A day that was fairly normal at the surface, if incredibly tiring: I actually went to the corner store – three bags of food, much needed but almost more than I could carry, changed the bed and did the laundry, took a shower.
As that all tailed off this evening... and just before the neighbors starting singing pop songs again – they're not unpleasant, but it's somehow strange, almost like incantations – I start to disintegrate, emotionally....
I've complained a great deal in the last ten years about being taken away from too many things, about landing too far from home, about there being too many dead people I would want to depend on. But tonight it is incredibly present, the reality of being alone and in extremis... this is why you're supposed to have a family, I guess: so that you aren't completely freaked out and disoriented when serious things start to go wrong, when you're thrown off base. But my family is far away, and I'm gay and most of my generation is gone to AIDS, so... oh well. Old whines, too often rehearsed.
By which I don't mean to say that friends haven't called, haven't come by. One even just e-mailed me – but I don't quite know what to do with this: isn't there supposed to be someone you turn to and trust when everything disintegrates? Tonight it feels as though those someones are all long dead, or continents away...
I don't know what to do with this e-mail. Should I actually ask him to come over, just to cheer me up, simply because I'm feeling a bit panicky?
And all the while, the eerie pop chants continue from downstairs....
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