I’m outta here. I leave in exactly thirty days.

Near the end of September I’m going to drive what little I have now, which is just a few boxes, down to the Bay Area and put them in a storage unit. Or maybe I’ll just see if one of my friends will let me store my stuff in their garage for $50 a month or something. I’m gonna hang around Oakland for a few days and then drive back up.

A few days later, Dante and I are flying home for a week or so to be with my family and go to my sister’s funeral services in Tennessee and Virginia.

And then I’m staying in Arizona for a few weeks, maybe a month.

And then I cut across the desert and go back to good ol California.

Yup

“Welcome, Ryan,” said Satan, “to the worst year of your life.”

i am so tired

i haven’t slept in three days

The last time I saw my sister, she had just come from surgery and was drowsy. She had a weak heart and any illness was potentially lethal to her, so I had to wear a mask. She was in her mid-thirties but she still looked so young. I could hear her pacemaker ticking. She hugged me and joked around with me. I remember the nurse laughing and she said, “Your sister is very funny.” We had to leave because she needed to sleep. I asked her for her phone number but she told me she didn’t have one.

In the car my dad told me that Tara had said she wasn’t afraid to die, she just didn’t want it to hurt. I hope that it didn’t hurt Tara.

I can hear her voice in my head. She had such a good voice. I miss my sister’s voice.

I was upset so I drank some cough syrup and drove to a coffee shop to read. I thought I would just sit there and read and not think about anything. There were a lot of people inside. I saw them from the street. I didn’t feel like being around all those people so I got back in the car and rolled down the windows and drove to the highway. My plan was to head up to the airport and then loop back around. But as I neared the exit I kept going for another thirty miles or so. I don’t know where I ended up. Deep in some forest in Oregon. There was a river beside me and I was the only one on the road. I thought about driving to the ocean or to Mt. Hood or to anything else but I wanted to hold Dante so I headed back down to Portland to do just that.

Sometimes in a state of delirium I will try to travel back in time. I get to a point where I convince myself that maybe if I try hard enough it will finally work. I have almost gotten there a few times by entering a sort of deep state of meditation. I have left my mind and have traveled back to be with people who I miss very dearly and who I can’t be with anymore.

I was so far gone just then. I was whacked out on cough syrup. I tried to travel back in time. It wasn’t working. It was dark and I was going fast. It was pitch black on the highway. The reflectors on the guardrail were flashing and they looked like little stars and I felt like I was flying through them. I had a childish thought that maybe if I couldn’t go back in time I could fly through the universe and go to the place where my sister is now.

I got back to Portland and decided I needed to be in water. I hopped the fence at the community pool near my house and jumped in and swam around for a while. There were other people there who were skinny dipping and a few of them talked to me. I didn’t have much to say to them. Most of them were very drunk. After a while I dried off and went home.

It is nearly 6 a.m. I can’t sleep. I probably won’t sleep. I have been holding Dante all night. My little sister said that Tara had kept a journal, and inside were pictures of the two of us when we were kids. I don’t know why but that crushes me. She had pictures of us that she took with her everywhere. I miss my sister. I don’t know what any of us could have done to save her.