My heart is broken. It was not a quick, sharp move that broke the thing, but a slow, heavy pressure.

In one week, STONE died; HORSE GIRL dumped me under circumstances that leave me wondering what I lack; I had a huge fight with JACK and his girlfriend; and I would have been fired from PAPER two days ago had I not, earlier that day before the incident, told them I would be moving to California the first week of January. They decided to spare me since I'm leaving anyway.

Just thinking about leaving gives me enough anxiety, but on top of all that (and I know I shouldn't care), after spending the night in each other's arms several days ago, THE LITTLE RED-HAIRED GIRL got back together with her boyfriend. Now I'll have to settle for wrapping that new memory in expensive fabric and holding it softly and carefully like a high school student taking care of an egg; pretending it's a baby for a Home Economics assignment.

The combination has been too much to hold up; the weight.

Tonight I vaguely explained this to my boss and co-workers. Actually, when telling them I needed tomorrow off due to mental-illness, I dwelled mainly on the death of my cat, cause I didn't think they'd sympathize with the rest. At least not enough to let me have a day off, which I desperately need, though I'll spend it looking for a restaurant job to fund my move to California. And I'll be dwelling on the death of my cat.

"I feel like I'm going to have a nervous breakdown if I don't have some time to myself." I told them. "Can I stay home tomorrow and get my shit together? Do any of you guys have a lighter? I need a cigarette." I hate that word; 'need'.

Tears begged for a way out as I rode the elevator downstairs by myself, holding onto the lighter, and all the bullshit sorrow of the past two weeks, way too tightly. The temporary solitude inside the shiny company elevator gave me a false feeling like, "Go ahead and let it out man, no one's around." But I knew I'd have to face the building's concierge when the elevator doors opened in 30 seconds. So I held back.

"Hello," I said, greeting the 90-year-old concierge with my fake-happy accent, sounding to me like a foreign language. The building that houses THE PAPER is 24-hours. At night the concierge totes a gun, even though he's almost too old to speak anymore.

He gummed a smile and silently waved me past and out the door, not helping me carry all my baggage.

Outside I lit my Parliament. I rarely smoke. When I do, it's only three or four a day and only when I'm feeling ill at heart.

I hate that I smoke when I'm upset. The dry, dirty cigarette taste, which often survives the tooth brush, sticks with me all day, flavoring my bad mood. That chalky, dirty, spiderweb taste of cigarettes is the flavor of defeat for me. I hate it. I hate defeat. But smoking is in my blood. My mom smoked when she was pregnant with me. The low-fetal-birth-weight death struggle I went through upon coming into this world didn't teach me not to smoke. When I'm having a hard time, I am again a nicotine baby.

When I'm upset at work, and I need a smoke break, I walk to the Hillsborough River, across the Editor's parking lot, on the other side of the The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. I stand on the edge of the brackish river, with the sun bringing out my fear of skin cancer, and I listen and stare at the flat water for 30 seconds. The Hillsborough River is a half-assed body of water, but it's calming.

Continuing across the parking lot, approaching The Performing Arts Center, I saw hundreds of teenage girls lined up ten-deep outside. I got closer and noticed them holding homemade signs: "We Love Hanson," "Hanson Rules!" in glitter and marker and poster-board and pure, distant teenage-love. One 12-year-old girl in braces and sexy, shiny stretch pants that she wouldn't fill out for another 5 years, held up the empty promise, "What's Love Got to Do With It? Invite me Back Stage" on plain white cardboard with stark black letters.

Automatically I was happier.

The girls ranged from 12 to 20. They were all beautiful. They all wore tight pants, silly and un-sexy.

I suddenly felt a wave of anxiety for smoking in front of them: I hated the thought of all those young girls with dirty depressing cigarette breath. I threw my Parliament down and stamped it as if that weren't a bad habit too.

The girls smiled cleanly and excitedly at each other, intermittently breaking out in fits of glee. "Hanson! Fuck yeah!" they would have screamed to each other if their parents weren't around.

I walked past them, among them, on my way to the river, unnoticed. The girls had much better things to think about than the lone, un-cute old boy walking by. I understand. Hanson, fuck yeah.

I disappeared around the corner of the Performing Arts Center, into complete silence, and realized the girls hadn't been very loud.

I saw the river ahead down the long, empty covered outdoor walkway. Once there, I stood on the seawall and thought about all the times I'd fallen in the water accidentally as a younger boy, and all the barnacle and oyster cuts on my feet, that I barely stopped to notice when I was a kid. I was a lot tougher then, maybe.

I followed the Hillsborough seawall left, to a little shallow rocky area at the base of a bridge crossing over the river. The nook is obscured by a cave of mangrove trees digging their fingers into the mud and rocks below for stability.

I'd found the covered nook at the base of the bridge another time I'd been depressed at work. It was where I decided, long ago, that I would sleep if I were ever homeless. Or desperately didn't want to go home.

Ten or twelve ringed, black plastic pipes, each a foot in diameter, hung out from a concrete hole in the underside of the bridge. The pipes came at a downward angle into the water and along the seawall, disappearing into the mangroves shielding the enclave from public view. At least in the homelessness scenarios I'd rendered in my head so many times; the pipes was strong and thick enough to support a body.

I stared at the water and the nest of pipes and mangroves and dwelled on all the bad stuff that's been happening, pushing me under. My eyes stagnated in their stare and the flat water several feet below became meaningless, nothing. It stopped my eyes stopped my dwelling stopped everything stopped. I stayed there, blank and calm for some time.

When I finally noticed that everything had stopped; it all came back. The water, the black plastic pipes, the little enclave reappeared, and in the water directly below I noticed a stingray.

The pipes and the mangroves and the low tide had trapped the little stingray in a three-foot-squared patch of water. He was stuck. In a worse mess than I am. But he was so far down that there was nothing I could to free him.