“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.” Virginia Woolf
Dear Diary -
I’ve never written the words, “Dear Diary,” in my entire life and before going on I have questions. Like who tf are you and why am I calling you, “dear?”
Brief research reveals that you’re a literary form of ancient lineage characterized by frankness. You’re of most use to historians if your author (me) is a famous man or, rarely, his sister. As a brotherless woman I’m afraid we’re doomed to historical uselessness, but I guess that shared fate is sufficiently endearing to accommodate my use of “dear.”
So, “dear,” I here record the fact that my life is in shambles because my love and partner of twenty years has decided, overnight and for no comprehensible reason, that I am a toxic horror and anathema. Of course I’m neither, but that doesn’t change the fact that now I have to find an apartment in a grossly inflated rental market. This amid swarms of ever-mutating viruses. While a mediocre KGB agent named “Vladimir” (It really sounds like a cheap Gatsby-Era after-shave, doesn’t it?) destroys Ukraine. Further disrupting countless already-disrupted supply chains, sending the price of gasoline to unmanageable levels and making it impossible to buy anything manufactured in China. Like parts for computers, cars and planes plus those infamous lead-paint-coated toy trains. I won’t even mention the deadly dog treats.
Of the four swimming pools I frequent for exercise to deter the ravages of arthritis, three are closed indefinitely for lack of motor, filter, pump, etc. parts made exclusively in China. Tool and die people, where are you? There are fortunes to be made.
But basically, hey, things are a mess everywhere so my life fits right in! I mean, who can sob all night over a kaleidoscope of ruined memories when corpses litter the streets in Ukraine? Actually, I can, but the existential voice in my head lets me know I’m being disgusting. And inane. I’m not the first, nor the last, broken heart in the cruelest month, but I’m taking bets that I’m the oldest. Seriously, how many septuagenarians of any affectional preference find themselves at the curb in the middle of the night muttering, “Love means never having to find her hearing aids again?”
Luckily, I write novels and can eventually pen a revenge character if I feel like it. Her name will be something ugly and she’ll die horribly in chapter seven, much to the relief of the other characters, who never liked her to begin with. But right now I have to write something saleable to pay for an apartment if I ever find one. I’m thinking maybe the sequel to An Unremembered Grave that I’ve put off for ages.
Stay tuned in case I do drag that vampire back to life!
I don’t know if you are bipolar of any degree (I’m NOS—just above cyclothymia—which my former psychiatrist of 17 years, who retired from private practice—called “bipolar lite”), or even neurodivergent, but you wrote the first bipolar character I ever read AND set it in the city I lived in the most before college, so I always knew were the action was set.
For that, I can’t thank you enough.
Then The Paper Doll Museum and An Unremembered Grave grabbed me by the ganglia and made me want more.
Yes, I still read blogs—mostly from authors I enjoy, over several genres.
You don’t come across as toxic in your books or blog, but breakups after that long, sudden or not, are just as bad as the beloved dying in an accident or disaster, when you had an argument as your last interaction. Your partner dying of an ailment in their sleep, or even in hospital, never mentioned to you is up there, along with being shut out of the life of decades-long dear friend, because of a serious illness, because they don't want your pity or so that you’d remember them in health. I’ve experienced the last, twice, in the late 90’s, and it still hurts.
If we met, I’d give you a long hug, and attempt to spoil you a bit with good food. I can provide references from several authors who will attest to my harmlessness!
It shakes your world—just as much as a war you can’t stop, or a quake 7.0 or above, with or without a tsunami that might do even more damage than the quake. Your pain is your pain, and not proportional to anyone else’s.
Best wishes on finding an affordable apartment. We had to move last summer. Ouch.
Due to my belle-mère’s broken hip, her inability to get strong enough to stand even with a walker, and her dementia, I won’t have to look for her hearing aids, glasses, water or juice bottle, or do three loads of laundry in a day (incontinence), because we can’t care for her here any longer. After rehab releases her, it’s a memory care nursing home for her. Not cheap, either, here in San Jose CA.
I did manage, in an apartment with no gardening space, to force the issue. Sunlovers are at the backdoor in the all-sun all-day, and the shade lovers (need more heuchera fir more color) in the NE-facing balcony with its impermeable stuccoed railing. Then I managed to get hired to prune sixty-bleeding-four diseased roses, and am now de-straggling the yard of a friend with lots of CA natives. It’s peaceful if strenuous work.
Bravely forwarding on through this tragedy as you have through so many, with a wry sense of humor like cotton batting around the blow. Yes, do revive "An Unremembered Grave."