how can I possibly put the last two years of my life with you into words?

It was back a few years.  1992, 1994, somewhere around there.  

I’d suddenly become haggard, emotionally worn, and disillusioned virtually overnight.   The young lady, whom I was dating at the time, had scribbled something on the front and back of an envelope and left it on my pillow just before taking an overdose of her father’s heart medication. 

“Many people out there pretend to have all the answers.  If I could make them feel the way I feel during the lowest of my lows for one week.  Just one week would be the sweetest revenge I could ever imagine because many people think I’m just a crying victim here.  That I’m weak.  I didn’t have the fortitude to bounce back and get my second wind in life because I wasn’t strong enough to deal with the disappointments, the shortcomings, the setbacks, the bad breaks!  I mean, what do they honestly think that this s**t is just a figment of my imagination?  That it’s just a mild case of the blahs?  We’re all looking for the perfect respite from the monotonous life, but it becomes more difficult as we slightly age and lose that twinkle in our eyes, no matter how much we attempt to block out any semblance of reality.  Why go through life dissatisfied and complacent?  Why keep sighing into our martinis late into the night and becoming copies of the people next to us?  Why turn to music to express our suppressed thoughts and emotions when we should be turning to each other?  And why, at this point, even attempt to create a story of friendship and hope amid such a dismal tableau?”

When you read a note like that in a book or newspaper or hear a character in a movie or play say it, you think, “Oh, how sad, how pervasive, how inescapable, what a tragedy.”

But when it’s written by someone you love, who knows you’re a down-and-out guy with trust issues, you don’t think how sad, painful, or tragic it is.   You just think, but I thought we had this all worked out?  And then you think, what about the engagement ring I just bought?  And then you think, I’m sorry I was a bit absent; I was just trying to find the courage and the energy.

And then you tell yourself to stop thinking because what you’re considering doesn’t represent what you’re trying to say.

So you fold the envelope, stick it in the top left bureau drawer next to a digital thermometer, a box of Benadryl, a shot glass that says Savannah, Georgia on it, and two spare keys from an old Toyota pickup truck and a pair of left-handed scissors and a yellow highlighter and your checkbook and an empty pill vial and a bottle of rosemary mint body cleanser and you close the drawer, drink a light scotch and soda, lye back down on your bed and the phone rings and you answer it. A voice on the other end says, “She’s gonna be okay.   They had to pump her stomach, she’s lying comfortably now, she’s gonna be alright,” and you say, “Thank god,” and you hang up, and you think, why do I always fall in love with women who seem to have no interest in me?