The Horror

This year, in review, positively sucked. It’s nice to fantasize that when midnight strokes, it all magically disappears and the Great Unravelling will suddenly stop. But what’s done is done.

Truly the best friend I’ve ever known, in the purest and truest sense of that badge, is allegedly heart-broken over my decision to be out of touch. I made this choice because, well, the reasons are complex and since she’s a reader, I won’t stab her in the eye with it, but in short, because I suck as a human being and while I can manage to balance a checkbook I cannot manage to keep my promises to people that care about me. I made it because I had to.

She’s a writer whose style is natural and direct and says very well what she means. In horror, I saw that every single entry in her blog has been deleted, except for the first and last two, I commented to her thusly:

Hate me if you want but don’t destroy your body of work. It’s history, a memorial and a celebration of that in you which is great and transcendant. Take away your words and you take away from the world sorrowful beauty and beautiful sorrow. Don’t do it, please . . .

It’s probably too late. When she aims at doing something, she does it and you’d better watch out, especially because she does it so well.

We’ve had a relationship-road strewn with rocks of contention, pointy and sharp, put there mostly by me. See, I’m a nut, so that creates problems in of itself: I’m great one week or day or hour, incredibly impossible the next month, eon, epoch. I make my apologies, but what’s the diff? She’s been level as marble tile, even saving my life once, though she’ll only know that now if she reads this. She’s endured omission, lies, fears, anger, sorrow and fear again from me and has always been stalwart, so, in return for her kindness, I told her to f*ck off.

I took a good and kind human being and tossed it (yes, I know I wrote ‘it’) off a figurative cliff. Just like that. Kept to my style, too. Oh, well – better watch your back when the Scorpion’s looking for a lift, eh?

But to decimate her work? Terrible, just terrible and, of course, I had a hand in that though it was her decision. What the f*ck is wrong with artists, anyway? Stop chopping off the ear, would ja? And, I am heartbroken at this loss, not only because of my guilt, but because it’s a tragedy compounding a tragedy and so unnecessary. And I actually don’t care the argument, it’s a bad move. Very bad.

So, in the Pantheon of Crappy Things That Happened This Year, that’s near the top. I’m sorry to see it go – it was like a snapshot of her soul. Oh, well. Que sera, motherf*cker!