A Comfortable Rock Bottom

This wound is red hot and open,

My heart sits crumbled and broken,

But there is comfort in this home.

How can rock bottom somehow still feel safe?

They are nursing me back to health here–

Bit by bit.

With a bottomless bowl of Reese’s eggs

And the best wine I’ve ever had.

They have two dogs and two cats

And I’m in love with all of them.

My companions in the trenches.

Carol tells me to go take a bath when I’m sick or sore or tired.

She has the bathtub of my dreams,

And a basket of assorted salts and bubble bath.

And big candles that I knock over every time I’m near them.

They feed me when I think I’ll never have an appetite again.

I wake up some days so anxious and nauseous and exhausted.

I lay in bed praying for the will to move.

But then I hear life upstairs.

I hear them walking and cooking and the dogs throwing their bones

So I crawl out of my hole and sip coffee while Carol fries bacon.

We talk about you a lot.

We talk about divorce and pain and stress.

We talk about the pain of now, and the hope of my future.

We talk about celebrity gossip and school and dating and religion

And I always feel ok again after some time at that dining room table.

The view.

I don’t know how to explain just how much I appreciate the view.

I remember the first night I drove to my new home

And when I turned into their neighborhood that night,

I saw all the city lights we were overlooking.

I forgot about city lights

And my heart ached

And felt whole at the same time seeing them again.

From their kitchen and their back porch, you can see the mountains so clearly.

The deck overlooks this beautiful golf course that we walk on sometimes.

Today me and Courtney walked the dogs.

I love waking their dogs and laughing with them

And feeling the Colorado sunshine.

We’re a lot closer to the sun here.

The vitamin D is probably healing me too.

I read on the porch swing and then we had a big dinner.

I had tall pours of a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc,

With roasted chicken and salad and potatoes.

Carol makes me eat more vegetables and I love her for it.

We talked and laughed and had tuxedo cake.

We watched a Hallmark movie while the sunset,

And I really felt like I was going to be ok today.

I’ve felt that, but in a different way.

In a

‘I’m so busy and distracted that I don’t have time to think about not being ok’

Kinda way.

But today felt different.

Today Carol told me

‘there will be a day when you wake up, and it’s not the first thing you think about. I promise’

I smiled so wide.

I really needed to hear that.

I really need that day to come.