loafe.com

Tomorrow (well, today now I guess, since it’s 2:40am), it’s been four years. It seems crazy. Four years? Really? I am annoyed that I know this day, that I keep track, that I mark it. How stupid. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It can be just another day.

But it isn’t.

The feeling is different every year (every day) but it also never changes. grief is so weird, don’t you think? when opposite things are equally true.

I miss her, often in unexpected ways, but I am use to her being gone. Not just because it’s been four years (which is a whole other kind of pain, this almost perverse ability we humans have to just “get over” anything and move on).

Having lived away from my family for much of my adulthood, her being dead is functionally no different to my every day life than when she was alive.

But each year that goes by is another memory that gets lost. Another story that gets forgotten. Details fade, shapes blur; the shadows have begun to take over.

It is a black hole, this space where she once existed. This paradox. vast and heavy, in a tiny little pinprick. How is it possible, that it can keep growing, swallowing everything. And yet with every breath, every blink, the pinprick gets smaller and smaller.

She is disappearing but her absence is expanding.

2021 is beginning to take some interesting turns and it’s kinda freaking me out. I don’t know that I am ready for it. But maybe? I have been making a focused effort, a conscious choice, to be open to new experiences and new paths, things I might have previously avoided or rejected.

It is hard though. All the struggles of the pandemic, on top of being a single parent, and feeling lonely much of the time, and living through a lifetime of bad choices… it’s just exhausting. And holy shit, I am so old now. So old and so tired and it’s easy as pie to just slip back into those familiar habits and same routines. They are comfortable and warm and I’m good at them. Really really good.

But I want to do better. If I can just forgive myself a tiny bit. allow the possibility that I might deserve good things. trust that I’m doing my best (even if sometimes my best is shitty).

It’s easy, though, to have these hopeful thoughts, late at night, in bed, when I should be sleeping, when the world is quiet. Much different when the sun comes and the shadows move away, when morning exposes all the lines and there is nowhere to hide.

I made a Bernie doll or as I like to call it Brrnie.

I’m just gonna go to bed.

I remember once upon a time, back in the hey day, when I had a few regular readers of loafe, from all over the country, all over the world.

I loved these people, all coming to vibrant life in the comments. It was filled with such lively discussions. Political discourse. So many great jokes. So much silliness. Insults and zingers. Weird shit. Goofy shit. Mean shit. Happy shit. All of us together, growing up and growing old, in this strange land.

And you know something? it WAS a community, a real community! Something I created, bringing together all these different people, from all over, with just my words. Back when the internet was still kind of new, kind of mysterious, kind of cool.

These loafers of mine, finding their way through the doors I’d created, strolling in, looking around for some kind of connection, to me, to others, to themselves. Creating this tiny special little community with me. they made loafe better. Made me better. We were friends and enemies and strangers and lovers and it was just so great.

I don’t think that is possible anymore. The internet has changed. The people and personalities who once populated loafe… they’re gone. we all got older. Time pushing us along, our paths shifting with the winds.

the world has moved on.

But I’m still here. 20 years and counting. That means something. To me at least. My community has crumbled, but I walk among the ruins and remember.

my “readership” (snicker snicker) now consists of me (loyal as ever) and lots foreign bots, looking for ways to get into my site (hi bots!).

The bots know. how valuable and powerful the rantings and navel-gazing of a lonely girl can be. They know how vital my 20+ years of self-obsession are going to be for finally ending the American empire.

I’m still here.