pastime anno_salutis I walked with her in a garden near the old ball park. The lavender was vivid and the smells themselves seemed in rows as orderly rows as the flowers from which they emanated. We had both come here once, when our stories were unknown to one another, as faced and balanced as mound and plate. This was before the local team had ever won a pennant, before the stadium had been sold and resold and was on the verge of demolition. Still, the night it mattered they were playing one last game there in the old cold air of stories. The lights atop the stadium awed like UFO lights in a coming of age movie in the 1980s. You could hear the shuffling of feet, and the crowd rising in sound like a wave on the basis of what happened at home. We walked through the garden once more and our options - the pennants of years past no longer enough to cohere. The smells the same, but known now, the sky above the ballpark no longer opening up into an endlessness that we raced to swing our victories into. 141118 ... unhinged . 141119 ... shpaaaaaaaaaaaa shpaaaaaaaaaaaa 141205 ... Risen The escapism is my only salve. When life is a type of purgatory - a place which embodies several of your worst nightmares and fears, a place where you battle every day just to keep yourself from falling any further down into the pit. Where there is no light, no solace, no company. No parole. No relief. No help. The paralysis of hope vs acceptance. I ran out of the energy to fight a long time ago. I thought about ending it, because this isn't the kind of quality of life I can bear. But I can't do that. So I endure. I stay alive, but I do not live. Except for my pastime. My imagination is still there, and I can escape in my head. I keep myself occupied. Mostly with things from other people's imaginations. But sometimes I use my own. I am a rational person. I know it's just extrapolation. That there is no basis in truth. That I have no right to these memories, given my sins. I am endlessly searching for a forgiveness that I don't think I deserve. Searching for the kindness of others, for a soothing hand to help lift me from the darkness. For a friend. Yet distancing myself, putting on a mask, refusing to talk to the people who've said they're there for me, because I don't want to be a burden. When I'm left alone in my head, I imagine the ways in which I'll end up being a burden for my nieces, being the obligation, the annoyance. With all my productive days behind me, with all the happiness and hope in my rearview, and with nothing but more of this hell in my future, can I be forgiven for allowing myself these small moments of distraction? Of daydreaming? I wonder. 180909 what's it to you? who go blather from