Birthdays

9/25/2005 5:55 AM

It’s my birthday and I can’t sleep.  I’m tired but that isn’t enough anymore.  

I keep thinking about my life:  the things for which I am lucky and the things for which I’m not.

I can’t decide which wins.

On the one hand, I don’t live in Faluja or Saudi Arabia or New Orleans; but I live right on top of a canyon of carbon monoxide generated daily by thousands of internal combustion engines traveling the Jersey Turnpike and GW Bridge.  

I have genuine love in my life from my sisters and I suppose from Chris, but I have to witness one of those sisters struggle with multiple sclerosis in a nursing home while I remain living an apartment that is full of memories of her.  Each wall, corridor and room has a memory of her that used to make me cry in remembrance.  I wish I could forget but I can’t.  

I miss Sharon’s company more than anything.  I hate that she’s not around anymore.  I still have the last set of birthday cards she bought me; because she can’t or won’t do that anymore.  It’s the little things that hurt the most:  her picking me up in her car so we can go someplace together; me calling her whenever I make something so she can be the first to share it; complaining, laughing; going on vacation together.

We still talk every day; twice a day; I spend three days a week with her.  We still laugh and eat but it’s now done in alien territory from which she cannot escape.  

I am free of that horrible job and those people who had nothing but contempt for me and lucky that Chris is so generous that I can have these few years to do what I like but I still want recognition that I suppose I’ll never get despite my pretensions as a playwright.  I do enjoy the time spent collaborating but I was hoping something would come of it and I see now nothing ever will.

Is my life worth anything?  I wonder.