The Secret Life of Parrots

This is just a draft of the story I want to write. I am having trouble finding a good place to start.
I don't regret my decison to move to Florida. I do regret giving up my house, my car, my job and all my possessions just to be with a man who used to beat me up and cheat on me. But that all changed when he came down with a serious illness which turned him into a shell of his former self.

Fuck it! I don't love anybody.And I hate saying "I love you". It sounds so hollow and fake like it's coming out of someone else's mouth. The one and only true love of my life is my dog. He doesn't constantly pester me for sex and he never asks for anything other than a dog treat once in awhile or to go outside to pee. I'm sorry if I hurt Chris's feelings because I didn't want my back rubbed. I'm just not a "lovey dovey" type of person. I'm not going to whore myself out anymore. If I'm not in the mood, I am NOT in the mood. And I don't appreciate being constantly mauled and kissed and loved on. Besides the fact that I already have a boyfriend as sick as he is, he's still alive. And I don't need some drunk horny asshole sniffing around my hole telling me how he wants to eat my "squirrel" and make me cum. It's totally disgusting. If I'm going to fool around it's going to be an affair that makes me happy, not feel totally guilty and dirty. I feel like a lowlife gutter whore because all Chris wants to do is fuck my brains out. I don't think he's an evil sex maniac, I just think he's dumb. He's equating sex with love. So I guess I must not "love" him that much. He just doesn't get it. It's kind of hard to get in the mood when I have to worry about taking care of my sick boyfriend and all that shit. I would be a whole different person if I wasn't already spoken for. This whole sordid affair just plain sucks.
Chris hurt my feelings too, by assuming that I'm soooo affection starved that all I want from him is sex, sex and more sex. I want more than that. I want friendship, companionship and trust. And that's what I have with James. I still love James. I don't want to start all over again with someone else. I'm not ready for that. As bad as things were in the beginning with me and James (and boy were they bad), I'm willing to forgive all that, because what we have is soooo way beyond the physical bullshit. James is still the only man I can stand to have even touch me.
Chris, in typical dumb man fashion, left early to go home and pout because it was clear he wasn't going to "get any". His child-like pea brain can only wrap itself around one thing, sex. And if he truly loved me like he claims he does he'd realize that I don't want just sex. I'm not using him and I'm not whoring myself out. I'm looking for friendship, because you have to have that before you can go any further. You have to like the person you're with before you can love that person. I don't know where he sees this relationship going if all he thinks about is getting into my pants as soon as James is away. If that's what it's all about, then I don't want him near me anymore.
It's been exactly one year since I broke up with James and met this horrible person I'll just call John. What a total schmuck that dude turned out to be. I thought that sex meant love with that idiot, but I was sorely mistaken when he wound up bringing home crack whores and let them root thru and steal what few pathetic posessions I had left. He had all these female "friends" calling him up at all hours. Kind of like Chris who is still "friends" with his ex. I've learned that any man who says that he's just friends with his ex is really still in love with her. I haven't even broken up with James and Chris thinks that I'm his. Well, I'm not his to fuck or fuck with. He either has to grow the fuck up and stop acting like a sex starved teenager or go on his merry way. I;m not going to tolerate a man who pouts because I won't let him boff me while my boyfriend is sick in the hospital.
And what does that kind of behavior show me? That he's more affection starved than I ever was and that if I was to ever get terminally ill and have to go to the hospital, Chris would be roaming the countryside looking for fresh meat.
I compare my relationship with Chris to what happened to my car. Everything was running fine, engine stubborn to start in the morning and a little shaky when I tried to go fast, but otherwise good. But as time went on the shaking got worse and worse until one day it was shaking so hard I could barely steer and then the wheel flew off. The car clunked to the pavement and smoke came billowing out as I was riding on a steel peg where the wheel once was. I glanced up for a split second to watch as the tire did the high bounce across six lanes then disappeared into the trees on the opposite side of the road. The man at the repair shop told me that the lug nuts had broken off because they were loose and probably had been for some time. So the moral of the story is that if I had taken the time to take care of things in the beginning I could have saved myself a lot of grief.

I just can't be with a man right now. First, James just passed away last week and I think he is haunting me. As he should be. Second , I can't be with a man who runs me over with his Jeep and slices my foot and crushes my cell phone;(it took 30 stitches to close the wound and that's the night I felt James die, but that's another story, and I had to pay over $230.00 to replace my phone);he pisses in my bed because he only comes over when he's already shit faced because he only works part-time due to some mysterious neck injury, my dog has better bladder control, he comes over empty handed, drunk as a skunk wants to fuck and goes thru my refrigerator like an army ant, calls me a prude and in the same breath calls me a whore(me of all people). Then he punches me in the face, while earlier as we sat out on the roof, he throws a beer bottle at the next door neighbors building and it smashes every where, he parks in someone else's assigned spot and just generally makes a nuisance of himself. I hate him and thank the good Lord he finally threw my apt key at me. But he probably made 50 copies of it and gave it to all his sleezy friends in his neighborhood because his fucking scummy friend "eddie" knows where I live and I've never met the asshole.

It just makes me sick how he comes over drunk, empty-handed, makes himself completely at home and all he wants is to yank me in the bedroom and do the nasty. He's nasty. He's just a moron. I am doomed to a life of solitude in Florida if he's all that there is out there. That is a really scary thing. Why did James have to go and die on me? I feel like he left me completely alone in this awful place with these awful people.

I'm searching for happiness that just won't come. I must be looking in all the wrong places.

I still can't believe James is gone. I have pictures of him and me together all over my cubicle at work. Sort of a shrine to him. I still have his ashes in a cardboard canister inside a plastic bag from Target. I feel he haunts me still and has possessed the dog. Humphrey has taken to shredding my bed clothes. He ripped the stuffing out of my conforter and tore the fresh clean sheet I'd just put on the bed in half. I was told that it's because the dog doesn't like Bryan's scent being in the bed. James's scent is wearing away and Bryan's is covering it up. The dog feels as if his territory is being invaded.

"God is closest to those with broken hearts.

-Jewish Proverb-

"Nobody's going to read this but me. " I was waiting for the dog to finish peeing when I gazed up at the dawn sky, deep indigo with a few pinkish clouds, a few blue-white stars twinkling. I I wanted to be able to look up at that sky and be happy for once in my miserable life.

I knew I couldn't stay where I was (360 Van Buren Street) because I wanted to be able to look up at the stars a nd feel happy.

I heard him fart in his sleep and all I could think was all men are gross. Nasty creatures of bad habits and uncontrollable urges. James was a little troll, I thought as I perched my skinny, boney ass on the thin ledge in front of Walgreens. It's all over now. Finally I can breath again. I felt a little more relaxed this morning than I had all week. Monday felt like it was a month ago. I never want to see James again. It was less than a week ago, but felt like a lifetime. The anger was still a fresh open sore and sat in my chest like a bolus of phlegm. It tore thru me like a red hot bayonette. The gaping wounds James left on my heart needed to heal. They still hurt. Not to mention the purple and green bruise on my eyelid and left side of my face. Enough to make sure, a confirmation that I can never, ever go back. I've come too far already and it's only been a matter of days. I have to write this all down. To live a solitary life and get it down on paper and out of me. To carve it out of me like a black cancerous tumor. The whole ugly nightmare. I'll probably wakre up screaming in the middle of the night. It needs to come out. The cancer called James.

My sister got rid of Eric, a small time theif and crack-head, when she woke up in the middle of the night and caught him robbing her purse. I too can get rid of James, but he robbed something from me far more valuavle than just money. He took my spirit, my self-confidence and my independence. He wanted to kick me to the curb like a sack of trash, discarded like one of his empty beer cans