#no progress

Last Saturday, I made the goal post about the life event and tried my best to explain without going into details.  I needed to vent and it was the only thing that really happened that week.  Once I saw that audience interaction was really low by the end of the day, I felt I either made a mistake or very few cared.  Even some of the people who like right away were missing, which caused my already…

I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone could genuinely love me romantically. I mean, nobody has ever confessed to me like ever, but if it were to happen, my dumbass would say, "it'll pass," because I need more angst and lore in my life, and I don't deserve to be happy according to my brain and the audience in my head

Here's another thing I wrote recently but don't know why or what it might have been.

On a Saturday morning in early fall, my wife and two children were killed in a car accident leaving me with my second, secret wife, who was woefully unaware that I needed to write an impossible eulogy. 

How do you memorialize a narcissist and two monsters? How to do you stand in front of friends and family, hiding your relief, and speak sorrowfully when you feel no sorrow? 

I should be good at lying. I should be fucking great at it by now, but somehow that skill never fully materialized despite my constant practice. The thing is, emotions aren’t hard to fake when you’re not faking them. The trick is finding the right one to bring up at the right time. Why yes, I am so happy to be home, rolls off the tongue when you remember the claw-foot tub with the view of the ocean harbor out the window. And god I love you is a simple thing to say when someone hands you a scotch with glacial ice poking out the top of the glass as you stare out at the wind-swept dunes. 

I had an imaginary friend growing up, but rather than a monster or another child my age, my special friend was a model named Vivian that I first saw in a copy of Vogue I stole from my mother’s bedside table. She was tall and blonde with a pearly white smile. We’d sit in the closet beneath dresses and furs in a sterile room in a sterile house and Vivian would pull down her dress in a very unmotherly fashion. 

On weekends when I was left alone with a nanny somewhere about, I’d wander the halls hand in hand with my gorgeous friend and she’d tell me about Paris and hotels and life behind the camera. My laughter would ring off the marbled walls and tile floors and a different sort of glamour would surround me in lush silks and white linens. Vivian didn’t love me. That much was clear. But she did tolerate me and share with me and occasionally roll her eyes when I peeked up her dress and that was enough for a young boy. 

Sarah told me that I looked sad. My phone quivered in my hand as I read the text message from my brother-in-law before looking up with a smile. No, darling, I’m not sad, just tired. Work was so much this week. But I have good news! I think I won’t have to travel for a while now, won’t that be nice? We’ll have more than just weekends. 

That would be nice she said, uncertainty in her eye as she got out bed. I was painfully aware that there were no children in this house. The apartment was small, a one bedroom, and it did not have a view of the ocean. There was a bar downstairs and a coffee shop around the corner however, and we had been talking about getting a dog. Sarah wore one of my t-shirts as she wandered to the shower, and I smiled as I glimpsed the lower curve of her ass and I wondered if morning sex would be disrespectful to my wife and two children who were currently being pulled from the car with the jaws of life. 

The Netherlands has made almost no progress in removing 15 very harmful industrial substances from our surface water in the past 12 years, the Court of Audit determined. In 2000, the Netherlands agreed within the European Union to reduce the presence of these substances by 2027. “It is unlikely that this will be achieved,” the Court of Audit said. The Court of Audit examined the concentration of the 15 most harmful substances from the total list of 122 harmful substanceslisted in the Water Framework Directive (WFD). These include carcinogenic PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), PFOS, heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and dioxins - all substances that pose a risk to human health and the environment. The researchers measured the concentration of these 15 substances at all 61 monitoring points in national waters in the Netherlands. They found that the concentration of one substance decreased, three increased, and nine remained about the same as 12 years ago. For two substances, there were not enough measurements to be definitive. According to the WDF, the concentration of all harmful 122 substances must be decreased to a certain level by 2027. If one substance does not meet the standard, the chemical quality of the water is deemed insufficient. According to the Court of Audit, almost all measurement points exceed at least one value.

I remember when a new year would feel like a change.  There was a sense of a fresh start and things could be left in the past.  Oddly enough I think this sensation only existed in elementary school and college.  The time in between and after always had years that reminded me that years are a human construct. So, this week was all about work and parenting.  The weather was frigid until Wednesday,…