I Need Rest

I need rest. Oh my God my god I need rest. I need to fucking mourn. I need to write something.

If I don’t write something my mind will implode. It may even explode but imploding would be better. We could call it a nervous breakdown.

There’s a new term for “nervous breakdown” but I don’t have to search it because I’m a recent widow and because we’re having a fucking conversation here. I watch comedy specials. On the Comedy Network. In Sarah Silverman’s brilliant “39” (which she executive produced) she tells the audience of thirty-nine, “You’re in this thing with me. Don’t kid yourselves.” I’m not sure she’s the first stand up comic to say this but she’s one of the first. So if you’re reading this, you’re in conversation with me. Your job is to say, “What happened next?” and “Go on, I’m listening,” and “I hear you.”

Steve Martin said, (I’m paraphrasing) “With the advent of the internet, who really knows if his material is original?” Someone could be saying everything I’m saying on another site as I speak. I suppose that’s unlikely but not impossible. Or someone could cop this and post it on her own blog. Although my spies might find it. Like many hopelessly naïve people, I’m protected by a network of invisible friends. I actually have a world wide web. I just don’t know who the spider is, anymore.

Uh oh. Don’t tell me Madeline Moore is falling into another funk. There’s no time for that! Although . . . I am learning to understand and speak double-talk. This is absolutely necessary when one enters the system. Michael said I should’ve been an actress. I know what he meant. My fear was that I wouldn’t be able to memorize lines. I’m very impressed by the ability of actors to memorize lines. But my suspension of disbelief is awesome.

Right now I want to say that a nervous breakdown would be the very best move on my part. I’ve been told I wouldn’t like the local psychiatric facilities but if I managed to have the breakdown in Hamilton, I know for a fact the psych ward at McMaster Hospital is gorgeous. There’s no reason for me to go to Hamilton, which makes it the perfect place to stage my mental collapse.

If I could get the corner room where my step-daughter was living the day I met her, I’d stay for a month. It was gorgeous. Filthy of course but she’d already been in it for a couple of days. I bet it cleans up nicely.

She was wearing a blue gown. She threw open her arms and cried, “Step-mommy.”
I went to my safe place.

All my life people have said, “You should do stand-up.” My reply? “Standing in a smoke-filled room trying to make drunks laugh for fifty bucks a night? That sounds even worse than being a writer!”

The Comedy Network. Who knew? Who knows what the future holds. As Tom Robbins wrote in Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, “Who knows how to make love stay?” I dunno, Tim, but your line sure stuck.

It can’t be done. Love cannot be made to stay. Words stay, though. Lines.

If I had a nervous breakdown everything would be taken care of for me. I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself, obs, so people would have to come in and take care of it for me. I could write. I’d get disability money from the government. I’d be paid to live very frugally and be depressed and write. I know, eh? It sounds too good to be true but there you have it.

I’m taking breaks as I type this because the sun is shining on my balcony, which it does for about an hour a day, in the right front corner. There’s just enough room for a chair. I came in to crank up more sad music and got distracted by this piece I’m writing. It’s complicated because those who are grieving don’t focus well. Also lose stuff constantly. These little problems overly-complicate an already intolerable situation. I’ve lost my wallet three times (if you count the time it was in my purse, which I lost on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Actually, I didn’t lose it, I just forgot it during my impromptu photo shoot. :P) That’s three times this month.

More music. I had a dance party on Twitter last night and lost three followers. HAHAHA! Plus I was snootily subtweeted about by a stupid agent I followed one day when I decided to follow a hundred agents. I unfollowed her. There you go, sweetheart! No mo’ invites to Maddy Mo’s dance parties for you. Hashtag MMdanceParty. OoooOOooo I’m subtweeting. She started it and anyway, this is a blog post. I’m not on Twitter right now. The freedom!

Free of all those fucking rules (Twitter is far from the anarchic entity it appears to be) and terrible 140 character maximum which is so useful for writers. Free from giving a damn about followers who come and go like busy little ants. I wanted more followers than following and now I have that and I always will, because if I dip in the opposite direction I’ll just go unfollow more agents. There’s only two that interest me. The rest are window dressing so the two I adore won’t know how much I adore them. I need a fucking finished manuscript first.

Which is another thing. I’m between publishers right now. No more pitch packages and advance on royalties for me. Which means I’m also free of the rules of the genre. They were so comforting, in the beginning. I liked having my options forcefully focused. I liked advances on royalties, too. But I don’t want to be restrained any more. My last attempt at writing an erotic novella that targeted the erotica reading populous tanked. So if it isn’t even working and I don’t have to do it to get an advance, I see no reason to follow any genre-related rules. Yippee. Breath play here we come!

The bells are ringing. “Bringing in the Sheaves” or “Blame it on the Stones” depending on your denomination. Oops. The sun is off my balcony. The birds are singing. They’re the same birds that will be singing when I go to bed tomorrow morning.

I need rest.

So the nervous breakdown is one option.

Here’s the other: eviction

I try to listen to the advice of my ex-husband. The man knows from money. His ideas are usually too extreme for me but in retrospect I always see how the scheme might’ve worked to my advantage. Financially. He thinks I should get evicted.

Once again, I do nothing. It all gets done for me. Perhaps not as restful as the nervous breakdown but I don’t have to get myself to Hamilton, which frankly fails to appeal. It’s a long ride and that’s in a car.

Eviction takes three months. I could fire the stuff I actually want into some boxes and out the door. The rest could be carried out around me while I sit cross-legged on the King bed, refusing to budge. Maybe cuffed to the headboard? I knew we should’ve bought a headboard. Cuffed to something. If I still had handcuffs. Everything went down the garbage chute the day Michael died. Pity, really. I kept the flogger, made with love by my man.

When I left my home and my family I took very little stuff but I cleverly absconded with the Christmas decorations I so carefully selected over the many years of my incarceration in the Institution of Marriage. I have four Rubbermaid containers of Christmas decorations. Every member of my fractured family is moving in May. Nobody will take one solitary item from my valuable collection of family memorabilia. This pains me. What about the first scribblings of my children? Their little clay hand prints? What about my pink Xmas ornament upon which is written “Baby’s First Christmas”? Nobody wants any of this shit? That is correct. Not one member of my nuclear-bombed family wants a thing. I’m sure I’ll never celebrate Christmas again. Who’s the smarty pants now, MM?

Sun is out again after all. Must go catch some rays. Ahaha. I have a mental vision of hurling Christmas ornaments off my balcony, starting with “Baby’s First Christmas.” But if I want that corner room in Hamilton, I need to have my break-down in Hamilton.
Tossing crap off the building will just get me evicted faster. Best to . . . what’s the term? Keep my counsel? I believe so.

Peter’s doing a musical number on Family Guy. “You don’t thank the Lord, you thank the whites.” Ahaha. I laugh every day, whether I like it or not.

I really need to rest.


Pictures: nervous breakdown: haleyscomic.com
balcony shot: mine, taken with a kobo
evicted woman image: Ontario rental tribunal
baby ornament: etsy.com