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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Don't Even Read This
Tonight, I am one of those people I can’t stand that look at sad things and read sad poems and listen to sad music and be sad.
I suck. I hate it when I do this.
The problem with being someone who “suffers from depression” is that you can’t tell the difference between sad or down or blue and depressed. You don’t know how to just be down because there are so many times when you got down and didn’t get back up. You end up being scared to be sad and suspicious of your own emotions and paranoid that this is more than just ‘regular’ sad so that every time someone asks ‘are you ok?’ you shoot back from the hip with ‘OF COURSE I’M OK-WHY WOULDN’T I BE OK-WHY DO YOU KEEP ASKING ME IF I’M OK!?’.
That’s usually when your inner-jerk whispers “only unstable people scream things like that through their teeth”.
Can you even imagine being stuck in here with this inner-jerk and my logical self arguing all the time? I wish they would just make out and get it over with.
I suck. I hate it when I do this.
The problem with being someone who “suffers from depression” is that you can’t tell the difference between sad or down or blue and depressed. You don’t know how to just be down because there are so many times when you got down and didn’t get back up. You end up being scared to be sad and suspicious of your own emotions and paranoid that this is more than just ‘regular’ sad so that every time someone asks ‘are you ok?’ you shoot back from the hip with ‘OF COURSE I’M OK-WHY WOULDN’T I BE OK-WHY DO YOU KEEP ASKING ME IF I’M OK!?’.
That’s usually when your inner-jerk whispers “only unstable people scream things like that through their teeth”.
Can you even imagine being stuck in here with this inner-jerk and my logical self arguing all the time? I wish they would just make out and get it over with.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Crazy Can't Save You From Cancer
There was no end to the excuses I would let my grandmother get away with. I would nod when she told me stories, nod when she got them backwards, nod when she called me by my mothers’ name.
I believed everything she said – every time she spoke, because she was an anomaly to me. She was fascinating and strong and beautiful. She was amazing and scary and strange and comfortable to me. There were days when she would tell me with great clarity of her love affair with my grandfather and days when she couldn’t remember his name.
When I was little and I would visit her, she would transform her entire house into yellow heaven. Yellow was my favorite color, so naturally, she would throw everything out that was anything but yellow. Soap, coffee cups, rugs, peas, toilet paper, bedspreads – every un-yellow thing had to go in the trash.
She ordered candy bars by the case. She called 800 numbers to see if someone named Ben would answer – because she wanted to talk to a Ben. She fed me cucumbers and chocolate syrup and Coca-Cola for lunch and orange-flavored cough medicine for desert. She kept a picture of Lee Majors hanging on her wall because she thought he looked like Jesus.
There was nothing on God’s earth that could have extinguished her like cancer did. It crept in unnoticed and unannounced and swept her away before she had a chance even to battle it. I held her cross when I got married and clutched her rosary when I was baptized last December, and I think about her when I see yellow in unexpected and unexplained places. She was my hero – cancer her villain.
My uncle – her son – was invincible. He was made out of pure steel – unbreakable and unsinkable. He fought in wars and in bars and was never afraid. He loved his wife madly from the minute they met until the minute he died and he never let her doubt it. There was simply nothing on earth that was strong enough to break him like cancer did. It was fast and violent and painful and we all deal with the guilt of thanking God for ending it when He did.
My grandfather wore his dress uniform to both funerals and saluted his son’s casket when it passed. I remember thinking that I’d never seen him look so handsome. I remember thinking that he looked so tired and so sad. Both times, I prayed that God would hold onto his heart and not loose all the pieces if it shattered. Both times I prayed that God would not make me see him cry. Both times I prayed that this timewould be the last time that cancer stole from my family.
My mother and her twin have both seen the shadow of cancer on their doorstep and they both check and check and recheck to see that it’s really not standing there anymore. We’ve all been told we should check and check as well, and we do.
Today, though, it feels like no matter how vigilant we’ve become, no matter how many motes and canals we dig around our castle, or how many dragons and monsters we chain to our front door – cancer keeps finding a way in. The shadows all over my grandfathers’ lungs is cancer. His heart condition has progressed to the point that a pacemaker is a necessity, but the aggressive nature of the cancer treatment he’ll need will destroy it.
Well played cancer – you fucking win again.
I believed everything she said – every time she spoke, because she was an anomaly to me. She was fascinating and strong and beautiful. She was amazing and scary and strange and comfortable to me. There were days when she would tell me with great clarity of her love affair with my grandfather and days when she couldn’t remember his name.
When I was little and I would visit her, she would transform her entire house into yellow heaven. Yellow was my favorite color, so naturally, she would throw everything out that was anything but yellow. Soap, coffee cups, rugs, peas, toilet paper, bedspreads – every un-yellow thing had to go in the trash.
She ordered candy bars by the case. She called 800 numbers to see if someone named Ben would answer – because she wanted to talk to a Ben. She fed me cucumbers and chocolate syrup and Coca-Cola for lunch and orange-flavored cough medicine for desert. She kept a picture of Lee Majors hanging on her wall because she thought he looked like Jesus.
There was nothing on God’s earth that could have extinguished her like cancer did. It crept in unnoticed and unannounced and swept her away before she had a chance even to battle it. I held her cross when I got married and clutched her rosary when I was baptized last December, and I think about her when I see yellow in unexpected and unexplained places. She was my hero – cancer her villain.
My uncle – her son – was invincible. He was made out of pure steel – unbreakable and unsinkable. He fought in wars and in bars and was never afraid. He loved his wife madly from the minute they met until the minute he died and he never let her doubt it. There was simply nothing on earth that was strong enough to break him like cancer did. It was fast and violent and painful and we all deal with the guilt of thanking God for ending it when He did.
My grandfather wore his dress uniform to both funerals and saluted his son’s casket when it passed. I remember thinking that I’d never seen him look so handsome. I remember thinking that he looked so tired and so sad. Both times, I prayed that God would hold onto his heart and not loose all the pieces if it shattered. Both times I prayed that God would not make me see him cry. Both times I prayed that this timewould be the last time that cancer stole from my family.
My mother and her twin have both seen the shadow of cancer on their doorstep and they both check and check and recheck to see that it’s really not standing there anymore. We’ve all been told we should check and check as well, and we do.
Today, though, it feels like no matter how vigilant we’ve become, no matter how many motes and canals we dig around our castle, or how many dragons and monsters we chain to our front door – cancer keeps finding a way in. The shadows all over my grandfathers’ lungs is cancer. His heart condition has progressed to the point that a pacemaker is a necessity, but the aggressive nature of the cancer treatment he’ll need will destroy it.
Well played cancer – you fucking win again.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Being Better
I have not taken a drink of alcohol in 2 years, 2 weeks and 2 days, as of today.
I have not smoked a cigarette in over a year and a half.
I don’t smoke pot or take pills or even use Nyquil.
I get nervous when my allergies act up because it means I might have to take something stronger than Tylenol and that means I might slur a word. My eyes might droop – my head might nod. I might miss something. And most certainly the scariest thought: I might like it.
I don’t know why a disease that tortures everyone around me never swallowed me whole. I don’t know why I don’t take chances with my sobriety. I don’t know why the same monster that chews on the souls of people I love never bit me as deep as it did them. I don’t know why I refrain from destroying myself. I don’t know why I have the ability to keep my shit together now. I don’t know why it’s no longer hard.
What is hard, though, is staying grateful and thankful that I don’t ache for that escape that I used to build my world around. It’s hard to love the light when people you love live in the dark. It’s hard to hang on to being free when those around you stay caged – hard to celebrate when they suffer.
I don’t know why I don’t know how to share being better, why I can’t give it away. I don’t know why
I can’t love or fight or hate or beat the beast that is this disease out of everything, everywhere, but I can’t.
I don’t know why sometimes I desperately wish I could just want to drink it or drug it away, but I can’t. I don’t even want to anymore.
Sometimes being better just pisses me off.
I have not smoked a cigarette in over a year and a half.
I don’t smoke pot or take pills or even use Nyquil.
I get nervous when my allergies act up because it means I might have to take something stronger than Tylenol and that means I might slur a word. My eyes might droop – my head might nod. I might miss something. And most certainly the scariest thought: I might like it.
I don’t know why a disease that tortures everyone around me never swallowed me whole. I don’t know why I don’t take chances with my sobriety. I don’t know why the same monster that chews on the souls of people I love never bit me as deep as it did them. I don’t know why I refrain from destroying myself. I don’t know why I have the ability to keep my shit together now. I don’t know why it’s no longer hard.
What is hard, though, is staying grateful and thankful that I don’t ache for that escape that I used to build my world around. It’s hard to love the light when people you love live in the dark. It’s hard to hang on to being free when those around you stay caged – hard to celebrate when they suffer.
I don’t know why I don’t know how to share being better, why I can’t give it away. I don’t know why
I can’t love or fight or hate or beat the beast that is this disease out of everything, everywhere, but I can’t.
I don’t know why sometimes I desperately wish I could just want to drink it or drug it away, but I can’t. I don’t even want to anymore.
Sometimes being better just pisses me off.
Monday, July 20, 2009
THE GODDESS IS COMING
In 23 days, The Goddess will be road-tripping from Washington to Texas to come and see me!! I am so grossly excited that I can’t stand myself.
My kids call her their Beenie.
Her kids call me their real dad.
My husband calls her his step-wife.
‘Best Friends’ has never summed up our relationship.
It has been way way too long since we’ve seen each other – but every time I start getting sad that it’s been so so so long, something like this happens on Facebook:
Me: Whatever, Ricky Retardo. Suck it, Mary Tyler Moron.
Her: HOW COME I’M NOT THERE??? SHUT YOUR EFFIN PIEHOLE!
Her: Stop making me laugh. The friggin Feds are here.
Me: WHAT DID YOU DO? Was it something you were trying to send me in the mail?! Was it because of the post office? Are they asking about me? What did they say? What do their faces look like? Are they smirky or like, all serious and straight-faced? Are they the FEDS FEDS or just like ‘the feds’? Do they have sunglasses on? DON’T LOOK AT THE FLASHY THING.
Me: Yesterday your step-husband started going “Whens my step-wife getting here? You’re meeeeeeaaaaaaaaaan.” He said he keeps texting you and you aren’t answering him and I told him it’s because you’re holding your breath till you get here.
Her: WHAT THE EFF DID I JUST SAY???? DO I STUTTER, TITLIP??? SHUT THE EFF UP! THE EFFIN FEDS ARE HERE RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE, TWO FEET AWAY FROM ME.
On the one day that I decided not to wear shoes to work, too.
Friuuuuck.
On the one day that I decided not to wear shoes to work, too.
Friuuuuck.
They walked in when my boss said I needed to go to sensitivity classes and I was yelling,”Sensitivity is for pussies!” That was real nice, too.
Her: I am holding my breath. I need him around because we are witty together and we banter.I like having a bantering step husband. It makes me sound smart.
Me: Ask them if they ever met Will Smith. Or the Jonas Brothers. Tell them you aren’t putting on your pants unless they have a Jonas Brother.
Me: Ask them if they’re scared they are gonna get blown to smithereeeens on the day before they retire.
Me: Ask them if they have any t-shirts that say I’M THE FEDS.
Me: Ask them if they would call you a Redhead Southern Bred Fed Bedder if you DID IT with one of ’em.
Me: Be like, I’D RATHER BE A BED WETTER THAN A FED BEDDER.
Her: Sherri, I swear to God.
Me: OMG I can’t breathe
Me: That’s the funniest email that’s ever – I’m gonna die.
Me: I’m crying – I’m doing the cryface laugh.
Her: I CANT FIND ANYTHING TO STARE AT SO I DONT GET THE HYSTERICALS! YOU KNOW HOW I AM. SHERRI-I SWEAR I AM GOING TO LOSE IT. I FEEL DIZZY
Her: IM BITING THE INSIDE OF MY EFFIN GTODAMAND MOUTH
Me: WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T LOOK AT THEIR WIENERS.
.
.
-and then I don’t feel so bad.
.
.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Her: Well if I’da known you were gonna blog it, I would have been funnier and kinda sexy sounding…like some kind of irresistible side-kick best friend who just hasn’t found that ONE special guy yet…like in the movies, Stupid. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to effin’ blog me, so I coulda sounded cool and sultry and sexy instead of hysterical and blabbering? NOBODY’S EVER GONNA LOVE ME NOW!
Gawd. I can’t believe how you always ruin my life.
Gawd. I can’t believe how you always ruin my life.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Incredible Exploding Family
So, we took Billy to the airport last week to send him off to his father for the yearly summer visit. After fighting with the ex all year over the visitation schedule, decision making authorities and who pays for what, it was a trip we weren’t sure he would be making. In the end, though, our strange lawyer turned out to me a super-hero and kicked some deadbeat-dad-ass; the ex pays for all transportation, cannot drink any alcohol while our son is in his possession, and only gets 30 days in the summer as opposed to the previous 80-90. We got all that we asked for, and (in true douche bag fashion) the ex threw in a “FINE – It’s just not worth it anyway!” at the end like a kid losing at hopscotch and not a man fighting to see his child. Whatever. Ass.
Either way, I still have to send my son on a plane to stay with that ‘man’ for his time and I still have to smile and pretend like I’m glad he’s having a great time playing Mature and Not Yet Rated video games and watching R and NC17 movies – not going to church and hearing his father get laughs all around for calling people ‘fagots’. Although the ass gets a sorry tale to tell about how his ex-wife screwed him (I didn’t) and how he lost everything (he didn’t), it still feels like a slap in the face to send my son to him at all.
We had to send Trevor & Veronica back the day before Billy left so they could spend their month with their mom; loosing all three at the same time feels like having your family explode and scatter all over the globe – needless to say, it makes me feel a bit shell shocked. Bella and Jack are left now, Bella ever-careful of not mentioning how she doesn’t get one of those vacations, and Jack still too little to care. Ironic, since he’s the only one that can truly enjoy never having been named in a divorce or custody battle.
Having kids is hard.
Either way, I still have to send my son on a plane to stay with that ‘man’ for his time and I still have to smile and pretend like I’m glad he’s having a great time playing Mature and Not Yet Rated video games and watching R and NC17 movies – not going to church and hearing his father get laughs all around for calling people ‘fagots’. Although the ass gets a sorry tale to tell about how his ex-wife screwed him (I didn’t) and how he lost everything (he didn’t), it still feels like a slap in the face to send my son to him at all.
We had to send Trevor & Veronica back the day before Billy left so they could spend their month with their mom; loosing all three at the same time feels like having your family explode and scatter all over the globe – needless to say, it makes me feel a bit shell shocked. Bella and Jack are left now, Bella ever-careful of not mentioning how she doesn’t get one of those vacations, and Jack still too little to care. Ironic, since he’s the only one that can truly enjoy never having been named in a divorce or custody battle.
Having kids is hard.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The Stalker Story
He wasn’t really a stalker.
That’s what pops into my head when I say it. Almost simultaneously, my mouth says “the stalker” while my head says “he wasn’t really a stalker” in a snotty, bitchy, almost condescending voice. As if the look on the voice’s face would be snarled and ugly and judging. As if it would have one of those faces that I would never make eye contact with.
I don’t know why I used that label – it just stuck. I don’t know what he was. Even now, years later, I sit here and type, delete, type, delete, type, delete. I try to find another title that encompasses the bottled rage, hatred, ugly, angry mean that he was; there isn’t one.
I hate talking about it. HATE it. It never makes sense – people never understand. I don’t even understand. My memory of it is skewed anyway and the whole thing was so surreal that I usually have to call my best friend and fact-check. I still make phone calls consisting of “did that really happen?” even though I know it all happened but she was there and she was not the one cracking open and having a nervous breakdown.
Every single time me and myself have this conversation about how much I hate talking about this, I say to myself “this is bullshit. Don’t you give him all that power. YOU are in control – if you still can’t talk about it, he is still winning. BUCK UP BABY. THIS IS YOUR SHOW. RAWR!” and then my stomach caves in and my throat closes up and 2,125 miles from where I lived back then, I check the lock on the front door. Stupid (says the bitchvoice).
I’ve told most of it to my husband. All out of order and shaky and disconnected. I waited till none of my stories made sense without the mysterious part I kept leaving out. I think I blurted it all out after a bottle of wine. Then my best friend came and put it all in order and cleaned up the ragged edges and I guess he got all the major events down. He didn’t ask me to elaborate unless something just wouldn’t add up without more details and I left some out that I knew would make him cringe too painfully. I know it is hard for him to hear about me hurting and being afraid – he wants to jump in and rescue me. I know what that feels like, because the whole ordeal sounds like it happened to someone else and when I hear it, I want to jump in and rescue me too.
Recently, Janet showed up. Her nearness and my fear of it conjuring up old ghosts has made me realize that it’s time to get it out.
STALKER – PART 1
Once upon a time there was a girl.
She lived in an apartment with her youngest, who at the time was called her ‘only’ because this was a long, long time ago. She lived in the city and had a cool job. She ate cool food, drank cool liquor and smoked cool cigarettes. She was cool. If you asked her, she would tell you just how cool, too. She and her son went to parks, malls and museums. They went for walks and carousel rides and grocery stores and weren’t afraid of anything. They were both cool.
One day, She got a babysitter and went to a bar. She wanted to take a break from being a mommy and being responsible, so she drank and drank and drank until she began feeling very brave. Soon, she saw a boy. The boy wasn’t just any ordinary boy, either – he was the kind of boy she would never ordinarily talk to. Not because she was scared or shy or afraid – but because he was not her kind of boy. He was a way-too-cool-for-you boy. He wasn’t dressed like any of the other boys here – he was different. His eyes were brooding and he was dark. He had tattoos and spiky hot pink in his hair. He was whiskey while these other boys were wine coolers. He was The Cure while all these other boys were The Beach Boys. He looked like he thought he was dangerous and that pissed the girl off. She wasn’t afraid of any boy – certainly not one with stupid hair. She was way cooler than him; and she planned on making sure he knew that.
The stupid-haired boy would never make eye contact with the girl. Even when he rode his bike by her apartment while she sat on the step with her friends in the summer. Sometimes he would ride right up into the yard and talk with her and her friends without ever looking at her or at any of them. His eyes would always dart – over heads and around corners – he was never really there when he was there and that pissed the girl off. She was way cooler than whatever he was on the lookout for, and she planned on making sure he knew that.
The girl was used to getting what she wanted and when she didn’t, she was used to just wanting something better, and getting that. She didn’t really want the stupid-haired boy to love her – just to want her – so she could tell him no. She was big-headed like that. She wanted to knock that too-cool off his face because back then, it was all just a game, and she wanted to win.
The girl and the stupid-haired boy started hanging out sometimes. Only sometimes, though, because the stupid-haired boy didn’t really like any of the girls’ friends and the girl didn’t really want her son getting all chummy with the stupid-haired boy. Eventually, avoiding the chumminess between her son and the stupid-haired boy took up half of the girls’ time and the stupid-haired boy took up the other half, so she stopped hanging out with her friends. They were getting to be a real pain anyway – they all thought the stupid-haired boy was creepy and weird and had too many secrets.
The girl thought so too, but it wasn’t like it mattered. It wasn’t like he was her boyfriend. He was just a stupid guy and she was bored so it’s not like ‘weird and creepy’ even mattered. She wasn’t planning on keeping him – just keeping him around for a little while. The girl didn’t see any harm in that – and besides – he wasn’t really around all that much anyway. He would disappear sometimes for days at a time and then show up demanding attention from the girl. The girl thought this was part of the silly game and laughed at him and all his needy ways.
The stupid-haired boy had lots and lots of excuses for why he would disappear and they were never normal reasons. His biological mother just showed up in town and he went to spend some time with her because they had never met before. She told him all about how his biological father raped her and he needed some time to deal with that. The woman who owns the building he lives in? Her husband just up and died right out of nowhere, leaving her and her kids all alone – he had to go help her with her kids and fix her car and her pipes and her roof – she’s just like an aunt to him. That young girl that always hangs out at his restaurant? She was homeless but she didn’t want anyone to know. Her parents kicked her out because she’s gay and when she tried to tell them her dad beat up really really bad, and her mom just couldn’t take it, so they kicked her out on the streets. He was off helping her get settled in with a good friend that would take good care of her. She really had no one else in the whole world who cared about her but him and his really good friend. The excuses went on and on and the girl believed all of them, because why would he lie? It’s not like they were serious – its not like it mattered.
Eventually, the girl’s lease was up. Luckily, the stupid-haired boy had began managing the building that he lived in because the poor woman who owns it just couldn’t function anymore since her husband just up and died. The stupid-haired boy would give the girl a good deal; no damage deposit and low rent – available after just a few repairs (that the girl would happily take care of). The apartment was small – tiny really – but her son could have the bedroom and the living room would double as her bedroom. It was perfect – the girl jumped on it. She loaded all her belongings into the basement (she still had to paint the unfinished wood floors) and shrugged off her old apartment and the big shiny locks on its doors. Her new apartment didn’t have locks yet but as soon as the stupid-haired boy installed them, she was sure it would start feeling safe and secure and just like a home.
STALKER – PART 2
The girl starting seeing more and more of the stupid-haired boy; he lived next door to her now and his restaurant was just across the street from her office. Conveniently, her son was in a daycare in the very same building as the stupid-haired boys’ restaurant, so seeing him ‘on accident’ easy.
The girl and the stupid-haired boy started to act like a boyfriend and girlfriend – but only in private – because the stupid-haired boy needed to be seen as professional in the community whereas the girl had no self-respect. At least, that’s what the stupid-haired boy told her. It was embarrassing the way she wanted to visit his restaurant on her lunch hour and drop by his apartment unannounced. She was starting to get needy.
The stupid-haired boy couldn’t handle needy women. He told the girl all about how he was raised with no touching, no holding, no loving, and how that’s how he needed it to be still. He told her about how he was abandoned by his biological mother and given up for adoption, only to be taken in by a cold, abusive and evil woman whom he ran far, far away from, as soon as he was old enough to run. He said the girl should stop acting so needy, because she might scare him off, like the cold, abusive and evil woman did.
Eventually, the stupid-haired boy told the girl that he should probably just bring her lunch in her office from now on. He knew how embarrassed she must have been to have appeared so needy in front of his friends in his restaurant and he wanted to spare her that shame. The girl thought this was silly, because she had never met any of the stupid-haired boys’ friends and didn’t feel embarrassed at all. She would play along, though, because asking for clarification from him had become exhausting and it always made his eyes dart faster and that had become unnerving to the girl.
The stupid-haired boys’ eyes had started to dart faster and faster every day.
He never showed up when he said he would and when he finally did, he was just off. Just, wrong. Sometimes he would show up and the girl would feel like he was someone else, just wearing the stupid-haired boys’ skin. He would move and talk and even fight different. He would start talking about things that the girl didn’t know about – as if he had forgotten that some subjects were still secret or like he had mistaken her for someone else. He would say “and about him, that man? He said no.” and if the girl appeared puzzled, the stupid-haired boy got angry, and angry on the stupid-haired boy looked like no other angry the girl had ever met.
He didn’t yell and he didn’t hit. He didn’t stomp or ball his fists or grunt under his breath. When the stupid-haired boy got angry he imploded. He folded in on himself and collapsed. He absorbed all the air in the room and turned the girls lungs inside out. He melted. And then he disappeared.
He would show back up two, sometimes three or four days later as if nothing happened, and as if he had never been gone. He would show back up as the original stupid-haired boy, in his own skin and the girl learned very quickly that his disappearances should simply be accepted and not questioned, so as not to cause another of these episodes. The girl got very very good at avoiding the stupid-haired boys’ anger because she thought that his particular kind of anger was much scarier and more dangerous than the boys in her past who actually threw fists.
Sometimes, the girl thought the stupid-haired boy had learned how to read her mind. The girl knew this was silly, but she couldn’t think of any other way he could know so much. One day, she was on the phone in her tiny apartment discussing the stupid-haired boy and her frustration with his disappearing ways. She told her friend “I deserve better than that. I deserve to be treated like a fucking princess, not a fucking afterthought!” and suddenly, the stupid-haired boy called to say he needed to talk, now.
He came over to tell her that he was so sorry. He had been thinking about her and how he had been treating her, and he saw, now, that she deserved better. “you should be treated like a princess” he said, “not an afterthought”. The girl was astonished. He was like magic.
Once he even burst through her lockless door with a hot cup of coffee and a fresh bagel, just ten minutes after she’d ended an email to her friend with a note about how nice a hot cup of coffee and a fresh bagel would be. It was like he could hear and see everything she was saying and doing in her tiny apartment.
But that was silly.
STALKER – PART 3
The girl started to pay more attention to the stupid-haired boys’ stories.
She had noticed that things weren’t adding up and some of his stories ran right into others. The cold, abusive and evil woman who once needed running away from would show up in other stories with apple pie and needlepoint, nurturing and loving; someone he needed to spend time with in what could prove to be her last days. The poor building owner whose husband had up and died showed up in other stories needing respite from an abusive husband; someone in need of the stupid-haired boy and his expertise in hiding away for days at a time. The homeless girl who’d been rejected by her family and strewn out onto the streets for their intolerance of her homosexuality showed up pregnant in another story; her boyfriend of years simply deserted her when she refused to have an abortion.
The girl started to suspect that the stupid-haired boy was simply a liar and that she should just be finished with him. She would tell him that his stories didn’t make sense and he was exhausting her. She would tell him that she needed more than he was giving her. She would say all the words she needed to say and he would listen, too, because she deserved that. But the stupid-haired boy didn’t hear her because he wouldn’t hear her so the girl called her friend and told her instead.
The girl told her friend all the stories and all the reasons that they didn’t make sense. She told her friend all about how the stupid-haired boy wouldn’t go places with her but would show up at those places and watch her from far away, because sometimes men will victimize women when they see them out alone and he needed to protect her from those men. She told her friend about how he would confuse her when she would confront him about things and how he would disappear when she upset him and how she couldn’t even pin him down long enough to tell him that these things didn’t sound so logical when she retold them. She did not tell her friend that she thought that he was listening to her conversations from somewhere because that made her feel like a crazy person.
He was listening. She was sure. And she knew that if he was listening to this conversation, he would show up any minute, and he did. The stupid-haired boy roared into her tiny apartment with that anger that took up the air in the room and turned it into fire. This anger terrified the girl and made her whole body go numb and then burn. She apologized and cried and pleaded with him to forgive her but he would not speak. The stupid-haired boy tore through the plastic on the box he carried in and with hands shaking, installed a lock on her previously lockless door.The girl pleaded for him to sit down and talk with her about this – she was sure there was an explanation for everything – she promised to believe him. He wouldn’t, and this pissed the girl off. “You didn’t even give me the fucking key!!” was all she could think of to scream at the back of his head when he walked out.
The girl was beside herself. She was elated with the proof that she was right, he was listening. She was enraged at the nerve of his dramatic entrance and exit, embarrassed at her reaction to his anger. The girl locked her new lock to keep him out, smirking at herself for pretending that he would even come back, and went to bed – she would fix this in the morning.
But sleeping didn’t bring peace and morning certainly didn’t bring fixing. Exhausted from tossing and turning all night but finally dressed and make-up’ed and presentable, she heaved her sleeping son on her shoulder and turned to walk out her front door. ‘Asshole’ she thought when she looked at the new lock. She turned it and pulled the knob, turned and pulled again when it wouldn’t open. Turned and pulled and turned and pulled and got more and more upset that the stupid-haired boy obviously installed the lock wrong. Clearly. On accident, certainly. She put down her son and pulled and pushed the door and turned and turned the lock but nothing moved and she began to realize that this was not a locked door – it had no give, no rattle. This was a rock hard, solid as concrete blocked door. This was a you locked me out so I locked you in door.
The girl, fingers bleeding and with sheer irrational panic threatening to swallow her, went to the only window in her tiny apartment, the only logical way to out because out was all she could think about, because out had to happen first before run and she really wanted to run, and there was the stupid-haired boy. And he was laughing. And in that slow-motion second, she thought “why have I never seen him laugh before?” and then “what is so fucking funny?” and then “I don’t know how to get out of this”.
And that was when the girl first started to unravel.
STALKER – PART 4
One day, the girl was walking on the street, slipping through the city being invisible, as she had become accustom to, when the first other one erupted from the crowd and announced herself.
‘J’ said she was happy to meet the girl and curious about her and wanted to know just who she was.
The girl was just a girl and she told J that, but J knew the girl was more than just a girl; she knew that the girl was of some interest to the stupid-haired boy, and she wanted to know why.
The girl was intrigued. She had not met anyone from the stupid-haired boys’ world, and J was nothing that she would have expected. She looked like sunshine – there was no way she would even visit the stupid-haired boys’ darkness.
Eventually, the girl learned that the stupid-haired boy had many, many different worlds, and many many different visitors. She learned that there were lots and lots of other ones, and that they all met the stupid-haired boy in their other worlds. He was different ages, went by different names, took different drugs. He was from different states, different families, different addresses. He smoked different cigarettes. Drank different alcohol. In every one of the stupid-haired boys’ worlds, he was someone else completely.
And the world that the girl was caught in had taken a turn for the very bad. She had gotten a call from another one. This other one was hateful and mean and wanted to believe that the girl made this all up. She demanded answers from the girl and the girl just answered her. Told this other one that she wasn’t the only other one and that she hoped this hateful other one stayed safe, and out of the stupid-haired boys’ way. She begged the hateful other one to stay safe and away. The hateful other one hung up.
The girl thought that part was over but the hateful other one called back, afraid and crying. The stupid-haired boy had shown up with bloody hands and shaky. Eyes darting and jumping with a story of having been mugged in the city, behind his restaurant, on his way to her. The hateful other one would have believed him except, she said, that he seemed so excited. He wasn’t a boy fresh from a mugging – he was a boy fresh from the carnival. He was giddy, and the hateful other one told him to leave, and he left. The hateful other one wanted to hear everything, again, and she would listen this time, and so the girl told her.
The girl didn’t sleep.
Before the sun came up, the girls mother called. The girls’ brother was in the hospital, broken.
Broken jaw, broken hands. Someone broke him in the city the night before right by your office her mother said. Behind that restaurant she said. Someone broke him into pieces and took all the money he was carrying and left him there bleeding. Her brother couldn’t remember the attack, couldn’t speak, but the girl knew who broke him, and she shattered into a million shards of dirty, guilty glass.
She called the hateful other one, but she was already gone, lost in his world where she could no longer hear the girl.
The stupid-haired boy had come back with a ring that he saved and saved and saved for. She was going to have picket fence and stupid-haired babies and the girl should shut up and let her. The girl made sure that the hateful other one knew that she was wearing her broken brothers’ blood on her finger.
The girl stayed in a heightened state of speeding awareness; she felt responsible for everything, everywhere.
There was a new other one that worked at the daycare. The stupid-haired boy tried one day to take the girls’ son and‘go for a walk’. This new other one had stopped him because he wasn’t on a list and she wasn’t convinced he was someone that should take a child. The girl thanked God Himself that this other one was there, then, but this new other one was now caught up in one of the stupid-haired boys’ worlds. Now she was enamored with him and his elusive ways and the girl wasn’t convinced that she would save her son again. She was convinced, though, that this new other one was going to get hurt, and that no one but the girl would be to blame.
Every event seemed to be happening as a direct result of the girls’ actions and she stopped being able to differentiate between the things she was worried might happen and the things that had happened.
Everything that hadn’t happened just hadn’t happened yet. She thought if she could keep watching him, watching her, he couldn’t hurt anyone else. She had decided that it would be better if he just hurt her, if he must hurt someone, so she just kept waiting for it to happen.
The stupid-haired boy was everywhere, all the time. The girl had started to simply live as if she were on display, because whenever she couldn’t lay her eyes on him, it was because he was just watching from up or behind or under. Sometimes it felt like he watched her with other peoples eyes in other peoples’ heads. He still simply seemed to know too much for someone that hadn’t spoken directly to her since he unblocked her door and uncaged her, since he made it unmistakably clear that he was the keeper and she was the kept. It was hard to believe that all this crazy had happened in just under a month.
And when it had been a month, the girl started sinking.
“I don’t know how to get out of this” stamped itself on the girl like a badge. It labeled her and attached itself to who she was. It was her silent and private cry for help.
Please help me get out of this reverberated in her head and threatened to seep out of her mouth when she had conversations – so she stopped having them. It screamed at her when the phone rang – maybe that’s how to get out of this – but it never was, so she stopped answering the phone. She stopped going to work and to the store. She didn’t dare dream of museums or riding carousels in the park with her son. She couldn’t leave her tiny apartment because out there caused time to move forward too fast and days to add up.
She waited and waited and waited to buy a test. Maybe it was stress. Maybe she’d lost count. Maybe it was because she wasn’t eating. Maybe she was drinking too much. Maybe she was dying. Maybe a hundred things. Anything but this thing.
STALKER – PART 5
There was no other thing.
The ‘this thing’ that the girl has most afraid of was true: she was pregnant. Not sick or dying: pregnant. Not going to be okay and not getting out of this. She simply couldn’t figure out how this would end or why she wasn’t dying or what was supposed to come of this and she simply came apart.
The Best Friend tried so hard to hold her together, but there was no glue left in the girl, so The Best Friend just started picking up her pieces, saving them in case someday the girl might ask for them back.
The girl took herself to a doctor and tried to pretend it was a quick fix. She tried to never think about it again. She tried to never remember the day that she’d told The Best Friend she felt pregnant with evil and feared that she always, always would be. The girl swallowed the awful, dirty secret and chased it with whiskey and wine and booze of all colors until the taste of it seemed more like an illusion then a real-life memory. It took years for the girl to realized that the aftertaste would never fade, and she would have to spit it back out.
The girl decided to go from being in danger to being dangerous. She stopped hiding behind shadows and started jumping into them, daring the stupid-haired boy to just end this. She walked all over the city and all over the stupid-haired boys’ worlds. She walked all around the other ones’ homes and offices and cars. She wanted them to see how many pieces she had torn into. She thought eventually, they would tell the stupid-haired boy and he would finally entomb her in that furious anger that she had been so frightened of. She couldn’t hide from his anger anymore; she craved it and couldn’t think of any better reprieve from the chaos her life had burst into. She thought “you started this” over and over and “the least you could do is finish it with the evil and hate you started it with” and “you win. I give up. you win.” but he didn’t come and he never claimed any victory.
The girl started seeing the looks on the other ones’ faces, one by one, as they started to worry about her. She thought, “they see this, what he’s done, and they will save themselves from him, surely” but she eventually learned that they wouldn’t. The stupid-haired boy had simply woven the girl into his stories, killing her off over and over, whenever he needed her to suffer.
He’d painted himself as a hero willing to rescue her, told them that he’d tried and tried to help her, but she was a junky and loved her fix more than her child. Told them that she eventually lost her son and overdosed alone.
He’d told them that she’d lost her house trying to pay off medical bills after being diagnosed with cancer. That without a home, she lost her job, and then her insurance. Told them that she’d finally given up the fight out on the street with her son – who knew where that kid ended up.
And then he told them that she was his stalker – that he was afraid of what she would do and say to ruin him. Told them that he’d rejected her, like a gentleman, but she couldn’t accept it. Told them that if they heard stories that she’d been threatened or hurt or had even been pregnant, it was simply a ploy to ruin him.
The looks on the other ones faces was of worry, and they were afraid. They did want to save themselves, but not from the stupid-haired boy; he’d made them afraid of the girl.
The girl had answered her door to see thugs that he’d sent to hurt her, awoke to him hovering over and staring at her, entered her tiny apartment to find things dead and rotting, feared for the lives of her son, her family, herself – and they were afraid of her.
The girl had walked through a line of raging protesters, pictures in hands of babies in pieces, spitting “sinner” at her, pushing and pulling and begging her not to ‘take the easy way out of this’ to get to a room where ‘easy’ has never been uttered and ‘out of this’ has never been achieved, because she didn’t know how else to save herself while the other ones acted as if they needed to save themselves from her.
And then when they would get scared and suspicious, they would find the girl and demand that she retell them, again, what she’d begged them to hear all along. If she did, they didn’t believe her. If she shared her pain, they still looked sideways at her. In the end, the ugly other ones always put themselves back in his danger. In a pinch, they could always draw on being better than the girl and look down their noses; after all, they would have never ‘taken the easy way out’. Sharing her pain with them was not helpful, it was horrible. They rubbed salt in her wounds and smirked at her agony, every chance they could.
The girl was sickened and sad and flattened. She ran in the middle of the night with her son and as much as she could take, and left everything else behind. She found a house where the stupid-haired boy and his other ones wouldn’t find her and tried to start being normal.
She brought herself to another doctor when she feared that her mind was irreparably broken and wouldn’t fit back together. He called it a nervous breakdown and PTSD and patched her up with pills and told her to mourn her loss and be finished, because what was done was done. He was wrong.
The girl mourned and mourned and then eventually started to heal. The Best Friend did save all of her pieces and still gives them back, one by one, when the girl asks for them, but she still can only ask for one at a time.
The girl wishes she could end this story with lightning and fire crackers. She wishes she could say that the stupid-haired boy learned his lesson, got his payback, payed his dues – but she can’t, because as far as she knows, he didn’t.
There have been times over the years that she thought she might just find him and pay him back, teach him the lesson, charge him the dues. In the end, though, she won’t. She knows that nothing the stupid-haired boy ever did to her was as painful as what she did to herself for years and years after.
Pretty soon, the stupid-haired boy was no longer even part of the girls’ story. He doesn’t even get a real name in her story.
In the end, the girl was ok. She is ok. And she learned that telling her story, her way, would be her way of getting out of it. Her way of winning. Her way of healing.
The End.
That’s what pops into my head when I say it. Almost simultaneously, my mouth says “the stalker” while my head says “he wasn’t really a stalker” in a snotty, bitchy, almost condescending voice. As if the look on the voice’s face would be snarled and ugly and judging. As if it would have one of those faces that I would never make eye contact with.
I don’t know why I used that label – it just stuck. I don’t know what he was. Even now, years later, I sit here and type, delete, type, delete, type, delete. I try to find another title that encompasses the bottled rage, hatred, ugly, angry mean that he was; there isn’t one.
I hate talking about it. HATE it. It never makes sense – people never understand. I don’t even understand. My memory of it is skewed anyway and the whole thing was so surreal that I usually have to call my best friend and fact-check. I still make phone calls consisting of “did that really happen?” even though I know it all happened but she was there and she was not the one cracking open and having a nervous breakdown.
Every single time me and myself have this conversation about how much I hate talking about this, I say to myself “this is bullshit. Don’t you give him all that power. YOU are in control – if you still can’t talk about it, he is still winning. BUCK UP BABY. THIS IS YOUR SHOW. RAWR!” and then my stomach caves in and my throat closes up and 2,125 miles from where I lived back then, I check the lock on the front door. Stupid (says the bitchvoice).
I’ve told most of it to my husband. All out of order and shaky and disconnected. I waited till none of my stories made sense without the mysterious part I kept leaving out. I think I blurted it all out after a bottle of wine. Then my best friend came and put it all in order and cleaned up the ragged edges and I guess he got all the major events down. He didn’t ask me to elaborate unless something just wouldn’t add up without more details and I left some out that I knew would make him cringe too painfully. I know it is hard for him to hear about me hurting and being afraid – he wants to jump in and rescue me. I know what that feels like, because the whole ordeal sounds like it happened to someone else and when I hear it, I want to jump in and rescue me too.
Recently, Janet showed up. Her nearness and my fear of it conjuring up old ghosts has made me realize that it’s time to get it out.
STALKER – PART 1
Once upon a time there was a girl.
She lived in an apartment with her youngest, who at the time was called her ‘only’ because this was a long, long time ago. She lived in the city and had a cool job. She ate cool food, drank cool liquor and smoked cool cigarettes. She was cool. If you asked her, she would tell you just how cool, too. She and her son went to parks, malls and museums. They went for walks and carousel rides and grocery stores and weren’t afraid of anything. They were both cool.
One day, She got a babysitter and went to a bar. She wanted to take a break from being a mommy and being responsible, so she drank and drank and drank until she began feeling very brave. Soon, she saw a boy. The boy wasn’t just any ordinary boy, either – he was the kind of boy she would never ordinarily talk to. Not because she was scared or shy or afraid – but because he was not her kind of boy. He was a way-too-cool-for-you boy. He wasn’t dressed like any of the other boys here – he was different. His eyes were brooding and he was dark. He had tattoos and spiky hot pink in his hair. He was whiskey while these other boys were wine coolers. He was The Cure while all these other boys were The Beach Boys. He looked like he thought he was dangerous and that pissed the girl off. She wasn’t afraid of any boy – certainly not one with stupid hair. She was way cooler than him; and she planned on making sure he knew that.
The stupid-haired boy would never make eye contact with the girl. Even when he rode his bike by her apartment while she sat on the step with her friends in the summer. Sometimes he would ride right up into the yard and talk with her and her friends without ever looking at her or at any of them. His eyes would always dart – over heads and around corners – he was never really there when he was there and that pissed the girl off. She was way cooler than whatever he was on the lookout for, and she planned on making sure he knew that.
The girl was used to getting what she wanted and when she didn’t, she was used to just wanting something better, and getting that. She didn’t really want the stupid-haired boy to love her – just to want her – so she could tell him no. She was big-headed like that. She wanted to knock that too-cool off his face because back then, it was all just a game, and she wanted to win.
The girl and the stupid-haired boy started hanging out sometimes. Only sometimes, though, because the stupid-haired boy didn’t really like any of the girls’ friends and the girl didn’t really want her son getting all chummy with the stupid-haired boy. Eventually, avoiding the chumminess between her son and the stupid-haired boy took up half of the girls’ time and the stupid-haired boy took up the other half, so she stopped hanging out with her friends. They were getting to be a real pain anyway – they all thought the stupid-haired boy was creepy and weird and had too many secrets.
The girl thought so too, but it wasn’t like it mattered. It wasn’t like he was her boyfriend. He was just a stupid guy and she was bored so it’s not like ‘weird and creepy’ even mattered. She wasn’t planning on keeping him – just keeping him around for a little while. The girl didn’t see any harm in that – and besides – he wasn’t really around all that much anyway. He would disappear sometimes for days at a time and then show up demanding attention from the girl. The girl thought this was part of the silly game and laughed at him and all his needy ways.
The stupid-haired boy had lots and lots of excuses for why he would disappear and they were never normal reasons. His biological mother just showed up in town and he went to spend some time with her because they had never met before. She told him all about how his biological father raped her and he needed some time to deal with that. The woman who owns the building he lives in? Her husband just up and died right out of nowhere, leaving her and her kids all alone – he had to go help her with her kids and fix her car and her pipes and her roof – she’s just like an aunt to him. That young girl that always hangs out at his restaurant? She was homeless but she didn’t want anyone to know. Her parents kicked her out because she’s gay and when she tried to tell them her dad beat up really really bad, and her mom just couldn’t take it, so they kicked her out on the streets. He was off helping her get settled in with a good friend that would take good care of her. She really had no one else in the whole world who cared about her but him and his really good friend. The excuses went on and on and the girl believed all of them, because why would he lie? It’s not like they were serious – its not like it mattered.
Eventually, the girl’s lease was up. Luckily, the stupid-haired boy had began managing the building that he lived in because the poor woman who owns it just couldn’t function anymore since her husband just up and died. The stupid-haired boy would give the girl a good deal; no damage deposit and low rent – available after just a few repairs (that the girl would happily take care of). The apartment was small – tiny really – but her son could have the bedroom and the living room would double as her bedroom. It was perfect – the girl jumped on it. She loaded all her belongings into the basement (she still had to paint the unfinished wood floors) and shrugged off her old apartment and the big shiny locks on its doors. Her new apartment didn’t have locks yet but as soon as the stupid-haired boy installed them, she was sure it would start feeling safe and secure and just like a home.
STALKER – PART 2
The girl starting seeing more and more of the stupid-haired boy; he lived next door to her now and his restaurant was just across the street from her office. Conveniently, her son was in a daycare in the very same building as the stupid-haired boys’ restaurant, so seeing him ‘on accident’ easy.
The girl and the stupid-haired boy started to act like a boyfriend and girlfriend – but only in private – because the stupid-haired boy needed to be seen as professional in the community whereas the girl had no self-respect. At least, that’s what the stupid-haired boy told her. It was embarrassing the way she wanted to visit his restaurant on her lunch hour and drop by his apartment unannounced. She was starting to get needy.
The stupid-haired boy couldn’t handle needy women. He told the girl all about how he was raised with no touching, no holding, no loving, and how that’s how he needed it to be still. He told her about how he was abandoned by his biological mother and given up for adoption, only to be taken in by a cold, abusive and evil woman whom he ran far, far away from, as soon as he was old enough to run. He said the girl should stop acting so needy, because she might scare him off, like the cold, abusive and evil woman did.
Eventually, the stupid-haired boy told the girl that he should probably just bring her lunch in her office from now on. He knew how embarrassed she must have been to have appeared so needy in front of his friends in his restaurant and he wanted to spare her that shame. The girl thought this was silly, because she had never met any of the stupid-haired boys’ friends and didn’t feel embarrassed at all. She would play along, though, because asking for clarification from him had become exhausting and it always made his eyes dart faster and that had become unnerving to the girl.
The stupid-haired boys’ eyes had started to dart faster and faster every day.
He never showed up when he said he would and when he finally did, he was just off. Just, wrong. Sometimes he would show up and the girl would feel like he was someone else, just wearing the stupid-haired boys’ skin. He would move and talk and even fight different. He would start talking about things that the girl didn’t know about – as if he had forgotten that some subjects were still secret or like he had mistaken her for someone else. He would say “and about him, that man? He said no.” and if the girl appeared puzzled, the stupid-haired boy got angry, and angry on the stupid-haired boy looked like no other angry the girl had ever met.
He didn’t yell and he didn’t hit. He didn’t stomp or ball his fists or grunt under his breath. When the stupid-haired boy got angry he imploded. He folded in on himself and collapsed. He absorbed all the air in the room and turned the girls lungs inside out. He melted. And then he disappeared.
He would show back up two, sometimes three or four days later as if nothing happened, and as if he had never been gone. He would show back up as the original stupid-haired boy, in his own skin and the girl learned very quickly that his disappearances should simply be accepted and not questioned, so as not to cause another of these episodes. The girl got very very good at avoiding the stupid-haired boys’ anger because she thought that his particular kind of anger was much scarier and more dangerous than the boys in her past who actually threw fists.
Sometimes, the girl thought the stupid-haired boy had learned how to read her mind. The girl knew this was silly, but she couldn’t think of any other way he could know so much. One day, she was on the phone in her tiny apartment discussing the stupid-haired boy and her frustration with his disappearing ways. She told her friend “I deserve better than that. I deserve to be treated like a fucking princess, not a fucking afterthought!” and suddenly, the stupid-haired boy called to say he needed to talk, now.
He came over to tell her that he was so sorry. He had been thinking about her and how he had been treating her, and he saw, now, that she deserved better. “you should be treated like a princess” he said, “not an afterthought”. The girl was astonished. He was like magic.
Once he even burst through her lockless door with a hot cup of coffee and a fresh bagel, just ten minutes after she’d ended an email to her friend with a note about how nice a hot cup of coffee and a fresh bagel would be. It was like he could hear and see everything she was saying and doing in her tiny apartment.
But that was silly.
STALKER – PART 3
The girl started to pay more attention to the stupid-haired boys’ stories.
She had noticed that things weren’t adding up and some of his stories ran right into others. The cold, abusive and evil woman who once needed running away from would show up in other stories with apple pie and needlepoint, nurturing and loving; someone he needed to spend time with in what could prove to be her last days. The poor building owner whose husband had up and died showed up in other stories needing respite from an abusive husband; someone in need of the stupid-haired boy and his expertise in hiding away for days at a time. The homeless girl who’d been rejected by her family and strewn out onto the streets for their intolerance of her homosexuality showed up pregnant in another story; her boyfriend of years simply deserted her when she refused to have an abortion.
The girl started to suspect that the stupid-haired boy was simply a liar and that she should just be finished with him. She would tell him that his stories didn’t make sense and he was exhausting her. She would tell him that she needed more than he was giving her. She would say all the words she needed to say and he would listen, too, because she deserved that. But the stupid-haired boy didn’t hear her because he wouldn’t hear her so the girl called her friend and told her instead.
The girl told her friend all the stories and all the reasons that they didn’t make sense. She told her friend all about how the stupid-haired boy wouldn’t go places with her but would show up at those places and watch her from far away, because sometimes men will victimize women when they see them out alone and he needed to protect her from those men. She told her friend about how he would confuse her when she would confront him about things and how he would disappear when she upset him and how she couldn’t even pin him down long enough to tell him that these things didn’t sound so logical when she retold them. She did not tell her friend that she thought that he was listening to her conversations from somewhere because that made her feel like a crazy person.
He was listening. She was sure. And she knew that if he was listening to this conversation, he would show up any minute, and he did. The stupid-haired boy roared into her tiny apartment with that anger that took up the air in the room and turned it into fire. This anger terrified the girl and made her whole body go numb and then burn. She apologized and cried and pleaded with him to forgive her but he would not speak. The stupid-haired boy tore through the plastic on the box he carried in and with hands shaking, installed a lock on her previously lockless door.The girl pleaded for him to sit down and talk with her about this – she was sure there was an explanation for everything – she promised to believe him. He wouldn’t, and this pissed the girl off. “You didn’t even give me the fucking key!!” was all she could think of to scream at the back of his head when he walked out.
The girl was beside herself. She was elated with the proof that she was right, he was listening. She was enraged at the nerve of his dramatic entrance and exit, embarrassed at her reaction to his anger. The girl locked her new lock to keep him out, smirking at herself for pretending that he would even come back, and went to bed – she would fix this in the morning.
But sleeping didn’t bring peace and morning certainly didn’t bring fixing. Exhausted from tossing and turning all night but finally dressed and make-up’ed and presentable, she heaved her sleeping son on her shoulder and turned to walk out her front door. ‘Asshole’ she thought when she looked at the new lock. She turned it and pulled the knob, turned and pulled again when it wouldn’t open. Turned and pulled and turned and pulled and got more and more upset that the stupid-haired boy obviously installed the lock wrong. Clearly. On accident, certainly. She put down her son and pulled and pushed the door and turned and turned the lock but nothing moved and she began to realize that this was not a locked door – it had no give, no rattle. This was a rock hard, solid as concrete blocked door. This was a you locked me out so I locked you in door.
The girl, fingers bleeding and with sheer irrational panic threatening to swallow her, went to the only window in her tiny apartment, the only logical way to out because out was all she could think about, because out had to happen first before run and she really wanted to run, and there was the stupid-haired boy. And he was laughing. And in that slow-motion second, she thought “why have I never seen him laugh before?” and then “what is so fucking funny?” and then “I don’t know how to get out of this”.
And that was when the girl first started to unravel.
STALKER – PART 4
One day, the girl was walking on the street, slipping through the city being invisible, as she had become accustom to, when the first other one erupted from the crowd and announced herself.
‘J’ said she was happy to meet the girl and curious about her and wanted to know just who she was.
The girl was just a girl and she told J that, but J knew the girl was more than just a girl; she knew that the girl was of some interest to the stupid-haired boy, and she wanted to know why.
The girl was intrigued. She had not met anyone from the stupid-haired boys’ world, and J was nothing that she would have expected. She looked like sunshine – there was no way she would even visit the stupid-haired boys’ darkness.
Eventually, the girl learned that the stupid-haired boy had many, many different worlds, and many many different visitors. She learned that there were lots and lots of other ones, and that they all met the stupid-haired boy in their other worlds. He was different ages, went by different names, took different drugs. He was from different states, different families, different addresses. He smoked different cigarettes. Drank different alcohol. In every one of the stupid-haired boys’ worlds, he was someone else completely.
And the world that the girl was caught in had taken a turn for the very bad. She had gotten a call from another one. This other one was hateful and mean and wanted to believe that the girl made this all up. She demanded answers from the girl and the girl just answered her. Told this other one that she wasn’t the only other one and that she hoped this hateful other one stayed safe, and out of the stupid-haired boys’ way. She begged the hateful other one to stay safe and away. The hateful other one hung up.
The girl thought that part was over but the hateful other one called back, afraid and crying. The stupid-haired boy had shown up with bloody hands and shaky. Eyes darting and jumping with a story of having been mugged in the city, behind his restaurant, on his way to her. The hateful other one would have believed him except, she said, that he seemed so excited. He wasn’t a boy fresh from a mugging – he was a boy fresh from the carnival. He was giddy, and the hateful other one told him to leave, and he left. The hateful other one wanted to hear everything, again, and she would listen this time, and so the girl told her.
The girl didn’t sleep.
Before the sun came up, the girls mother called. The girls’ brother was in the hospital, broken.
Broken jaw, broken hands. Someone broke him in the city the night before right by your office her mother said. Behind that restaurant she said. Someone broke him into pieces and took all the money he was carrying and left him there bleeding. Her brother couldn’t remember the attack, couldn’t speak, but the girl knew who broke him, and she shattered into a million shards of dirty, guilty glass.
She called the hateful other one, but she was already gone, lost in his world where she could no longer hear the girl.
The stupid-haired boy had come back with a ring that he saved and saved and saved for. She was going to have picket fence and stupid-haired babies and the girl should shut up and let her. The girl made sure that the hateful other one knew that she was wearing her broken brothers’ blood on her finger.
The girl stayed in a heightened state of speeding awareness; she felt responsible for everything, everywhere.
There was a new other one that worked at the daycare. The stupid-haired boy tried one day to take the girls’ son and‘go for a walk’. This new other one had stopped him because he wasn’t on a list and she wasn’t convinced he was someone that should take a child. The girl thanked God Himself that this other one was there, then, but this new other one was now caught up in one of the stupid-haired boys’ worlds. Now she was enamored with him and his elusive ways and the girl wasn’t convinced that she would save her son again. She was convinced, though, that this new other one was going to get hurt, and that no one but the girl would be to blame.
Every event seemed to be happening as a direct result of the girls’ actions and she stopped being able to differentiate between the things she was worried might happen and the things that had happened.
Everything that hadn’t happened just hadn’t happened yet. She thought if she could keep watching him, watching her, he couldn’t hurt anyone else. She had decided that it would be better if he just hurt her, if he must hurt someone, so she just kept waiting for it to happen.
The stupid-haired boy was everywhere, all the time. The girl had started to simply live as if she were on display, because whenever she couldn’t lay her eyes on him, it was because he was just watching from up or behind or under. Sometimes it felt like he watched her with other peoples eyes in other peoples’ heads. He still simply seemed to know too much for someone that hadn’t spoken directly to her since he unblocked her door and uncaged her, since he made it unmistakably clear that he was the keeper and she was the kept. It was hard to believe that all this crazy had happened in just under a month.
And when it had been a month, the girl started sinking.
“I don’t know how to get out of this” stamped itself on the girl like a badge. It labeled her and attached itself to who she was. It was her silent and private cry for help.
Please help me get out of this reverberated in her head and threatened to seep out of her mouth when she had conversations – so she stopped having them. It screamed at her when the phone rang – maybe that’s how to get out of this – but it never was, so she stopped answering the phone. She stopped going to work and to the store. She didn’t dare dream of museums or riding carousels in the park with her son. She couldn’t leave her tiny apartment because out there caused time to move forward too fast and days to add up.
She waited and waited and waited to buy a test. Maybe it was stress. Maybe she’d lost count. Maybe it was because she wasn’t eating. Maybe she was drinking too much. Maybe she was dying. Maybe a hundred things. Anything but this thing.
STALKER – PART 5
There was no other thing.
The ‘this thing’ that the girl has most afraid of was true: she was pregnant. Not sick or dying: pregnant. Not going to be okay and not getting out of this. She simply couldn’t figure out how this would end or why she wasn’t dying or what was supposed to come of this and she simply came apart.
The Best Friend tried so hard to hold her together, but there was no glue left in the girl, so The Best Friend just started picking up her pieces, saving them in case someday the girl might ask for them back.
The girl took herself to a doctor and tried to pretend it was a quick fix. She tried to never think about it again. She tried to never remember the day that she’d told The Best Friend she felt pregnant with evil and feared that she always, always would be. The girl swallowed the awful, dirty secret and chased it with whiskey and wine and booze of all colors until the taste of it seemed more like an illusion then a real-life memory. It took years for the girl to realized that the aftertaste would never fade, and she would have to spit it back out.
The girl decided to go from being in danger to being dangerous. She stopped hiding behind shadows and started jumping into them, daring the stupid-haired boy to just end this. She walked all over the city and all over the stupid-haired boys’ worlds. She walked all around the other ones’ homes and offices and cars. She wanted them to see how many pieces she had torn into. She thought eventually, they would tell the stupid-haired boy and he would finally entomb her in that furious anger that she had been so frightened of. She couldn’t hide from his anger anymore; she craved it and couldn’t think of any better reprieve from the chaos her life had burst into. She thought “you started this” over and over and “the least you could do is finish it with the evil and hate you started it with” and “you win. I give up. you win.” but he didn’t come and he never claimed any victory.
The girl started seeing the looks on the other ones’ faces, one by one, as they started to worry about her. She thought, “they see this, what he’s done, and they will save themselves from him, surely” but she eventually learned that they wouldn’t. The stupid-haired boy had simply woven the girl into his stories, killing her off over and over, whenever he needed her to suffer.
He’d painted himself as a hero willing to rescue her, told them that he’d tried and tried to help her, but she was a junky and loved her fix more than her child. Told them that she eventually lost her son and overdosed alone.
He’d told them that she’d lost her house trying to pay off medical bills after being diagnosed with cancer. That without a home, she lost her job, and then her insurance. Told them that she’d finally given up the fight out on the street with her son – who knew where that kid ended up.
And then he told them that she was his stalker – that he was afraid of what she would do and say to ruin him. Told them that he’d rejected her, like a gentleman, but she couldn’t accept it. Told them that if they heard stories that she’d been threatened or hurt or had even been pregnant, it was simply a ploy to ruin him.
The looks on the other ones faces was of worry, and they were afraid. They did want to save themselves, but not from the stupid-haired boy; he’d made them afraid of the girl.
The girl had answered her door to see thugs that he’d sent to hurt her, awoke to him hovering over and staring at her, entered her tiny apartment to find things dead and rotting, feared for the lives of her son, her family, herself – and they were afraid of her.
The girl had walked through a line of raging protesters, pictures in hands of babies in pieces, spitting “sinner” at her, pushing and pulling and begging her not to ‘take the easy way out of this’ to get to a room where ‘easy’ has never been uttered and ‘out of this’ has never been achieved, because she didn’t know how else to save herself while the other ones acted as if they needed to save themselves from her.
And then when they would get scared and suspicious, they would find the girl and demand that she retell them, again, what she’d begged them to hear all along. If she did, they didn’t believe her. If she shared her pain, they still looked sideways at her. In the end, the ugly other ones always put themselves back in his danger. In a pinch, they could always draw on being better than the girl and look down their noses; after all, they would have never ‘taken the easy way out’. Sharing her pain with them was not helpful, it was horrible. They rubbed salt in her wounds and smirked at her agony, every chance they could.
The girl was sickened and sad and flattened. She ran in the middle of the night with her son and as much as she could take, and left everything else behind. She found a house where the stupid-haired boy and his other ones wouldn’t find her and tried to start being normal.
She brought herself to another doctor when she feared that her mind was irreparably broken and wouldn’t fit back together. He called it a nervous breakdown and PTSD and patched her up with pills and told her to mourn her loss and be finished, because what was done was done. He was wrong.
The girl mourned and mourned and then eventually started to heal. The Best Friend did save all of her pieces and still gives them back, one by one, when the girl asks for them, but she still can only ask for one at a time.
The girl wishes she could end this story with lightning and fire crackers. She wishes she could say that the stupid-haired boy learned his lesson, got his payback, payed his dues – but she can’t, because as far as she knows, he didn’t.
There have been times over the years that she thought she might just find him and pay him back, teach him the lesson, charge him the dues. In the end, though, she won’t. She knows that nothing the stupid-haired boy ever did to her was as painful as what she did to herself for years and years after.
Pretty soon, the stupid-haired boy was no longer even part of the girls’ story. He doesn’t even get a real name in her story.
In the end, the girl was ok. She is ok. And she learned that telling her story, her way, would be her way of getting out of it. Her way of winning. Her way of healing.
The End.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
There Are No Monsters In Texas
A long long time ago, on another planet (it seems), my whole world took a turn for the insane. I’ve only sat one person down in the whole world and explained what happened from beginning to end. He knows what I mean when I say ‘the stalker’. He knows that I refer to not only a person, but an event – a happening. An incident.
My husband knows that when we reminisce, when we retell our lives to each other, when we recount our worlds pre-us, some of the stories run into ‘those’ stories and sometimes I choke on what comes next. He knows I use stupid phrases that don’t fit to encompass entire periods of time. He knows that when a story comes to ‘and then, the stalker’ that that is, in fact, the end of that story. That ‘and then, the stalker’ is where many of my stories just hang.
I don’t even have a proper name for it.
Either way – here’s the point: I wasn’t the only the only one there, then. I wasn’t the only – victim? Survivor? There were a lot – more than I’ll ever know. More than, I think, I even want to know about – but everyone else was inhuman to me. Their stories tried to make mine fade and tried to make my reaction invisible. The others stole pieces of my pain to smooth their own, and tried to turn me into a number. All, of course, but one.
She became human to me – made me realize that we were still women, still alive. Still going to live. She really was a survivor. I would have never considered adding ‘victim’ to her story – she was going to beat this. She was going to kick this things’ ass. And she did. And now, years and years and years later, and on another planet (it seems) she wants to visit me.
I am beside myself with worry that with her will come the rest of the story. Or more of it. Or some of it. Or just the ashes of what’s left of it. I am filled with anxiety at the thought that she may want to talk about it. We did agree – seven years ago – that we were done with it. That we would remain great friends for reasons not related to the terrorism that brought us together. But we haven’t seen each other since then –seven years ago. What if we have nothing else in common? What if conversation lags and the silence feels weird and she says “Hey, remember when he choked me?” and
I panic and say “yeah, and remember when he hid in my basement?” ..then what?
Every time another piece of Then floats to the surface, I spear it – blurt it all out – talk about it – write about it – smash it to pieces – overcome it. I do fear that if I don’t, a tiny piece might fester. So what, universe, do I do with a whole person that floats to the top – hmm?
My husband knows that when we reminisce, when we retell our lives to each other, when we recount our worlds pre-us, some of the stories run into ‘those’ stories and sometimes I choke on what comes next. He knows I use stupid phrases that don’t fit to encompass entire periods of time. He knows that when a story comes to ‘and then, the stalker’ that that is, in fact, the end of that story. That ‘and then, the stalker’ is where many of my stories just hang.
I don’t even have a proper name for it.
Either way – here’s the point: I wasn’t the only the only one there, then. I wasn’t the only – victim? Survivor? There were a lot – more than I’ll ever know. More than, I think, I even want to know about – but everyone else was inhuman to me. Their stories tried to make mine fade and tried to make my reaction invisible. The others stole pieces of my pain to smooth their own, and tried to turn me into a number. All, of course, but one.
She became human to me – made me realize that we were still women, still alive. Still going to live. She really was a survivor. I would have never considered adding ‘victim’ to her story – she was going to beat this. She was going to kick this things’ ass. And she did. And now, years and years and years later, and on another planet (it seems) she wants to visit me.
In my home.
In my new life, in a whole new state.
Where I live safely because no monsters live here or ever have lived here.
I am beside myself with worry that with her will come the rest of the story. Or more of it. Or some of it. Or just the ashes of what’s left of it. I am filled with anxiety at the thought that she may want to talk about it. We did agree – seven years ago – that we were done with it. That we would remain great friends for reasons not related to the terrorism that brought us together. But we haven’t seen each other since then –seven years ago. What if we have nothing else in common? What if conversation lags and the silence feels weird and she says “Hey, remember when he choked me?” and
I panic and say “yeah, and remember when he hid in my basement?” ..then what?
Every time another piece of Then floats to the surface, I spear it – blurt it all out – talk about it – write about it – smash it to pieces – overcome it. I do fear that if I don’t, a tiny piece might fester. So what, universe, do I do with a whole person that floats to the top – hmm?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Stick Families
I love Mother’s Day. I love the handmade, homemade cards with pictures of mommies with stick-person babies and round kids with too-long legs and too-short hair living in square houses and smiling half-circle smiles. I love the cards. I look forward to them every year and I save them all in a big jumbley stack.
Someday I will put them all in plastic notebook sleeves and even label them with kid-names and ages and put them all in order by kid, then year; but that day is far, far away because, well, I have kids. Lots and lots of kids.
When people ask me how many kids I have I say “We have five” without missing a beat. Every once in awhile, I will offer the explanation of how he had two and I had two and then we had another one, but that usually leads to having to hear all the reasons why they did or did not like Eight Is Enough and/or The Brady Bunch and inevitably, them saying “Hey! Now you just need one more so it can be two and two and two!!” because apparently families work best and are complete when they are mathematically balanced. More often than not, though, I say “We have five” and leave it at that.
I grew up in what felt like a giant pile of mismatched socks; people were always asking who belonged to whom, and why. I grew up with my mom and step-father, two older step-sisters and my adopted younger sister (whose biological mother was my oldest step-sister). My brother lived with my dad and I visited on the weekends. My step-sisters insisted that my mom and I lived in their house with their dad – that my brother and I were the ‘other kids’. In conversations, I never ever let a ‘your dad’ go by uncorrected when used in reference to my step-father. I never let anyone call my step-sisters my ‘sisters’, but I insisted that no one ever call my little sister anything less that my sister. There was always separation and distinction. We identified ourselves with our differences; displayed our separateness before our similarities – and in the end, are in fact, all separate.
My mother and step-father have long since divorced and after an ugly custody battle; my step-father raised my sister and mom remarried. I never speak to the step-sisters or my step-father but my brother and sister and I are close. My sister is very close to her biological mother – my oldest step-sister – and calls her husband a step-dad. As you can imagine, I have a hard time mapping out this whole community when trying to tell childhood stories to my kids. To this day, I avoid “how many kids were in your family?” because it was just too confusing to recite all the rules.
I glow when asked how many kids I have. I beam. I swell. We have five. All five of them stack up perfectly. They all match. They’re made out of tiny pieces all of us and of each other and we’re all glued together (in our triangle dresses and orange yarn hair) and I thank God daily for every extra minute we get to share together.
Someday, I’ll sit with a giant, nicely-organized binder full of all my Construction Paper Mother’s Day cards in their pretty flat plastic sleeves (in order of kid and year, no less) and I’ll show them all off to all my hundreds of grandkids. I’ll pull each card out one by one and we will reattach each taped-on heart and glued-on button that didn’t make it through the years. I’ll tell them all the stories about their mommies and daddies that I promised never to tell and show them all the embarrassing haircut pictures that they think I threw away.
And eventually, I will make sure they all know how some families are built with construction paper and Elmer’s glue, and that even though our buttons might fall off and our yarn hair might get fuzzy – we absolutely must stay stuck to each other.
Happy late Mother’s Day, mommies – may your Popsicle sticks never be splintery.
Someday I will put them all in plastic notebook sleeves and even label them with kid-names and ages and put them all in order by kid, then year; but that day is far, far away because, well, I have kids. Lots and lots of kids.
When people ask me how many kids I have I say “We have five” without missing a beat. Every once in awhile, I will offer the explanation of how he had two and I had two and then we had another one, but that usually leads to having to hear all the reasons why they did or did not like Eight Is Enough and/or The Brady Bunch and inevitably, them saying “Hey! Now you just need one more so it can be two and two and two!!” because apparently families work best and are complete when they are mathematically balanced. More often than not, though, I say “We have five” and leave it at that.
I grew up in what felt like a giant pile of mismatched socks; people were always asking who belonged to whom, and why. I grew up with my mom and step-father, two older step-sisters and my adopted younger sister (whose biological mother was my oldest step-sister). My brother lived with my dad and I visited on the weekends. My step-sisters insisted that my mom and I lived in their house with their dad – that my brother and I were the ‘other kids’. In conversations, I never ever let a ‘your dad’ go by uncorrected when used in reference to my step-father. I never let anyone call my step-sisters my ‘sisters’, but I insisted that no one ever call my little sister anything less that my sister. There was always separation and distinction. We identified ourselves with our differences; displayed our separateness before our similarities – and in the end, are in fact, all separate.
My mother and step-father have long since divorced and after an ugly custody battle; my step-father raised my sister and mom remarried. I never speak to the step-sisters or my step-father but my brother and sister and I are close. My sister is very close to her biological mother – my oldest step-sister – and calls her husband a step-dad. As you can imagine, I have a hard time mapping out this whole community when trying to tell childhood stories to my kids. To this day, I avoid “how many kids were in your family?” because it was just too confusing to recite all the rules.
I glow when asked how many kids I have. I beam. I swell. We have five. All five of them stack up perfectly. They all match. They’re made out of tiny pieces all of us and of each other and we’re all glued together (in our triangle dresses and orange yarn hair) and I thank God daily for every extra minute we get to share together.
Someday, I’ll sit with a giant, nicely-organized binder full of all my Construction Paper Mother’s Day cards in their pretty flat plastic sleeves (in order of kid and year, no less) and I’ll show them all off to all my hundreds of grandkids. I’ll pull each card out one by one and we will reattach each taped-on heart and glued-on button that didn’t make it through the years. I’ll tell them all the stories about their mommies and daddies that I promised never to tell and show them all the embarrassing haircut pictures that they think I threw away.
And eventually, I will make sure they all know how some families are built with construction paper and Elmer’s glue, and that even though our buttons might fall off and our yarn hair might get fuzzy – we absolutely must stay stuck to each other.
Happy late Mother’s Day, mommies – may your Popsicle sticks never be splintery.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Random Things: Will & Recharging
Because sometimes I just got random things to say, okay?!
Random Thing #1: God’s will
My husband hit a crisis. He was gone, he had relapsed, it was bad. He didn’t know I knew, and he was on his way home. This was it. He was going to die if he didn’t stop, and I didn’t know how to make him stop. I just wanted him to get home to me safe and alive and I would figure out what to do if God would just let me lay my eyes on him again. Alive.
Standing at the window that day, I strained to see as far down the road as I could, as if once my eyes grabbed his car, I could create protection and guide him to me, safe. I peeked between the blinds so he wouldn’t see me first; he would know that I knew and turn around and leave again. I knew knew knew that if he did, he wouldn’t come back. I didn’t breath. I was helpless. So scared that I was about to loose this man that was my all, my everything, my rock, to an evil and heartless and cold disease.
I remember wondering what is it going to take to make this stop? What is it going to take to make you not fucking die?
I had been struggling with “God’s will” for months, not able to come to terms with giving things to God, believing in His will and really having faith that His will was any better than mine. And frankly, being a bit annoyed that God always gets the last word. Somewhere in the middle of please bring him home safely-please bring him home safely-please bring him home safely I figured it out. Having faith in God’s willthat day meant understanding that while I hoped with every inch of me that ‘home’ would be mean my home, God might need to bring him to His. All at once, I realized that I trusted God much more with this than I trusted me- obviously, I couldn’t save him. I didn’t want to be the one that had to fix this, I didn’t know how; I didn’t knowwhat was best, I didn’t know what to want. My will meant nothing, I didn’t even know how to use it. Please bring him home safely suddenly meant I trust You – please take this. It was faith, and I was relieved.
He did get home, by the way, and everyday he works hard to make it safely.
I find myself praying my personal prayer a lot, for a lot of different things. Most recently, that Maddie‘s mommy and daddy make it ‘home’ and out of the dark woods that is losing a child. ‘Safely’ with their hearts pulled back together, someday.
Random Thing #2: Recharging
I visited the crisis center today. I signed up to be a real official volunteer (with a letter of recommendation and background check and everything) and then freaked myself out and didn’t go back for two weeks. Today I had an overwhelming need to barge in there and just sit on their couch, so I did. The lady who runs the place hugged me and handed me a water bottle, like she’d been standing there waiting for me all day. She never asked where I’ve been or why I didn’t show up at the board meeting, just hugged me and said she was glad I came. I left feeling recharged and appreciated, and I didn’t even do anything. I’m supposed to be there, I know. I’ll stop fighting it soon, I’m almost certain. Did I tell you I’m kinda stubborn?
Random Thing #1: God’s will
My husband hit a crisis. He was gone, he had relapsed, it was bad. He didn’t know I knew, and he was on his way home. This was it. He was going to die if he didn’t stop, and I didn’t know how to make him stop. I just wanted him to get home to me safe and alive and I would figure out what to do if God would just let me lay my eyes on him again. Alive.
Standing at the window that day, I strained to see as far down the road as I could, as if once my eyes grabbed his car, I could create protection and guide him to me, safe. I peeked between the blinds so he wouldn’t see me first; he would know that I knew and turn around and leave again. I knew knew knew that if he did, he wouldn’t come back. I didn’t breath. I was helpless. So scared that I was about to loose this man that was my all, my everything, my rock, to an evil and heartless and cold disease.
I remember wondering what is it going to take to make this stop? What is it going to take to make you not fucking die?
I had been struggling with “God’s will” for months, not able to come to terms with giving things to God, believing in His will and really having faith that His will was any better than mine. And frankly, being a bit annoyed that God always gets the last word. Somewhere in the middle of please bring him home safely-please bring him home safely-please bring him home safely I figured it out. Having faith in God’s willthat day meant understanding that while I hoped with every inch of me that ‘home’ would be mean my home, God might need to bring him to His. All at once, I realized that I trusted God much more with this than I trusted me- obviously, I couldn’t save him. I didn’t want to be the one that had to fix this, I didn’t know how; I didn’t knowwhat was best, I didn’t know what to want. My will meant nothing, I didn’t even know how to use it. Please bring him home safely suddenly meant I trust You – please take this. It was faith, and I was relieved.
He did get home, by the way, and everyday he works hard to make it safely.
I find myself praying my personal prayer a lot, for a lot of different things. Most recently, that Maddie‘s mommy and daddy make it ‘home’ and out of the dark woods that is losing a child. ‘Safely’ with their hearts pulled back together, someday.
Random Thing #2: Recharging
I visited the crisis center today. I signed up to be a real official volunteer (with a letter of recommendation and background check and everything) and then freaked myself out and didn’t go back for two weeks. Today I had an overwhelming need to barge in there and just sit on their couch, so I did. The lady who runs the place hugged me and handed me a water bottle, like she’d been standing there waiting for me all day. She never asked where I’ve been or why I didn’t show up at the board meeting, just hugged me and said she was glad I came. I left feeling recharged and appreciated, and I didn’t even do anything. I’m supposed to be there, I know. I’ll stop fighting it soon, I’m almost certain. Did I tell you I’m kinda stubborn?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
32
Thirty-two.
Thurteeeeee. Toooooo.
That used to be what old people were, remember? Remember when we were young and thought about our parents ages and how we would look and act and talk when (and if) we were that age?
And remember how we figured we would be flying cars and eating our meals in capsule-form and be movie stars and millionaires and have a vacation home on the moon (or Gilligan’s Island)?
I distinctly remember my mom turning 32 and being pissed about it. I’m not really pissed – I kinda like my thirties.
So far – I married my best friend, had another baby, quit drinking, joined a church, got pierced, quit smoking, got baptized, ditched a career I hated, got another tattoo, opened my own business, unpierced myself – I even went to the prom. And for the most part, in that order.
I like my life. I love my life, really. Apparently that happened in my thirties too – so it’s about time I got to 32 – apparently it’s been waiting for me for like, ever.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Emergeing
“I am prone to depression”.
No.
“Sometimes I get depressed”.
No.
“I struggle with dep-” No.
“Depression has always been a-” No, that’s stupid.
I never talk about it except to my husband, and even that is new. Before him, the only time I came close to discussing it was if someone demanded that yes-I-did remember that-one-time that-one-thing happened, and I have to find a delicate and elusive way around the fact that I don’t. At all. I don’t remember most of what you said or he said or she said or I said at all during that particular time. The worst “bout of depression” years ago, that required 4 or 5 different prescriptions and a psychologist to fish me back out. I am still fascinated by stories with me in them that happened during that time; pictures with me in them that I don’t remember posing for. I lost a lot of that time, but the point is, I survived, and for the most part, for most of the time, that was all I was doing.
And now when it creeps in, I hide and deny. I don’t want drugs or doctors or labels or diagnoses. I am immediately terrified that it is going to get that bad again and I hide and pretend I am fine; all the while snapping at my family, agonizing over old wounds I can’t bear to let heal, building walls, rationalizing the idea of never leaving the house again. Giving in.
And then I emerge and I look around, three months later this time, and realize I have been disconnected, disjointed, disengaged. I come out with almost a manic explosion; I need to write this out, check everything, ask everyone, know everything, NOW. I have to get out, get moving, get something, go somewhere – do something. All in an effort to bandage anything I let bleed while I was ‘gone’. Gather up anything I missed, pick up whatever I dropped, feel anything I shuttered against and let bounce off me while I was under my rock.
I hate and love this part. Hate that I missed things. Hate that my baby is four months old and I just shrugged a three month drudge off my shoulders. Love that it didn’t last three years and I am here now. Hate that I must have felt distant to my kids and they (like I did at their ages) may have wondered what they did to deserve that. Love that I came out of it long before they got fed up and gave up on me (like I did at their ages).
Finally the blackness has lifted, but my bones ache after dragging it around for so many miles.
But it lifted, and I came out and now I am gathering up everything I missed out on while I was gone, and that’s the point.
There. Now I officially ‘talk’ about it.
Friday, March 13, 2009
They All Fall Down
I try so hard to keep painful things tied up in pretty packages. I smash them and squeeze them and force them into tiny corners of imaginary boxes and then try to cover them in the colors of strong and brave and better-than and eventually I can convince myself that they no longer exist and can’t hurt my anymore.
I do this over and over and they all fall down over and over and I never learn – it’s excruciatingly frustrating to the people who love me, I know. It’s exhausting, I know. I hurt myself more trying to forget things than I would just talking about them; at least talking about them would get them out of me. It is just so hard to convince myself sometimes that it won’t crush me – that talking about things that hurt won’t smash me; that they don’t have to be bigger than me forever.
I do this over and over and they all fall down over and over and I never learn – it’s excruciatingly frustrating to the people who love me, I know. It’s exhausting, I know. I hurt myself more trying to forget things than I would just talking about them; at least talking about them would get them out of me. It is just so hard to convince myself sometimes that it won’t crush me – that talking about things that hurt won’t smash me; that they don’t have to be bigger than me forever.
Obviously, all the stupid boxes fell down again; I just don’t have it in me this time to shove everything back in again.
I don’t want to pretend that huge events in my world didn’t happen. I don’t want to be angry anymore. I don’t want to be afraid or ashamed of decisions I made at a time when there were no other options. I don’t want to be sad anymore that there were no other options; there just weren’t. I want to heal. I want to believe that I deserve to heal and stop hating the me that did what had to be done. I want to be the person that was not there for me then – now.
So.
Just how, exactly, does one go about doing that?
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
On Being Afraid
I hate it when I realize I am afraid of something. I hate that there are things lurking around in me that control my actions (in inaction, as the case may be) and dictate my every-next move without my permission.
To my computer-geek mind, these unaddressed fears are like a computer virus in my brain. Just sitting around inside my head, waiting to trigger a detrimental reaction; activating pop-up bitchiness and eventually shutting down my whole machine self. {Who’s the biggest nerd you know?}
The other night while I was knee-deep in justification as to why I had not yet gotten off my ass and gone to volunteer at the crisis center like I said I was going to a month ago, my husband said “what are you so afraid of?” and it all came out in a blurry, snotty mess.
I’m afraid that someone might need me. Someone might need to tell me their story and I might have to listen to it. Someone might have a story that I get, you know? Like mine. And I might have to relate to it. Like at some point, what if I need to tell someone my whole story? Like my whole story? And what if it doesn’t make any sense and someone makes the things that happened seem unnecessary or unjustified? What if someone somewhere says that what I did was wrong and thinks I am a bad person for it? What if I am a bad person for it? What if the grief and mourning and hurt was all unnecessary? What if someone says “and then what?” like the story still doesn’t have an ending?
And that’s what it was. I was frozen by the fear that my pain was unnecessary.
What bullshit.
I went in this afternoon. No one asked me anything I couldn’t answer. I didn’t get hit by a truck and a meteor didn’t fall on my head. Nothing exploded and no one punched me in the face or threw rocks at me.
I’m going back tomorrow.
Weird.
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