life

January 9, 2026

The Soundtrack of My Life – 46 – A Minor Incident

Since spotify got off their bullshit to stop running ads for ICE, I have made a happy return to the streaming platform, even though it still uses AI for it’s suggestions and “wrap-ups.” And I thought “why not do another ‘soundtrack post’ with one of the most depressing fucking songs?” So, here it is.

Back when Charlie and I started dating, I got this album for myself from Best Buy (our favorite store at the time, since one had opened up in town) with a Christmas gift card. For whatever reason, this soundtrack makes me think of Christmas time. Maybe it’s because that was when I first saw it or because, of the two main characters, one of them lived on the wealth of their father’s Christmas song.

Also, I have this weird habit that when I fall into “depressive episodes” I will watch the same film on repeat. This was the film, at that time, that I had in a loop.

The story telling/writing in it is phenomenal and has some of my favorite actors in it: Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette. (Rachel Weisz is one of the 3 women who could make my forsake my homosexual life for a hetero one.) The musical score and the songs elevate all of this to another level for me. I had to have the soundtrack as my own.

As I do, I became hyper-fixated on 3 songs on the album. The one of above being one of them. It’s the song written for the scene when Marcus’s mom tries to end her life. The lyrics in it address the loss of words one experiences when faced with someone who attempted and, luckily, failed in their effort. So, what that had to do with Charlie potentially taking a job in Iraq at the time is beyond me.

The logic of teenagers is obtuse at best. They’re melodramatic and find resonance in things that don’t really pertain to certain scenarios. As like this one.

Charlie was an over the road trucker at the time, but he wasn’t making as much money as he wanted. He was always looking out for the next, better opportunity to further his ultimate goal: to be filthy rich like his dad.

As the made up war in Iraq/Afghanistan was killing innocent civilians and rebels fighting the imperial invaders over their oil, a job opportunity was presented to him by his father. His father worked for Oxy at the time. The salary for driving an oil tanker over there paid enormously, but it also was very high risk. (Obviously.)

He toyed with the idea because he wanted the money but terrified because he didn’t want this job to end his life before it even began. I wish I could remember how long he entertained the idea. From my memory it felt like weeks but I’m sure it was just A WEEK if not DAYS. Regardless, I told him, at the time, that I would wait for him when he came back. He told me that would be dumb, but I really wanted to live that “war wife” fantasy.

So in my obsession of the above song and him potentially going off to work in a war-torn country, I dedicated and played it for him, expecting some big “oh, wow, that meant so much” from him. Which shows how little I knew of my future husband at the time. I’m surprised I didn’t hear his eye-balls rolling from across town.

What I find odd about this song is it actually pertains eerily closer to how our relationship ended than it ever did at the start. Even as I listen to it now it was almost like I was casting some magical spell over our relationship and cursing us to the fates we found.

“There’s nothing I can say to try to make you feel okay. And nothing you could do, to stop me feeling the way I do… And if the chance should happen that I never see you again, just remember that I’ll always love you.”

I feel that in my soul, as trite as it sounds. The song echoes of the helplessness one feels watching someone struggle with something you cannot change. Then there is an undercurrent of understanding, that it is out of your hands but regardless the singer will be there. Through all of it.

As it pertains to us, it almost feels like each of us takes a turn singing one verse to the other. And in those verses that I feel Charlie would sing, they bring me comfort, even though the song breaks my heart. It also highly improbable that he would have ever openly admitted those words to me, even if he meant them.

December 23, 2025

Christmas “cheer”

Christmas is just a day away and I have less than zero spirit in me. I couldn’t even be bothered to decorate. I did do some but it all looks like shit, when you really examine the placement or motif. In the end it was Tony who did most, if not all, of the work. He was pulling double duty trying to bring “wonder for the season” while we both have none.

The more distance I leave between the death of my husband and the present, the more my heart aches for him and the life we once had. Every day I grow increasingly sad by his absence. I never realized how much of him was me. Or how our life together wasn’t perfect but it was ours. Now I just feel like a foreigner in a strange land.

Navigating all of the Christmas events without him or the new ones with a slight twist, just make my heart ache more than the moment before.

The other day I went to the boyfriends company holiday party and during it they played a song that once I left to drive home, I downloaded and had it on repeat the whole way. Every mile driven was soaked in tears. I could not stop myself from crying. It was ugly and visceral. The kind that if I were to ever see someone doing in real life or film I would immediately think they were faking it. It was that dramatic.

As the embarrassment of my actions shrouded over me, I looked around the car and asked myself “if you’re faking, who is this for?” No one was watching. No one even knew I was crying. It was just me. Well, me and the mental manifestation I have of my husband sitting in the passenger seat.

I would look insane if someone were to look at me through car windows. I turn and speak to him as if he’s there. Sometimes I hear a response in my head and other times I can see him making a face at me. All of it not real. In my head.

Grief is wild.

So much of my life exists only in my head. I sit and ponder everything, backward and forward in time. Then I hit the junctions where my thoughts skew into random topics of which I will dedicate entirely too much time ruminating. It’s a habit that has become too prevalent, that hours will pass by and I will find myself back in my family room as if no time has passed. It’s the nearest experience I will ever get to going to Narnia.

These mental adventures are, if not more, perilous than the imagined ones. Some times I wonder if this is how people go “insane.” They start traveling the narrow passages of their thoughts and wind up trapped in their own head.

Anyway… Merry Christmas. It is a trite sentiment but it never feels more tangible than when you’ve lost the ones you love: treasure the moments you have with them. They will one day be gone.

November 11, 2025

Who Am I?

It has come to my attention that I don’t know who I am anymore. Currently I feel like an amalgamation of all these different personalities, compounded into a chubby insecure body. One where every cell is filled with dread and paranoia. I don’t know who to trust or where to turn.

For the first time in my life I feel utterly vulnerable.

I imagine that is what caused my panic of “having a heart attack,” or what I told the E.R. was “heart issues.” I couldn’t bring myself to be THAT melodramatic and claim something “worse.” “No one ever walks calmly into the hospital having a heart attack.” A claim that maintained it’s sentiment. As it turned out, I am healthy-healthy. The doctor in the E.R. told me it was acid reflux and left it at that, giving me a new list of “don’t haves” before releasing me back into the human wild.

Today I return to my aimless wandering. Filled to the brim with insecurity. My thoughts all about how I have wronged everyone and that no one cares about me, even though that is untrue.

I keep looking back on this weekend and I worry I offended Papa Bill by not buying his and his partners ice creams. I had had intention to do so, but then the clerk ignored me and instead helped the hetero family that cut in line.

Okay. Cool. I wasn’t waiting longer than them. That’s fine.

In a knee jerk reaction I refused to give the store any of my business and left in a huff. Leaving my Papa Bill’s partner to pay for their own. It didn’t occur to me, until the drive home, that I was rude in not paying. They had paid for our breakfast.

As a result I am overcome with dread and I am once again spiraling.

On top of that I don’t know where I stand with Tony. He literally ignored my birthday and I don’t know if that’s one of his “sending a signal” things or if there is something else at play. Try as I might to muster up the courage to ask, I cannot. My biggest fear is having it confirmed. That would send me further into a tailspin. Tony is the one last link I have to my husband.

Another thought realized from this Palm Springs “weekend,” is that I really, really, REALLY miss my husband. His absence has left a giant hole in my life that I am unable to ignore any longer. He was the one who was sociable. The man could strike up a conversation with anyone about anything. He was the one to pull me out of my insecurity and make me personable.

It’s the silence that makes it so much more obvious. The visit and the entire ride to and from revealed that. Try as I might to help cover the gap, I could not get out of my own thoughts to fill it with something. Making his absence even worse where all I wanted to do was crumble into microscopic particles.

He was what brought out the best in me. Without him I sulk in silence, trapped in my head by my negative thoughts. And try as I might to escape them and return to normal I cannot.

It just feels like I am spiraling out of control. I want to isolate myself to find some kind of peace, but there is no way to do that. “Taking a break” from ‘life’ is not an option. Which means I am left with, “how do I find stability while free falling in a spin?”

Someone who knew who they are could, but who even am I? What am I to anyone? I’m not a son. I’m not a husband. I’m not an employee. I’m not even sane.

November 4, 2025

Another Tuesday

And just like that, I’m 40. It’s official. Despite all the other times throughout this past year where I kept thinking “I’m 40” when in fact I was not. I don’t quite understand it. It was almost as though I was excited about hitting a new decade, like a kid at Christmas time. Which is quite the 180 from when I turned 30. At that time I thought I was above the stereotypical “I’m dead” mentality. Plot twist, I was in fact not. I was just ignoring that sense of doom like I do with any and all of my emotions.

If looking back on 22 years with my husband has taught me anything it is that I do not recognize my own feelings. I don’t know if that was a conscious choice on my part or of it was a learned behavior. Regardless of the reason, one simple fact remains: I don’t know how I feel as I’m feeling it. It’s not until I am alone with my thoughts that I finally have found enough peace for them to come roaring to the forefront. Then I breakdown. Well, most of the time. Ninety percent of the time I do something entirely different.

My go to behavior whenever I’m feeling emotions is that I cover them with something: food, sex, buying crap. There are no ends to what I will do to avoid “being human.” And that is what has gotten me in trouble over these last few years. I did all of these self destructive behaviors in an effort to suppress whatever I did not want to face. Evidently it was a lot.

As an adult I am slowly unpacking my feelings. I can finally recognize when I am upset or bothered by something. I may not know what it is yet, but I will try and figure it out. Sometimes I do, and other times it’s a complete and utter fucking mystery. Those are the times that make me angry, and that I feel with un-tethered abandon.

So, today I will do nothing. I will celebrate nothing. There is no point when the family you had known up until now is gone. I just want this day to pass as if it never happened. It was just a regular Tuesday. It just so happens that I have been present for 40 of them.