Taking Life Seriously

-17-

Martin met Betsy back in '92 in a disco out in the city. His friends were all dancing, but he was awkward and he stayed by the bar by himself staring into his drink and feeling like he was in that Smiths song, 'How Soon is Now'. Then she suddenly tripped on that bar stool and spilled her beer all over him, and she spent half an hour apologizing. He didn't mind. He thought she was just the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen and he let her pat him dry and apologize, and then he let her ramble on about work and Kurt Vonnegut and water on Mars. He himself said very little, he just didn't want her to stop talking. 

They were both kids then, just out of school and neither has ever kissed another person before that night. It was clumsy and odd, but to them it was something a lot more meaningful than just the sensation of having a warm tongue in your mouth and getting caught up in each other's braces. And he knew, right from that first night, that he would never love another.

They married a year later. Betsy had gone on to study Bio engineering in the city and he was going for his medical degree and the future had looked bright and they were happy and in love. But the gods frown on happiness, and two months after being told that he was getting his apprenticeship in the best hospital in the city, Betsy had had the accident. 'My future started with an accident', Martin often said, 'and then it ended with one.'

The truck driver was drunk and on speed and he ran a red light and hit her from the side. Betsy was in a coma for three weeks. 

When she woke up she was different. She would forget things, and she cried for no reason at all. Sometimes he found her standing in the middle of a room looking at an arbitrary object like a wine opener completely unable to conceive what it was meant for.
It was still his Betsy only, other. She couldn't retain information as well as before and then the seizures started and the medical bills, and there was no way they could move out south now and who would take care of her when he was working the night shift and she'd be all alone in a strange house in the big city?
So he stayed close to friends and family and he took a job at the Savemore because what the fuck else can you do in a place called Gort. But there are more good days than bad and she is still the girl he loved and right now she was...
'I'm going home,' said Martin.

I totally forgot to take life seriously

The first thing that happened this year was the tarot card. I opened it because people are curious and because even sceptics are romantic on cold sunday mornings. It was the ten of swords: ruin, defeat, delusion, despair. 

People like me, they don't ever grow up, they only grow old. it's because we have a stunted emotional development as result of something or other, or because we have fucking terrible luck. but not as bad as R. that was the second thing that happened. he went to a bar with a few friends and got attacked by a nazi because he's from chile. ten minutes later R was home and the nazi was in a coma. three days later the nazi was dead. just bad luck folx. terrible lousy ten of swords kinda luck.

So here's me now. i spent my life doing whatever the fuck i wanted with no regards at all for the future and it fucking shows. when i look in the mirror now i wanna punch myself in the face because i can't recognise me anymore and maybe cause i sort of like it.  

i do okay for myself. having been alone a lot so i know how to be alone, something which most people don't want to learn, but i'm new in this city, hardly speak the languagge and then there's my imaginary friend. And that's the third thing that happened and it is that i fell in love with someone who doesn't love me back, or who does and is too afraid to act on it. In any case i can't keep holding my breath here, i'm turning purple from the effort. 

it's bad luck and it feels bad. It's weird how you close your eyes one day and you're 20 and you blink, and you're 40 and 60 is around the corner and there's so much i'm forgetting. I clear forgot about this blog. i travelled near the whole of 2012 and then i didn't have a computer for a couple of years (yeah yeah, fucking luddite) and then today i decide to kill the voices in my head but they're persistant, so i start out by reading a bunch of stuff and then i rememeber i have so much writing i did, most of it is lost, at least two books worth, but some of it is around and then i find this jem. so maybe not such bad luck after all.

i figure if i write a bit every day i can kinda hand this over to my sister's kids when i'm done and maybe they'd like that. probably not. 

i live in hope.

we now return you to your schedualed episode of taking life seriously