Friday night CornerGirl made yummy lasagna for dinner. Then Saturday she made me take home the leftover lasagna, so I nuked it for dinner.

Now that I've had her yummy lasagna for two straight days, I think I'm spoiled for life.

I don't see the prying eyes anymore, hardly ever. Maybe they're hidden. Or maybe they're gone, and I can actually be relevant here.

Sometimes I watch a movie and some turn of phrase will give me pause. It will make me think or wonder or ponder or wish or dread.

Who knows? Lightning may strike.

And the gist of that statement, the unspoken implication, was that, without the lightning, a life has not been lived. Only a rough semblance of a life. A cheap copy. A dream. A manifestation of wishful thinking.

An imposter.

No matter. For me, lightning did indeed strike. And boy did it burn me. Sear me. Knock me down and keep me down, shaking from the shock. Unable to rise on noodly legs.

So does this count as a life now? If so, it doesn't seem worth the hoopla.

A year ago, I outlived my mother. In a little less than a decade, maybe, I'll outlive my father. Is there a point to this? I dunno. I used to think that maybe there there was. Wait, scratch that - I use to know that there was absolutely a point.

Lightning had struck.

How do you live with no hope? I don't think you do. Maybe you can exist without it, but that's just another imposter.

Inadequate.

CornerGirl is off today and tomorrow because she's mean and clearly wants me to ask LaptopGirl to lunch one of these days.

But that's not the funny part.

The funny part started last year, when we went to Harvest Homecoming and two different people saw her with me and thought she was HatGirl and she got all mad about it.

Then this morning CornerGirl went to get her hairs done, and some girl came into the salon place and thought she was HatGirl.

Well, I think it's funny anyway.

Sometimes I get in this particular mood. I've mentioned it before, ad nauseum...

I yammer sometimes. Usually there's alcohol involved. Not tonight, though.

Who am I? What am I? How am I?

Sometimes, I enjoy contemplating these questions.

I'd like to say that I'm done with what I was doing. They paid me. There's no real purpose to it anymore. I ranted and raved for months and months. It will, most likely, never see the light of day. But they paid me, so does that make me a real writer? A professional? Maybe.

I need to come back here, to where I started. Nothing written doesn't mean nothing nothing nothing nothing. So much has happened, is happening, will I'm sure continue to happen.

It's the same stuff. Some things never change. Some things change too much. I can't even catch my breath, let alone compose my thoughts and put them into words.

I spend a lot of time trying to do what I perceive to be the right thing. Usually, I then spend a lot of time doubting my actions and decisions. I feel like I'm missing something. Like if I said or did or didn't say or didn't do some particular thing or things, then maybe things would be better.

I spend a lot of time trying to understand the motives of people who, quite frankly, are incomprehensible. I hear these words, or I think these words. I ignore all evidence so that I can ignore these words. Crazy is another word I've heard a lot, though I've never quite been ready to accept that particular description. If I did that, then I'd have to assign that word to myself as well, and I'm seldom willing to do that.

I dunno. Maybe I should.

Sometimes, I find it.

Always fleeting, fanciful, fictional. Friction as I slide. Purchase as I climb. Crumbling into dust soon after I notice.

Sometimes, I can pause, and relax, and relish.

Not always. Not even often.

But sometimes.

I have this idea, this prediction, this foreboding, of what this entry will be. When it's done. When I finish it.

It will not, most likely, be close at all to what I've envisioned.

Oh well.

---

Nobody will understand. Maybe one person.

---

I get the urges all the time. Every 10 or 20 seconds. For years I've had them.

Usually, most of the time, I've been able to resist.

But. Not. This. Time.

The urge this morning was as if from the Borg.

Resistance, this time, was futile indeed. I barely even tried.

Stupidity, also, may be relevant, most of the time. This time, I ignored it. Relevance be damned.

---

Nobody will get how hard it was for me to send that invitation. Nobody will understand how easy, effortless, reflexive, it was for me to send that invitation.

Maybe one person.

---

My heart leapt out of my chest. It bounced around the room. It finally settled back into place, vibrating with anticipation. I absorbed and endured.

I felt.

Joy.

Terror.

---

When nothing is par, then anything, anything at all, is everything.

There is nothing else.

Nothing.

---

We ended up on this damn road.

Life provides its own metaphors.

How many times have we taken this road?

Numbers don't go high enough.

Our entire relationship has been on this road.

---

It was a nice time. Really really nice. Just what I needed.

---

Nobody will understand.

Maybe one person.

---

It never got better, or easier, or bearable.

It got worse and worse with every passing second and minute and hour and day and week and month.

Six months. Nearly a year before that.

Everybody said it would get easier. Everybody was wrong.

So very wrong.

---

My lunch was yummy. My company was yummy.

---

So, right now, I'm sad.

But that's sooooooooooo much better than devastated, ruined, wrecked, almost suicidal.

I'll take sad, every time and forever, over those alternatives.

Maybe one person will understand why I did what I did. Why I had to do what I did. Why I'm glad I did what I did.

Why it was necessary.

Why I'm so happy to be merely sad right now.

---

I'm under no illusions.

Now I get to try again. To start again.

Maybe it will be easier, this time.

Not better, but maybe easier, for a while. Bearable, for a while.

That would be nice.

---

This entry is not what I envisioned.

Oh well.

Great, another fucking metaphor.

Deal with it. Or don't. I sincerely hope nobody still believes that I give a shit.

A flipping mosquito. Buzzing and darting and flitting around my mind. Just barely noticeable, most of the time, Until I notice it. Until it's there. Until it's everything that ever was or is or will be.

Or would have been or could have been or should have been.

Bzzzzzt.

People don't get it. I barely get it myself. Almost eight years now, and counting. Always counting.

Since.

It.

Happened.

I changed. Or the universe changed around me. Or I went insane. Or the universe went insane around me, to spite me.

Does it even matter what really happened? Or how? Or why?

Not to me.

Do the ends, maybe not justify, but perhaps neuter, the means?

Bzzzzzt.

This fucking mosquito. Sometimes I'm able to sum up the strength to swat at it, but I always miss, and all I manage to do is piss it off. Redouble its efforts to distract and annoy and irritate.

Anyway, I fell.

And this, this is my reward for it all. And my punishment.

Bzzzzzt.

I'm not so vain to believe that I'm the first person this has happened to, but I remain optimistically stupid enough to hope that maybe, just maybe, I'm the last.

The good news is that my vision has stabilized.

The bad news is that my vision has stabilized, in the wrong place.

No more fluctuating, no more discomfort. I'm only using the eye drops when I wake up in the morning, and by now I think this is more of a reflex than anything else.

But I can't see as well as I'd hoped, as well as I'd been led to expect.

I had my 8-week checkup at Joffe. Right off the bat, I told the nurse dude that I was spending most of the time wishing I still had glasses. He had me look through a machine at a balloon - not sure what that test is all about - and then old me to wait for the real eye-doctor.

I told her the same thing. I can't read scores scrolling on the bottom of a TV. I can't read menus behind the counters at fast-food places. I see ghost-images of balls when I play pool. I remember fondly the pre-LASIK days when I saw much better, albeit with glasses.

She had me do the standard test, and I read the 20/20 line on the eye chart for her. Then I reminded her that there's a difference between making out the letters, and seeing them clearly. I was not seeing them clearly. Not at all.

So then she had me do that series of tests where I look at two different lines, one after the other, and declare which one I can see better. This is the same test that everyone who's ever worn glasses has taken. It's how they figure out what prescription you need.

Every other time in my life, when comparing these pairs of lines, I've always had to make them switch back and forth for some of the pairs. Some of the pairs were just too similar at first glance, so I had to see them again before declaring a winner.

But not this time.

For whatever reason, there was never any doubt at all. Two was better than one. Four was better than three. Six was better than five, eight was better than seven, and ten was better than nine. And, each and every time, there was absolutely no doubt. The difference was glaringly obvious. Like, twelve wasn't just better than eleven, it was a million times better. Those even-numbered lines were clear and sharp. Those odd-numbered lines were blurry and/or ghosty.

The results of this test seem to have convinced the doctor that I wasn't just pulling her leg for some reason. She'd already determined that there was no swelling or scarring or dryness in my eye. The only remaining explanation for my less-than-perfect vision was that they'd fucked something up. Or, as she put it, I would most likely need a second procedure to make everything right.

She also said that we could start discussing that after I'd gone three months. So, sometime in June or July, it's extremely likely that I'll be going under the knife/laser again.

I hope so. I hope they don't try/succeed in talking me out of it. There will be no cost to me, and I'm sure they don't relish the idea of doing free procedures on people. But, as things are now, I'm not exactly a glowing endorsement for either LASIK in general or for Joffe in particular. That's gotta count for something.

I'm looking forward to it. I want to see better. To be fair, I already can see better. It's like the partial success I've had has given me a taste of how things could be. Will be, I'm convinced, once I heal from the second correction.

It's calming, actually. I'm no longer stressing about blurriness or ghost images. I'm no longer wondering just how long it's supposed to take for my vision to get better. Now I know that it's not going to get better on it's own, so I can stop worrying about it.

I'll have to go through all that crap again. The prescription eye-drops. The trying to sleep in the sunglasses. The burning and itchiness for a few weeks. But, after I go through all that one more time, I expect to finally have what I should have gotten the first time.

Clear vision. That will be nice.

I used to have all these metaphors. I liked them. They were useful and just barely descriptive if someone was paying enough attention.

I lived on my tip-toes. Sometimes that wasn't enough. Usually, it seemed, that wasn't enough. I'm only so tall. Drowning is drowning, whether it's by an inch or a mile. I was constantly aware of that fact.

Usually, back then, it was waist deep. That was the average. Ostensibly safe, but too close for any type of real comfort. Rogue waves would overwhelm me, knock me down, all the time. Now, now it laps at my ankles. Not much at all, really, until I remember. Until I think about it too much. Like I'm doing tonight.

It only takes an inch to drown.

All I have to do is fall, and then I could drown. All I have to do is lie down, to rest, and then I could drown. A big enough wave, and I could drown.

Some people think I want to drown, to die. They're wrong. I want to live, but I'm not sure it's up to me. I'm at the mercy of the waves.

I'm in shock, still, after all this time. I'm just in shock. By all of it. Me. Her. Us.

Don't pity me. Learn from me. Run, at the first sign. It's not worth the risk.

Run!