Seam by seam

I've been in a dreadful mood this week, if not a little dumbed down. Everything I have started has caved in on itself, apparently having no firm foundation to begin with. I feel as if my brain has split, Emily Dickinson-like, and I haven't left the house in three days. Today I didn't even leave my pajamas. I thought of her in that attic doorway, wearing all white, and then closing the door again.

I read a little bit, if only to help me remember what is it is that I enjoy. I quickly realized that I would have to start The Beautiful and the Damned all over again because the words were slipping past me and I was making no sense of them. "I believe I've left my vocabulary somewhere," I thought, as I had to look up more and more words. In the first fifteen pages, these are the words I underlined for my later appointment with the dictionary: sophistry, monomaniac, inveterate, fatuously,erudition, and facetious.

My old neighbor came over yesterday to thank me for my note of sympathy. His eyes well up and repeated over and over, "Everything's just ruined. Everything's just ruined." I just wanted to go inside and cover myself with my blankets and pillows and not hear him or anyone or anything. And I felt so guilty for this, but it's how I felt nonetheless.

When my husband arrived later that night, he asked me what was wrong, and I couldn't explain it to him. I think if I told him my "brain had split," he might have gone into the bathroom and gotten me a couple of aspirin. He's a "fixer."