So back on April 12th, 2005 I wrote a post on here about someone that I cared about once.
I had known this woman for most of my life.
I probably knew as much about her pain and sorrow and joy and beauty as anyone alive, but by the time I was thirty I couldn't stand to be around her. That is to say that I couldn't stand seeing what she had become, couldn't stand being used as an emotional/psychological/monetary crutch, and couldn't help feeling that I had somehow failed her (though not for lack of trying).
When I close my eyes I can almost force myself to remember that, once upon a time, she was bright and quick and beautiful and artistic and very very smart.
I would be very happy if I could forget the dead look in her eyes the last few times I saw her, the pockmarks and bruises, the sunken veins and grey skin and used up look of someone who has lost all hope.
Life was never very kind to her, and it showed.
I try to remember the good times, but don't always succeed.
Lately I wonder if there was anything else I could have done over the years that could have changed or somehow prevented the newspaper article I received last week telling me how she was found dead in her shitty little apartment, apparently of pneumonia and other complications resulting from the strain of hepatitis that she contracted during one of her stints as a small town prostitute.
She never made it out of that shitty little county, never conquered her past, or her addictions, or the echoing memories of her fucked up life; never learned to value herself in any meaningful way.
Bad as it got, I will still always remember holding her in the dark, trying to make her demons go away.
Don't mind me, these are just the drunken ramblings of a pathetic old fart trapped in middle age.
Sorry A. , I wish I had been able to do better for you.
May you have the peace now that you could never find in life.
lv.
