#4: for you who needs compassion

I don't know if I'm more worried about you or annoyed by you. I thought about this last night: If she kills herself and I find her, what a hassle that would be. Have I lost my ability to be compassionate? That saddens me. But last night, I didn't feel so good, I went to bed early, not all that early -- 10:30 isn't all that early -- and at 11:45 that disconcerting ticking in my dreams managed to wake me up. What is that ticking? I felt frightened. But it was a misplaced emotion. There wasn't anything to be afraid of. But all the effects of feeling frightened were there, the racing heart, the clammy coldness, the distorted view. Or maybe that was from being awakened by a noise in my house, in my room, halfway between the bed and the desk. Fortunately. Two feet this direction or that would have been a fucking nightmare. Water dripping from the ceiling. A string of drips along a line. I know from the time before that that line matches up almost perfectly with the outside edge of your bathtub. That time when you decided to mop your bathroom floor with your bath water. All of it. I'm pretty sure I said then, "I don't think you should be doing that." I thought you got it. But you've got a lot on your plate. You left for a weekend trip (a family thing, you called it), left your dog behind and didn't come back for six weeks. Your dog is an escape artist; everybody knows this. Maybe you thought this was gonna save her. Maybe you knew. If she hadn't broken that window out, if a neighbor hadn't seen her hanging out the second floor window, had she not leaped out the window into his arms, I don't think she would've lasted that six weeks without food or water.

Another neighbor took your dog, gave her to somebody else after she -- an escape artist and a generally ill-behaved dog -- kept trying to eat the cat. I don't blame the neighbor for finding another home for the dog. And then you come back to town, lightheaded or something, distant, squirrelly. Avoiding everybody, feeling bad about your actions, hiding from us. "One day at a time," I think was what you said the first time I saw you, but not because you're in AA, just because that's the way you make it through life. And so, maybe you forgot that you aren't supposed to douse your bathroom floor in late night bath water. That's what I thought when I sat there watching the water pour on my floor, ticking and not showing any signs of stopping or slowing. I gathered my wits and my ill feelings, grabbed a couple of thick rugs from the bathroom, then an ice chest, to catch the water. I put one of the wet rugs in the chest to dampen the sound, tried to go back to sleep.

But then I remembered that you're a woman on the verge. One night when you came back and were scratching furniture across your floor, I imagined that you had fashioned a noose and were pulling a chair or something over so that you could get your neck in it and hang yourself. There was a thump -- the chair that you'd kicked out from under yourself tipping to the floor. I was glad when you emerged the next day.

I thought maybe you had decided to drown yourself last night. That's why the water was pouring into my bedroom, because you'd turned the water on and it was just rippling over the edge of the tub, your floating blue body under the surface, eyes open, lips slightly parted, a shy bubble hanging out just inside one nostril.

I put on my clothes. Lots of clothes. More clothes that I'd had on earlier. I went to bed early, feeling chilled, but now I was cold, and I was gonna have to go outside and maybe deal with some sort of a dead body in water, or a water leak, or something. I put on long johns and jeans and cotton socks with wool socks over them, two shirts, two jackets -- one with a hood -- and a hat. I found your key in my bedside table, the flashlight from the kitchen drawer. Your apartment lights were out, your car was gone. I made my way in. Your place is a wreck. The window your dog broke out is still gone; the vents around a window unit a/c are missing, so the cold wind is blowing in. The wall gas heater in the bathroom is missing all of its innards.

The tub was empty, but the lid to the toilet tank was on the floor. There was water droplets all over the sink, and standing water on the floor. I searched out some towels from your dirty clothes and soaked up the water. The dripping downstairs stopped.

This morning you called me back but I didn't answer. You left an apologetic message, but no explanation, only that you were going to be going to the doctor tomorrow for some new medicine that will "make things better."

I guess I have to keep listening.