i am not a veterinarian.

It's been two weeks, and sometimes when I look out my kitchen window to the corner across the street where the telephone pole marks the spot, I can still see the dog, lying there limp and resigned to leave its environs without the usual use of its once agile legs.

It was a Saturday night, and I was just about to take a shower before I left for Cambridge to see Marcellus Hall play a show at TT the Bears. I heard a screech of tires on the pavement, a thud, and then desperate, piercing yelps for more than thirty seconds, and they've lasted over a week. I don't know for how much longer I'll hear them, but they were howling with the last bit of fight it had. It may be a while yet.

I ran outside, bare feet and frantic, with my green sweatpants on and an ugly maroon sweater. The dog was lying there panting, and a few cars had lined up along the road. I was scared for the dog, but he wasn't moving set aside the fast rise and fall of his chest, yet I couldn't bring myself to go to him. The girl who was driving the car he had run into was on my side of the street. I asked her if she was o.k., and she said she didn't see it - that she just heard it and stopped. I offered her some water, because I didn't know what else to say. She said no thank you, and I yelled over to whom appeared to be her boyfriend, who had my then begun to pet the dog and tell it to be calm. I said that I didn't know who to call, and he said maybe the police.

I bolted up the stairs to grab the phone, even though he probably had a phone. I just wanted to do something. The police said yes, they would be right there, dear, and thank you for the call. I went back outside. The girl's boyfriend called out the phone number on Rudy's tag; I tried to call the owner, but was connected to voice mail three times and I gave up. I didn't leave a message, because I wouldn't want to get that sort of information in a voicemail. Meantime, the police arrived blue lights, no sirens. The officer walked around and lifted the dog by its upper body to carry it over to the corner.

I cringed when I saw how its lower body and hind legs dangled beneath it without any sign of movement as the officer carried him for about ten feet, for which the time hung suspended. I wondered why the dog didn't whimper or whine, knowing it's spine was twisted and probably at that point severed. To think of it makes me feel nauseated, knowing that its lean, black body became nothing more than a shell in a matter of seconds.

I've never felt even a splinter in any of my bones, but I can feel my own body's fragility when I picture the dog from the inside out, and my stomach turns and my abdomen quivers like my very own spleen is going to rupture at any moment, or maybe my spinal cord will just sever all on its own. I have this feeling a lot lately, and it's overwhelming at best.

It died soon after, right there on the side of the road. I was already upstairs, because after 10 minutes I finally figured out that nothing I could do would make it feel better. That doesn't make me inadequate, or a failure. It just makes me not a veterinarian.

Not then, but later, my eyes filled up like wells, regardless of how far I'd driven to get to where I was going.

I didn't know the dog, but I knew someone had to have loved it, and I could feel that too. And I felt like everyone and everything you love will inevitably get hurt, no matter how big a fence you build around them. And that sometimes when they do, you're not going to be qualified to make them feel better.

I've been quiet lately, or at least my fragile little burned fingers have been. I've been tending without any formal training or expertise a fire that can't be quenched, and though the blisters are healing, the sensation is only slowly returning. But it is.

A side note: as I was writing the first sentence - the first thought outside of email I've been able to complete in nearly three weeks - my mother called. My grandfather had a massive stroke last night and died at five this morning. I hope they have plenty of wood to split wherever he's gone, because at 89 he was still splitting enough wood over the course of a year to heat the house for the the next in its entirety. It's a fairly simple life if you can cut a road in your heart for simple things.

answers the question.

"Is this really what you wanted,
To listen to a song
That makes you feel
Haunted?" -Chris Leo

Happiness. No one's going to drop by with a silver platter and hand it to me. This is not news. And sometimes when I've got a hold of it, someone's going to come by with a hacksaw and start cutting my hands off until I let go. Believe it or not, that's where hope comes in. I'm not sure if I have a whole lot left. That's the long and short of it. Sometimes it costs you. I've been spending it like it's cool money, and inflation's getting me down.

I turned 35 this week. I didn't do anything special, but I was still happy to be alive. Tired, but alive. Days have been better, it's true. Yet, days have been darker.

About darker. I'm terrified of winter.  Last winter turned me on my side. It took until three weeks ago to get upright again, and it took a lot. I let him pull the rug out one more time, except this time the fall wasn't too far, since I was already down. I was exhausted. Hurt and less hopeful. And I came to an end that I've been hoping to dodge with him. The one where my heart's broken, and the potential for everything turning out fine was gone. You can't maintain a relationship that kills you, because then you'd be dead inside and one person holds all of the cards. Awkward isn't the word. But that's the name he's been giving it.

Awkward is when you don't know how to say the right thing nicely, or when you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or when you don't know how to act when you see your ex so you look at the floor and try to make small talk. That's not how it went down. Even I bought it, but I knew all along I wasn't going to be able to buy it forever.

"Think of it as a bad dream," is not the same as sorry, and it's certainly not awkward. The words are too calculated to amount to that, and wishing someone nightmares isn't my idea of "It's not you, it's me." Seems to me they say, "I've lured you in, and now I'm going to reel you out, hook in your mouth and bleeding." And I said it was for the last time. It was. Yet, I kept hoping we'd turn up awkward and roses.

And yes, that hope is gone. Yet, I'm out of bed in the morning, even though the rain says I can stay under cover. Thankfully, I woke up with a different hope for better things.

Things that I know I can reach without that wobbly, rusty ladder someone placed in front of me to make me think they must be true.

once was.

I ran into the little girl I once was last Wednesday. She's been turning up here and there all this year, usually at inconvenient times. I'm not going to describe her, because she's had enough trouble. Except to say she was a good reader at an early age, and a true believer that people are capable of love. She only assumed that eventually they would know how to love her, frog face and all. And each other. She has high hopes.

She's here now, and she doesn't want to talk about it, so I'm going to spare her. Flash to the woman I hate to admit that I actually am. Today and for years to come.

I complain about a job that isn't supposed to be my career, but is, if you count that it's the only thing I have seven years experience doing. Experience doesn't always make me perfect, but I get it done. "I don't want to," the little girl says. And I tell her nicely, "But dear, that's just what you have to do." I remind her, "This is just what you have to do so you can afford to have the things that allow you to do what you love."

The little girl becomes angry, and sometimes she makes a big raucous about it. She and my boss's little girl duke it out, and I have to rope her in before she loses my job for me. Ironically, my boss's little girl can still get me fired.

And I begin relationships that may or may not end abruptly, or die slowly, and the little girl says, "How come?"

"Because people change, and sometimes we don't change with them," I say.

"But what if I do everything right?" she asks.

And I tell her that I'm sorry, but that can never happen because sometimes we're going to have to fail, and that if we keep chasing the perfect version of ourselves we're going to be lying to everyone, including us. The little girl thinks that if she keeps her bad feelings under wraps, they'll have to stay. If she pretends not to mind when someone hurts her, they'll stay. And she thinks if she lets them see that she hurts enough, they won't leave.

"I'm feeling uncomfortable," she said just now.

And I'm saying don't worry, I'm going to take over from here. That I'm older, and while I can't make her feel better, I'm going to teach her how to be real. And that once I do, she's going to be in a place where she gets to play with her friends, and won't have any reasons to cry.

"I think I'll like that place," she says.

I'm not telling her yet that she can't stay here,or that we may not meet again, but I know she'll be happier when she's gone. I've allowed her to stay much too long, and while I've always kept her with me, I've come to a place where she doesn't belong. There are things I have to see through, and they're not for her eyes.

It's for her own good.

i'm not out.

Friends. They know how just how to save you. With the very same knowledge, they know just how to hurt you. Whether or not that's a bad thing depends upon how they use it.

I haven't always been right, but I've always tried to be kind. I'm no martyr, either. Sometimes I've been dead wrong about what's good for anyone else, let alone me.

I've never really been sure who anyone thought I was, or whether or not they knew who I really am. Now I know.

I guess the least I can do today is keep writing everything down, because that's who I've always been.

oh, sister.

This is about me. Some things are. I've been carrying the universe on my shoulders, and trying to balance it, too. To the universe, I say I'm sorry, but I need to let you down. To me, I say I'm sorry, but I'm out of rope.

I thought I was going to fall, but I've since landed, only to realize that it wasn't a deepening hole beneath me, but the ground. The very real, very rocky, and sometimes slippery ground. I can't say that I've landed on my feet, but I'm getting up now and I can't let anyone tell me to get back down. Not anyone. I'm dirty and I'm writing it down.

It's been a hard year. Creatively stifling, heartbreakingly disappointing, moderately overbearing, and sometimes just plain ugly. I'm taking a few steps back, assessing the damage, and trying to get back to being right again. I haven't changed, but the lighting's bad, and I've been someone else's duck in a row. I've hated it. It ruins everything I try to write and makes anything I say translate poorly. I have plans, and they don't include falling into place if said place is only where someone else says I should be.

That said, I'm calling some things off. There's cause, there's effect, and then there's a root, or a core. Whatever you want to call it, it's there, beneath your feet, underground. Or maybe it is your feet, planted there solid, safe from the weather, but not the tide.

Knowing this, I'd say it's come time to dig up the dirt and have a look at what's been killing me. It ain't always pretty.

"It's a slow rolling thunder that keeps the blue jays at bay, and the blue jays say she's pretty so it must be true."

these things I've seen.

Regarding the change of scenery here, I needed something new. I hate change. I cope with change, sometimes I roll with change, but I've never been able to like it.

I can't understand it, because I've needed it so badly, which I didn't know until this week.

Status quo is for suckers. How can I say that when I took almost a year off from everything challenging in my life to watch television? Here's how. This year was the most miserable yet. I'm talking lifetime. And who would ever have guessed it? I'd say maybe one or two people. Possibly three.

Before things changed, there used to be my father; he always understood me, at least until the booze soaked in. Sadly, he knows his cognitive skills are bad. He can't comprehend simple hospital forms, or his daughter, but he recognizes that he can't do those things. Yet he remembers when he could. Now that's a bad year.

I'm going to have to move on. From toll booths and trainstops to other, more tangible things. Like destinations. I don't love it, but I figure it's about time I start arriving, since I've grown out of driving just to be anywhere but here. I've never been good at leaving things behind; as a result, I've only become worse at being left behind.

It's been a crap year, and until now, I thought I was falling. I'm beginning to think that I've just been driving down the wrong road.

And if I'm lucky, I'll get a Garmin for my birthday.

"La Maga, without the drugs, this relationship's dead/when we were high, you agreed when I said/that comfort is fraud/and true love is like/true love is like watching you go/so watch me/go." - Vague Angels

kicking television.

I'm in the same boat as a lot of people. Problem stated, most succinct: I accept the love I think I deserve. How cliche, I know.

I don't feel entitled to anything in particular, and I always want to work for the things that I want. Really, really hard. I feel so lucky when I don't have to do anything, that I usually sabotage it just to make it work for me. For that, I apologize. To about eight or twelve guys, and a handful of friends, both former and present.

For the record, I did give back the engagement ring once. I'm not that girl. Instead, I'm the girl who feels really, really terrible when things don't pan out the way you or I or he and I or she or I thought they would. Especially when we've gone to such great lengths to make them good. And I feel so sorry, no matter how long it's been.

There are situations that take a long time to shape your life. Sometimes it takes less than three seconds. Other times, it's both, and you don't even see it coming.

For example, my father's drinking patterns. I'm angry with him now, but it's been such a long time coming. Ten years ago, I figured we were o.k., regardless. He never hit me, or yelled at me unless I deserved it. Most days, I didn't even know he was off his rocker.

Today, he forgets everything I say, he lectures me about things I've already learned how to do, and sometimes he leans on me so hard that I can barely stand myself. And just like that, I hate the way he smells. Almost sterile, and I can smell hospital, because that's where he's spent a lot of time. He hasn't been back in six months, but I think it's gotten into his blood. The lacking stench of the permanently infirm.

I've smelled it before, when my grandfather was dying of cancer. So clean on the outside, so dirty on the inside. I watched him die in what seemed like a week's time. On the first day, I called the hospital to say he needed help, because he wouldn't get out of bed, and he wouldn't take food or drink. I don't know what anyone else was doing, but I knew it wasn't much. On the fifth day, hospice came. On the seventh day, everyone else came, and then he was gone.

I don't always know that I'm doing so much to hurt me when I'm trying to help someone else. I wrote his obituary because I worked for the newspaper at the time, but also because no one else wanted to do it. I don't know whether this was good for me, but I'm leaning toward 'no'. I think I had to suck it up, and I think I do that a lot.

As for my father, I'm doing it now, because no one's talking about the smell. Maybe it won't be seven days, but I don't think it's much longer. And I don't like that my senses haven't lost their memory.