Thin As Paper

8.17.20 – Not much has changed… today I still feel this empty loneliness. It’s difficult to describe with words, so I’ve been sketching pictures of it… Imagine a large canvas, propped on an easel in a vacant gallery. The entirety of the showroom has been left stagnant with a dark and dusty remanence of the life that use to occupy that very space. The only lights are the four that shine on the display. They shine as brilliant as the spotlights on a single ballerina in the opening act of a ballet when the heavy red folds of curtains draw open. On the canvas… nothing but a black circle, a black hole, a mixture of graphite and charcoal so intimate that they have bred the darkest empty loneliness ever to be seen… or felt.

8.25.20 – I still haven’t been answering the phone, but he still keeps calling every Tuesday. I know that Charlie means well and is assumingly just as sad as I am, if not more, but I don’t think I could even force words, if I did answer. He has always made attempts to bond with me, ever since he met Mom it has been like that, we just never clicked like how he did with Gwyn. At least he has her to answer his calls and check on him here and there. I just hope I choose to talk to him again before the virus takes him too.

9.9.20 – Getting adjusted to this “new normal”, at least that is what the city representatives are calling it. I started to panic last month with the first snuck up on me and I had to scrape couch change to pay my rent. So… I’m delivering food again, not fun or amusing but it is something I can do when I crawl out of my apartment and into my car. Being an “essential worker” is sort of cool, kind of like a hero? Been trying to find the silver linings in the day to day, so I don’t wind up in some facility somewhere. Gwyn came by unannounced as always, (I shouldn’t have been surprised), she was pretty worried and disgusted with the way I’ve been living. Lately I disgust myself too.

9.12.20 – I can hardly even remember what happened last night… I know it got drastic, Roger insisted I help him celebrate his 31st. But that’s not even the point of today. When I woke up…

9.16.20 – It’s amazing how fast life can change! One day your developing agoraphobia and re-living the same memories cycle after cycle, then the next you are creating new ones! I still haven’t opened it yet, and I don’t believe I want to… It gives me LIFE just knowing that there is still a gift, still a surprise left in inventory in my meek existence. There could be anything I’ll ever desire inside this brown paper box. My wildest dreams could be enveloped in there. I should open it… No! I can’t open it! I thought surely there could be some mistake, but it was right there when I woke up, with my name on it! Sometimes I think it could be from Roger, but it still wouldn’t make any sense. He’s not the gift giving type, it’s bad enough he spent all night trying to shovel me out of my pit of misery. I shook it a few times yesterday and strained to hear what was inside, but it didn’t make any noise, even for being so heavy… it actually sounds like it could be wet. I thought it could be a farewell or maybe a reconciling from Penelope, a memorandum of the old days that we shared so closely, before the lockdown and Mom passing away. She tried to stay but made it clear that I was too broken to repair. I don’t blame her, psychologically it has been rough for all of us. “You’re too broken for me to fix you and to keep myself from falling apart with you…” I remember those words like yesterday, tears were flowing down her pale face, I could tell that she didn’t wish to abandon me, but she had no choice. Her voice still rings in my ears at night… “I Love You Andrew…”

9.21.20 – I’ve found new joy with every breath! When I’m out people stare at me like green eyed monsters, envious of my abundant happiness. I would share it with them, but they are too afraid and self-absorbed to understand the reasoning for it and maybe I’m a little greedy. They do not wish to really see the truth with eyes wide open. I’m beaming, I’m gleaming… screaming from the tops of parking garages, “I’M ME AGAIN!” “I’M FREE!” “I’M COMPLETE!”

9.22.20 – I carefully opened the brown paper box the day before last, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I gave away my heart a long time ago and now it has been returned to its rightful owner. All that separated me from being whole again was a thin paper box. What could be stopping you from loving yourself and re-imagining your life… could just be as thin as paper.

I Love You,

Andrew