Comfort(ably numb)

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?

Come on, now
I hear you're feeling down
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again

Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are the only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying

When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am

I have become comfortably numb

Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

— `phfina diatribe:

I am, truly, dead.

Today ... was February 14th, now it's the Ides of February, and I find myself wishing my name was Julian or Julia and I was a special mayonnaise salad, and it was a month later so my big hulking buddy could do me a favor.

You'll get that later. Or you won't. Not only do kids these days don't read, they also don't make associations of what they haven't read to their lives.

One of the many reasons why were are all swimming in this cesspool.

GOD! I'm old to be saying: "In my day ..." and "kids these days ..." ... what a year does to you!

Did you know today was St. Valentine's Day?

I didn't.

How could I not?

My nieces gave me a card with a poem the older one wrote:

Roses are Red
Violets blue
Honey is sweet
& so are u.

Isn't that sweet?

But it didn't register, even the heart shape it was cut out into and the hearts inscribed in red pencil on it. I said: "Oh, how nice!" and that was that.

At work, in a predominately female profession with three super hot azn chicks, were flowers give and displayed? Oh, yes! Was there much cooing and preening going on today about all that? Oh, yes! Did I notice a whit of it?

No. I went through my day today in a fog. I got home, I don't know how, I could've been mass murder serial raped for all I know on the way home, because I went right to bed and pulled the covers over my head and went right to sleep.

I haven't slept in the past two days. Wonder why.

Last week was the story of the leper. How they were to be cast outside the camp and how they had to wear a bell and proclaim: "Unclean, unclean!" And the priest, Fr. P., told the story about St. Damien journal as he tended to the lepers, and how he knew he had caught the disease when he spilled hot water over his feet from his tea kettle ...

... and he saw it happen, but felt nothing.

And Fr. P. went on to explain how that is what sin is, you commit a sin, you feel pain or guilt the first time, but then the next, it's less, then less, then less, ...

then nothing.

I felt nothing today. Things happened around me, but I wasn't aware of any of it. I wasn't aware I was breathing, or that I had a heartbeat.

Do you know when I realized it?

A friend.

A friend told me Saga was thinking of me, and today, and how she forgot about today being St. Valentine's day, and how I so generously forgave her that.

This year, there was no St. Valentine's day. There was no generosity on my part, and nothing I could forgive.

But this mutual acquaintance told me Saga has things to say to me, and that's when my dead heart quickened.

Oh, what cruelty! Why am I given a heart that must beat on? Where everything I do hurts somebody, and if I choose the path of no-doing, I hurt everybody?

And that's when I realized I was dead today, when I felt my heart beating at the mention of Saga, and things she has to tell me.

You have to be alive, to realize you are dead. Another cruelty.

Of course, when somebody says, 'I have things to say to you,' that means something. For them. And for you.

You know what that mean. It means they say their cathartic things, and then they are forever free. Released of the burden of these things, these horrible things they've been holding onto, about you ... about me, that is, and they will say these horrible things, aimed right at that dead, cold, still beating heart, and then released from their burdens they skip off, happily, into the sunset.

And then you, me, I mean, are left behind, with that burden, forever knowing what you were to the person who was and is everything to you.

Saga, say your things to me, be released from these burdens, and then be free, skipping off into the sunset, happy and content.

Me, I'm fine. In fact, ...

I'm comfortably numb.

I don't feel my cheeks, my tongue is thick and useless, and my arms are two stone weights I can barely move. All I am is a funeral waiting for the actual date to make it official.

'Date.' Heh.

Happy St. Valentine's day.