The Morning After

It's late Saturday morning. The sky is cloudy (as usual) but bright, the kind of day where I'll need sunglasses. Morning sounds filter through as I sip my tea: the metallic clang as the neighbours fold back their shutters, the faint sound of children yelling, steps loud on the stairs just outside my door.

I was awakened this morning by an impossibly beautiful birdsong. It was like Mozart and a sparrow had some kind of miraculous lovechild and there it was, the most melodic alarm clock in history.

I have a headache. It could be a the half-bottle of rosé I bombed while writing Charlie's fateful end. I could be the two hours of sobbing that followed. Could be both. I'll call it a grief hangover and that should suffice.

After I finished writing and the first round of crying (there's usually several when I get going), I wrote an email to Dana the Artist:

"Oh God. I killed her. Or rather, she killed herself. It's what she's been trying to tell me. I'm horribly, horribly sad. It's why I've been fucked all day...I knew it, but I didn't want to know it. How ridiculous, but how lovely, to be crying over people who came out of my own head."

My sorrow did have a really lovely tinge to it...that this was somehow 'right' and good and true and beautiful. There was also the feeling that this, my snot-faced Friday night sobbing over someone who doesn't exist, was absolutely ridiculous.

My boyfriend confirmed it. He offered a rather confused, "I'm sorry...that your character...died?" And I laughed my head off. Because there I was, age thirty-one, slightly drunk on pink juice-wine, bawling my head off over my imaginary friend.