if you speak the truth, they will shun

It's been raining for two days now. We've officially entered the Colorado monsoon season, and there are greens emerging that we aren't usually privvy to here in the central Rockies. Lovely really. It forces people indoors, incites reaarrangement of closets and linen chests, slows down the manic forces inherent to this city. The zinnias look like they've been injected by steroids, and if I don't move the potted (read: restrained) morning glory from it's current climbing route, it's going to invade the entire corner of the garden.

I've been completely unmotivated and uninterested in just about anything resembling exercise and healthy eating. It's not SO bad, i.e. I am not shoveling the Mickey D's into my bottomless gut or macking on a whole pizza, but I did buy a pounder bag of peanut m & m's last Tuesday (the "mega" kind in "rich colors," which includes cornflower blue, a maroon evoking the Victorian age, and god forgive us, the ubiquitous taupe) and the bag is almost gone. I've been on an avocado binge. Yesterday, for lunch, I savored a cup of butternut squash soup and a chinois salad at the local Puck cafe. Yogurt and granola and fresh blueberries at 4:30. Amy's burrito especial topped with homemade salsa and low fat sour cream and guac at 7:30. M & M's by 9 p.m.

I'm lonely and I'm still angry. I miss S terribly, and four more long days exist between the now and the time she returns to her home, her life, her wife. Our wedding feels light years behind us. I spoke to my father yesterday for the first time since I told him that I got married and the conversation was terse, superficial. He was busy trimming ribs and pork butt for a barbeque feast. I could imagine the small bottles of my father's dry rubs lined up on the kitchen counter, awaiting their chance to flavor the racks of meat stacked three, four high on the butcher block. Though I made it through the Fourth of July holiday without consuming any pork products (one hamburger, one hot dog), I've experienced a low level of craving for bbq for weeks now. One of the finest bbq establishments in the city sits a mere five blocks from my house. I love their ribs, the accompanying greens and corn bread. But resist I have. I must. I've fallen too far already.

I am fighting a fight that has no clear winner. The winner should be me, but the finish line is barely perceptible, if at all, through this fog of expectations thwarted, hopes dashed. I am desperately, desperately trying to retain a semblance of power and balance through it all. And I'm not doing the best job of it, which pisses me off to no end, because I'm thirty-fucking-five years old and I'm exhausted by myriad attempts at being seen--truly seen and loved--in my family and I thought that I'd stopped caring long ago. But we never really stop caring, right? I can put up a good fight and put on a happy face, but deep inside I'm ready to blow. I don't want to beg for validation here. I just want to be treated like every other newlywed who just took the biggest leap of her life...

I say thirty-five, but the truth is, I'll be 36 in five short weeks. Take the first number and double it. 3 + 3 = 6. Half a life ago I graduated from high school; half a life ago I tasted my first bit of sweet Chiba. I was more than happy to leave the halls of GlenOak High, pack up my things, and head 40 miles from my hometown to a small liberal arts college that would, for the next four years, challenge and infuriate and test me as I uncovered the intellectual, sexual and emotional person that I was meant to be. Or so I thought. Leaving behind the boring, wet streets of Canton, Ohio was not difficult, but I had not an inkling of an idea that those seemingly innocent "experiments" with marijuana would result in the drug binding to my receptors and refusing to let go-- smoke curling into my brain and covering everything like a diaphanous blanket, softening reality, distancing me from pain. Weed as miracle worker. And now, half a life later, I believe it has become my albatross, my secret burden, the thing-that-works-like-a-charm-but-with-definite-trade-offs. I am so far from myself these days that when I look in the mirror I see little more than a screened back image, ghost-like, my ever-fatter body double, doubling.

There. I said it.