I drove Lily to a job interview but it didn’t go well and I don’t think she got it. We printed her resume but it came out looking funny, the color cartridges blurred the subtitles. I felt for her, that resume. Trying to promote yourself when you’re 18, to market your wares. I hated that restaurant anyway and the drive is hell. I felt bad for her but also relieved.

Still getting up in the 4 o’clock hour and hitting the sack by 8. I fall asleep and wake to the sound of birds and lay there trying to empty my head. When I’m working my brain moves too fast and I’m not sure it’s good, I think too hard about things. I anticipate every little detail and decide what I’ll do about in advance which makes me look either brilliant or a bit nuts. I used to drink to dull that but now I’m glad I don’t.

I read an article about people in their 50s losing their friends to apathy or death or divorce. We know how important friends are but many of us go lax about it later in life and suffer as a result. The pandemic torpedoed a lot of friendships too. You have to invest time and energy to keep them alive.

The article said there are no scripts for how to end friendships and I could relate to that. I had an old friend I’d only seen once in 2022 and he wasn’t responding to my texts anymore. I’d asked what was going on (was he getting my messages) but came to believe he didn’t want to be friends anymore. The worst part was me realizing I didn’t have the courage to confront him about it because I feared how much it would hurt to hear him say that so it was easier to just let it die an apathetic death.

And then when songs came on from that timeframe we were friends, songs and music he introduced me to, I got sentimental. I felt like a bonafide loser. And then I blogged about it. Who reads blogs?

It wasn’t him as much I cared about as it was me, the idea I wasn’t the hero he once thought I was. Those songs put me back to our first house in West Seattle and us drinking every weekend in those dark small rooms. It made me feel old.

The nice thing about old friends is you can get old together and relive old times and think, “man he looks old,” as your friend sits there thinking the same about you. Now I put all my energy into things or thoughts and not enough into people. But you get to an age you realize you don’t care so much. And that’s not so good.

Today we ferry to Vashon island so I can see Donnie to cut my hair, and do Lily and Charlotte’s too. I finally figured out how to get my hair to look like Morrissey, I just shampoo once a week and then run my fingers through it and it stands up straight, even in the wind.

It’s almost summer now but so cool here this weekend we have to keep the windows closed. I got my fleece-lined flannel out and may need to turn on the heat.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: CNF, Creative Nonfiction