Standing at the end of the pier at the northern end of the lake, near the college, in the company of probably the strongest friendship I’ve ever discovered. We got chicken sandwiches from McDonald’s. She blasted Taylor Swift in the car on the way home. I got red nail polish and she got a graphic t shirt featuring snoopy from the peanuts gang, from Five Below.

The air pollution from the wild fires in Canada blocked out the horizon at twilight. There were ducks. We watched the fireworks.

Another friend gave me sixteen bottles of wine. She’s just moved cities and lost her job in wine making this morning and now she isn’t sure if she’ll be able to make rent. Now I have sixteen bottles of wine, a slight headache, and also a belly that hasn’t been there since I was seventeen, but at least I’m eating again. Send good thoughts to a friend of a friend who’s having a bad day, please.

I think maybe I spent most of last winter entertaining this backwards delusional state of grace where everything made sense because everyone was secretly a little in love with everybody else and nobody was talking about this, especially not out loud. And maybe that’s what made it perfect. The not talking about it, the delightfully awful shyness.

Except I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong. And maybe that’s alright. We move on with our lives.

I’m still grieving the way the stories I told myself made themselves make everything make sense. Back in January, I was trying to make tortellini in the microwave, of all things, only I messed up and got the timing wrong and wasn’t sure what to do and I had the meltdown of the year there in the kitchen and did not end up in the psych ward because when I got there they tried to take away my shoes.

And I was having none of that.

I can still hear my voice asking the security gaurd for my shoes back, please.

And that was probably the last straw, or the lowest moment, because there has to be a lowest moment before recovery starts to happen, before you start kicking your way back up to the surface. I think.

I’ve been listening to the Delta album, by Mumford & Sons. It’s fucking gorgeous, anyhow. Y’all should listen.

Tomorrow I have this intention to get up and drink coffee and make breakfast and go for a walk, in spite of the air pollution that has no business being here on the East coast, and listen to this album on repeat.

It’ll help me feel better.

My family adopted a dog and he’s going to the vet for some heartworm treatment, which could be rough. There’s a gofundme, which is helping financially.

As my dad put it, he is such a good dog.