Atrophy

I'm enjoying an acute depression right now. I found some pictures in the trash -- pictures of someone I will never see again. It feels like it's deliberate. It feels profoundly disrespectful. It feels like I have nothing, and never can, and that everything I've ever cared about has been or will be taken from me. It's just barely possible I'm reading too much into it. But we are after all talking about feelings. I found my old baseball glove, from 42 years ago, in the trash. I found some rather important documents in the trash. It bothers me, having to dig through the trash. Do I have to do this every week? How much else has been lost, to the trash? Are the things that I have, and seem to care about, trash?

When they finally catch me, and put me in prison, where I'll be murdered, it would have been nice to have documents establishing my innocence.

When I pulled out that manila envelope, full of pictures I haven't looked at for years and years, I groaned like I'd been stabbed in the belly. I went and sat on my bed and wept. Irrational, enraged, and grieving.

Yes, the things that we have are trash. Yard sales prove it. That's why I generally buy only food. The rest of it just takes up our time. There is that special category of thing, though, that although it is trash, obviously, obviously, it evokes some memory or feeling that gives it worth. They are time machines, then, helping us reclaim the irrecoverable past. Just a handful of dirt from a new grave, a lock of hair, an old thin hunting jacket, a yellowed sheet of wide-lined paper, where someone learned to form his letters. I didn't bother to teach him block letters -- he'd lost too much time already.

There's a place between my arms that misses holding someone. I feel it sometimes. I feel it now. I miss the little boy my son was. I miss so many things. No, not many, much. The mistake I'm making isn't that I have loved. It's that all my love is rooted in the past. New love? Who could love me?

But that's just morbid. Get over it. Buck up, old sport. It's not as bad as all that. Stiff upper lip, what? Everything will be fine.

I rolled for the first time at the place my son goes. No gi, which is not my forte, but it was good. Intense. I've wanted to take it easy, but I suspect I'll end up going all the time. Either that, or never. Worked out yesterday. Total failure on my squats. Moved from 455 to 475, and only did two. I've been adding lots of weight, 20 or 30 pounds, trying to find the sticking point, and there it is. So I'll drop back to 455, of which I only did 7 and 3 last time, and this time I'll do 15. After that, I'll add only 10 pounds each workout. It's unsettling how weak I got -- a few years ago my goal was 540 for 10, and a max of 605. But it was three years ago. And this isn't something you can fake. Gotta earn it, and earn it again. I'm okay with that. Up to 90 pounds on the weighted dips. Used to do 180. No worries. I'm adding 10 pounds each workout. Soon I'll drop it to five, and just plod my way back. At least that strange deltoid atrophy is filling it.

What. You think I'm rambling? How blind you are. But if I couldn't talk to you, I'd only talk to myself. You don't have to understand. I'm not looking for advice. I just want someone to listen.


J