Today, I Think I'll Just Cry

Today I think I'll just cry...

I cry for my friend Sam, who hung himself three days ago.
I knew him as a child.
He would taunt and tease me, as so many boys did back then, making me bawl from time to time.
Later in life, we became lovers, briefly, for maybe all of a week or so.
He treated me then with so much tender passion, and deep understanding of my body and mind...
making up for the years of tears he bullied out of me in my girlhood.
I hadn't seen him since.
Now I know I won't ever again.
I knew him first through weepy eyes;
and sob now again as I say goodbye.

I cry for my mom, who suddenly wanted back in my life
after a year and a half of no connection or communication.
She came, she saw me in pain.
She took me to a clinic, and later to the hospital.
She came for a 10-minute visit five days ago.
I haven't heard from her since.
I cry not knowing what's easiest:
to not have her in my life at all, and therefore not expect anything from her,
or to have her in my life, living with hope that she might actually want to mother me someday,
but knowing, really knowing
that she was never able to before, and likely won't anytime soon.
I cry just wanting a mom, a mom who just calls to say, "I love you."

I cry for a carpenter.
A man who can build things, and take them apart.
A man who constructed, then destroyed my heart.
He thinks it unfair that I feel so used, insists I keep myself from feeling so dumb.
Still I cry each and every day he does not come.

I cry for my back, my spine, my pain and inability
to move, to wander, to work, to enjoy life as I always have.
I cry in this bed, this fucking bed I have come to hate
despite the fact that it, alone, has been here for me, night after night,
day after day, week after week, and now month after month,
giving me comfort and a soft place to land.
And yet I hate it, hate being stranded in it, as I will be, and am.

I cry over bills that stack up a mile high.
Unable to pay, I close my eyes and deny
their existence - as so so many of us do.
No point in opening them, looking to see, calculating or budgeting
when I know it will only overwhelm me some more.
I'm supposed to focus on healing.
Stress will only make me sore.

I cry for my Dad. Loudly - banshee screams,
that he might hear me, wherever he be.

I cry for affection. God, desperately so.
Just to have that "someone" here, lying next to me
for hours on end, making me laugh,
not minding my stink.
Telling me all the good things I'm forgetting to think.
Someone who'd rather be here than anywhere else.
Someone whose love for me is truly and deeply felt.

I cry because I'm crying,
of sadness, frustration, grief, anger and fear.
To quote the book I'm now reading:

"Of all the things to master, why did I have to pick tears?"