For someone who works as much as I do, an amazing number of absolutely abnormal things happen in my life. Let’s review the last two months. My neighbor went on a meth binge and threatened to kill my dog and rape me. I got a restraining order. I participated in a 5 hour black-belt test. I had a five day migraine. On the weekend of my birthday my neighbor decided to ignore the restraining order and parked his truck on my front lawn inches from my window. He even ran over and broke a sprinkler. So I bought a new house. Then last Monday I almost lost the new house due to a error on the mortgage broker’s part. I saved the house (moving in 3 weeks or so) and got the loan finalized in a last ditch effort. Wednesday evening I had surgery in my mouth to try and save a molar. But Wednesday morning… Wednesday morning was horrible. The most horrible of everything so far these last few months.
I was getting on the freeway to go to the gym, and there was a kitten in the onramp. It was writhing and flipping back and forth, squirming the way that animals in their death throes do. It’s head had been half crushed. But it was still alive. My instinct was to swerve – to try not to hit it because I don’t want to kill anything. I even chase flies out of my house if I can. But that kitten – it was dying a horrible painful terrifying death. And it was happening slowly. Who knows how long it had been in the roadway. And who knows how long it was there after I passed by.
I wish – even now – that I had run it over – that I had killed it and put it out of its misery. I can’t get the image of its tiny body flopping on the asphalt out of my mind, and I hate the person who didn’t spay or neuter their cats so that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. It is so useless. This kind of thing doesn’t have to happen. And that it does is proof of how careless – and I mean that in the most literal form of the word – people are. I hate them a bit for this cruelty. Them being everyone.
And it reminds me of my time here in this neighborhood. I really tried to live here in good faith. But since my experiences with my neighbor, I don’t even go outside anymore. I’m paying the guy next door to do my front yard. The only time I go outside is to take my trash to the curb once or twice a month. Otherwise I enter and leave from my garage. I spend the whole weekend holed up in my house – not even going outside, eating whatever I can find in the cupboard. I don’t go running. I don’t go to the gym. I already know that my neighbor is tracking when I come and go – he said as much. And he jacked off on my porch – at least once.
So I’m trapped – or at least I feel trapped – until I move. I will do it better this time. I will make it a whole lot harder to find me. That I why I picked the house I did. It is obscure. And it will never be my mailing address. And it has a big gate – my dog will be on the other side – between the street and the front door. It is like a miniature fortress. And I will fortify it with additional locks and motion sensors and new alarms and whatever else I need.
I haven’t felt this vulnerable and this helpless in a very long time. I’m not dealing with direct conflict. I’m dealing with someone who watches from the shadows – as though I don’t know. But I do know. I know and I half wish it would just come to violence already – so that I can properly defend myself. Because this passive-agressive bullshit is impossible. But that isn’t how it will be.
I think that part of the reason that the kitten on the onramp has so disturbed me is that a. I didn’t kill it when I had a chance. I just didn’t realize what had happened soon enough and by the time I understood I was past it, and backing up wasn’t an option. So I had to keep going and hope that someone would do what I hadn’t done. I don’t even want to use the freeway onramp now because I do not want to see its corpse – and I know it will still be there. It took them a week to remove the body of the dead dog on that same onramp – even though it was in the way and causing traffic to swerve when merging. b. I feel that way in my life – as though something critical has been crushed out of me and the remainder is fighting for life even though it really isn’t possible – or even worth it. My anxiety is at an all time high. I have panic attacks in the middle of the night. I go nights without sleep due to noisy neighbors – they have almost nightly sub-woofer competitions that leave me fantasizing about taking a crow-bar and seeing how much damage I can do before the cops come. I’m thinking quite a lot. And when the neighbors aren’t partying, the dogs are barking. I haven’t slept more than 3 hours without waking up in months. None of this means anything. I am depressed in a way that I know to be truly dangerous. Most of the time when I am depressed I still try to spend time with other people. That is the balance – the time I spend with others helps heal whatever it is that is broken in my own brain. But times like this – when the anxiety is so high that I can’t even go to my gym or to see my friends – that is when things get scary.
I turned 36 this year. I used to joke about spending the rest of my life alone. I don’t joke anymore. It is happening. One year at a time I pass my life alone. At some point it is going to cease to be worth it. Even the “crushes” are gone now. I haven’t seen the guy at the gym in weeks – and last time I did he was surrounded by pretty young girls. And the guy at work… beyond the awkwardness, I think he might be seriously involved with someone else. It is a sense I’ve had for a while, but one that I tried to ignore. I can’t ignore it any more. It is what it is.
And for good reason. Tonight I sit here writing this pathetic drivel – my face is swollen from surgery, my eyes rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep, and the rest of me showing my age at a far faster pace than seems reasonable. The grey in my hair is obvious now. And the skin on my skull seems to just sag. I feel so worn out. So exhausted. Such a waste of life. This depression has lasted for a very long time. Usually it breaks up after a few months. But this has lasted almost two years. For almost two years I’ve been imagining how relieving it would be to be done here. And every time I start to get better – like this spring – I get a nice little present to remind me of just how ruined my life is.
I did it to myself. Ok, maybe I didn’t do the stalking myself, but I didn’t handle it right from the start. And I still am not handling it right. I’m running away. Or at least I’m trying to. I’m going to a place where I can hide even more than I am now. Where I can disappear completely.
I wish I’d killed the kitten on the freeway onramp. I wish I could have ended its suffering quickly and without fear or trauma. I wish I had been thinking fast enough to know what was happening. I wish I had made the right decisions at the right time. I wish…
And then I give up.
SecondHand Saint 