Gabrielle
We met at an audition for a play at Trinity College Dublin, where I was spending my junior year. By then, I was no longer planning suicide, which was my first idea. Somehow, I thought it would make things easier for my parents if I killed myself in a foreign country. Okay, I was twenty, and my prefrontal cortex was still undeveloped. Also, I was in a depression so deep I could not imagine any future. At the beginning of the summer, I had broken up with who I believed to be the love of my life, and shortly afterward, my best childhood friend was killed in a car crash. After attending her funeral in a state of chaos, I went back to New Jersey and told my mother I was an alcoholic and wanted to die. Since she was in the middle of slicing up a massive rump roast, she waved the knife at me and said, "No! It's his fault. You are perfect. Go to your room." Instead, I left, found a gig house sitting, minding a depressed dog, and spent several months drifting around in a pool, stoned, crying.
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My Parents
Recently several people I know have lost a parent and I find it very hard to say anything helpful. Daily, I miss them both. But I would be lying if I claimed I’d rather they were still alive in the world as it currently implodes, explodes, malfunctions, whatever the hell is happening. Also, life is easier without the constant worry about my mother who lived alone in her house after my father died until something in her brain went rogue and she accused me of kidnapping her and pulled a knife on her caregiver. After that it was a lock-up psychiatric place, memory care, a better memory care and then she died. All the time she just wanted to go home to the house she had designed for her and my father’s retirement.
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My Year So Far
2026 has been a clusterfuck both globally and personally. I feel uniquely unqualified to comment on the behavior of our government, so I’ll stick to the personal. January was meant to be my chance to spend time with my new granddaughter and to that end I agreed to cat sit in Chicago for two weeks. As soon as I settled into this glamorous mansion right by the Viagra Triangle so named because it is the hunting ground for older men seeking younger dates, I started to cough like a dying person, to cough like someone you would prefer to avoid. I was shunned by the new parents, chastised for trailing after them to sit at a separate table at Gibsons, gazing forlornly at the lump that was fast asleep in her stroller.
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