Waiting for time to burn me down

Dear Jon -

Blame it on the Tetons lyrics:

Everyone's a building burning with no one to put the fire out. Standing at the window looking out, waiting for time to burn us down. Everyone's an ocean drowning with no one really to show how they might get a little better air if they turned themselves into a cloud.

I'm not writing for you. I'm writing because the house is empty and the cat knocked over my flimsy little coffee table so there's papers and cigarette butts all over the living room floor (I know I shouldn't smoke in the house, but with no one to tell me "No," why not stay up all night getting drunk and getting crazy and trying desperately to forget how desperate my life has become?)

Why should I bother not to eat frozen yogurt out of the tub with old BBC documentaries playing on my laptop in the dark? Why should I bother to sleep, or to even attempt sleep, or to eat anything besides diet soda and saltines and ravioli from the can? I don't know what to do with this time and this empty house. Time. and Emptiness.

This too shall pass, right?

The doctor really scared me, today. In a few years I'll have a half a million dollar education and I'll be deaf. What to do then? Better start learning ASL, I imagine. When I was first diagnosed, I took a few classes (I was scared then, too).

But the music. I don't have an obsession with discography like the Nick Hornby-esque musicphiles I know, and I can't tell you the names of the bands I like without looking at my iPod, much less who their lead guitarists are.

But the music, Jon.

When I was in middle school, I started playing in the jazz band. I loved it because I was a part of something moving and beautiful, because I belonged, in harmony. I loved it because my part was small and didn't make sense alone, but when placed in context I mattered. I kept playing, and it was my love and my escape in the midst of being raped and being an outcast and leaving home and working my ass off and being smarter than everyone but not smart enough to take care of myself. I was in the all state band. I had a music scholarship. I started traveling with the college band. I started playing on the Strip, paying gigs with grungy old jazz musicians who drink shots of whiskey between sets. I was living a beautiful and dirty and wonderous life, and I lost the hearing in my left ear. I couldn't keep time anymore. So I became an engineering major. Then I dropped out of school.

That's when I started playing the guitar. It's just me, and I don't have a voice, but I can certainly raise a joyful noise. I'm not that good, but I am good enough to let my friends sing along and become a part of something again, sometimes.

I'm losing my hearing, Jon. But the music. I don't know what I'll do for the music.

I re-read this blog from the beginning tonight, before I spent an hour howling along to my poor covers of Leonard Cohen and the Pogues. I can't be this into you. I think I'm just really lonely. I've been lonely for a very long time. I'm constantly disappointed - in life, in those around me, in myself. Life is supposed to be better by now.

Right now, I'm living in an apartment I can't afford, teetering on the edge of academic probation, in the midst of a divorce, in constant fear of debilitating vertigo which could come with no warning, terrified I'm going to be deaf before I graduate. Is this all there is? Is that all there is?

I was talking to a friend about you tonight. He asked me what I want out of this. I told him that I just want you to acknowledge that I meant something to you. I think that would be enough - to feel like I mattered to someone who meant something to me.

I'm tired and I'll see you in nine hours.

I hope you think of me sometimes, Jon. I hope you find the time to pray for me.

- M.