I chose you because Linus can't take it and dad will be a mess. I don't imagine you're doing much better than they are but I know you'll have questions. You've had questions since Roy, your brother, at age eleven hung himself. I can't speak for him but I'll tell you about me. I can offer words and you can take them or discard them, but these will be the last ones I've got. So, I tried to make them good.

I can see you seeing me; your pale eyes take in the scars, they process my behavior, my lack of ambition and irregular sleep schedule. I watch you watching me and I'm grateful you say nothing because it feeds this part of me that lives off of the lies I tell to protect my secrets. 

It is not that I can't see a future, because I can see clearly my path: two years at community college, two years at University, one for a masters, and five for a PhD. I see it like a timeline a linear line of progression stretched out before me and all I have to do to is walk towards it. 

But the ground is a slack line, I'm a thousand feet up, and each step must be calculated so that I don't fall. I know this is life, I understand rationally that life is not easy and others have it worse than me. 

In my mind though, everything seems somehow worse, I can't connect to that rational part of me and at night while you're asleep and the dog is lying on my bed I sit there rocking telling myself, not tonight, not again. Don't go to that drawer, don't take out that razor blade, bobby pins, lighter. Not tonight, just go a night and tomorrow will be easier. 

Tomorrow is never easier though. Tomorrow is always worse. I don't know why it is this way, but it is. Tomorrow my mind will tell me that the world will get over my death. Tomorrow the exhaustion will be heavier. Tomorrow I'll still be tired. Tomorrow I'll still be afraid of the future. Because it's coming and I'll still be on that slack line. It's not that I'm afraid I'll never get better it's that I will have to get better. To have the things I want in life, a child, a dog, a husband, to have these things I will have to talk about all the things I've spent so long not talking about. 

And I'm selfish mom. I don't want to talk about them. I didn't want those things to happen to me. I didn't want to have to lies. I didn't want my brain to forget things to protect me. I never wanted to need a locked bedroom door. But these things happened and I can't change them and I think that's the problem. The lack of control I have over myself. 

I bet this doesn't actually help you at all. I suppose these sort of notes aren't supposed to help. I'm not sure why they get written. I suppose people want those around them to know that there was nothing they could have done to prevent this or maybe we want to reassure ourselves of this. Or perhaps it's because we would have wanted a note if we had found someone dead one day. We'd have wanted closure, a last goodbye, an explanation.

I'm not sure that is what this is and I don't think I've answered any questions at all. Maybe I just wanted to apologize for what's to come for you. For the pain we're about to cause. Maybe that is what this letter holds, my cowardice; because I wanted to say sorry but I didn't want to have to say it out loud. 

"It's supposed to be lucky to see a pangolin. They're s'posed to be magic."

"It wasn't lucky for the pangolin; Great-Uncle Barry stuffed him."

"Did he get leprosy?"

"No. Why?"

"You can get leprosy from armadillos."

"It's a pangolin, not an armadillo."

"Yeah, but they're related. I think you have to butcher the armadillo and eat it raw, or keep it as a pet and sleep with it, or share a toothbrush, or something, though."

"Ew. He stuffed it. He didn't eat it. And he didn't share a toothbrush with it, not like Aunt Jen and Bootsie."

"How'd you know? He could have. Back in the day, lots of naturalists ate what they killed, and just kept the skin and bones. Plus, pangolin meat's hot on the black-market today. That, and their scales."

"Again, ew. That'd be like chewing on Great-Uncle Barry's horny old toenails!"

"Pretty much. Mad-King George had a coat of armor made of pangolin scales. I saw it on a school trip to this museum in Leeds."

"That'd be like wearing Uncle Barry's old toe-nails."

"To be fair, they were decorated with gold-"

"Fingernail polish!"

"Shut up. It was cool. It looked more like a coat of dragon scales than anything. Probably wouldn't have done much good in a battle, though."

"Probably just for show. Maybe he never even wore it. It's not like anybody would have let him near a fight, anyhow. People give kings all kinds of weird presents. I heard the Queen has a sword made of shark teeth."

"The royals don't want to offend anyone, so it all goes on display, they can never throw anything out."

"Bet their storage rooms look like Uncle Barry's house on steroids. He never threw anything out. You don't know how much we had to go through before we even got to the pangolin. You remember that old box he kept his medals in? We almost tossed them out with all the toenail clippings he'd piled on top, but the box felt too heavy. I think he must have gotten kinda loopy. Suspicious somebody would steal his medals."

"Don't let me get like that."

"It's probably too late. --Ow!"

I saw it in your eyes

The fear, the rage

How could you?

That’s all I could ask

I was six years old

And you almost left us

But I swore…

That I would never become anything like you

I stepped up and became the man of the house for that day

I stepped up and hurt you as much as you hurt her and her

I’m not afraid of you

I never was, and never will be

I made myself as hard as rock

Because you never wanted to be my rock

At only six years old, I protected both of them

Your actions got you what you deserved

During that time, you were nothing to me

Communication, respect, and loyalty

That lay the foundation of any type of relationship, you shattered all three

How was I supposed to trust you?

How was I supposed to forgive you?

But as time went on,

You learned, I learned to move past it all

I had this memory locked away, hidden in the inner caves of my episodic memory vault

Maybe that’s why I’m always straight up

And I can’t stand anyone lying

Maybe that’s why I hate it when people can’t communicate

And I’m always the one left trying

Trying with every ounce of energy I possess

Because I can’t stand when people close to me just leave me

Just like how your actions almost made you give up on your family, according to the six-year-old me

You always thought you've lost her

in a made-up world she created;

re-reading the lines you used to write about her,

carving each fucking words

inside every shitty part

of her bones and tendons,

making every freaking words and lies

become a part of her being

and yet you left her--

thinking she was insane

reminiscing the moments she had with you

while you were there... sitting beside her.

A breathing, living asshole

staring at her

while sketching a woman you have yet to encounter

which made you decide to move on...

realizing how impossible it is

to spend forever with a stuck-up bitch

lost in her own world;

writing you songs and letters,

making you altars and pedestals

which can never be overwhelming

all because it's just fucking crazy

and that's when she lost you.

But it took her years to understand

you weren't the person she idealized,

the one she loved all these years

because fate has a funny twist:

You've never been hers in the first place...

so she learned it the hard way.

Then you start telling people stories

saying,

"That's how i lost her..."

But the truth you can not tell them

is the fact that you can not lost

someone you never claimed.

She lost herself instead.

~Joanna

O6-07-15

I might have kept on loving you

If I were a little more kind

And you were a little less cruel

I might have stayed with you

If I were a little more

And you were a little less

I might have done...

If I were...

And you were...

I can see the good in everyone. I hardly meet strangers, I feel people's intentions so I already know what's going on.

The glass is half full. But in certain important issues I have to be a realist. No amount of beatin around the bush is going to change anything!

So don't! Just keep it simple folks.

I've been dead 3 times already. You know heaven is lovely, but they weren't ready for me, and Hell said

"O Hell No!" Lol!

What keeps me true is that we only borrow all of this from our children, they are our teachers if humanity would just understand that instead of trying to turn out canned kids the world would be better.

Look, life here is just a breath away and your gone.

Life is so short so why waste it being pessimistic and

looking at the dark side of everything?

I would much rather see smiles, give hugs, hold hands and give heartfelt gratitude for what I have left.

I just spent the night in the ER with heart issues again! Am going to let it get me down?

Hell no! Cause the bastard's not going to win that easy!! Lol.

So yes life I enjoy every small moment and I've learned how to make a moment of bliss last longer!

Amazing the things we can do!

Just gotta have Faith!

I can't afford to pay electricity

for the light at the end of the tunnel.

Stumbling in the dark,

I find that my glass

is not half empty,

it's bone dry.

However,

the storm in my head never stops

with no sign of Noah anywhere.

Maybe I'm a unicorn.

The afghan that once

kept me warm at night

now suffocates me.

I can't remember how

fresh air feels in my lungs.

All I can do now is

hope that the sunlight

reaches the shadows of the tunnel,

and I can see enough

to climb out of the covers,

and make my escape.

A warm autumnal day long ago

I broke free of my familial jail

Took a long ride north to where my adulthood sat waiting

It was a quiet ride,

One filled with questions and concerns

I must have answered but mostly I remember sitting there thinking:

Do Not Cry.

This is what YOU want.

Time to grow up.

I took so little with me.

I wasn't allowed a car or a phone.

And I wasn't allowed to come home until Thanksgiving break.

For years I bitterly looked back on that day as a memory of how much my parents wanted me gone. Which has always been true of my mother. 

But my Dad, he was stoic. He didn't let me see him cry. And he's man enough now that I have kids to have told me it was the worst day of his life. I regret leaving him behind. He's a good man. I just can't live with her and deal with her shit, so I left. He doesn't blame me....but does miss me and my family. 

I'm not a pretty face that people will remember,

I've got a cold soul like the heart of December,

My blood glowing and hot like a burning ember,

What happened to the girl I knew in November?

Into and out of my life people came,

Nobody knew me except for my shame,

You won't remember me from fame,

But please, I beg you, remember my name.