I hate coming up with titles.

Buddy is in a band and pretty much anyone cool is in a band, I've learned. We saw a girl, the female vocalist of some crappy Huntington band, when we were driving home from KFC yesterday and he told me she sucks. I said she is in a band though, so she's cooler than me and he said "Like it's hard to be in a band." He said all you have to do to be in the band is be "The Shit" and that I am poop but not quite The Shit yet. One of my favorite things about him is how easily he manages to be honest without being totally brutal. His opinion may be harsh, but at least it's not void of hope.

He is a good lyric writer, but his strength is in producing. He's best at putting words to music, and I am horrible at that, so I try to perform for him with what I can, like writing good words. The trouble is, I'm not so great at that either. The ones I've managed to write always start out being about him or some general lesson in life and always end up mutating into something very obviously about Jake or my own confusions, words I can't share with him because they are too deeply personal or would be unfair to him.

Today, for example, I keep singing my own song in my head. It's slow and melancholy, and it's basically a plea for acceptance. The chorus starts "It sneaks up like a haunting, it leaves me always wanting you to say ... " and then proceeds to ask of the receiver to accept and forgive, say he can't remember, say I'm still the one he wanted.

Yesterday Katie and I had a cry-fest, as we like to call them. She bawled about her unreliable, demeaning father and I about my error in only showing a few people the person I really am - and my even greater error in having shown that to the wrong people, people who have forgotten and have turned their backs on me.

I've shown it to Katie and my sister and sometimes to Johanna, but it's hard for me to show it even to my daughter because she is still so much a part of them, and they've hurt me. I'm terrified of her and her potential to be that way, to turn her back on me too and roll her eyes and give up.

So that's what I write about, or refuse to write about because it's too convoluted and traumatic, but it is really all I have. It's this big thing that takes over all my brain cells and leaves no room for new material. I would like to be Buddy's girlfriend and contribute to his art by creating my own, and I know I could, but I'm totaled - as in a car, I think. I am so not The Shit.