Shredded

Sometimes I want to take myself apart.  Think pulled pork or shredded beef.  I envision pulling my soul apart until it is nothing but strands of spirit – little shreds of soulness almost completely unlike anything resembling a real soul.  Just bits perfectly sized for someone else’s consumption.  Think about how little that shredded beef resembles a cow.  That is how apart I want to be.

I talk to friends about death and I listen to their interpretations of rebirth or of heaven and hell or whatever their belief structure entails and I’m afraid to tell them what I want, what I hope that death provides.  Nothing.  Pure absolute and complete nothing.  I want to cease to be.  As though I never was.

Just another typo.  Hit the delete key please.

So I know this is pathos and self -absorbed and all that shit.  I know.  I know that it is the depression speaking and I know it is reality and I know.  I know.  I just can’t do anything about it.  I try.  I try every day.  That is why I’m still sitting here in my wilted office chair typing on my wireless keyboard, listening to whatever Pandora is serving tonight.  I fail at taking myself apart.  But that doesn’t mean I succeed at life.  I just live.  It is different.

And it doesn’t change the want.

Tomorrow I go to say what will probably be my last goodbye to a dear friend.  She has cancer, and after fighting for a long time, she is ready to be done.  And you know what?  That is ok.  I understand.  I don’t want her to go, because she was one of the first to accept me for who I actually am – to not judge me by a set of standards that I had no part in setting.  She was honest with me, yet always optimistic.  She understood.  And that meant everything.  She knew it wasn’t my fault.  I was never perfect, but a lot of what happened wasn’t my fault.  And she never even suggested otherwise.  This is all my self-centered perception – my interpretation.  Because the part that meant the most was the part she gave to me.  I wish it could have been otherwise.  I wish I could have given a fraction back to her.

I am not a good friend.  My friends know this.  I disappear for days and weeks and sometimes even months.  I don’t return calls.  I flake out on parties.  I forget birthdays and holidays and anniversaries.  But I will drop everything to help a friend if they ask.  I will risk or give anything to those that I acknowledge as true friends.  And I will forgive just about anything from someone I know to be my friend.  Because, as careless as I am with my friends and as selfish as I am with my own pain and my own weaknesses, my friends still mean the world to me.  They are my family.  My reason for not taking myself apart.

They are my ground.

So losing one is like losing a bit of myself.  Like being bitten by a ravenous animal and having no recourse but to let that chunk of flesh go.   And no matter how much complaining I do about gaining weight, letting some beast take a pound of flesh is not the kind of weight loss I can get behind.

Tonight I was reminded that I do matter.  Maybe not the way that I wish I did, but still, there are people who think about me and who enjoy my presence.  Despite my doom and gloom here, I am not always – not even usually, a negative Nelly.  I tell jokes.  I act silly.  I smile and laugh and tease.  I engage.  For me, being around other people is like a drug.  It allows me to escape my own mind, my own neurosis.  I can act human and feel human and be human.  I’ve been alone for so long that sometimes I forget what human is.

Which brings me back to where I started.  I sit here by myself and I can hear the music and feel the chair and listen to the keyboard and all I can think about is how it would feel to be shredded – to be in so many pieces as to be unrecognizable.  To not be me.

I don’t want to say good bye to her.  It should be the other way around.  I mean, really, I’m not exactly doing anything amazing with this life.  Give it to someone who has something to contribute.  Give it to someone who can make others feel better about their struggles, about their humanity.

Because in the end, that is all we have.

And for what it is worth, I’m sorry.  I know that I am too late.  I’m always too late.  Still.  I’m sorry.  I’ll do better next time.  I promise.