or the time.  Not sure if the enamels from my modeling days are any good still, either.  I really want to do a portrait of Dana with her copper hair.  That I could do on paper in crayon, blending it with rubbing alcohol.  It would be easier, though, if I had her FB page open but (a) I absolutely do not want to look at her page when I feel this shitty, it just makes me feel worse, and  (b) net access is restricted to library visits anyway. 

I have a bunch of fabric softener sheets I saved, as I've a couple ideas how to use them in a painting.  What I've never had was an image in mind.  That's still a creative hangup Dana could teach me about.  I wonder if they still make those sheets?  I could use more.  I'm supposed to be throwing things out and here I am still wanting to use them.

...aaaaaaaaaaaaaand probably delusional too.

The initial post of this blog gives you the essential reason I believe in ESP, and why for me it is wrapped up in dreams.  What I haven't explained is the problem it created.

Back in...'81?  I was briefly infatuated with a girl named Mara.  Lasted maybe a week.  I had been on the verge of approaching her when one night I had a dream.  I won't detail that dream, but it was the first that had a peculiar intensity that I later would come to think of as "that kind" of dream.  As Jesseca would say, "Usual Caveats Apply".   UCA.  It was vivid, tactile, and very immediate, and I awoke with a mad conviction - an utter certainty - that it had been a vision and not a dream.  Mind you, because it was delivered as a dream it was staged with a number of symbols.  It was set in an unspecified future year,  after 2010, and in it there was a woman...and I knew that I knew her, I knew she looked like someone I knew, but I couldn't place her.  She looked like Dana, I'd later realize.  That's hindsight, which is highly suspect and given to misreading after-the-fact...just sayin', I'm aware. But that was hardly the only dream.  Most aspects of it are coming true currently, read a certain way (if you spin things just so)...but not that one vital moment: the recognition of compassion, the opening of the heart, the embrace.

If I believed in God, I'd have believed that dream was a message.  "Mara's not the one.  There's someone else.  This WILL happen."

It was a startling dream.  I awoke immediately from it, believing with all my heart that I had glimpsed something vitally important about my future.  I knew this woman would be the love of my life someday.  I also was suddenly aware that Mara was a complete cypher to me, and was over her instantly.  I had fallen for her to help recover from Diane Schwartz. 

I had a number of other dreams, and in these I was fully aware at the time that it was Dana in them.  At least one was while I was in high school, a few more when Dana first arrived in California, and a few when we first started writing to each other in '88.  In these I saw the future again, some unknown date after 2010.  Each dream showed me the same thing in a different way - a long separation, a rift, pain, depression, heartache, ended by a heartfelt reconciliation.

At the time I had those dreams, no such rift had yet occurred.  Nor was it a self-fulfilling prophecy.  When it happened in real life, it took us both by surprise.  It was unavoidable.

If I believed in God, I'd have believed these visions of reunion were a solemn promise.  Especially after in real life the rift came true.  But I cannot hold Dana responsible for a promise that wasn't made by her but by some God I don't even believe in.

Could only the worst aspect of those dreams - the separation - have been prophecy?  Why did every dream show us re-uniting when we had never even been apart? They all felt like "that kind".
Over the last thirty years I have had more dreams of Dana, some of which were definitely psychic: they contained specific details I couldn't have known yet later were corroborated as having been true.

Over the last few years dreams of her have become exceedingly rare, now I almost never have any...usually if I do it's no more than a hypnagogic or hypnopompic flash (those brief dreamlet moments you have while either falling asleep or waking up).  That infrequency is part of the reason I think she has put me out of her thoughts entirely.  There was a link between us that I think Dana has finally managed to kill off completely in her heart.  That, and her insistent silence despite knowing she has hurt me deeply.

But maybe you see the problem regarding the dreams?  Every time I dream of her, I have to wonder...was this only a figment of my psyche (I'm telling myself a pleasing romantic lie), or was some aspect of this dream really her?  Because, see,  some of these dreams prolong my hope.  If they really are just dreams and nothing more, then my own heart has been as cruel to me as she has been.

If I did believe in God...at this point, and after what my family has been put through over the past few years, the unnatural, unrelenting way it has been piled up on us...I would have to believe that God is an evil fucking bastard who delights in hurting good people for no reason.  I don't want to insult anyone of faith, and that includes Dana...but God is smiling right now.

In September, I had one of those dreamlets, a hypnopompic flash, an unidentified voice speaking.  The voice said "It's coming true."  There was no explanation as to just what might be coming true.  Probably just a dream.  UCA.  Two days later mom went into the hospital.  She never came home.  And Dana responded to me on Facebook.  She did.  She was speaking to me.  She was finally able to speak to me.  The block was gone.  The wall was down.  Dana felt free to speak to me.

Except she won't.  Still.  By choice, by design.  I can no longer console myself with the hope that it's just a block for her to overcome, she really means to do that to me regardless of the damage she knows she's doing  to someone she knows loves her and is a loyal friend

Would someone please tell me how the FUCK I am supposed to feel about this?  I've TRIED 'just getting over it'.

What it Takes to Heal/Unashamed

"You don't want to hurt me but see how deep the bullet lies.
Unaware, I'm tearing you asunder. There is thunder in our hearts.
Is there so much hate for the ones we love?  Tell me we both matter, don't we?"
-Kate Bush, 'Running up That Hill'

*************
Yes, I keep Wiseau-ing on about her.   I know.  Everyone's annoyed.  I'm usually not this much fun. (insert facepalm emoji)  Sorry, I'm doing my best staying a step ahead of a slo-mo breakdown.

Dana apparently needs me to move on without my ever hearing from her.  I need her to talk with me so that I can move on and heal.  We are at an impasse and we continue to hurt each other when we should be trying to help each other heal.

My friends on Facebook think my pain is just unrequited love.  Fair enough, they know what they see.  As far as it goes, it's true.  There's so much more to it than that, though...Ive been through unrequited love and lost love before and gotten through.  I fell out of love again, my heart mended.  There's more to this one, this isn't the same thing at all.  There's a backstory I cannot tell anyone. 

I have not been reaching out to Dana as anything more than just a friend.  Dana understands that if no one else does.  I don't expect her to harbor feelings of love for me, we were never that to begin with.  And I'm sure she's already with someone, though I don't wish to know about it.  At least, not from anyone but her.  Point is, her being with someone else is not an excuse for her treating me so badly as a friend.  She knows that too.  She knows she's been hurtful.  The question is whether she'll do anything about it.  Whether she will put this right.

 The way we parted was abrupt.  It was tragic.  Putting it mildly, it was without resolution for either of us.  It left questions, it left misunderstandings, and it left deep wounds that for me have never healed.  And if Dana absolutely cannot bring herself to speak with me, if her conscience cannot move her to act with any compassion...then I think she never healed either.  She might need this as much as I do.  Ironically, she runs from it at any cost.  The cage isn't me, it is her fear of facing me.  The bird within refuses to set itself free, thinking that removing me from her awareness will do the same thing.  I could move to the Moon and she wouldn't be free: If I died she would be in that cage for the rest of her life because she never faced her fear of speaking to me.

If I could get over this unaided, I would have a long time ago.  Her freezing me out without even telling me why will never make that happen (she seems to be betting that it will), it only makes things worse.  I love her and usually admire her, but the wounded part of me thinks she's a cold, selfish, cowardly, uncaring person unworthy of the hope I hold. She's used up the faith I used to have in her.
I've needed this every single day for thirty years: answers, resolution, closure (though her letting me back into her life would be preferable to closure and a decent, honest goodbye).  Dana finally offered closure to me this past October.  I was so close.  Then she pulled it away - and at the lowest, most terrified, most vulnerable point of my life.  Why would she do that??  How could she do it?  Why make the offer if she didn't mean it?  I've known people who didn't like me, and a few who hated me.  None of them ever did anything so heartless. 

I am certain that I have finally gotten a few things across to her, after having tried and failed for so long...that I am a fiercely loyal and dedicated friend, that I have always - always - been on her side and would have stood by her anywhere or backed her on anything.  And that I'm in love with her.  And that her absence and her silence have been damaging.  And two or three other things best kept private. 

I'm not ashamed of showing my pain.  I'm fighting for my soul with the only thing I have, words.  And I'm not going to hide my love for Dana Marie Cooper. Not from anyone, least of all Dana herself.  That's a lesson I learned long ago from another love I missed out on, someone I lost the chance to tell.  Diane Schwartz and I clicked (at YMA, Willamette  University campus, 1980).  Diane disappeared without ever knowing that she meant something to me.  I'll never let that happen again.

If I still mean anything to Dana at all, even just as a friend, she hides it magnificently.

Resurrection?

In some ways I will be glad to be gone from this life - I wish I could say that literally because I'm more than ready for that peace - from life here in Portland, from a good half of my family...from one insane, hostile, hate-filled sister and one sociopathic brother in particular.  I'll be glad to never see them again.  This could be a rebirth.  Jesseca cares about me, more than Dana ever has.  But Jesseca has her husband, I will only be a friend. 

I had wanted to marry Dana someday, and barring that at least be in her life.  The only ambition I've ever had in life had been to spend it with Dana, to mean something positive to her.  I've meant something to her alright, something she feels she has to be  rid of at all costs even to the point of treating me with contempt as she has for three decades.  Even reconciliation, even closure, is more than she can do as it means having to speak to me - a thing she cannot tolerate.  Even explaining it to me means breaking that imperative, so not only can I not have her friendship, I can't know why.  She has no idea how badly my heart is broken and doesn't want to know.  The promise of hope she offered in early October, she rescinded.  I don't know why she made it if she didn't mean it.  She got me through my mother's death with that false promise, anyway.  Now I have literally nothing left I desire to live for.  I sure don't want to stick around for more of the same shit, things just keep getting worse in ways large and small.  It's a promise of a future spent empty and hurt.  Why the fuck would I want it?? Dana is counting on me to accept that I will never hear from her again: her peace depends on my continued suffering. 

I want fucking out.  And that's a peace no one will let me have.  I've got strangers online sending police to my door to make sure I'm not committing suicide (which I wasn't)...that was the right thing for him to do, no question, but fucking hell let this pain end one way or another.

It isn't just that I'm in love with Dana, it never was that by itself.  There's a backstory about the rift that developed between us.  I can't discuss it because I'm still very protective of her despite the ice-cold way she's treated me all these years, her uncanny way of making me feel worthless.  She knows she's been cruel, but she continues to be so.  No pang of conscience stirs her to put this right.  So I continue to be heartbroken, not only for the abiding love I hold for her but also very much for our lost friendship.  My arms have always been open to her.  She never steps into them. 

It's like she resents actually meaning anything to anyone, I knew someone else like that.  Maybe if I didn't give a shit about her I'd still be welcome in her life.  I have to become someone I never wanted to be, someone I don't even like - indifferent, uncaring, cold to life and feeling.  Maybe that's the kind of person she wants anyway.  But those aren't her values.  Her values seem to be mine.  More's the loss.

My only hope is that I will have a rebirth in New York.  Maybe I can be someone different.  Maybe it will be a different life.  If only I could forget Dana Marie Cooper ever existed.  If only I could forget I ever existed.  There are people who have accidents that erase their memories and identities.  Some  even awaken with radically different personalities.  How I envy them.

Pardon the Hamster

Being forced to move and with no money, I have now sold all my Aurora model kits and all but two of my Polar Lights repops and originals.  I'm keeping the cold-cast porcelain Wolfman that Lisa Greco sent me, and the numbered Guillotine signed by the company owner Thomas Lowe.  All the rest...all my hard work, my award winners, my best paint jobs, all the evidence of my growth as a model builder...all gone.  My original Superboy and Captain America, gone.  My black-and-white Universal Monsters, gone.

Got a great price for them, anyway, and they went to a fellow modeler and an appreciative home.  Still, it was painful to see them go. 

I was a  kid in the Seventies when I found Aurora kits of the classic monsters at K-Mart.  These were the square-boxed glow kits, with the James Bama artwork vandalized to express that some of the parts were now being molded in glow-in-the-dark plastic.  There had been thirteen in the original line-up, with only The Bride of Frankenstein dropped for the glow series.  I built as many as I could before the line was discontinued.  I didn't know about painting them, and when I saw someone else had done so I went home and attempted it myself - using watercolors!

My Aurora collection grew when my mom signed me up for a "model of the month club", a way to get rid of overstock presumably.  They had models from any number of companies, and each month would surprise me with something random. 

As an adult I saw a picture in a magazine of the old Aurora Frankenstein.  Nostalgia, you see, eveything old was hot again.  Anyway, it was a fantastic paint job and I wanted to to do that too.  After a few months I brought all my old kits (in such poor condition) down from the attic, stripped them, took them apart, and did them all over again...starting with Frankenstein.  I did my best to recreate that wonderful paint job, and got nowhere near the mark.  What surprised me, though, was that I gave it my own touch...and was pretty damn good.  I'd never been that good, and had not been in practice for decades.  How did that happen?

About that time I discovered that a new company was cashing in on the nostalgia market and had bought the rights to a great many Aurora models (and the name Johnny Lightning, rival to Hot Wheels).  Playing Mantis began putting out the old kits under the new name Polar Lights.  They'd been at it for maybe a year when I stumbled across them.  They were using a daring new business model utlizing not just a web site but a message board for their customers to interact with each other and with the company itself.  The Polar Lights Bulletin Board would soon be featured in Inc. Magazine for its success and innovation.  I can proudly say that I spent some time as a volunteer moderator on that site under the screen name 'dreamer'.  The site was run by the company's public relations manager, the beloved Lisa Greco.

Doing those old kits allowed me to play around with color quite a bit.  I'd had some interesting ideas to experiment with, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  For the Mummy I consulted the best color photos of Egypt and its ruins that the local library offered.  For Dracula, I painted the diorama of natural surroundings in dusty, dull earth tones to suggest death and decay, while the figure himself looked feverish in stark reds, whites, and blacks - the ideas to suggest he was a thing apart and thus not natural.  That idea didn't come communicate well.  PL's original Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera, OTOH, was a big success as I painted him and his organ (PLBB running joke) to suggest an old sepiatone photograph.  That one garnered me a Best in Class at Sci-Fan near Seattle.  For the matching King Kong and Godzilla builds, I did the Tokyo Terror in drab pastels to siulate the unrestored, faded look of the '60s movies, and did his Skull Island counterpart in rich earth tones highlighted by flecks of bright tropical colors.  Paired, but opposites.  It was the first time as an artist that I delved into color.  Now I'm beginning to experiment with it in two-dimensional painting.

There's a story about the demise of Playing Mantis under the new owners who bought it out, and how they treated their loyal community with disregard, the PLBB (and sister board for Johnny Lightning, the JLBB) with disdain, and the eventual dismantling of the company.   Inc. Magazine's praise had been lost on them.  They were bottom-liners.  There was also a lamentable disturbance in the force on the BB, which was not owned by PL but leased from a webmaster.  I ended up resigning as moderator to protest the treatment of the BB family, no longer allowed the freedom to do my job anyway.  People were looking to me to help them, protect them, and I couldn't having been essentially locked out by the guy with the keys.   I won't bother with all that, but I can say that Mr. Lowe eventually began again with a new company named Round Two.  He eventually won back the Polar Lights title and trademark and is now once again going strong.  I haven't checked to see if there's a new BB or online community.  Sadly, model kits had already become too expensive and I was priced out of the market.

They were good great times.  One of our running jokes was a phrase that one of our members coined, from a childhood memory involving his brother, the Aurora Guillotine, and a pet hamster that had been "condemned" by the French Revolution.   Thus is named this blog.

Someday I hope to do the complete line of those thirteen monsters again, in black and white.  And maybe this time I can keep them.  I had a grand scheme for the Salem Witch.

This is my third current blog.  The first is for reviews of movie and TV.  The second began as a chronicle of efforts to jumpstart my artistic endeavors, but as those efforts were undercut by a life slowly disintegrating the blog became something else: an art block blog with no art and a great many posts sounding off for the sake of my sanity.  Posts much like the ones I'm writing now, here.  So I've broken those off into their own blog.

Comforter

*********

I took mom's bedclothes out to the garage tonight, ready to donate to a place that helps women trying to escape abuse. Seeing them in a heap like that being discarded hurt more than most of what I've been having to lose. I held the blankets and cried some. I keep feeling as if mom is just gone out of town. It isn't sinking in because when it threatens to it overwhelms. I made a peanut butter pie a week ago and realized it's the last one I'll ever make in this house. I tried it with brown sugar this time. Wasn't strong enough to make a difference but either way mom wasn't here to try it.

I held mom's hand for a long time in the hospital. She was under sedation.  I told her when she sees a light, go to it.  . She had wanted me home, not there, so I left the hospital. I was told later what time she passed. It was during the ride home. During that ride, at the hour I was later told of, I'd had a sudden and vivid sense memory for a moment of holding her hand.

'Comforter' 18"x24", enamel and crayon on Masonite

Updated, color is more accurate in this shot, some details sharper except that the  whites are a bit snowed out.

Mom's hospice workers were named Claire and Tim.  Tim was Claire's assistant, being a teenager.  He spent a very long, careful time giving mom morphine.  When he finished, I thanked him for the care he'd given, and he looked surprised and embarrassed.  Claire was particularly kind.  They both were.

The one sister that lives here moved in about two years ago to help take care of my parents. She's not openly hostile to me most of the time but doesn't mind making things as difficult as possible, throwing up new roadblocks to me sorting my stuff while pushing me to get it done and passive-aggressively cutting me down...insisting we sell the house before I can ready a place to go is the worst part of it, scares the shit out of me and she knows it (doesn't care). The tension is there and some days worsens. The night after one of those damned 'family meetings' I dreamt that we had caused mom to retreat to her bed crying. We did that, we caused that.

Mom had had two children by her second husband before me. I was the one that lived. I had never heard of them from her and never knew until many years later. One, a girl, was told me by one of my sisters. The loss had put mom in a clinic. The other I learned of by accident when I was looking through some magazines being thrown out. Hidden among them had been a birth certificate for a brother born not much more than a year before I was. I never wanted to hurt mom by asking so I put the certificate back in hiding and soon it was gone. To my lasting shame I can't remember the name on the paper, what my brother's name was. I've never asked anyone else in the family and never will.

I remember my first Christmas - it had to be, because I remember not being able to walk, just crawl. I recall the living room in Vallejo, the tree towering in the corner with the blown-glass onion-shaped ornaments in all colors. I have an impression (but is it mis-shapen by what I have learned since?) of the many smiling adults who kept urging me to play with an arrangement of toys on the floor, and being reluctant to do so because I knew they weren't mine but belonged to another child. I was the only child there.

I had a nephew Tony, who was a year older than me. he died a few years ago after a troubled life of drug abuse and homelessness. I used to believe that he had visited us down there, but everyone swore up and down that he never left Portland. See, I thought Tony had been with us on this one occasion I remember of my father taking me to play at a park in Vallejo. I remember a structure with holes and tubes to climb through, which I and the other boy with me really enjoyed. He was only a little older than I was, about a year. I felt he was family somehow - why not, as he rode in the car home with us? But everyone swears that I was the only child on that trip.

*********

The above is the bulk of a slightly longer bit that I posted elsewhere a month ago.  It was in hopes of convincing a particular someone that deeply personal, even painful matters can be talked about - not necessarily openly like this, but even privately with, say, someone who cares.

Pretty sure she's put me completely out of her head at this point...  : (

Losing

(edit)  I don't think Dana wants to be unkind...but it doesn't stop her from being knowingly unkind, willfully unkind.  And there must be a reason why she chooses this, but she keeps it to herself.  The worst part of it might -  no, no, every part of it is the worst part.  But not knowing why she treats me this way makes it so much worse.  Oh...and there's the question of whether or not she feels the least bit bad about hurting me.  Does she?  She's given me zero reason to think she does, and my faith on that score is depleted.  Given that we were friends once, that hurts a helluva lot.

For that matter, she may not be aware she's hurt me at all.  I've no means of reaching her, and I doubt she followed up finding out.

I was hurt and angry when I wrote the post below.  The anger has gone but the hurt remains.  There's a backstory I can't go into.   Despite everything, I'm very protective toward Dana.  Wildfires just broke out again in Southern California, and I worry she has loved ones there who might be in danger.  Is she still in San Mateo?

___________

It's 10:40 PM, Wednesday.  I've been unable to sleep since maybe 5 or 6 AM Tuesday.  That was when Dana let me know that she is not my friend and never will be.  I want to rail at her, yell at her to go to hell, but she is as beyond reach as she is beyond caring.

I don't understand.  She's not a cold person.  I don't believe that.  Yet she knows the way to hurt me more than anything is to keep me in the dark.  She will not tell me why she will not speak to me.   Jesseca tells  me she has a tattoo of Guanyin.  This can't be right.  Guanyin is a figure of compassion. Dana refuses to practice that compassion.

I listened to an album Dana likes, and one of the songs on it echoes our story - or so it seems to me.  If that's so, the lyrics indicate that she never did intend to speak to me - and she's known for two months that I was hoping she would.  So, she's been cruelly stringing me along?  I asked her.  I sent her a PM and asked her.  I wasn't rude, or strident,  and I was far from angry.  That was on Friday morning, the 25th. 

I had the following dream on the 25th:  Dana in what looks like a park or playground, seen from across the grounds.  She has her hair long, straight, and copper, wears a baggy black sweatshirt, and tan pants.  She has two or three female friends with her, dressed the same. They are trying to restrain her as she is in hysterics, crying and raging, seems like she wants to hit or destroy something but there's nothing to destroy. Don't know if this was psychic or imagination.

On Tuesday morning I discovered that Dana had been on her FB on the 25th and blocked me from sending her messages.  The only reason I was ever on FB to begin with was the hope of reconnecting with her.  She knows what this means to me.

She chooses to do this now, at the lowest point of my life.  My parents have died, I have no money and no job, and will be losing a roof over my head within the next month or so.  Dana knew this was cruel, and she did it anyway.

Jesus, my hands are shaking.

Everyone wants me to survive this.  I have friends who will help.  Dana is not one of them.  I want the fucking pain to end, and Dana knows full well she is adding to it.  I don't understand this betrayal.  I don't understand her cruelty and coldness.

Earlier I found a cache of old photos from childhood.  There was a shot of mom in there.  That was a painful shock I hadn't been expecting. 

When mom died,, it was only the hope Dana had just extended of reconciling with her that got me through it.  Dana maybe saved my life.  Now she has withdrawn that hope with no explanation.  She kept me alive only to force me to spend it in misery.  THAT's cruel.  It's fucking hateful.

I had wanted someday to ask her to marry me.  What I had just asked of her was compassion.  She spat in my face for it.

(3 in the morning, soon be 48 hours, still can't sleep.)

The Two Times I Overcame a Block

The  following is a post I had written elsewhere.  It's 5:30 in the morning.  I've been laying in bed since 8 last night, wide awake, nowhere near sleep.  Can't shut off my mind.  I've been hurt and am at one of my lowest points, but I'm still going.  I'm surrounded by people who insist on believing I want to survive.  There are just one or two I wouldn't hurt for the world.  And I'm not the only one hurting.  If this can help someone, even me, I offer it.

****************

The second time I overcame a block was pretty undramatic, just flexing muscle memory.  I had a photo of Jesseca that I wanted to draw...funny, all this time later, I know longer recall how I was going to render it except that it specifically was not going to be pencil.  Probably pen and ink, simple lines and  blocks.  The point was specifically not pencil because - ugh - too long away, too daunting.  But I got to the folds of the jacket she was wearing and...juuuuuuuuust couldn't help getting drawn in by them, really, really wanted to dive in and explore them.  So I ended up with the first finished pencil drawing since probably Franklin.  Let's see, that was (I think) 2009.   That's a hell of a block.  25 years.  But I did it.

The first time, though...that's another story.  I warn you right now that it's very uncomfortable, very private and personal.  Intimate.  I offer it to the depressed, the hurt,  the lonely, the blocked, to any who may be helped by it...but above all I offer this to Dana Cooper, an enigma and beloved friend, cherished and badly missed. I write this as a spell from my soul and set it free unto to the world, may it heal where it needs to heal.  May it find Dana's heart.

As high school came to a close, I didn't know that I had depression.  Neither did anyone else, so I got yelled at  a lot for the piles of homework I didn't do.  No one could say I wasn't paying attention in class, because I aced the tests and knew the material, but when it came to transforming a blank page with the info in my mind it always worked the other way around. (Tryin' to keep this short and give you the basics, but I do need to set the stage.)

By the end of '84, Dana had left for L.A. via a holiday in Europe.  She sent a few postcards, and I discovered that when I tried to write her the same thing happened as with the homework.  I  couldn't make it happen.  It was about this time I fully admitted to myself that I was head-over-heels in love with her, and wondered how I'd managed to keep that squelched.  In love?  I wanted to marry her!

I did a handful of plays, including an independent sci-fi bit in which I met and fell in love with Lori Hamilton, who by strange coincidence I had never know at Franklin.  She was class of '83.  By the end of that year, 1985, Lori also was gone - just packed up and vanished, no word to anyone, no way to reach her.

I was still attempting to draw, less and less, and never finishing anything.  I did a small painting, and several pen and ink works - posters for plays, print ads for White's Collectibles.

In 1986 I had an unusual dream.  I dreamt of an acquaintance from school.  She was a ta a mall (in the dream), we met and said hello.  This was someone I had never seen anywhere save one class in one year of school, and never expect to see her again.  The very next day I went to a different mall from than the one in the dream.  She was there, we met, said, hello, and that was that.

My friend Jesseca would say that was a testing of the signal to see if I was tuned in and paying attention.  A number of minor incidents of the same sort followed, inconsequential but fun.  Skeptics of ESP like to argue that believers who've experienced it have a prior bias: they want to believe it because it's fun.  The barrage of dreams that lasted throughout 1986 were neither wanted nor fun, and I desperately tried to believe that ESP was not real.

I will not detail these dreams (that's you knocked over with a feather, right?) except to say that they all took place in L.A.  Some were about Dana, and gave me no real information at all except that she was miserable and apparently isolated.  The rest were about Lori, and those were rich in details.  There was also an evolving and consistent narrative concerning the nature of the scene she was immersed in and the company she was keeping. 

These were not normal dreams.  They had an intensity like few I'd  ever had before.  I'd awaken fully from them, convinced that they were actually taking place.  The dreams were not strictly literal - that is, they still had bits of dream-embroidery about them - but the meat of them was overwhelmingly real.  A mutual friend of Lori's, Robert, began to appear in the dreams.  He would try to persuade her to save herself from the situation, and she'd laugh him off.

My friends, these two women I was madly in love with, were in trouble and I had no way to help them.  I made more attempts to write to Dana but the block was firmly in place.  Lori, I had no one to contact to find her.  I began trying distance myself from the dreams.  I mean...they're just dreams.  Be real.   Lori could be anywhere in the world, why would she pick L.A.?  And then another dream would hit.  It was irrational how guilty I felt.  Dreams, really.

A pattern began early that year.  I began to lose sleep.  Those hated dreams, I tried to stay awake days at a time to avoid having dreams.  I would raid a local video rental outlet for movies of all sorts to binge-watch.  I could make it awake for the better part of a week.

But still the dreams would come.  All year for a year. 1986.   Then I stopped having them.
1987 was uneventful until nearing the end, Winter, when I had a surprise phone call from Robert.  I asked if he'd heard any news of Lori, and he said "Man, you better sit down..."  When Lori had left Portland at end of '85 she'd gone to Los Angeles.  From there Robert proceeded to lay out her story, what he knew of it.  The details were the same as from my dreams, with a few variations.  Lori had been in trouble, willfully, self-destructively, and when Robert arrived on the scene and tried to persuade her to help herself, she laughed and ignored him.  Eventually, though, she did come to a sense of herself and extracted herself from all of it.  That was around the time my nightmares had stopped coming.

I could not have known any of this...but I had.  It all came to me in my sleep.
(So...the dreams of Dana?  They were real too?  But they had told me nothing, I didn't know what had troubled her so!  And were they too resolved, if no more bad dreams called to me?)

Lori had returned to Portland.  She was having trouble meeting with most of her old friends for personal reasons, but she was doing  well.  I asked where I met leave a letter for her and was told she often came to her father's house.  I wrote her a letter - in itself a huge breakthrough but not the one I'm building toward.  My art was long gone by then, no longer even trying. 

I didn't hear back from Lori.  Which is...about as far as I care to delineate that memory.  It triggered the depression that had been growing in me.  It was perfectly reasonable for her part, I must have been an association to a past she wasn't ready to engage with yet.  But for my psyche it was too much.  I'd spent a year terrified for her and she couldn't even say 'hello'.  I crashed. 

I began having fantasies about my death, about how she might feel when she learned. These became suicide fantasies.

Now...it's one thing to read or hear about depression clinically, or even anecdotally, as I had many time before.  It's another thing to be inside it.  It wasn't something I recognized.  Part of me kept thinking there must be something wrong with me, but I kept that brutally crushed.  There are people out there with REAL problems!  How dare I claim to have a problem?  How privileged!  Besides, I'm just...fantasizing.  I'm just indulging in a little fantasy, the way someone might do putting on a sad movie when they're down.  (No.  People, no.  Readers...no.)  Or the way you can't leave a loose tooth alone but keep nagging it with your tongue.

This is how the brain-chemistry imbalance feeds itself, pushing the balance even further out of alignment until it reaches a critical point.  Listen, please, if you reading this recognize yourself in what I've written, if you're there now - whatever you do, you must stop those thoughts.  Do whatever you can to distract your brain.  And tell someone.  Your thoughts will kill you. Literally.  Stop feeding the imbalance.  Right the boat.  They're not just fantasies, and you do have the absolute right to claim this problem for yourself.  You're not alone.  Plenty of us have been there. 
I'm reaching the nadir.

I had heard of a phenomenon called the "suicidal urge".  It's not a general leaning but an explicit impulse.  Talk is that if you've never felt it, you cant know just how primal it is.   That's the kind of things that sounds like hyperbole to everyone else.  One night in February 1988 I found out for myself. 

I had taken to sitting in my room for hours at a time, inanimate, overwhelmed with longing and rejection and pain and a loss for answers.  My mind wandered.  My mind was numbed.  My mind was battered.  Then, suddenly, for a moment, my mind was sharp, clear - get up.  go to the kitchen, get a knife, bring it back, put it to my wrists.  It wasn't how I wanted to go, but...I could do it.  Easily.  Right now.  Middle of the night, no one will see and ask questions.  What is this clarity, is this what they call the "suicidal urge"?  It's like my brain has produced a batch of chemical imperative and flooded my system with it, an "off-switch" message stored in the lizard brain and invoked when things pass  a critical point of no return.  Before it had been speculative, fantasy, but I could.  Right now.  But it would have to be right now because I've heard that the urge is fleeting, that it only lasts a moment and then is gone.  That's probably right, the chemical "shut down" command would break  down quickly, dissipate, so if I'm going to it needs to be right now.  I don't want to be walking back to my room with a knife in my hand and then not be able to use it, that would be humiliating.   I want this, this relief, finally, I don't have to go through this anymore.  I can actually feel my right arm plunging itself toward my left forearm and elbow!  This is fascinating, my body is locked and won't move but I can feel the tension of my right arm struggling to be free and use a knife I never went and got.  I can't make myself stand up.  None of my muscles will move.

And then it was over.  As intense as it had been, I was in a dense fog again.  I remember thinking absolutely nothing, just getting out of the chair and walking to my bed, laying down and falling into a dreamless sleep.

I don't know how many days it was after that that I ran across a lecture on PBS about depression.  I put it on as background noise while I did something else.  It's a marvel how the mind works...sometimes it will do something that's brilliant in a Homer Simpson kinda way.  As I listened, I recognized myself as the subject.  Hey!  This thing I've been telling myself isn't a real problem?  It's got a name!  It's a diagnosis!  I'm not imagining it after all!  Here's the 'D'oh!' part of it: it was such a relief that a great lot of the depression lifted!

Part of what had kept me from writing to Dana all those years was the fear of having to explain to her why I had remained silent for so long.  Simply, I couldn't.  I didn't have the understanding of it.  Learning that I had depression solved a lot of that.  It unlocked something.

There was a night when I was walking one of my nieces home in the dark, and we talked about things...I spoke about Lori and about Dana...and as I was talking I became aware that in the back of my mind I had already made the decision to write to her.  More, that I was fully capable of it.  The letter wouldn't be perfect and didn't have to be.  She might reject my explanation and my apology, but that would be okay.  If she didn't get it, I did and would have made the effort.  When I got home, I wrote to Dana that very night.  It came back undeliverable a week and a half later, but I took it to her former address here and tried again.  Her father Ralph met me at the door and said he'd pass it along to her.  By that point I had already written a  second letter, and put them both in the same envelope.  It was a review of the D.O.A. remake that had just been released.  Dennis Quaid finds out he's been poisoned and has days to live.

She wrote me back, happy to hear from me.  I didn't tell her that I was on love with her.  Or that I'd been suicidal, or about Lori, or about the ESP.  Dana keep asking me if...how did she put it?  I have the letters but it hurts to look at them...she kept thinking I was holding something back and urged me to open up.  When I finally did it was too late.  I think in hindsight, when she sensed me hiding something she was  thinking of something else  entirely.  But I wouldn't know about that for a few months yet.


*******
For Dana Marie Cooper, with deepest love and admiration
12:34 AM
11/26/2017