January 11
LONELINESS EATS MY LUNCH
There are days loneliness eats my lunch and I can’t fight back. How can I stand it? How can it still be this bad? I pull out the old chestnuts: If I’m not happy with what I have, how could I be happier with more? And, Even tickets on the fifty yard line don’t interest me; I came to play! I roll them around. I think of the other slogans, the tidbits, the smiles and hugs. Still, there are days my lunch is gulped down and I sit with my plate empty. Pickle juice, coleslaw drool is small comfort. Actually, it’s a jeer. I stare at my empty plate. I turn it and twist it. I stick out my tongue at it.
“You're good company,” says my sponsor.
Then why am I alone? If I’m so good, if my company is worthwhile, why do I sit here hungry and desperate?
“Are you sure you are?”
It sure feels that way.
“Well it might be true.”
And it might not. I get it. I am unhooked from myself; I’m ignoring the multitude at my elbow, looking for someone in my lap. I’m holding out for old terms from a new contract. I am loved by people who aren’t trying to consume me and I am letting my expectations dine for free.
Imagine who the wind visited before you and who it is on its way to visit now.
*
Pepo
My father used to destroy a perfectly good watermelon
by cutting a triangle in the top
and pouring a bottle of vodka into it.
I used to destroy my perfectly good melon the same way.
Emulating bad ideas in new ways
was a onetime pastime of mine.
Giving it up was harder than I had expected.
Flawed thinking blends so freely with my mental landscape
I have trouble distinguishing it.
Condemning the action and not the man
is not usually my preferred method.
I would rather condemn the man.
But this leaves me with the actions in place
and him long gone and though I prefer him gone
I will recreate him within myself
if I don’t flush his actions as well.
I have a good pumpkin on my shoulders
but it is my job to keep it intact.
You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault
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