whenwhenwhenwhenwhen. I feel like I'd like my brain cleaned. it all feels just cruddy. this weekend was inexplicably awful, nearly every inch of it. all the best parts felt unrelated to me, uninitiated by me. my housemates painted the dining room one evening when I was out, all luscious dark sea green (where it was yucky dried-glue before). that was the best news. everyone in my house (save for jen, who's too busy for such) seems depressed, and the three (save for me (save for jen)) have formed a triumvirate of the industrious unhappy, and they are making the house a better place. planting flowers and repainting walls, hanging coatracks and dog doors. somewhat unsmilingly, with cigarette breaks and beer and talk about failed love and empty prospects for jobs. I've begun joining them for cigarette breaks and talking, but my problems are not the same. mine are flippant, passing, different from theirs. all I can do is sit and smoke with them.
it's trouble though, making friends via common sadness. I made three of them at once several years ago. we'd all felt wrecked by bad love and bad jobs, and we were sad together. we had fun, of a sort, and it was comforting. we sat in the yard smoking cigarettes, shelling fava beans or cutting hair, drinking beer or mojitos with fresh garden mint, letting words pass from our mouths. letting hours pass from the days.
all of it was fine until one of us became happy. I was second to defect from the nation of sad girls. thinking, you haven't known me, you've known my sadness, realizing I was tacitly unwelcome if not unhappy.
I don't know how to speak to them. we have all diverged.