And Through the Window...

 Friday on Halloween weekend.

Are you coming out?

I'll be at...

Come to...

No. I was in my office. Recording guitars. A record I had started last year, abandoned, and had recently come back to. I needed something to focus on. To pay attention to. To try to care about. Recording guitars with half a heart and just trying to say "hey, at least I did something today."

Scroll.

People posting costumes. Make-up. Parties. A world away.

I was in my office. Recording guitars. Half a heart. 

Strum the same chord slowly, repeatedly, and drift into the drone. One and one and one and one and

I turn the amp off. Set the guitar, my beautiful and beaten love, to the side. I couldn't do it. I wasn't there.

My sweater is on the floor behind the amps. The sleeve catches my eye and I see the knitting and the colors. I can feel the warmth of it. The touch. I must have thrown it off and lost it there. I must have forgotten. I've been forgetting everything.

Sit back in the chair and through the window night has come. I hadn't noticed.

Friday on Halloween weekend. 

Through the window.

A world away.

I am not here.

Light Conversation

 "I worry about you sometimes," my mother says from across the table. 

She had driven down and we went to get lunch. She does once in a while, and we do. We talk over whatever our family is up to. Plans for the future. She is looking for the perfect property in the woods near water and away from everything and I think it's funny that that is also my dream. To be alone in the forest. To live and slowly die in a home that wants me, painting, reading, taking care of my small corner of the world. Drive into town once a month for groceries and to sing at an open mic. Each time she describes her property, I think it's funny.

I always try to keep the conversation light. We both do. She had caught me off guard then.

"I'm okay."

"How long has it been since you came back?"

"A year and a half."

"Look how well you've done in a year and a half. You've come a long way."

"I got very lucky. You know, the apartment, this job. It's not me. I just got lucky." I take a bite and with my finger push a meatball back into the sandwich.

"Maybe. You should take more credit. I'm proud of you. You should be too."

I'm having a rough time lately. I was okay for a little while but not anymore and when she says that I can feel a pressure in my eyes and I look away. Stare at a large neon "S" affixed to the wall near the counter. It woudn't look right to put my sunglasses on now. It's a tell. I stare at the S.

"Are you still in therapy?" she asks.

"Yeah. Taking my medication. Doing all the things I need to do." 

"Good."

I nod. Take another bite. I'm almost finished. I ate too quickly and I wonder if it's because some part of me wants to just get home and hide. 

I know I have to try to stop over-analyzing every moment and word and look. Even sitting here, eating with my mother who is showing a legitimate and justified concern, I am oscillating between total detachment and running math on what these words really mean. Why is she telling me she's proud? Because she isn't. How could she be? I am nothing. Wasted potential. Wasted years. Wasted opportunities. She could only see me as the alcoholic. The addict. Desperate for attention. Unmotivated. Lazy. Stunted. Delusional. She can't be proud. The math doesn't work.

I've been told it's projection, and maybe it is, but I've been right so many times. Even if it is projection, it doesn't mean I'm wrong. 

She looks at me and I am ashamed.

"I have a lot to be grateful for," I say. "I think about it a lot."

"You do. It's important to remember that. You have a good home. A good car. A good job. Do you have groceries? Do you need help getting groceries?"

I am ashamed. I look away again. 

"No. Thank you though. I appreciate it. I have food. I have some money."

"Okay. I just want to make sure. While I'm in town, if you need anything, I want to help."

"I know, Mom. Thank you."

"You know you can always call me, right? Always, but I mean, you know, if you need to. When..."

She's having trouble saying it. I've done this to her. 

"I know. I'm okay. I promise."

She takes a bite of her food and she keeps looking at me. "Do you have people you can call?"

"Yes." It takes me a second to figure out if I'm lying. 

I'm not.

"Yeah, I have a support system. I have one or two people I can talk to. That I would talk to."

"Good. That's important." She takes a few seconds. "I just worry sometimes."

"I know. But I'm okay. I promise." 

She gives a small smile and I try to read it. She knows she's done as much as she can do. Said all she can. I don't know if she believes me, the smile says she doesn't, but maybe it's projection. 

"Your niece doesn't want to go to Columbia," she says. "She saw the campus and just said 'no'."

"That's it? Why?"

"Who knows. She says she wants to go to Oneonta instead."

The tone has shifted. We're out of the forest now. Into the sun.

"That's ridiculous. I'm texting her," I say.

"What are you going to say?"

"Go to Columbia you dork."

"She's not going to have any idea what you're talking about."

"I'll say it twice."

We finish our food. We talk about schools and futures and plans. We throw away our garbage, wipe the table. Leave. 

She drops me off at my apartment. We hug and she kisses me on the cheek. 

"Thanks for having lunch with me," she says.

"Thank you, Mom. I appreciate it."

She gets in her truck and as she leaves I go inside. Hide.

Handkerchief

I was seeing shit. Out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes in front of me. Wisps like black smoke and sometimes more solid like fabric. I had taken to calling it a handkerchief. Usually just quickly in my periphery, but not always.Once or twice I had looked right at it. 

Someone else had also seen it. So I thought it must be real. I thought I couldn't be hallucinating. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe they were hallucinating with me. It happens. They were concerned they were having a breakdown, and maybe they were. Maybe I am.

It had always been in that house. Sometimes near the floor boards. Sometimes close to the ceiling. Always sudden and then swiftly gone. I didn't talk about it for a while at first, until they brought it up. Sitting in the dark outside, comparing notes. The same thing.

The handkerchief.

It stayed in that house mostly and soon they said "please don't talk about it with me anymore." So I stopped. I don't know if they ever saw it again, but for a while afterward I did. In the living room mostly, flitting away into the shadows. It wasn't frightening, but curious. Other things would happen in the house. Noises that made no sense, mostly. A lamp turning itself on and off. What sounded like walking in an empty bedroom upstairs. Another bedroom with an often overwhelming oppressiveness. 

I wanted to investigate. To learn. Ask questions and find answers, but they said "please don't talk about it with me anymore" and I left it alone. Only watched. I saw it less and less there.

I had gone through a rough period in the spring and early summer. If you've spent any significant period of time with me, you'd know that weird shit starts to happen around me in those times. And it was. It's the only correlation that I can put together consistently. I'm feeling rough, shit gets weird.

Over the last couple of weeks I had been dipping into it again. The dark. Slowly and without cause. In my living room a few days ago I was nearing the point where I get nervous about it and the next day a wisp of grey smoke out of the corner of my eye. I ignored it, but noted it, as I note damn near everything. The next day, in my kitchen, another. I started paying attention. Two days ago, at work a third. Then last night, I looked right at it.

It wasn't smoke this time. It seemed as though fabric. Black. In the crack under the bottom of my bedroom door, sticking out an inch or two. I looked right at it and just as quickly it slipped under the door as if yanked from the other side. I ran into the bedroom, vigilant watch on the floor. Nothing. I thought that maybe I had only seen a mouse, and that it wasn't black, just dark. I stuffed a shirt under the door and went through the bedroom. The baseboards. The walls. Anywhere a mouse could have slipped into. I went through the clothing on my floor. The laundry basket, under my bed. My book shelf. My closet. Everywhere. I found no mouse. I found no holes or cracks. No exits.

I had looked right at it.

It was with me now, and I had looked right at it.

It makes me nervous. A medication I had been on had caused distinct auditory hallucinations and I had stopped using it. I wondered if the new medication was doing the same thing. I wondered if it could be stress. Could depression make me hallucinate? I had been sleeping okay that week, so I didn't think it was that. But two things I didn't want to entertain were; I'm losing my shit, or what I saw was real.

I was seeing shit. Barely leaving the dark apartment. Burnt out from work and the world in general. From just living. Depressed, anxious, and increasingly paranoid and I was seeing shit. 

I'm going to catch it and make it pay some fucking rent.