august 27

reality bites

So we didn't win the Powerball. Darn. We did, however, get three numbers right so we get seven bucks. Profit = $2. It's funny: the whole time we were waiting for the drawing I had this giddy feeling and this assuredness that we would win. Well, I was right. Seven dollars. Woo hoo!

Sunday I spent the whole fucking day dealing with our finances. I couldn't believe how long it took. And, of course, in the end I was just gripped with horror. Oh. My. God. All I can do is laugh. And hope that A* gets this job (he should be walking into the interview this second) and that I get one soon, too. Oh, please please pretty please. *sending good vibes to my sweetie*

I can't imagine he won't get the job. People always love him because he's just so darned nice and brilliant and easy to work with. He isn't dogmatic about anything and recognizes that people want to use the web to make money and it's not his place to shove down their throats whatever academic theory is in vogue at the moment. He really wants to help people be more successful without being sick and greedy himself. And they appreciate that. And that's why this company will hire him.

My mom called me from her hairdresser's shop on Saturday telling me that she was having a fainting spell and asked if I could come pick her up. My mother has gone to the same salon since I was 11, so that's 17 years. First we both went to Nasre*en, an Iranian woman who was a fabulous hairdresser but lousy at service. She gave me my first "cool" hairstyle, that wedge thing with the body perm circa 1985. I quit going to her right before my wedding when she cut my hair but was too busy to blow dry it. Um, no. Nasre*en is now out of the picture and her practically identical (in resemblance, not necessarily manners) sister now does my mom's hair. I, however, go to a different crazy hairdresser.

A startling relevation: I didn't piss my mom off as much as I'd wanted to

I grabbed some orange juice, thinking this might help Mom, and A* and I drove the 15 minutes across town to pick her up. She had given blood that morning and hadn't had enough to eat. She has celiac disease, which means she can't eat gluten, and all sorts of other allergies. She has a hard time finding something she can eat on the run so when she gets busy she doesn't eat.

I found her in the back of the salon all ashen and zoned out, draped across one of those lounges they have you lay on when they wash your hair. She'd had her hair permed but it wasn't styled and combed out so the curls were laid out in rows of tight little bundles across her scalp, like bales of soft, copper hay (I know hay is neither soft nor copper, but you get my drift). After I was sure she would make it from the lounger to the truck without falling over or puking, I drove her home with A* driving her car behind me.

I told her about Vincent. First, though, I had to remind her who he was. "I'm trying to remember," she said. "Was he the blonde one?" Virtually all of my boyfriends in high school were blonde, but Vincent's hair was that perfect yellow-gold blonde, and it was shaggy-long and thick so there was a lot of it to remember him by. Still, I was surprised that she didn't remember him for the Army jackets and the combat boots and the hundreds of dollars in long distance calls to him when we were on our family vacation in Mexico. I had thought that she had disapproved of him. It must not have been as bad as I thought because if she did have something against him, she would remember it. Believe me. It made me realize how at the time Vincent and I were together I thought I was being so cool and rebellious by dating this guy who was so mysterious and dangerous. Even my mother saw him as the quiet, harmless, perhaps troubled boy that he was.

Denial: My drug of choice

I told her what happened to him in this flat, emotionless voice. I suppose this is partly because I don't express fear or sadness to my mother, ever. Something to do with making sure I don't need her, I suppose. That's a psychic flaw for another day. But this is the new trend now: denial. I'm not sure how I went from accepting that he's dead and I'll never see him again to completely not accepting it and having imaginary conversations with him and thinking about what I would put on a mix CD for him (when I never make mix CDs, for anyone), and what we would talk about if he was in the passenger seat of the car right now and how he and Sam and I would hang out and drink beers and I would make them pasta. I even went so far as to concoct this fantasy that he really wasn't dead and the body they'd found hanging from a tree in the park was actually some other street kid that kinda looked like Vincent who'd stolen his ID and Vincent was really in a clinic in San Diego, where it's warm and bright and a good place to get over your depression and any day now he'd show up on my doorstep because Sam told him how distraught I was over his death and what a great day that would be!

I read a story in the paper yesterday about a couple whose son was murdered over 10 years ago here in Portland in a well-publicized concert ticket counterfeiting operation. For a decade they didn't know what had happened to their child, though they suspected foul play. Then they found out he'd been murdered but even his killers couldn't find the grave they'd dug and buried him in, out in the woods in the Columbia Gorge. While this couple found justice in the court system, they still had to figure out how to complete their grieving, or at least get through the worst of it. An expert called this "desperate grieving."

Of course, this loss I'm feeling isn't anywhere near what this couple went through. But I get little twinges of this desperate grief, usually when I'm alone and driving and I realize what I'm having is really an imaginary conversation and that I'll never have another real one with him again. I never actually feel all the pain. Whenever I think it's time to just bring it on and deal with it, I let it begin to well up, this bitter, panicked blackness that fills my belly and it keeps coming and coming and when I realize it's not going to stop anytime soon and there's more there than I can deal with, I just shut it off. And I go back to thinking about what I'll do and say when he gets out of that clinic in San Diego and takes the number 8 bus up to my house and knocks on my door to tell me he's sorry I went to all that worry but he's still alive and we can now pick up where we left off.

My friend Polly keeps suggesting that I see her therapist, seeing as how I have all these things going on right now: unemployment, dead boyfriend, panicked husband, total apathy. Polly is one of the most together people I know and it amazes me that she would ever find herself in a situation where she didn't have total control over everything. But I hate therapists. They always want to go back to your childhood and pick everything apart and blah blah blah. If there ever was a time when my childhood was totally irrelevant to the situation it's now. These are very adult issues I'm dealing with and it's just the normal shit that people go through sometimes. I know exactly what I should be doing right now to feel better. I've been through severe depression before and I know I'm not there. And if I get there I'll get help. I have no desire to be there again. I think I'm using completely appropriate coping mechanisms right now: denial and escapism. Better than some of the alternatives. I'll delve back into reality when I'm ready. At least I still know what's reality and what's not. At times, I almost wish I didn't.