I'm ready to give up, actually.

My grandmother lives in California with my great-grandmother, grandfather, and uncle. She is addicting to sleeping pills. In fact, she is addicted to pills in general. She will literally take any pills she can find just to take them. She takes money from everyone else so that she can buy pills. She suffers from dementia. She can't talk anymore.

Now she's missing.

She's been missing for a day. She disappeared when my uncle--carelessly, I guess--took her grocery shopping. No hospital has found her, the police have no clue, and nobody anywhere seems to know where she is. My uncle drove around all night looking for her. He's still looking now. "Someone probably took her in," the policeman said. If that was true, why didn't they call the police? Now she's lost somewhere in Garden Grove, California.

I don't really know how I'm supposed to feel about it. I didn't know her very well, honestly. She bought me my first Batman action figure. I still have it. I remember her car. Her hats. We still have her dog. I remember her being happy to see us. The last time I saw her, she didn't remember me. She didn't remember anything.

Actually, I'm not sure about that part because she didn't say anything.

These last few years she has been a burden to her family. Her drug problems. Her refusal to get help. Her cancer. Her dementia. Her refusal to let her family help her. She has had a crazy, ridiculous life. And now she's lost. She was my grandmother.

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Side effects include constant irritability, being an ass.

It was a typical day in MUS 307 . A typical day where nobody pays attention to anything the professor talks about. A day where people play shitty flash games instead of take notes. A day where people sit and refresh their Facebook newsfeed instead of follow the slides. A day where people roll their eyes and go to sleep instead of listen to the music examples. A day where people get up and leave ten minutes before lecture ends instead of having the God damn decency to stay the whole time and pretend to be interested. I mean, if you're going to be so unaffected by the music we're studying in class then why the fuck did you take the class in the first place? Fuck it makes me mad. And I haven't even started talking about that fucker who sits in the back and tries to whistle along with every song that gets played in class. Alright, dude, we get it: you are just too cool and you know everything about jazz, ever. You know every standard ever written and everybody's so...

I wonder, sometimes.

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Past the butterfly wall.

Spontaneous pneumothorax is a collection of air or gas in the space between the lungs and the chest that "collapses" the lung and prevents it from inflating completely. Spontaneous means there is no traumatic injury to the chest or lung. There are two types of spontaneous pneumothorax: primary and secondary. Primary spontaneous pneumothorax occurs in people without lung disease. It occurs most often in tall, thin, young people. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket but I can't answer it. We are in the middle of rehearsal. It is not an uncommon event. We continue to play. The strap of my saxophone cuts into my neck. The nylon is rough against my skin. I look out of place. Everyone else is dressed casually; shorts, shirts, shoes optional. There I stand, a button down shirt and slacks. I'm entitled to dress up a little. It's my birthday. My phone vibrates again. I always used to roll my eyes whenever I saw those scenes in movies. The phone call. The bad news....

everything is fine

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