It is not a competition? I’m told. Except it is. Except not for me. I know how competitive I can be. So I don’t do it. I won’t. I would give up everything for someone to win? Probably. I can’t do this. I show the restraint. I let them win. I even give permission. Go ahead and take him. I can’t be enough. Without giving up something I don’t really want to give up. Me. Again. I did this enough. Second. You feel second. Never first. You can’t be anyway. People shouldn’t be numbered like an order. We don’t pick a favorite kid? So why people? Except sometimes I secretly pick a favorite kid. Like when in my head I say it. That one. That’s the one I like. It always changes. My dad was my favorite person and I don’t even like to say it with fear I hurt mom. Or my ex husband. Or even my kids. He just was.

I wasn’t enough for another person. Not who I currently know I think it is old pain from new pain. I can be for myself? I believe I can be otherwise I would compete. Fight for my man. But I won’t. Not from a woman. I will fight for him, if he can’t for him self. I’m a huge advocate for fighting for someone who will not need me to fight for my man from a woman. But women are everywhere. I don’t like to fight. I don’t like to give up either. But I won’t fight first. I will walk away when it feel like someone wants to. Which is the plan. Just not mine. I don’t make plans. I just do things I know. And don’t do things I don’t know, like fight for a man.

I can’t write tonight. I thought I could but my eyes are stinging from crying for a dead bug, my sister and my mom and even my other sister. She is sitting there with what is left of her marriage to someone she once left and should have stayed left yet there he was with her through this. My mom and sister on the other side of me holding each other. Rightfully so. They lost their husbands. I’m sitting there in the middle just sitting there in the middle. Like I am. The middle one. Alone. But with me. But not with my dad. I go to look for bugs outside. That’s just me. It’s what I know. My dad would have known where to find me. It’s what he knew. He would have brought me back inside and sat me back down and patted my head. The bug was dead. A cicada. An annual cicada. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. He is from Texas? Not the cicada we usually see annually. Greener. More superb? A dog days. These are things I know. Things I will google later to also know more of because he is greener and this I don’t know. He could have gotten here a million ways but he was sitting there all dead with a broken leg from flying into the window here in Illinois at my brother in laws funeral. I wanted to fix his leg. It was bent wrong. Even though he was dead. I put him under the boxwood to not further get dead. I buried a bug today.

I wanted to write about trust and jealousy but can’t stop thinking of a bug. I don’t like to be a jealous person. It’s something i don’t know. And it’s something I do know. I was just given a lot of reasons to be? Reasons I didn’t know. But did know. I also don’t want to be jealous. I am not. I al cautious? Nervous? Suspicious? What is jealous?trust? I don’t know. I can’t ever trust again? Unless I chose it? I it a choice? You chose to one person but not another? I may never know I fear. Or maybe I will know I also fear. There Is that word. Fear. I am afraid to. To avoid being hurt again. Which is something I know. It’s some thing we all know. And I will. I have been. And I will again. That how it is supposed to work? Does that really work? Wouldn’t it be easier if we just did and didn’t always not. Or that we didn’t give reasons to not. If we all just did trusting thing and said what we need and want and know then we wouldn’t need to not trust? I don’t know. And I also do know. You have to earn trust by breaking it first? Like love. You have to sometimes not love to feel it again? That’s ridiculous. We should just not break trust?

I can’t tell people I need them. I want to. But I don’t know how. It’s not something I say. I need you. Or even do. I don’t show it? How do you? Look needy? I thought I was showing it but I may not know what that is either. I don’t know.

The things I know. And don’t.

I was told to just be happy I had the years I did with him or to be grateful I had such a close bond and love with my dad that not many people are that lucky. Except I am not happy and not grateful. I don’t want to be either. I am sad and not ungrateful but what? I am grateful I had an amazing father. But I am not because now he is gone and I am still grateful but does the grate stop? Now what will I be grateful for? My kids? My mom? My sisters? The family I can’t connect with because they don’t connect like I do. I would take one in person visit a year over a daily interaction where I can not actually see someone or know if they are really there. I don’t believe It. A few family showed up for the funeral and it made my day. I was grateful for a day to see people I never see or hear. And then it was over with wishes from them to me that I would reconnect online so they could stay caught up on my life. Even asked what do I do without these avenues? I live. And know one knows about it. Like my dad did until he didn’t anymore.

If I was a ranger in the woods I would for sure be one who would notice if a new tree appeared planted. In the woods. By a person. I need a park with a ranger who doesn’t do a good job? I hope that isn’t a park I can find yet I hope I can. I need to plant a tree for my dad in a place I’m not supposed to. I don’t want it in the city where it will be planted by city workers who are disgruntled over pay. Who won’t want a new tree to mow around and may even scar it with the mower or trim it erratically to be able to go under it. It may not get watered then die. I have to pay an huge amount of money to support a municipal that is full of disgruntled city workers. I worked with them so I know they are them. The money goes to what? Not that tree. I want a guarantee and promise of a long time commitment to his tree. I won’t get that. I’ve seen the memorial trees in places. I need to do it myself. Somewhere. Just take a small little tree and find somewhere I can access easily with water and that no one will mow it down. The woods. Let the animals take care of it naturally. It will be climbed and explored by creatures and maybe lose a branch from wind someday. Maybe have another tree fall on it and it will lay and decompose, growing new life while turning back into the earth. I’m way forward thinking. In my head I have planted a tree that grew a hundred years and is now going back to earth already. Too forward. Fast forward. How is I make it just that the little tree is today and feel the wind today and hear the little creek babbling near by? Touch the earth with my bare hands and feet? Look for the bugs? How do I stay right here today? When I’m told to be happy my dad died someday. Someday you will feel less sad. I can’t see that day anymore than I can see that tree laying down decomposing. I looked too forward?

I am either being lied to by a whole bunch of people or just like two. I can’t decide who and what is going on because it is things I don’t know. I’ve sorted out the gains and losses for each individual and can’t decide why some would some wouldn’t. They gain and some don’t. In the end I lose either way. I lose a friend. Unless that’s who is lying. How do we know? Do we ever?

I can’t be around sad people for just a day. I’m sad enough for me. I can’t seem to be anywhere for just a day. I don’t know where to be. What to do? And who and what to believe. I don’t know how to feel grateful my dad died and to feel happy he is no longer here and I’m no longer happy. I can’t forward think and feel happy in the future I had such a great dad and I am grateful I had the years I did. I just know how to plant a tree and bury bugs that died with broken legs and don’t know a lot of other things today.

I am not regular thinking at all today. I mostly just regular think lately which is just like it sounds regular thinking and now it’s irregular thinking. Which is like it sounds. Irregular. Like an irregular heart beat. The rhythm is not right. It’s fast and slow and erratic. It’s not so much the topics; it’s the switch of the topics. It’s not even that it’s that I was consistently thinking and now I’m skipping beats and rhythms from topics too hard to think of topics. Not from one extreme to another but so far out there to nothing to everything. Almost nothing. And almost everything. Not too much. Just bouncing around. Not just over thinking but I’ve created scenarios so far out of reach I can’t bring them back? I’ve missed beats in my thoughts and am bouncing all around. They are too out there. More like they don’t matter they are so far out there. Grief is really making me irregular think.

I shouldn’t be here. I am not the person to sit and wait for people to die. I am not even usually the person to sit for anything or nothing. I am not the person for so much of this. I’m just a regular person with too many tentacles to try and hang on to people too hard and long for no reason and all the reasons at once.

I wish we could actually touch clouds. They look like they can be touched and enjoyed and felt. Today they look like I could reach out and grab one and pull it from the sky and gobble it up like cotton candy. White cotton candy. What flavor is this? Just white? Just sugar. Plain sugar. Is cotton candy just sugar? Yes it’s spun sugar. The blue taste like blue and the pink tastes like pink. They taste different? Can I request white cotton candy when I buy it? Just the sugar one without the numbered dye. That’s what I want. The one that looks like clouds you can eat and touch. So I can see what it’s like to touch and eat a cloud. Since I can’t. Because we just get to see them. They aren’t something we get to jump and bounce from and leap our way up to where we believe is a place people go. Up. To heaven. To the place above the clouds. It’s imaginary. All the clouds today look like the bart Simpson clouds. They look jumpable. Eatable and touchable but are actually unbelievable.

What do people do? I will them to die. I am sitting here willing someone to die in my head. That’s not regular thinking anymore. It is causing so much live living grief. Not grief of a loss but grief of a loss to come that should come so the grief of actual loss can begin and not the hang onto someone kind that is teetering on the edge of loss grief. See what I mean? Irregular thinking. Hoping someone dies so the living can live again. Can move on. We hang on to our almost dead. It’s too hard to let them go. It’s too hard to imagine them gone. It’s too hard to move on. It’s too hard to not get to touch the people we see when we close our eyes. The people we think of who are gone. Or even when we have them open. Like clouds. Like someone who is dead. They aren’t there anymore. Like clouds aren’t really there? But it’s too hard for who?

He will be ok. It’s been hard for him. It’s been too hard for him. It feels easy and peaceful to just let go of the hard. After all this time it’s time. We all have a time. It’s time. Nobody wants it to be time at all. But some times it is just time. Even when we don’t want it to be that time. It’s scary for us and him. It would be weird to not be scary. But being afraid is brave. It’s brave to die when it’s time but no one wants it to be time. After all this time it’s just time.

I’m just so still torn about so much. I don’t want to be contacted by ex girlfriends, lovers or whatever it was or if it still is. I have too much to really regular think about without adding to the irregular thinking I’m doing today so my guy can feel a little relief for once. I don’t know how to be there for anyone let alone someone who is so used to being let down, or not having someone there for him. Because I can’t sit and wait for people to die well. I don’t even know if being there for someone means being there or just saying I am but not actually. Like clouds. Is it a physical presence or just let me know and I can be? I can’t? I wasn’t and someone else was. That’s what I am used to. My own let downs my own no one is there for me.

What does it even mean for me? For me it is someone who would show up for me. Someone who is also getting the life knocked out of them in an arena at the same time and keeps getting up and somehow occasionally turns and looks over their beaten bloodied face and shoulder and says. You good? And spits a tooth out maybe. Wipes the bloody snot away and never gets actually beaten just hurt. But also never leaves the arena we are in where we are both getting constantly hurt and knocked down. When do we win in this I am there for you irregular thinking scenario. Is it never? Do we just never win? Is it actually always because we never left the fight? Is it just occasionally? Is it when someone dies? Who’s win was that?

I don’t want any more people to die. No one does. But I sort of do. Because what kind of life is it when you can’t live? Not don’t want to but can’t? Physically can’t. Why would we want them to stay? For us. So we have someone to care for? When we can’t care for ourselves? My mom was this? Is this? She has to have someone to care for or else it means she has to for once take care of herself. She doesn’t know how. Some people don’t. I joke that she just needs a good homeless person to fix. Yet I know that’s not a joke and it’s actually a suggestion she wouldn’t take lightly to pursue. She would take it seriously. She is also part octopus.

I am part her and this is why I have so many octopus tentacles. Actually I have just the 8 like octopus do or else I wouldn’t be an octopus, in my head anyway. I don’t have them all filled and squeezing someone but I know I am capable of it. Because I am my moms girl part of the way and the other part of the way I am my dad. I take care of me. Usually this part of me is me. But my mom surfaces when I get bored with just me. Or apparently when I Am grieving. Because grieving for me is just too hard and it is just easier to help other grieve so I can look for clues on how to do it myself. How do I grieve? By helping others with grief? Will I lose myself again? My dad being gone to remind me to look out for me again. To not lose myself while fixing others who can’t fix themselves. Or don’t want to fix themselves. Or it’s just too hard. Their arena was harder than mine. They couldn’t. Look away and spit a tooth out and look out for me because they had too many punches coming. Maybe no teeth left.

It feels like not regular thinking to be hoping someone can be allowed and granted the grace to go. We aren’t anyway. They aren’t laying there hanging on to every breath they take for you. It’s because the time isn’t there yet. They look so labored and dramatic. Like they are breathing just for you. Like it hurts. Like it’s the one for you and then one more for you. Then still one more for you. Then none for anyone. Even you. But it’s not. It’s still for them. It just takes a little time for the body to stop being alive apparently. They aren’t hanging on. We are. We want them to breath forever so we can hold their hands and see them and touch them and hear them forever. It’s just not forever. The last breath was relief for me. Not mine. Watching my dad take one last one was relief. I was holding my breath. I couldn’t breath. I wanted him to stop so I could again. He was suffering. I could see it and had seen of for months and most his life and all of mine. We were his life but we didn’t keep him going. He did. Then it was time to be done. It became finally easier for him for once. But harder for us. But easier for him so easier for me. For once.

I’ve imagine what life would be like if bug lives mattered. Like really mattered. Like they drove around in our cars and they would be their cars and we clung to the windshields as people while they drove around. Or that we were swatted and smacked and smashed. Or that we were zapped in zappers or given poison for eating lawn roots and trees leaves. All of this administered and acted out upon us by bugs. Would bugs have other lives matter? Like fly lives matter? Or fleas or gnats. There are a lot of kinds of bugs. Would they have issues with race? Are there racist bugs? Hypocritical? Do bugs hate? Why do we? Do bugs have instincts and gut feelings? Seriously. Not regular thinking today.

I should amputate my octopus legs. Or let go a little more of some of them. What would I be if I wasn’t always reaching out to others who I think need me? Me again is who? Who was that? Is that? It’s not me. We have to have octopus people. People who reach out to help even if it is jeopardizing yourself. It’s what sacrifice is? Giving up something for something else? Although this word has such very different uses. Anywhere from slaughtering animals to a religious act. Depends on the sentence it’s in what the sacrifice is. I wouldn’t sacrifice my octopus legs for no octopus legs because I just don’t really know who I am without helping others sometimes. I wanted to clean the floor, do dishes, wash the little covers over the lights on the ceiling, look for a ladder to do this, weed the neighbors garden, water the other neighbors flowers and maybe mow the entire park down the road in the mower I saw just sitting while the mower park guy didn’t mow and was not watching his mower well. But I was hungry and missed this guy who is about to lose someone who I keep willing to die in my irregular thoughts. Because it is just time. Not time but time.

I want to pull weeds and dead plants from a building that tax payer money pays for. Why can’t I? Isn’t it like an act of kindness. Even my cicvic duty as an active community member. Am i active in the community though? No. Im not a community person. Let alone an active one. I could be. If i was I would be addressing horticulture maintenance for sure. I could vote? Does this get effected by who and what we vote for? The plant selection wasn’t ideal. I could maybe ask? Parks aren’t working at full capacity yet? I could do it in the middle of the night but that seems like more of a crime than in daylight. In daylight I could explain myself better than all dressed in black skirtn around the shérif department ripping dead plants and weeds out. Maybe I wouldn’t wear black. Maybe high visibility and be seen so I don’t look like a criminal? No matter how I imagine it I am breaking a law. Even though I am just trying to do a simple civic duty of horticulture clean up for free even though somehow my taxes already payed for it to not be kept up. I am just being a responsible tax payer? I paid for this so it should look better? No, I should simply call the office and say I am disappointed in the lack of care of plants I sort of own. No, I should drive a different way until this quits bothering me or they rip it out and plant all new plants to die. Maybe start a volunteer group? Except there are likely union rules for this space…maybe close my eyes when o drive by? Nope. Need the eyes open. Maybe just stop and do it and see what happens, who would bother a lady out weeding weeds on county property without permission or a real good reason. I would certainly find out, I let it go. Loosen my grip on things I can’t control. Like dead and dying landscaping and dead and dying people.

I am not the right person for this but here I am not the right person for this with a person who needs a person to be just any person for once. Right or wrong. Just someone. I am not just someone but I am a person who can right or wrong be a person. I want to be that person. Except I am getting the crap beat out of me by life and I’m even beating myself up and I need someone to turn to and say you good as much as someone might need to say it to someone too. Or hear it. Just a regular person with some irregular thoughts today.

I haven’t written in days. Which is the core of the angst I am dealing with. Yet I don’t know why I stopped other than the core of my angst was when I wrote. It is both, yet I was seeing it as I wrote and didn’t want to see it as I wrote yet need to see it as I wrote to know it’s there. Now I know it’s there yet I can’t see it because I have not written it. It’s just there. I just can’t see it. Becasue I quit writing it.

I’m not a labels person. I don’t need to say I am a girl. A female specifically, which is not a label yet a word for what my gender is. I just am. I never and don’t doubt it. I just don’t need to say it. I am woman../hear me what? Roar? Why? Do we? I can? But I’m also not a lion. I don’t identify with anything specific other than I am me. I work with a girl who says she identifies as just her name. Not as herself, just her name. She says it so much that I actually doubt her. She is afraid of herself. She can’t identify with anything it seems. Except fear, yet she also doesn’t like labels so she is not labeled as afraid. She just shows it. She put a post on her own page, which I don’t have pages so I didn’t see but saying that masks are the new face of customer service. Yet I can’t agree. Yet maybe I do. If we are evolving. I’ve said yet too many times. Like I’m trying to convince myself of something. Yet I’m not. Masks to me are hiding fear or showing it. I’ll do it simply because it’s recommended and it’s all we know to do other than never be with each other again and to wash ourselves to the point of oblivion. I’ve never been so clean, my baths are super clean. I have no dirt rims to clean anymore. I am just cleaner. Safer? I don’t know. I could say. Let me show you how clean my tub is. Then you will see how clean I am. How safe I am? Say this to who? I have just never been so clean, so distant and so unafraid. Yet afraid.

I don’t know that the new customer service could be called customer service if in fact we can’t serve customers. Maybe it’s her way to deal with what we evolve to? Maybe it’s the way it is? We can’t greet with warm friendly smiles. We can’t approach. We can’t assist. We can’t touch phones to look at plant photos. We can’t grieve and hug and mourn each other’s losses. We can’t become personal. We can’t serve our customers. It is not the new face of customer service unless you can self serve. Then what are some of us doing? Hiding behind our masks? Evolving?

I don’t mean to ever need to feel like I have to work through mask angst yet here I am. Yet I’m also still saying yet. Working through mask angst. My opinion is indifference and to allow others to have their own opinions but unfortunately I expect it back. I want people to stay away as much they want me to. It’s how I have always lived. Keep my circle small yet nearly non existent.

My circle was small yet I let too many in out of fear. My circle was too small. Then it got too big. I needed people. My dad died and I thought I needed the world for more than I thought. That my octopus arms had room for more. I grew more arms and can now smother more people. I was very wrong. I trusted someone and they snuck in and thought they earned it. She said. I don’t know what it is. I just have one of those faces that people will tell me anything and then I did. It wasn’t her face. In fact my first thought was I shouldn’t tell this person a single thing but yet here I am needing people and yet here she is sensing it. It was my own moment of time of weakness where I needed a face and an ear when my face and ears had died with the person I told the things to. The one I trusted. Yes one. My person is gone. I am not any less of a person just a lost person. Maybe not even lost yet more alone. Not even more alone yet more lonely. Also not lonely yet just plain missing a void that didn’t make me feel complete, my dad was my other whole.

On my own I am just a whole person. I require so little that it scares people away. That’s what my other whole person raised me to believe. To be ok, to find my way, listen to my gut, believe in myself, to do it myself. Not so much that others will consistently let you down yet that you can and don’t need them. Yet you will want one and them.

Why don’t my kids know things like that bread goes stale, automatically? It has to be taught? It seems like common sense to me yet I am certain I let bread go stale as a child from not knowing it goes stale when exposed to air for too long or from ripping the bag open in the middle and not untwisting the twists. What seems like common sense to me was once taught? How can I expect my kids to open things properly when they have witnessed me tear open and destroy boxes for the same reasons they do. I’m still a child when it comes to opening things.

I was never 20. I missed it. I was carrying my first baby in my belly and had just left the job I dreamed of as a ranger in the forests since I could speak. I was a grown up when I needed to be a grown up yet I turned 21 and enjoyed a glass of milk like a toddler. I was not a super young mom but I was never 20. I just missed it by 20 years and now I am feeling like I am 20. I just can’t act it. I forgot what girls can be like because I keep them from my circle. Like I keep all people from my circle. My circle isn’t really a circle. It’s maybe a triangle. Maybe even a dot. Maybe even nothing for now until I feel out of I need or want a circle or a triangle or even a shape at all?

It is risky to say things to people. They say them back and wrong. For reasons that they gain from. It is calculated and the risks are weighed and there is forethought and motive. There are feelings that will be hurt yet they won’t be theirs. I forgot that I am a just one person kind of person. Who doesn’t like labels. It takes so long for me to understand me let alone a bunch of people in a circle I don’t have yet might really be a triangle. Or not?

I cant handle the little red notifications on my apps. I also can’t handle many apps. I rented a car for the day to pick my sister up to prepare to say goodbye to her husband this weekend. She can’t drive and get left from home. She keeps coming up with reasons not to. She keeps getting sick to her stomach. She was cooped up alone battling coronavirus while her husband battled it alone in the hospital. Now she has to say goodbye without getting to say goodbye. She can drive but he always did. She needs someone to just come and do what he did for her this one time. My phone sinked my rental with my calendar making little red notifications on my calendar. Wrong sink, yet I am not correcting it. I don’t need reminded I rented a car. I don’t have a car while mine is being fixed so I don’t doubt the existence of rental. I don’t see not remembering to go get my rental car. So I can drive it. I can’t handle the red notifications. I will delete and say ok and just open to avoid seeing the notifications. They are too much pressure for me to see who I trying to get me to be notified. It worked. For me. I won’t notify back. I am angsty over being notified. I don’t want to be and don’t want to to others.

The universe put him in my path. I didn’t actively pursue him or look even. In fact I looked up one day and said I bet he will hike with me. It just happened. I was walking along and looking somewhere else and then turned back to my path that I really don’t know if I am on and he was in it. Is it right? I don’t know? Who is right? I don’t know? I just have to chose to believe that something is in the works that is written in the stars and I can’t read the stars so I stopped trying and never even really did. I just kind of like stars. Yet don’t know what they are saying. I let them tell the story. I wasn’t looking. I was definitely missing that person to help me up and to help me back and to help my on and out and around and through. That wouldn’t leave me on the other side of the road for not knowing how to get us off the side of the road. Who wouldn’t give up on me.

So many women. So little time. So many men. Same reason. Yet there are just too many. My friend is online and shopping for a man. That sounds so bad to say shopping but maybe looking? She has drawn me right into it. Not me personally but me for her personally. I am not shopping for a man. Or looking for one. If a man is on there to find his real connection than he isn’t going to find me. I believe a real connection is when you don’t look for it. When you let the stars do their thing and tell the stories we can’t read that are written. I know how you feel stars. I have to write to see to believe. Stars don’t feel. Or maybe they do? Who knows? We study the stars yet we shouldn’t read them it’s written not to be read yet just looked at.

I found a guy. Maybe he found me? We found each other through unresolved grief. It makes sense. I’ve been saying he is my guy for several weeks to no one but me. Not even to my triangle. Because I haven’t determined my shape since I decided needed the whole world. I love things n threes. Or maybe just in odd numbers. It bothers me octopus have 8 tentacles unless I think of them as 3 on one side and 5 on the other except I don’t know if an octopus has sides like we do. Are they a left or right? Or just all around?

I don’t like labels. I don’t like the idea of a boyfriend or a husband or a friend or a partner. He is a guy. A male. It’s simple and he has been mine for a few weeks and I didn’t tell him because I don’t know how. I also fear I’m not his something? He had a someone he lost. Im not trying to be his someone. I am not trying to be anything but me for once. I am trying to be someone who can help him get through losing his someone like he is me and doesn’t know it because I don’t know how to say it just write it. I also fear she is. She says she is and he says s he is not, my person is gone who tells me to listen to my gut and I have not learned how to listen to my gut yet or found someone that knows I need to sometimes be told to listen to my gut. Man not even spell check knows what I’m trying to say today. Usually I get close to a word and it will say it but type it or suggest it and tonight it is also just as angsty as me. My spell check has word angst. I caused it. I want to get back on my time machine and leave junior high. I wasn’t ever 20 and don’t want to be a 14-20 year old again just because I missed 20 doesn’t mean I need to go back in time and say, be 20. Or be around 20. But really 14. I just happen to look it. I confuse people when I say my age they don’t believe me. I stopped telling people. Does it matter? Why does it? Why do I have to check that box with all the other labels just to finish and complete a school registration and or any thing. What does this data tell a bank? A school? A census? It gives them numbers of people who have labels. You can not submit anything without successfully filling all the boxes in. I get label angst from being labeled.

I’m sitting in my tub sideways. All my water ran out. I love a good bath but lately I don’t. I am bored and it’s so small. And I’m cleaner than I usually am. I’ve been sitting in tubs reading and writing for so long. Years. I won’t tell you how many since you know I’m not 20 if I give any other numbers than they could be added to come up with one that I am but feel i am not. I’m sitting in my own filth I am told. How dirty am I? Really dirty actually. I work in dirt. Yet I have been cleaning my arms and legs and hands so I don’t have viruses on them. Dirt used to rim my tub if I sat too long. I would have pieces of plants and mulch and flowers I forgot are in my hair floating all around me. Yet here is am in clean water and a clean tub with no dirt rim filth. And I am disappointed? Bored? My tail bone hurts. I broke it once falling off a ladder removing ivy from a building on campus. Before I looked this over it said I fell off a lady. Not a ladder. See, spell check angst. Sideways tub bathing angst and just plain angst. The end of my tail bone points to one side. I have a little tail. You can’t see it yet I have to sit a certain way to avoid it.

I can’t figure out and don’t want to google why bees die when they sting you. I know that the stinger is attached to the guts, or Im told, maybe and so when they sting you they gets their guts ripped out. Imagine that. This thought makes me sick to my stomach. Bee sting guts angst. I avoid letting bees sting me not from the pain for me but for them. They mean business. Stay away or I will die. Not just die but my guts will be ripped from me. Think of that before you start trying to spray me with water and making me leave my place. I just have a simple job to do. Why can’t bees evolve into something less dramatic? Are bees still evolving or have they always been this way? Is that it? They will just always die if they sting you? It seems like poor design yet also brilliant if you consider that a bee will die if they sting you yet that a bee hurts when it stings you. Change your thoughts? We should evolve? Yet we don’t? Or is that what we are doing now? Yet to fear. Maybe we should get stingers and die if we sting others? Yet the idea of my guts being ripped out is enough to stay away from others so my guts won’t be ripped out when I sting them from fear of them being to close. Masks. Let’s just do that. I don’t even know if the guts thing is true.

How am I supposed to breath today? And tomorrow? Where is all the air? It feels stuck in the air. The air is too heavy? Too thin? The air is not air? Is it even air? How do we even know? Is it full of the virus? Is that what it is? We have all been breathing so much we have exhaled a virus that we are all inhaling? Then exhaling? Are we just breathing the virus in and out now? Where do the little droplets settle when we exhale? On the things? Or in the air. Are the studies of a human breathing showing us moving particles less than six feet away a real thing? We study this? We like to study. To guess. To not know but to know. We like to project so we can project some more. We study air and no air.

Isn’t that where we are getting this? The air? Is our air this dangerous now? Just because it is in the air does it mean that’s the way we are getting it? A mask keeps those droplets from landing on things? So now my mask is full of virus? Maybe? My mask has spaghetti sauce and dirt on it. I touch it all day long and try to eat through it if I have to be in a place I can’t keep away from the people who think I am afraid of them. What if we all wear masks and it still spreads? Do we stop wearing them? And all of this was for not? Then what do we do to stop doing? Study more? What happens to all the masks? They float in rivers and storm sewers? They are on every corner. One at the bottom of a lake in South Carolina. I struggled not to retrieve it. To dive in and clean the bottom of this lake of masks. Who’s was it? Why was it there? Did they throw it off in reckless abandon after a long drive to this lake? Disregarding the 1000 dollar fine for littering? I don’t care they will say, I can breath air and not no air.

They aren’t ever going to be able to make people wear them? Some will not and so we never gain control? But if we all did then it still spread so what do we do then? Until then how do I breath this messy air we call air when I can’t even breath air and now I have to breath through something to get my air when I could barely get air to do it before? I’m still adjusting to mask wearing rules. How do some of us breath that couldn’t anyway? That felt it was always the last? Each one taken as if was it? Why cover it up if that’s the last one you get? And how do I even do it anyway? It is too thick. Too thin? Too dangerous? Too no air.

Everyone is afraid of me. Yet I am not of them. I get it. Let’s all be or not be afraid of each other. When the whole world is wearing masks and social distancing and no one is touching or loving or trusting again, then when this point is reached and no one is dying. Then I will get it. We did it. Right? Stopped the spread of the virus and everyone is going to live? What are we fighting? Who? And why? When all the control is achieved and everyone survives forever then I will get it. I get it. Let’s just wear them so everyone feels safe. But I am not afraid. And don’t tell me to be afraid when I need to eat a chip in a moment when no one is around me and afraid of me for a second. When I have a second I can breath my air not my no air.

I was yelled at by a customer for taking my mask down to eat a chip. Approached then yelled at. I was told to leave my place of business or to eat in the back. Where I work. It was delivered as an angry message of hate towards me. Of fear of me? She is keeping me safe so I should her? Yet she is so far away from me I can’t seem to think even for a second how I could give her my air? Or even want to. As soon as I knew she was there I put it back ups In case she tried to get into my air and leave me with no air. She thinks I am selfish for taking a minute to eat when I was the only person to be around to answer phones. How dare I eat after months of not eating from death, Lyme and river parasites. Should I tell her these things? I finally did.

My dad died and my brother died from the virus. To back off. I was 8-10 feet from her and needed to eat. She wouldn’t back off. She told me well then you should know better. Today wasn’t the day to not back off from me. To tell me to know better. I do know better. I don’t wish anyone to know better and that’s why I follow the rules when I can’t follow the rules. If I can’t keep away from you then I will protect you from me. When you say I have to wear a mask to protect others yet don’t tell all the others to also protect me I will do it. I just say nothing. For too long. I have stayed silent for too long. Not about masks. About my thoughts. I have them. I can write what i think for hours but unless you read what I write, i say almost nothing to people unless it’s about plants. I don’t let this stuff out. My voice. Years of being told not to by someone: years of being told to stay quiet.

Once I was even told before a meeting that this was the kind of meeting we don’t ask questions at. I was perplexed and said. So this is exactly the kind of meeting we should be asking questions at? He then cocks his head in that disappointed and don’t push it manner and his head wobbles like a bobble head on the dash of a car. I then picture him in Hawaiian prints and a grass skirt for some reason. I cock my head back and say without saying don’t tempt me by telling me not to. I cross my arms to match his crossed arms. We finish our little head cocking arms crossed and bobble head game and bobble head in to the meeting where I promptly raise my hand and ask if we can ask questions. There is then a lot of head cocking and bobbling like maybe we should allow some questions. No one has ever asked. I am then told to sit. Which I need to be told to do or I will stand. I was never asked back to a state budget meeting again. I prefer to be outside where there are no questioning rules. No bobble heads. No grass skirts, just open air.

I have suffered a lot of loss specifically from the virus and she wants to tell me a mask is going to protect who? My dad? Too late. My brother? Too late. All those gone? Too late. Anyone about to die? Too late. Anyone who could die? Also probably too late and yet not here. They did not save them. They are gone. She tells me that I should get it then. But I don’t. She doesn’t know me and I don’t her. It’s why we both wear masks yet we don’t really know why we are. But I can’t eat chips through a mask. But she demands me to leave. I am eating and 10 feet from her and her alone. No none else. I have 3 other customers not wearing them and won’t force people to so I don’t get my legs bashed in by angry non mask wearing patrons. Yet now I’m worried I will get my legs bashed in by my angry mask wearing patrons.

Rules are getting tighter. Rightfully so. Except it will never work. We will never get control of a world we have no control over. So we should let it go. Everyone look out for themselves not each other? I can’t look out for others anymore. I don’t know where the homeless man went I keep giving money to. I do know there is a lady in his place holding a sign saying she is homeless because of the pandemic. I didn’t want to feel bad for her. Why do we even have medians? So people can stand on them? What is the point of the extra concrete raised between lanes? If we had no medians where would they stand? Why have them? Not just for the homeless people but they keep trying to also make Beech trees live in them. Let’s just be real here. We don’t need medians. I take an entirely different way to avoid medians, homeless people and dead Beech trees. I struggled not to water them somehow, then to prune the dead branches now I struggle to not remove the dead Beech trees and maybe even the median itself. If I were homeless on the median I would water trees and prune. No tree wants to live in 3 feet of soil with concrete on top it’s root system even if it stays super skinny. Especially if no one is going to water them or prune them. I love a good Beech tree and admire the perseverance for trees but let’s just all agree it isn’t working.

None of it. No beech trees on the median.

He’s not dead, he died. This, from my daughter with special needs. When I talk about my dad being dead she reminds me he isn’t but he did die. It goes on for minutes and it’s daily. I try to re-explain that they are one in the same but it took her 17 years to walk down stairs right. Like one foot on each stair not her foot meeting on each stair. It has been driving me bonkers. Now she can do it with the precision of a perfectionist. She has mastered stairs. She can do it with a cup of juice. With her arms behind her back. With her enormous laugh echoing the halls at 6:00 a.m. she is so proud of herself and I so am proud of me for not losing my shit for the last 17 years while we master stairs. Death mastering may take some time and it may not even be necessary to even correct simple grammar. He died and he is dead. He also is dead and he died. She argues it like it’s a thing to argue but she is half me and half her dad and we liked to argue. She is a master arguer.

If you aren’t a parent with a child with really different needs you can’t grasp the enormous emotion around the stairs mastering. It’s why I live in a second floor building. I needed stairs. I want her to be able to do stairs. I have goals she doesn’t know about for her and stairs is one. I can’t have her in some building some day that she catches on fire from her lack of cooking mastering and not be able to hussle her booty out that building. I may not have the option or be around to say. We need lower level. She walks down stairs like a brand new toddler. I want to be able to say. Sure we will take the second floor she can get down stairs faster than, than what? A brand new toddler. Or, I want to be able to say nothing if I am also dead and also have died.

If you look back you will note I said she will catch a building on fire. It’s not an excessive fear or worry of just your typical mom. It’s an excessive worry or fear from experience of an atypical mom. She likes the kitchen. She loves food. She is curious about the microwave. She likes very specific foods and sometimes she wants them when she wants them in the microwave. Again, I don’t think microwaves should be allowed to cook to the point something could explode or catch fire. I need a microwave with the option for 2 minutes. Tops. Like an easy bake oven. She can heat her spaghetti Os with a light bulb. It’s safer. She knows in the kitchen is the place that I make food. She is not a good cook. We have talked about this. She knows she isn’t a good cook. She says, im not a good cook. I say. No sweety, not yet.

I focus on the things she is good at like dishes and laundry as relates to domestic duties. She may need a good cook someday. Luckily they need the skills of a typical teenager cooking skills. Basic microwave 101 and scrambled eggs. And a stock in ketchup. This is not a goal. I don’t know how to make it one safely yet. Things in the kitchen contain flammables and fire and power and these are just all reasons she needs to be great at stairs for now. To save herself. Someone can help her feed herself.

I can use cool words. My son and people talk around me in such cool ways. They say cool things and use words that say cool but aren’t the actual word cool. I’ve googled them. I want to talk cool like cool kids but coming out of my mouth they sound like someone saying a word for the first time. Sick, tight, swassy, apparently saying Jeff Bridges is cool. You can say that is deck. Or mantasmagorical. Too big. I can’t even say it fast enough to sound deck. I love the urban dictionary. It is full of things to say for words that aren’t the right words to say. In fact I could make up my own. I can say something is cool in any way I want. Or I can just say cool.

I have had 3 nights of sleep. Today I don’t feel groggy or hung over. Which I shouldn’t since I didn’t drink to have a hang over. I just felt that way. My daughter could be up in the night doing things. But I’ve slept hard enough I don’t know. She unplugged the turtle tank filter and all the TVs before bed. She likely thinks this is something we do. She sees me unplug the microwavee and stove and thinks we just unplug things. She doesn’t like the noise from the turtle tank filter and she won’t sleep if she knows the tiny little tv light is on even though the tv is off. Why do we have to have a tiny little red light on when the tv is off? It’s a huge issue for my life. I took a tv apart to see if it could be something I just remove. Then I needed a new tv….my son did not think this was very Walnut Creek. That doesn’t even make sense, why would Walnut Creek be slang for cool? It’s not that cool? Or not that damp? I need to just stick with cool. I could maybe get away with tight. But for now I am using cool or drippin.

I worried my new hiking friend won’t want to hike with me anymore. Hang with me? That’s what we are doing, right? I asked. He said of course. Which means we are just hanging out? But I don’t think he will. He might. He needs to hike. I need to hike. I need engaged and he needs engaged. In nature. To deal with our not being engaged out of nature. So why do I think it? Because people also need to do other things. Things that don’t have anything to do with hanging with me? I can hang by myself which is what I know. Are we just hanging out? Like two cool kids? Just hanging? No. We are not just hanging out. For me it’s more. Thats why I ask .

I feel like I am not quite needed there sometimes. I don’t need to be needed. Not quite thought of as even there. I dont need to be thought of as there. Is that a reason to hang back. Not hang? I could do other things? The things I used to do before I had someone to hang out with. I just like having a hiking hanging out partner. It’s new and uncomfortable which is why I do it. Because I’m afraid to. The more comfortable I am on my own the more comfortable I will be when I am on my own. The more uncomfortable I am with new things the more comfortable I will be being uncomfortable. Is that possible. Wouldn’t I just be comfortable then? Some people just can’t be without someone. I can’t be with someone as easily as some can not be without. Or with? My ex was just someone kind of in the vicinity of me. He did things that were just around me, we didn’t share a life we shared a space where he had no room for my life. Then he needed more and didn’t feel like telling me but telling others. It had nothing to do with me and who I am or am not. I am just who I am. And I think I am pretty cool. Or pretty baller. Or pretty str8 out the washa. The possibilities of cool words is just so cool.

I can finally eat again. I’ve had grief unresolved, Lyme disease and then a river parasite. I haven’t wanted to eat and haven’t been able to eat. This has not been cool. I have lost a lot of weight that I don’t have to lose. But I lost a lot, then bugs kept giving me things. I have yet to get coronavirus. I feel like I will and so will everyone else no matter what we are all doing or not doing.

Today I googled the coronavirus news. And I did it before I got out of bed. A solid rule of mine broke. No googling while horizontal. I can’t digest news while waking or not waking for sleep or not sleep. I have to be upright and ready with feet on the ground. Grounded. Locally they are back to giving specific tally’s of deaths. No names just whether you are male or female and how old you were. I remember when we knew all the things. Each individual that died and is also dead had a story to be told now we don’t have the time to tell them. There are too many. Coronavirus impacted my life. Someone said it would. Someone said we will all eventually know someone who died from it. Not just impacted but I have felt a loss. I knew someone with a story. He is gone. Coronavirus is so uncool. So unballer. So not str8 out of the washa. So impactful.

It doesn’t change how I feel. Someone told me I should be more careful since I know someone who died from it. That I should take more precautions. I can’t do anymore than I am. And am not. He died doing exactly what we say to do plus some and he still got it. It makes me feel even more like we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t control a single thing so we need to live life to the fullest before it is over. I don’t feel like an asshole or like I am selfish. I have lost a lot. I still have a lot I could. So could anyone. I know someone, my friend, who keeps losing people. From no coronavirus. We are both grieving. But not. Just still living. For now.

I can’t think of anything to write so why would I think of anything to write. Because I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not tired? I am in the middle of an amazing book but don’t want to finish it because then I will need another books and the process of getting another book was too hard. Not too hard. Too tempting to make people touch books. I shouldn’t be in book stores right now. I want to pick everything up and to be honest maybe lick it. I won’t but in my mind I’m curious about it.

My lifeguard wears a mask when I swim. She is exactly 5 lanes away from me when I’m in there. Is the air potentially filling up with coronavirus unbeknownst to us all? All meaning me. I’m the only one swimming. I want to tell her I’m not afraid and to take it off. If I almost drown will she come get me or be afraid to? She won’t keep her mask on? She won’t even think of it? She won’t worry until after I am saved if I am going to give her something or she me. Let me save you so I can then give you a dangerous virus.

The world is my oyster. I heard this today. I’ve never heard it before. Is it? Why? Where did that saying come from? I’m told Shakespeare? Why this saying? Meaning I am in a position to take what life has to offer. I can’t figure out without googling how this relates to oysters. Maybe because the are easy to open? What is life offering? Is it easy to open? I am in no position to take what is being offered. Is it my oyster or yours?

I’ve never eaten oysters. It doesn’t seem to make sense to just swallow something without chewing it. And apparently it doesn’t make sense to chew them before swallowing them. They just slide right down your throat. Easy. Peasy. But why? Lots of things don’t make sense with oysters I suppose. They are however mine to take if offered by the world or if the world happens to be an oyster than it is mine. I can’t make it relate to anything no matter how hard I try.

So I won’t try. I couldn’t find a reason to stay in bed too long today. I went to bed with the thought I would stay in bed too long since I had no where to be as early as I usually do. But once I woke I woke. I also woke from sleep. I was asleep and then I woke up. It was odd since I didn’t remember falling asleep. I also don’t remember a single thing from the night or my dreams. I googled houses to buy and why and how the world is my oyster then just got up and decided I can’t stay in bed for no good reason. I have a lot of reasons to wake. The world is my oyster remember.

I did something strictly for myself. For my own reasons. I have always done it for someone else’s reasons and now I want to for my own. I don’t have any either. So I did something for no reasons but all for my own. None. I woman scaped. Not even scaped, removed. Once something is in my head to do I have to do it. Like scuba diving and sky diving. And shaving hair to see if maybe I swim faster. I don’t. Well I do and can but I am never trying to swim fast I am just trying to swim. I didn’t move through the water like a porpoise all smooth and silky I just swam. I simply can’t make that small amount of hair make sense to make me do anything other than need longer showers and more specific tools. But I did this for my own non reasons.

So what is the world offering? Something new every day and every minute really. Some mine and some yours? The world is full of oysters. Probably too many since we eat them. The world isn’t an oyster we have oysters to take. I could walk around all day with my knife or sword and open up oysters I find and say nope sorry this one is mine. They all are. I have the knife. But I am not going to eat any of them. I shouldn’t need a sword but when one doesn’t know what the world is offering one must be prepared. Methinks. You can never be too prepared for the world. Especially if it is an oyster. Or it is your oyster? Or just full of them?

I don’t want oysters in my head all day today anymore than I want to swallow one without chewing them. But they are there. It was said and I didn’t understand it and now I must pick it apart all day with my tools until I can make it make sense. Which it won’t because it doesn’t. What was Shakespeare even thinking. What was he always thinking? I would love to have a good chat with this man. Except can you imagine trying to talk to Shakespeare in our day in age with his day and age? Could Shakespeare text? Would he be able to grasp texting? What about if he was on social media? I would certainly sign up to be friends with him so I could ask about oysters and say things like The lady doth protest too much, methinks, lol! #shakespeaerocks?

There are a lot of people from the past I would like to chat with. Shakespeare probably isn’t one of them. I just wouldn’t get him or be able to talk to him. I would like to talk to Eleanor Roosevelt. For no really good reason. Einstein, for so many reasons. Mozart. The real Tom Sawyer. I have some questions for Sacagawea. Amelia Earhart and Christopher Columbus. This is really just a small list. Some of them are just missing people that I want to know where they are. I was thinking I could get us all together and play a game like maybe what? What game would we all play? Monopoly? Maybe scrabble. This may not be the best list for games. I need new lists.

I have no top three of what I like. I tried to make one and can’t. I can’t even make a top ten. I can’t even make a number one on a list. When I picked a number one it seemed to belong as 3 but then 3 seemed to belong as 6 and then I kept moving and ranking them in various orders that changed each time I thought Of something to add to my list. I just can’t make lists of things. Not even of things to do. I can make a list of things I did then I can check them off as done but a list of things to do looks just like that. Things I must do. I want to do them and then see them done not write them down undone then do them.

Falstaff: I will not lend thee a penny.
Pistol: Why then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.

This is the phrase I found after a quick search as to why and what is going on with oysters and the world. From the play The Merry Wives or Windsor. Nothing more will happen in my head with anything Shakespeare related. I can’t speak his speak and grasp his stories. Ever. That is not something I want to achieve in life but I do want to achieve life. I can open the world wide open and it is mine. To take. To give me what I want. Maybe it will be a pearl?

Because I slept I woke with less chaos? I dreamt. I remember it had a lot of details but don’t remember any of the details except the last part where I was in like a men’s lounge and they were all testing strange hard liquors and I started dumping them all out. And they laughed and laughed and laughed this jovial men laugh as I would dump them out and they automatically filled back up.

I started swimming again. When I have in the past I usually sleep exhausted. I lay down early and feel just exhausted. I was able to do my whole mile on the first day back but my chest felt like I had been swimming a mile. I felt like a fish out of water. I do a bunch of strange stroke rhythm things. I will breath every third, alternating sides, every eighth on just one side, every single stroke and sometimes I try and swim the entire length without breathing. In my head I want really strong lungs. For what? Scuba diving, which doesn’t make any sense since I won’t be holding my breath the entire time or even coming up every three seconds to breath.

I think I think it is training my lungs just to breath. To control the breathing. But that’s my mind. My mind tells my lungs what to do not my lungs just know what to do? That’s a question. Lungs have to be told what to do. Or mine do anyway. I have to tell myself to take deep breaths above water and sometimes I have to tell myself, which is really my lungs to hold my breath for no reason. I’m not telling me I’m telling them. When I’m swimming I say come on lungs hold the air in there you can’t breath under water we are not fish. Just a fish out of water. Why I think this will help me with scuba diving I don’t know. I feel like my natural instinct is going to say don’t breath under water lungs we aren’t fish. And I will hold it as long as I can then panic when I finally can’t anymore then have to surface to breath because I won’t be able to breath under water.

Im not planning to scuba dive soon but I am planning to scuba dive someday soon. I want to go into the really cold Lake Superior. Im not sure I want to see under the ocean. It seems too deep. I want to see the shipwrecks in the Lake not all the coral reefs and amazing fish of the deep sea. I won’t want to come up. And since I can’t hold my breath forever I shouldn’t go below the ocean. Just a big cold lake. For now.

I planned flowers for my brother in laws funeral service. It’s all I know to do. Make things pretty. For who? After I spent the morning trying and failing to use an app to plan to swim then finally calling and telling them I can’t figure the app out. I ask if I can call and make a time which she then says, it’s easier if you use the app. I say easier for who? But she just laughs. Tells me to unload and reload the app that it has kinks still. That’s doesn’t sound easier for me. So I ask again. Can’t you just put me in the computer? She tells her lungs to deep breath and agrees. Then I ask if she can just put me in for the whole week. Then she says lots of people just call and do it this way. Then I tell my lungs to deep breath. To prepare to swim. To prepare to say goodbye to my brother in law who I didn’t actually get to say goodbye to and I don’t know who I’m saying goodbye to now. There is no brother in law now.

I don’t have to make it so hard. I was told it doesn’t have to be. And it doesn’t. It was with my dad and I found myself in a place now that it’s not as hard. Maybe not as hard is the wrong words it’s just what it is. It is still hard i am just kind of ok with the hard. He died when the whole world was chaos. If it hadn’t been what would I have done? It would have been harder? Harder to get used to just him gone and not all the just new things that are now. I found comfort in the fact Im relieved he died when he did. Comfort in really uncomfortable.

We have not had a service for my dad. We couldn’t then can’t and now it seems we don’t want to. My mom doesn’t want it to be final?. But it is. I don’t need a service. It’s been long enough that I’ve gotten to my own place. Found comfort in uncomfortable. Learned to breath better above water and now need to breath better below. So I can breath better below not just above. Fish don’t get to learn to breath above water. They are fish from water. We get to learn to breath below. Like people in water.

I would love to take his boat on top of water fill it full of flowers and let it go boat one last time. But it won’t be the last time and it won’t be ever again with him so it seems ridiculous. I should just take the boat more times than a last time. Plus it would go boat all alone and I would have to go fish his boat out that I sent out without a boater.

I like someone. Like really like them. I haven’t really liked someone since I did once a half a life ago and then my half of life stopped when he stopped really liking me. Just stopped. People do. I wait for it. I have not had someone really like me since then either. Not anyone I believed really did. It’s just risky. It is at a place that can decide if it can be a place. We have traveled the country together, been lost, been not lost, talked, walked, slept, and now it’s now. I really like him. Now what? Now nothing? Now just take a day at a time and do nothing? Do you just do nothing now? Now is time to just see? I can’t make him like me back now. It is just where it is. I can’t be anymore than I am. I am worried it won’t be enough and also if I’m not then it’s what it is. I’m not really worried I’m just over thinking it. Not really over . thinking but a little because now I really like him. So what now?

When I first started to swim I thought I would drown. I hadn’t swam before and before I swam I just liked being on top of water in a boat. And would panic at the thought of not being on top of the water on a boat. But one day I just needed to know how to swim. Nothing specific happened I just saw deep water in the pool when I walked by at the school my daughter was at and decided I want to jump in that. I had to restrain myself from doing it right then. I wasn’t even supposed to be in that part of the building to retrieve my daughter but worked at the university and was working right by the pool. When I first saw it it was as if I had never seen a pool which was ridiculous. I had seen lots of pools. Even ones with deep water but something about that moment said you need to be able to get into this deep water. I like to get into deep water. Except the ocean. Too deep. Too big. I would fall in love. Stay away from things too deep. Too risky?

I don’t have a fear of water or a fear of drowning. Quite the opposite. I worried I would drown since I lacked the skills not to but not a fear. I am afraid I will fall in love with it. Always need to be in it. Always need to find water to be in. Always want and need to swim. I am afraid to fall in love. I’m glad I’m not a fish. They can just go to the one fish place they are. They don’t get to get legs and walk around looking for more water. They are stuck in the water they were somehow born in. I don’t like seeing a fish in really small water. I want to intervene and take them to bigger deeper water. I’m like my daughter who likes to play with her fish. We think fish are bored and need entertained. That they need us to involve ourselves in what makes them happy. I’ve never moved a fish. I’ve just thought about it.

Im a little like a fish out of water right now. Just kind of struggling to breath above water. Flopping around on land looking for water to practice breathing below so I can someday breath below water. I am uncomfortable in a situation because it is unfamiliar. Is that how a fish really feels out of water? How do we know? Are they uncomfortable or curious? Do fish feel curious or even uncomfortable? Do fish feel anything? Angry? Sad? Love? Do they worry about people in water? Do they say? Look at that people out of air? What are their fish brains telling them when they are out of water? To breath? Breath what? When we are on water we are telling ourselves not breath water. To hold our breath. So when they are out of water are they also holding their breath? They probably just feel like they can’t tell their little fish brains to breath air since it’s not water since they are a fish out of water.

I want someone to be there to talk to. Like really talk. All girls want this right? We like to talk I hear and men don’t listen. That’s not even what this is about for me. I don’t need someone to listen I need someone to let me talk and not think it’s crazy I don’t need them to totally listen. I need someone to just pretend to listen. I just have to talk sometimes. Get it out. I don’t have a lot of important things to say. Just things that need said so they aren’t thought. If I had more of this then my therapist wouldn’t need me so much to talk to her.

I just wish I never had to text again. That someone would be there later and all the things could be said and not text and I would never have to text again. I can’t say what needs of be said in a sweet and short text. It can’t be read either. It won’t be usually anyway. It is a text. Why did we go to this method of communication? Was the other way too hard? We now are simple minds with simple sentences and pictures to say what we need to say without saying it. Who sent the first text? Why? Who said I don’t know how to say this so I’m going to not? Then you can read it and see what I’m trying not to say but trying to say without saying it.

Was it so bad to sleep till 11:00? Not the 11:00 at night the 11:00 at day. Even if it was because I was up till 3:00? 3:00 the next morning. I was exhausted with thoughts of the South Pacific, Botox injection, pubic hair removal and border line self doubt. Don’t we all think things? Not just some things but all the things? Why do I have more questions than the average person? Why doesn’t the average person have more questions? Do we really believe really brilliant people? What makes their thoughts and ideas true over anyone else’s? If a really smart person says something we just believe it? This is going nowhere or everywhere. I can’t figure out what makes all of our brains so different. I am not really trying to figure it out but I am about to want to.

There are people that study brains. They look at them after people are done being alive except there brains. They look at them after and maybe even before. When we do brain surgery we are looking at them. It’s our chance to see what’s inside. It’s brains. To fix what’s broken. We don’t open them up and see what is thought from them just what’s wrong with them that is making the thoughts or not. I don’t have time to be a brain surgeon or even a person who studies brains. It would be more fascinating and take less time to have a chat with one of these people and ask some brain questions. Or maybe talk to my therapist? I’ll trade knowledge with a brain surgeon? I’ll talk about trees if they talk about brains.

I witnessed murder in my sleep. A man was shot on a bus after being tricked into getting on this bus. Then the guy took his gun and just blew him right out the back of the bus. I was not on the bus or even involved but since I dreamt it I witnessed it right? I was nowhere on this bus. Where was I watching it from? My bed? The hole was so small it left when the guy went flying out the back. Like the size of a pencil. Like it never happened. Then I woke. Why did I have a dream like this?

I am just sort of consumed by brains today. I have just the same amount as anyone else but feel like I have a bunch more. That my head is larger than most people and that sometimes I may even have two brains. No one has ever told me this. But I was born with a large head that needed help coming out. I didn’t want to be born. I was safer in the womb? No, I just had a large head. More skull than some babies. Not more brains. I don’t behave like two different people. I just have two different kinds of thoughts always. A one side and another side. Not good or evil. Just chaos and not chaos. Not a calm side just a side that is saying the other side is way too chaotic. They don’t talk to each other well either. My two brains don’t not get along they just don’t understand each other. I don’t understand either of them even though they are mine.

Someone told me I am so put together. I am not. Do I just show it? They don’t know what’s inside my head. I don’t tell them. They see that I am not a mess because they can’t see my brains and even if they could it wouldn’t tell them anything other than I have exposed brains for some reason. They would just be there when my head was broke open for some reason and see that yes in fact I have brains and I am not that put together because my head is broke open leaking brains. Why is this person even there? Would they get closer and look, really look and see the inside of me. Should I tell my friend if he ever gets the chance to see my brains to check and see how many I have. Gets the chance? Is this an opportunity? That’s a true friend though If that is the case.

No that’s ridiculous they would be calling for help which would be too late since I clearly can’t have thoughts anymore. Can we? Once we are expired the brains stop being thoughts? They become just the mess they look like, so what are they studying? How do they keep them going once they study them? We study thoughts of people when their brains are still thinking not after? After we are gone we are looking at brains for some reason. This seems unnecessary if we don’t know what is being thought anymore. I’ll have to ask my therapist. She likes to hear what people say and think.

I have to get brains out of my head. Not literally. I have to have them all. And don’t want them exposed for anyone to see unless it’s a skilled brain surgeon. You are awake during brain surgery? Is this true? So maybe I can ask questions and he can see the answer inside while looking. Do they talk to people while doing brain surgery? I don’t actually think I have too many or even two brains at all. I just wake some days and think somedays that I am battling two thoughts and trying to come to one single one. That I’m trying to make 2+2 equal 4 without wondering why it has to and why the numbers are always moving when I think of them. I don’t doubt math I just doubt myself? Math is always right. Someone said so. Someone said this is what it equals so I need to just believe it? Are we really sure it equals this? Just because someone with smarter brains not more brains said it we now believe it?

I need to swim. I am going to. I am going to do the process of scheduling a good lap swim or Im going to call and tell them I want to schedule without having to schedule. What if someone who wants to swim can’t download an app to make an appointment to not think of brains? I can download an app but I don’t like apps and don’t want to. I could explain this entire story to the gym? Tell them all of the thoughts so they just jot it down so I will quit telling them about brain surgery that I don’t know anything about, that I’m coming to swim and they can go into their app and put me it in for me. That’s their job. To help me be able to swim. I need to be able to not think for awhile about things with no answers. I need some simple math and maybe a good swim. Not a good long chat with a brain surgeon. Or even brain surgery. I don’t have two brains just a lot of thoughts.

Gagillion. That’s how much I have on my mind today. Or is it gazillion? Gazillion is the actual word. Maybe quadrillion. A thousand trillions. Or it’s just gagillion: like I want it to be. A word to describe a number that exdeeds normal description and has no known origin because it’s not a word. It’s more like a feeling. An action? I am gagillioned today. Exceeding normal descriptions.

There are people that groom? Maybe groom is the wrong word. Why does it mean the opposite of bride and also to manicure? They are completely different. Anyway they maintain themselves to the point of injecting things into their bodies to make them fuller. Less wrinkled. Bigger. Less aged. Give them pouty lips forever. Intentionally use needles for no good medical reason. This is just something I didn’t know actually happens with real people who aren’t celebrity people. Who are real people even though they play other people, but they maybe are not nearly as real, full of injected things to make them less real but more full. So they can be other people. Pretend people. Less aged and more anti aged. Just not them. But real.

I know a lot of things but there are a lot of things I don’t know. I would surprise you with what I do know and what I don’t know. I would surprise you just no matter what. I may not like surprises but I love to surprise. How can you know so much about trees but not know about injecting products into lips to make them have a permanent pout? Again, some people know some things and some don’t. I know what I know and I don’t know what I don’t know.

So now I’m worried I’m too wrinkled and have some simply just average not kissable non pouty lips. I can’t pout. It’s not just a motion with a mouth it’s a behavior with the mind and body. I can stomp a foot and demand my way like a child not getting my way but I don’t pout. It isn’t becoming of me. Neither is stomping a foot like a child but when I want straight plant rows I want straight plant rows. We want what we want when we want it. I’m just not going to pout if it doesn’t happen. I don’t have pouty lips. Just average ones.

I can’t even move my face and my average lips right now. I bought 6 anti-aging masks. I put on two. Two has to better than one. 6 is even more or at least 3 days of 2 is better than one. It says it will reduce the appearance of fine lines. I have more like hard lines. Real deep canyons from years of squinting in the sun, wind, rain, snow.

Why does this happen? Why does weather cause wrinkles? Why do they stress does? Why do we have to get wrinkles anyway? Can’t we evolve again into something way cooler than what we are? Or are we evolving right now and we won’t know until a million years from now. Meaning I won’t know. Im not evolving I am aging. I have allowed years of dirt and grime to fill these canyons and never thought once about needing to reduce their appearance or even clean them good. Until now. Because I thought of pouty lips which lead me to think of less wrinkles which lead me to think of just anyone but me.

It won’t work. I wasted 6 dollars, time and thought and made a huge mess to try and reduce fine lines. I have done nothing but fill the canyons with a weird honey crud that is going to do nothing to them other than fill them with more crud and I will have to work harder to clean them out. I’m overly concerned with my looks all of a sudden. I feel like I never tried or made an effort to dress nice or look nice and even clean. I once was asked out and left from work. Covered in paint, dirt and marker. I was told to at least change my clothes but I didn’t have time. I didn’t see this man again. I was not surprised. I made sure I wouldn’t be.

I am who I am? Right? I can clean up but I am always going to end up not cleaned up. So why bother. Because I like him? Is that a thing? Do we dress up for our men? When I dress up I do it for me. Which is why I don’t for him. I don’t need me to be dressed up since I know I will end up not dressed up. Mess finds me and me it. I’m usually a dressed up mess and dressed up I will become a mess.

I opened my jaw really wide and cracked my mask. I can’t move my really simple average not full lips to drink my half glass of wine and am certain I will have reduced my fine lines to nothing more than the fine lines that they already were. Fine lines waiting for more gagillioned years of squinting to make them less fine. Fine lines are just fine.

I cried over a dead caterpillar for too long. I took it really hard. I was really likely crying to cry. It wasn’t about the caterpillar. I moved a beautiful caterpillar to a place I thought was better than where he somehow ended up. I intervened in the natural yet also unnatural process. He didn’t belong anywhere where he was. Now he is dead. I am afraid he ate the plant I put him on and it poisoned him. It was a tropical banana. Google won’t tell me if this is true no matter how long I looked. It tells me bananas aren’t poisonous. It tells me to keep googling and looking but never once tells me to quite getting involved. Never tells me to quit googling what happens when we try to control the world. I finally told myself to let go and let the natural order of the world happen. Don’t intervene.

What if I had started my anti aging masks at like 11? Why would I? Why would we even teach our kids that’s something to do? If I start anti aging now it’s too late. I am not 11. What is anti-aging? Why is this a thing and a hyphenated word. Anti means opposed. Aging means we are not as young as we once were. So why are we opposed to aging? Why am I all of a sudden? Is it his age? To me it’s not. Maybe I’m worried or is to him, I’m worried a gagillion it is.

Im about to get personal. I mean real personal. I cut my hair. Not on my head. Below my head. Not my beard since I don’t have one. I just have hard canyon like lines full of honey anti aging cream and still fine lines. Farther south, down. Not belly hair. Although I still don’t know why some people have belly hair and others don’t. Also why some people are fat that try so hard not to be. Genetics? Really? That’s our answer? So below the belly is less hairy. I panicked this was also something to do. Man scaping is a thing. Not a word but a thing. They sell tools and rules and videos and commercials about it. So is woman scaping? Or are we just grooming? Why are we grooming? Can we also briding? That’s not a word but grooming is? What is all this hair in the way of? Does it really make swimmers swim faster? Are people just weighed down with hair?

It’s going to look weird to me. But I’m curious. I did it once. A lady waxed me. All of it. I didn’t prepare for it to be such a painful experience. For what? I was curious if I would swim faster. I had no one to impress. Which is this a thing? We impress others with a painstaking process of hair removal in a place that actually is supposed to so we don’t get things down there. It’s there to protect us. So why did I remove it? I remember when my ex did. Or when I noticed he started to. I questioned it. Why wouldn’t I? I didn’t care I was curious. Then later when more truths surfaced he tells me that she liked it. That was it. I was crushed. I never said I didn’t like it I just knew deep down it had nothing to do with me and him.

So I have now written two paragraphs, (I don’t know that paragraph is even right. I use no format and follow no rules about writing, correct grammar and sometimes spelling except I don’t like seeing the red lines) about down there hair removal. It’s a thing. It’s a thing we do for no reason, for some reasons and also the wrong ones. I’m doing it for my reasons. I want to know if when I’m done I feel like it was all about me. And maybe I will swim super fast. But I don’t want to swim fast. I want to swim period. I have to download an app, open an account and remember a password and then make an appointment to swim. Even though for years I am usually the only one who swims at this place. I miss the methodical moves and the bubbles and counting tile. It’s the one place I feel not calm but I feel like I’m swimming and not thinking of not swimming. When my mind is too leaky I like to take it to the water and let it overflow there and fill back up with something like how many tile or how many bubbles or just how many strokes to the end. Anything but the leaky brain thoughts I am over full of.

What are we all doing? For someone else? I did it out of fear. Best reason ever to do anything. I’m afraid, so I did it. It’s just a step. I want it all gone. Just not yet. I cut skin. I used dangerous scissors and don’t cut places on me ever and I cut an entire chunk of skin. I bleed for an hour. Cried a small tear. Sucked it up and pushed through my fear to be someone I am not. So I can be someone I am not to see if it’s someone I want to be and can be but not be for someone else. No way to know unless I try. Even if I’m afraid. I’m just going to be someone else afraid. A real afraid groomed not bride.

I woke to a man laying sideways on me. On. He slept like a toddler having bad dreams. I tried to comfort him. It was not like comforting a toddler. It was like comforting a bomb, or a tornado. How can you calm a storm? You can’t. You ride it out. Watch it. Take a little cover from it. I had to duck twice from something startling him. Maybe it was me? But being there after the storm? Is that what matters? I want him to know that not everyone that touches him is someone who he thinks shouldn’t be. So I keep looking for places and ways that won’t.

I don’t have any specific doubts of my looks and worth. Is this something you do for someone or for your self? Is it the same? My face feels really dry. I took all the years of things off in one face masking times 2. I removed necessary moisture hidden in the canyons of years of work and life. They probably look more there. I’m not going to look. I don’t look at me. I see me and not what people say they see. Now I will see someone who tries to be not me. The real someone.

The South Pacific is full of people. How did they even get there? There are islands there and I can’t figure out how it is habitated like it is. Who was the first person on that island? It would have had to have been more than one. To make more than one. Full of people who wear Nike clothes and fish using octopus as bait for fish and then bite their heads off. Can you imagine teaching your child this? Can just imagine doing this? How did they know to use octopus legs? Do they bite them off too? Can’t they make a tool or send for one when there Nike clothes come?

I woke to being told good morning beautiful girl. Did he mean to say it? He said things all night long in his sleep. I listened. He meant it. I believe it so it must be true. Their are giant crabs on these islands that eat coconuts. They are the only animal or creature that can naturally open one. They claw at it and remove its husk to expose lots of protein which crabs need apparently. It takes them hours. Coconut crabs. I wonder if they taste like coconut like how shrimp does when we coat it with coconut?

There are a gagillion other things there. In this South Pacific. How did I not know about this place? And about lip filling and about wrinkles and grooming. The world is full. Maybe too full.

People also use the dead to have them tattooed into them. The dead people ashes. So do they also have the dead injected into fuller lips and places? What else can we use the dead for besides being dead? I don’t picture wanting to take my dad all burnt up and into a dust and doing any such things or any such thing with him. I don’t even want him mailed to us. I don’t want him to come back at all in any pieces. I don’t want to see the container holding what used to be the man who held me for the first time.

I dated a guy who lost his wife to cancer and the first date I am taken back to his place and his wife is there. In a little container surrounded by dead and dried up flowers from the service still. I struggled not to pick up flower petals and clean the area up. Put her away. She is in there in a gazillion dust particles waiting for what? The dead don’t wait for anything? We just keep them in containers until we are done waiting for something .

He then tells me after three dates I can keep clothes there in a drawer and opens one up containing still his dead wife’s clothes. He says he wants to spend every minute with me, every weekend. I couldn’t breath and saw all my backpack trips go away. He isn’t someone I would want to take and until a someone finally came, which they did, I didn’t want an anyone.

I panicked and left, never saw him again. I didn’t talk to him for a few days and he text me to say since he didn’t hear from me for a few days he figured I didn’t like him. I did. I just wanted him to text me and ask where I went. Maybe call. Maybe try. Ask If I was ok. Not take all my time. Not want me so much. I wanted to know what was wrong with him that he needed me so much. Just me only. I wanted to know why he his wife was still there. He needed more people than me and I can just be one. Just one real person. I just couldn’t be around the gazillion pieces of her still there. She wasn’t real anymore.

Thé gagillioned feeling is less after a day of work but now I have a dry face, less skin in my space that dangerous scissors aren’t supposed to be and I want to go to the South Pacific to see penguins and these crabs that contain the power to open coconut. To ask the fish head biting off people how they get there name brand clothes and the money for them. And why they don’t use knives instead of their teeth? Do they have dentists? Do they have domestic cats or are they wild cats if they live somewhere so wild that we bite heads off of fish? Or are they domestic if they are just that? Domestic. It is their home. Do they love nike clothes? There “just do it”motto means something totally different in the South Pacific than it does to me. I just do it to run and they just do it to bite fish heads so they can feed their brides and kids and maybe cats.

I need less zillions of things going on in my head when I should be asleep but was awake with a man who was asleep with a gagillion things in his head too. But then I would have nothing going on if I had less zillions going on. I would be what? Who? Not less wrinkled or any younger. I am anti what? What is opposite of aging? I am anti anti aging. I am young. Because I’m not as old as I could be yet. I am younger than anyone older and older than anyone younger who wishes they were older but once they are will be anti aging. or anti anti aging. Just aging.

I am so exhausted not knowing so much and knowing too much but not quite enough. I’ve never felt so tired. I can’t describe it. Other than a made up word of gagillioned. Too much to describe. Exceeding normal description. But not a real word. I will stay a real person. Full of just me. No one else. Not always groomed or brided or maintained?. Not dressed up. Sometimes a little messed up. Sometimes a little dressed up. But really me.

The chaos in my mind right now is just that, chaotic. I need him to know that it is and I can’t stop it. I can’t say it in fear of being told I’m crazy. Maybe someday I will be able to. We will see. Until then the chaos gets written out. For no one to see.

I feared it was because I shared what’s in my mind. That I wasn’t good last night. It’s supposed to help sleep and it didn’t. I took a risk but wanted to so I could also sleep. I’m not sure that’s what helps me sleep. It was staying that did. That someone there is what helped me sleep. I took a risk sharing who I am when I’m not talking but thinking. It’s more intimate than sex for me. It’s a bigger risk than any minute with me. It’s a moment with me inside my head. What no one knows is there.

I feared it was that I didn’t sand enough. Not right. Didn’t do something right. I was waiting to hear I needed to leave. I was waiting to hear this just isn’t working.

I had my phone on music and I sort of get hyper focused on some things. Like drywall mudding. Which I did. I didn’t see all the messages saying things. I wasn’t getting messages in the basement. I thought I was left there. I thought he left to be somewhere better. I thought again of all the times this has happened. Then it compounded into made up scenarios I couldn’t stop. Now I have de-railed. I have gone off the tracks of normal moderate over thinking to severe again. I just became a moderate over thinker in winter so it is sort of new to me. Can I get back to it on my own? What if I said all these things out loud could I get back to it all from someone else? What if I tried? What if I don’t?

I may be someone who needs more than I thought. I cause myself such misery. My chaos consumes me and I create scenarios that don’t exist. I can’t stop them or numb them. I become a walking what if. I forget about the what the fuck side of me. I may need told Im right here. Don’t worry. Sit. Be quieter. Listen. Don’t talk. I won’t leave. I may not believe any of them.

I now can’t even remember all of the things I was afraid of for 2 hours. Just two hours. I’m relieved no one can see what I think. I’m relieved I didn’t say any of it. I’m relieved none of it is likely true.

What if some one could read my mind? What if I could read my own? This is why I write. To see what I think. What if I could just do it and not need to see it? I’m relieved I’m not blind. If asked I would chose to lose my hearing before my sight. Why would someone even ask me this? I don’t need to hear to know or feel or see I have to see to know and feel or hear. If I didn’t see I would lose them all. My eyes are my ears and a window to so much. The brain is fascinating. All full of thoughts when it’s just full of brain matter. Thoughts look like brains but brains just look like brains.

I remember. Think of all the women who would want to touch the face I got to. Why me? Why do I get to? We are clearly learning so much from each other. Or at least I am from him. I have never done any kind of home remodeling project with another human. Besides my dad of course. He seems good at it and picks up quickly. Easily distracted but also not. Didn’t seem to care I was getting filth all over me. I’m the worst dry wall mudder. I get it everywhere on myself.

I’m the worst at opening cereal boxes. In fact all things that are closed and need opened by following the instructions to open I can do with the grace of a shredder. Because they never open right. I rip them to shreds out of frustration that they don’t open on the dotted lines laid out to allow them to open. Or that the glue was too strong on one side of the cereal box and now I have to put the cereal in a container from destroying the box and the bag inside and maybe even have to sweep the floor and throw away an entire box of cereal from poor cereal box opening design. Listen to me blaming my lack of patience on cereal box design.

Why did he leave me for so long? 2 hours is a long time for me to go without knowing what is going on. I could have asked but was afraid. I then got focused on finishing so I could leave since I had been left. In my mind. I know he needed to eat and needed a bathroom. Then just nothing for a long time. I don’t trust cell phone signals. I sometimes turn my cell service off so I don’t get bothered. Then I miss very important things that I needs to know and asked even. But I had peace for a little bit. Did I though? I don’t have peace for a little bit ever.

I fear it was the last time. I always do. And always will. I fear it is the last time for everything. It is both a nightmare and not. It makes me go in whole hearted and love big but right before that o am certain it is the last time. Then when it’s not I am so relieved I love whole hearted and all in again, in case it is the last time. Because sometimes it just is. I’m not expecting it but preparing for it. Just in case I kiss longer and harder and really remember and really be right in the moment so I can remember it forever.

I found a have a twitter account. It’s 5 years old. My sister said did you know you have one? I did not. I’m not surprised when I decided to sign up for social media I really signed up. I did them all. Then never did them all. Then closed them all quickly after realizing I am not a follower. And I also don’t like to be followed. I’m not a leader either. And I also don’t want to be lead. I just want to do what I want.

I tried to log in to the Account to shut it down. I’m relieved it wouldn’t let me. I am not attached to that life anymore and I don’t want to see it. My sister said I literally retweeted something from Starbucks and then never again. I had 9 followers and was following 60. Sounds a about 1 too many to be following me. I don’t know 9 people well enough that I want to tweet them. I am sure the 60 I followed were people I shouldn’t follow.

Then I thought, I’ll open a new one. I’ll tweet all day long. I’ll shop for people to tweet and they won’t tweet me back. I’ll tweet all day long and never do my job or take care of my kids or most important myself. I’ll worry who is doing what from their toilet and what their thoughts are on everything from masks to dog toys. Ill know all the presidents issues. We will be BFF’s. I’ll know about other countries and states and places to go that I wish I could but can’t. Because I am right here tweeting instead of working or pooping. I’ll watch weird videos of other people’s lives and never think of mine again. Sounds amazing right?

But I am right here not tweeting. Currently I’m writing about being unable to tweet. So I can work all day without worrying about why I can’t tweet. I want to be someone who can casually pop onto a social media sight and pop off in a casual manner. But there is no end to it and I am always looking for the end. I could just casually share an opinion and not worry about what anyone thinks about it and says about it. Casually discuss coronavirus. Causally discuss lives that matter and ones that some think don’t when it’s risky to say all lives do them you are saying some don’t somehow. I could casually go on and look at other lives without comparing them to mine or seeing why I’m not part of theirs. I could casually go on and look for something I know is missing in myself. But I won’t. Because I did. And it is not there and there is no end to the internet. I’ve looked.

I went to the bookstore for the first time since the whole world shut book stores down. It was weird. For one. No one greets you or asks if you want help anymore. For the record they don’t in home remodeling stores either. We are all to afraid of each other to want to help with books and buildings. Are they told this? Is it said at company meetings now. Don’t approach people. Stay away. Stop the spread. Don’t help others.

They have all their new releases in one spot and it’s super bright. Like the banners around it are so bright I thought it might be the only thing in the store. They don’t want you to actually be in there so right in front is everything you need, but, don’t touch it if you aren’t going to buy it. What? I was too afraid to actually look at books. I didn’t want to be approached and told not to touch books. I wanted to be approached and told. Welcome back, we missed having people in here touching books. But no one knew me there before and they don’t now. I’m just a book person with no followers. Well I have 9. I’m sort of curious who they are too. Not that curious but a little. I suspect all family.

I bought 2 books based on what they looked like on the front and that one was someone I read and the other just had big fire in the woods. I googled both titles with my phone and then decided to get out and not kill anyone with a virus I don’t have. Or might have. Luckily though I just harbor a gross parasite from river water that unless you used my toilet and really used it you won’t get it so I think everyone is safe. For now.

I looked all around and everyone was just kind of walking around and looking at the covers of books. Why are we all in here? A man had a motocycle helmet and goggles on the whole time. They say we should wear goggles now and he clearly read that story on twitter maybe? A man went to pick up a magazine then stopped himself. I wanted to scream. Just pick the fucking thing up. Let’s all do it. Let’s all take the risk of life and death and touch books. But I don’t want to be followed or follow others so for now I won’t start a touch books following. I left. I’ll buy books online for now. I love my mailman and he knows how excited I get to get new books. I bet he would follow me on Twitter if I wanted to be followed. This is why I don’t need followers I shouldn’t be followed. I will make us all touch books.

I still don’t have coronavirus but woke full of drywall dust snot and things. It has me congested and confused but I know I don’t. I will have to cough all day somehow. Luckily no one is following me. I’m not someone to follow. I will get you lost and make you touch books .