last year and the year before that and the year before that

sometimes when i lie on my back on my bedroom floor and listen to music with my eyes closed, i forget how old i am, i could be any age i've already been. because these are the things i do, these are the things we do, things that people do. we feel sadness and we feel longing and we stare up at the ceiling for hours. we play the same songs on repeat and memorize all the words and apply them to ourselves and sing them out loud in the dark. i eat the same food and watch the same movies this time of year, to feel less lonely and excuse my annual urge for hibernation as something to do with tradition. i stay in my room, i stay in my bed, and it's all i want to do until i start wondering what you're doing, how you're doing, what we'd be doing if we were together right now, or down the street from each other still. and then i lie to myself and say that winter's just like that, autumn's just like that, breeding time for nostalgia; brooding time. but really, that's just all the time, every season. we all know.

and every winter, every autumn, i romanticize the cold season of last year, or the year before, years where i felt just the same as i do now except it looks so much better in retrospect. knowing you lived through it, maybe. you pause in the present to look back, look at all the details, up close and with appreciation. the colors of the walls and the songs on the radio and the way the living room was arranged that year. and in all the time it takes you, you can finally see all the beauty, the every day beauty, what was real, what was pictureque, what was perfect, what you missed.

this is a funeral procession: chapter two

the next morning bill called me early, urgently, demanding an emergency coffee date. "this is serious," he told me, "we are both really fucked up. we all are. we can't just get drunk and make confessions and then forget half of what was said."

i nodded solemnly, still holding down last night's leftover bile. i took bill's word for it; he seemed to understand more about me than myself. "we're fucked up," i agreed, holding my hand against my collar bone, checking my pulse, making sure i was still there

we spent the next week hanging flyers all over town: FEEL LIKE SHIT? WE DO TOO, it read in big, blunt words. (MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT GROUP), it explained below, featuring a yin-yang and those theatre faces that are half happy and half sad. "this represents how our goal will be to find balance in our lives," he shouted over his shoulder to me as he stormed the neighborhood blocks, using his staple gun on the telephone poles like it was a real weapon (which perhaps it was). i trailed behind, holding stacks of flyers and quarter-sheets, averting my eyes from strangers. "maybe at the next meeting there will be an artist who can make a better flyer for next week," he reassured me.

but no one came to our meeting. we sat waiting for an hour, perking up with hopefulness every time someone nervous or tired walked in for their afternoon coffee. "maybe the flyer was too intimidating," i suggested. "maybe no one can tell who we are," he countered, "maybe we don't look as depressed as i thought we did."

"do i look depressed?" i asked, tucking my hair behind my ears self-consciously. he shrugged, making a big sign that read: WE ARE THE DEPRESSED ONES, leaning it against the wall between our heads. i hid myself in my hands, tried to scoot away from the sign.

he looked at me knowingly. "this scares me too, you know. you think i'm not scared shitless? trust me, i am. i'm just more angry than scared."

and so began our mental health support group - meeting once than soon twice than soon three of four time a week - just the two of us. soon every time we were together we would discuss and maybe even dismantle all the little pieces of our self-loathing, not procedurally, but slowly, surely.

bill spoke big and grandiose and conceptual, talking about capitalism and media representations and patriarchy and alienation; college words that i had missed with my business and economics degree. i would walk him through my collection of stories, the ones that left me with scars or nightmares, and he would slam his fist on the table or furiously jot down notes on napkins and scratch paper. i told him about being 8 years old and stepping on our newborn orange kitten as i ran through the house, the crunch under my bare feet, carrying him in to the corner of my room and watching him die there, telling my parents i didn't know what had happened. about the boyfriend i had who fucked me on prom night in a hotel, his hand over my mouth so as not to wake our friends passed out on the floor next to us, the blood i left on the couch and everyone noticing it in the morning. about the one i fell in love with, an old neighbor who i would watch come home through the peep-hole in my door, walking down our gray apartment hall, how our beds were on opposite sides of the same wall and i would masturbate as i heard him fucking his girlfriends, feeling the thin wall shake between us.

"if jackson were here," bill said one say, "i think he'd feel better. he's getting worse. he's getting so much worse."

"if jackson were here," i told bill, "i'd give him a hug and tell him to join the club."