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I've known a few people who've died before their time but not many, and none of them well. I've also known people who have died in their time and whose deaths are still deeply regrettable.


I suppose all deaths are regrettable, huh? There's always something more a person could do, that's part of what's great about being a person.


Anyway, I've been thinking about the people I've known who have passed away from the potentiality of life and I've come to an unexpected realization about what I previously thought was an unrelated issue - heartbreak.


A little background. Facebook thinks I ought to be friends with my exes. There are some of my exes I am friends with, and others with whom I am no longer close for reasons I don't entirely understand, but for the purposes of this elucidation there's only one of my exes who really counts. Doesn't it always come back to that first time somehow? Everyone I dated after Kris was handling damaged goods, whether or not they knew or believed it, up until (god I hope) the relationship I'm in currently with Tony. Now here comes the wonderful friend recommendation system that wants to know if I know Kris. Yes, I do, or I did. No, that does not mean I want to be confronted with his goddamned picture today, thank you.


So I was wondering to myself why it is that I don't have that reaction to pictures of, oh, say Patrick.


Don't worry, I'll bring this back around to dead people soon enough.


It's because Patrick and I weren't together long enough or emotionally immature enough when we were together to allow our relationship to take on a life of it's own. My relationship with Kris, on the other hand, was alive in it's own way. It was like a third person in some ways - a third person who nobody knew but the two of us. When Kris left me that person died. Or more correctly, when he betrayed me and left me, he killed that person.


Everyone knows I went ******** crazy. I'm not ever going to try to deny that though god knows I wish I could. Recently though, I think I've finally begun to understand why. Heaven knows it wasn't as though I wasn't perfectly competent to exist without him. I had been doing it with moderate success off and on for five years. I had a great life even without him (and by some accounts especially without) him in it. Yet still, I went absolutely batshit nuts when he left.


He was my best friend. Between us we had a third individual (our relationship) whom only we knew. And then he murdered this third individual. I grieved. I grieved like a young girl whose best friend has been murdered because I was. Not only had I lost someone who had been of tantamount importance to me in the death of our relationship but the only person who had known the deceased was his murderer - who was utterly unrepentant.


Scenario -


Mary, Beth, and Kathy have been friends for years. They're very close. They were there for each other through crises ranging from the deaths of family members to the emotional upheaval of sexual awakening and everything in between. They have been on vacations together and eaten at restaurants no one else they know has heard of, they have seen sunsets together that have made them weep. They know each other inside and out.


One day, Beth meets Amy and she starts changing. She begins avoiding Mary and Kathy, who are concerned, but so confident in the strength of their friendship that they continue to treat Beth normally. Then one day, Beth and Amy walk into Kathy's house and stab her while Mary looks on in horror. Beth and Amy are taken into custody and refuse to repent for Kathy's death.


Mary has suddenly lost the two people closest to her. She hates Amy, yes, but Amy didn't know Mary or Kathy, Amy just had no moral compass. Mary's real vitriol is reserved for Beth. Beth who knew her, Beth who knew Kathy, and Beth who betrayed them both. But when Mary wants to remember Kathy, it is Beth she wants to remember her with, Beth who was there with them both for so much. So through all her rage and grief, Mary continues to reach out for Beth - needing her desperately to grieve for Kathy and hating for for Kathy's death just as desperately.


Yeah, that's gonna drive Mary crazy.


So I've been thinking about people I have known who have died. And I've been thinking about the love I shared with Kris at one point, and how when that love died it became mine alone. And how I did not know how to grieve.


And I've been thinking a lot of things.

Every day of the week except Friday, Ned woke up with a frown on his face and some gruff words for a mother who seemed to expect him to was, dress, have breakfast, and get to school all in the same minute. But on Fridays he woke up with a smile as bright as an upside-down rainbow. Friday was the day of the night he met the Joybaloo.

Not that meeting a Joybaloo had been easy for Ned. He'd looked in everything, under everything, behind everything. He'd even looked in places he knew a Joybaloo could not possibly be.

Then one Friday night he'd gone to the linen closet in search of an important piece of a thing he was making and there it was, when he wasn't expecting it, big and beautiful, with a funny leathery nose and its breath full of paper roses.

Together he and the Joybaloo danced across the landing and onto Ned's bed. They bounced high and and they bounced higher, till the cieling opened and let in the stars. They made each other laugh so much their laughter propelled them up, up, and on past their every-day night and every-night dreams to the playgrounds of the Joybaloo.

There they slid in the slow dark mud and swam in the warm fast streams. They ran wild with the wind and lost themselves for hours in the long wayward grass.

When they'd squeezed the last drop of mischief out of the night, they promised to meet at the same time in the same place the next Friday and every Friday forever.

So how did next Friday begin to seem like never? Ned didn't know, but it did. He began to want more. He began to want lots. He began to want every night to be Joybaloo night.

To fill in the time between one Friday and the next, he became impossible. He wouldn't eat. He wouldn't practice his recorder. He drew on every wall and put tacks in people's shoes.

He stayed awake deep into the night when he might have been sleeping and growing.
"I don't believe you're a real Joybaloo. You don't even breath real roses. If you were and you cared about me, you'd come out and play every night."
Can't," said the Joybaloo, "or I get used up."
But Ned was not listening.

He pushed and pulled until he got his way. He didn't seem to notice that each time the Joybaloo came out when it wanted to sleep, their bouncing got a little lower and their laughter a little less.

He didn't seem to notice the Joybaloo getting smaller and smaller, its colors fewer and fewer, its breath emptier and emptier, until one night when he opened the linen closet door

...

THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.

After that, Ned found he had no choice but to start making his own joy. To his suprise, he found it wasn't so hard.

Once he even picked his HURRY-UP-I-WARN-YOU mother a bunch of flowers so he could enjoy watching her trying not to smile.

He is also sleeping soundly and dreaming happily of the day his Joybaloo gets back its joy. To anyone who asks he says,"Joybaloos need lots of sleep. I've met one and I know."

These are the rules to Advanced Sex. Perhaps you've played the game Sex before? No you say? Well it's quite fun. You must have two or more people in a car wearing clothing. The object is to undress the other person/people. Drivers may choose to be exempt, but it is heavily frowned upon. Anybody refusing to undress cannot call sex.

To call a sex in the Beginner's Version you must see a car with only one headlight, yell "sex!" and hit the roof of the car before someone else.

However, in Avanced Sex, any of the following things, combined with the explicative, "Sex!" and a roof slap, will result in the removal of an article of clothing by all other participating pasengers.

Anybody on a bike, unless it's a ******. No niggers on bikes.

License plates with te letter "v" in them because "v" is for v****a.

Police, on foot or in cars, but empty police cars don't count.

Anyone carrying something bigger than a breadbox that is not a purse or a backpack or a child.

Horses with riders.

Llamas under any condition. Unless there is a rainbow. If there's a rainbow, llamas are not sex.

Anybody bouncing any kind of ball with them while they walk.

White people on't count on motorcycles, but niggers on motorcycles do.

Midgets.

Any license plate or street sign with all the letters to spell sex is auto-nudity for everyone else in the car.

Cars with one headlight.

Cars with one tailight.

Once you are naked, if you call sex you can choose to have everyone else remove one article of clothing or to put one back on yourself but this option is not valid unless the "sexer" is completely nude.

Admurti



Aehlae



Almea



Antifreeze Kisses



ArmorFelix



Bane is on Fire!



Bishounen Ducky Generator



CA.ged



Captain v****a



'Che



cockVIKING.



DagdaIV



Dakk



Deacon Nuno



Discourse



Eares_Deathlord



fibonacci



Follow My Lied



Gambol



Have Your Pi



InsaneShadowFan



Kjralon



lilbrokenstarlight



MajKai Nis



mucus filled uterus



Scary Fairy



the rebel prince!



Vannak



Vladimir_Lenin



Zoharial

What's it like to look inside a dead man's head?
I mean, really inside. Inside the hole in the side of his skull, past the runnels of blood cutting their way through his thin hair, over his dry skin. So little mess. No exit wound, a clean way to die, but only by luck. It could have easily blown out the other side of his skull, he could have splattered himself over my rose bushes. Yes, they're mine. I trim them, I prune them, I water, I cut, I dry, they belong to me. He was my uncle. He smoked the last cigarette before he did it. He was smiling. I asked the M.E. and he told me. He told me the smile wasn't there because he had torn his brain to liquidy shreds (I'll never forget that I'l never forget that, god, it was so red) but because he had smiled with his finger on the trigger. It was a beautiful day. I was less than seventy feet away and I slept through it. Not a thing woke me. I might have been as dead as him. I wanted the note to mean he had left us, gone wandering, bt without his cane, without his meds, where could he have gone? It was a beautiful day to walk outside, walk round the side of the house, see his sandaled feet hanging over the edge of the chair. He was the last samurai. He couldn't spell or type. He shot himself in the head. He was going to die anyway. My family didn't see him, I wouldn't let them see him. I found him, was alone with him, called the right numbrs, gathered my family. But they didn't look only me. I saw the gun, his toes, how blue they were (not red like - ) with the bugs and dispatch asked me to check his pulse, but he was dead. Dead dead dead. I wasn't checking s**t. I saw the cigarette butt, knew I wouldn't beat the sirens back to my house even if I ran for a new pack. Had the shakes. Had 'em so bad.

Not gonna quit anytime soon. Can't stop dreaming about how red it was, how little mess. How I slept the whole time. How that cigarette must have tasted to him.

Weekes ago, three on Wednesday. I haven't said a word out loud. Watched everyone else grieve. I want to be sad, but I feel like I have him now , like he's riding my starboard and it makes every emotion hollow. I can weep, I can't laugh. I'm just moving forward, and poorly. But to tell my teachers that every time I sit down at my desk, my pen writes this and only this, my eyes see that terrible red, it seems a cheap excuse. His death was a triumph over pain, and I will not let my life cheapen that.

So terribly ******** red.

"But I'm already with someone."
Rolling over in your bed is rated
underneath that by necessity
if not need, because my needs
are irrelevant.

His yours theirs hers mine,
it's all the same.
You're blurring the lines,
I'm blind too.

So I'm rolling over and,
"Sorry, is that your arm?"
(I whisper in the dark
because it seems to suit.)
I won't ask why it's not.
Because you know the name
like I know my own
and we don't talk about it.

So I'll wake up and crawl
to the bathroom in the night
to vomit myself up,
knowing you're watching
and I'll open my eyes
to skin. And I'm drooling.
"Sorry, is that your arm?"
(Hoarse in the mornings,
I smoke all night, I'm a drunk.)
But it's mine and I know it
and you're watching, impassive,
a countertop God.

While I scream for salvation
and call it singing.
I'm a bathtime gospel choir
sitting in the shower
crying semen and going
crazy blind.

The counter is vacant
while I paint my face
but I know better than to think
myself godless.
"Is that your arm?"
(Lord, you could sing
angels out of haloes!)
My blouse aids a lie you can smell
[blood] a mile away.

"So, is that your arm?"
(My therapist got a computer.
I only wanted her to read
my words so I wouldn't need
to breath her office air so much,
but she's attached to the pictures.)
Yes, it was, but I'm older now.
I don't write in blood anymore.
Ink is so much more...
dramatic.

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6227215 I'm going to be doing a series of these. Also, I'm not going to write anymore, just hang around and wait till they lynch me out of the OP/L. Goodbye.

Why doesn't anybody believe me?

I had wonderful greasy hash for breakfast in a diner with my family and my hangover is gone, just like that.

Only three hours until I can start drinking again.

I alomst thought I dreampt my name
exploding from aldulterous lips
and the ache you released
when you came
has settled poignantly
between my hips.

I'm a mother ******** winner.