A lit­tle while ago, I shared a cor­re­spon­dence with a woman who once found this site by search­ing for “cool futon cov­ers” on the web. She was a sin­gle moth­er (the search was for her daugh­ters’ new futon), and she told me that she gained a new con­scious­ness after read­ing my entries. She led me to believe that this some­how changed her life, a woman who was begin­ning to real­ize that she had come to the end of the direc­tion of her life in her ear­ly thir­ties, and that she grew up too quick­ly, and could­n’t relate to her teenage daugh­ter.

She had always been ner­vous, and what I believe was a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed, with our cor­re­spon­dence; I could tell that she was putting up a wall, a sort of sep­a­ra­tion to keep her dis­tance. When I brought this up to her, she acknowl­edged it. Later, she sent me this let­ter.

This is me. Without spellcheck or the com­fort of a cut + paste option. Ink is hon­est. Even more I hes­i­tate before com­plet­ing the thought/sentence. But I want­ed to give some­thing more and this seems like an accept­able amount for now.

What if I am just “trite”? I estab­lished that opin­ions are irrel­e­vant, so what the hell.

I had a mas­sage tonight + I feel bet­ter, phys­i­cal­ly. I can move my neck and look over my shoul­ders. I was begin­ning to look like a lit­tle old lady when I drove, turn­ing my entire body at the waist to look left or right. It cost me $80 to not be in pain. Funny, that’s about the amount that my com­pa­ny paid me to get in this shape. Ironic.

I just climbed into Jessi’s top bunk of her bed + hugged her. She did­n’t hug me back, but she did­n’t push me away either. That’s progress. We argue over the most insane­ly stu­pid things. It is usu­al­ly by acci­dent that we find our­selves get­ting along these days. Putting forth an effort does­n’t seem to work at the moment. I sup­pose that will change over time….but I sure do miss her.

It is late. I’ve had my bath, I ate din­ner (egg sal­ad + chee­toes). I won’t read tonight. I have enough in my head right now. Besides, I’m afraid I will be tempt­ed to stay up too late. I can’t func­tion on a few hours of sleep like some peo­ple. I need a sol­id sev­en hours minimum…and that’s been rare late­ly. I have a big clos­ing at 8am with a very impor­tant client. She is there because of me. I’d love to tell the pri­madon­na bitch to kiss my ass, but she pays my bills…so instead — I will kiss hers. Being a grown up sucks.

I won­der what it would be like to “check out” of this world? To give in to the notion of insan­i­ty and be for­giv­en any­thing + every­thing for lack of a func­tion­ing mind? Perhaps that sounds a bit dra­mat­ic — but for me it sounds like peace. If only I could some­how be sure that I could find my way back — maybe then it would be a viable option. I’d nev­er have the guts. I could­n’t let go of the con­trols. Voluntary insan­i­ty — — now there’s a fan­ta­sy I could play with. But alas, I would nev­er make it in a world with­out log­ic + order. Wow. I have writ­ten non stop. No more hes­i­tat­ing. I real­ize I’m no longer break­ing up the para­graphs cor­rect­ly: and I’m sure I’m start­ing sen­tences with the word “and”. Ha! I haven’t reread one thought, haven’t ripped out a page + start­ed over — see — it’s just me.

I could tell that just from talk­ing with me, learn­ing how I under­stand my life, she was begin­ning to under­stand many parts of hers that she was­n’t com­fort­able think­ing about. Raymond Lindquist once said, “Courage is the pow­er to let go of the famil­iar”, and I admired her for what seemed to be a great effort to share her­self with a stranger.

For a while now, our cor­re­spon­dence has stopped. It was her deci­sion, and some­thing I assume to have end­ed only because she has giv­en no response and no rea­son. She always told to me of her dreams, to one day buy a motor­cy­cle and take the high­way to the woods, instead of her exit home. From there she would save the world, one tree at a time. I’ve always hoped that that’s what hap­pened. That the rea­son why she stopped reply­ing was because she took Jessi with her, and left every­thing else behind.

And I wish her all the best.