Sometimes I waiver back and forth across the lines of caring and not so much. But I realize beauty when I see it, and for someone who is perpetually afraid of death, life is one of those things that needs to be tasted and savored and appreciated.

I have been watching my friend squirm and wiggle over stresses imposed by those “not in the know.” She’s a good person and continually forgets that things happen in the order that they are going to; we try to exercise rights and obligations over our lives that sometimes are out of our hands. If you could control people’s reactions to you, then we would all be bored and disinterested. Which is precisely how I feel sometimes. You can shoot out your energy to get good or bad attention depending on the intention, and this is a practice I exercise frequently. I remember talking about this hanging off a ledge near Christopher Street and how every person we directed to look at us without speaking really did crane their necks.

Music to me is like an old lover you hide away in the sock drawer for a time. My lovers parallel battery powered devices as of late. My needs for emotional support are taken care of by a mind that sees no point right now in fighting the good fight. Mostly this is attributed to a continuing desire to see the beach by summer’s end. But my music, oh, how do I ever leave thee?

But really. I was walking outside and remembering how there was a time not even ten years back that I didn’t have the ability to do even that. I was locked up in a room in a snow drawn Worcester, Ma for many months during the Winter of 1995-1996 and it was, for me, a serious innocence murdering experience. I never got to live that carefree drug induced 20’s hood that I was heading for simply because my heart was broken in 5 places, literally. Three of the five have been fixed-the others just are sitting in slumber to wake me up when things finally start making sense. That’s how it worked the last time, anyhow. I escaped the wraiths, my parents, and was jacked up with chest tubes and staples running across my belly 75 odd long. How is that retribution, I ask? It wasn’t, but it was time I could not buy back.

Oh that pesky biological suffering. It dominoed into a slew of problems that I haven’t figured out how to fix even now. Money money money-such a tool and such the bane of my future.

Have you ever thought about how it would feel to have your freedom to walk ripped away from you? To be told that you weren’t gonna make it, because there was a 67% chance you weren’t gonna be around to even say goodbye? To be told that your heart, broken emotionally into a billion blood soaked pieces, wasn’t gonna work for you. And you look and you say, “yeah, ok man.” Bring it right the fuck on. Nothing can break me because I don’t let the damage get close enough to really hurt. Oh, but Deanna, you cut yourself off to the beauty that is life?

No no. I just exist in a world separated by very fine threads. The threads are connected to my being spiritually and affectionately, and are the reason I am alive.