I know you like to compare me to the Egyptian Goddess Isis
but I don’t really think that’s fair.
To her, not me.
For one thing:
Sometimes when I stub my toe against the china cabinet
as I’m going to refill my glass of wine,
I loudly exclaim
Fuck Shit Ass Damn
and call my wine bottle a son of a bitch.
I don’t think Isis would do that.
Also:
When my street dog tears up a book I just bought,
Especially The Children of Green Knowe,
I tell him I fucking hate him
and I wish I’d never brought him home.
Of course, I love him
but he drives me batshit insane most of the time.
I doubt ol’ Isis would hate anything
And check this:
Just the other day, one of my employees
sensing my utter desperation,
rolled a fat ass joint for me and left it in the door of her car, the lighter on the seat.
“Go take you a couple hits, you’ll feel better.”
So I did.
And I don’t even smoke, really.
But sometimes life is a heartless little bitch
and you can’t escape it any other way
than to go sit in the parking lot, in a tinted car,
on the corner of Highway 80 and nowhere,
and cry your goddamn eyes out while you inhale a blunt so strong that you cough and sputter
because you haven’t hit that shit since college,
and college was 80 years ago on another planet.
Do you think Isis would do some shit like that?
My kid knows every cuss word and in different languages
AND I ALLOW HIM TO USE THEM SOMETIMES.
Isis would die.
I curse under my breath at old people, babies, and animals
even though I love all three.
I take the lord’s name in vain on a daily basis, sometimes for the entire goddamn day.
I am wildly unhinged and prone to sadness and would rather watch the flowers wilt
under the weight of your absence,
than to see them thrive in a garden where you are not their gardener.
Isis would never stand for it.
You once told me you could read between the lines
but I’m not giving you enough space to do that.
I’m dirty, broken, worn out, tired.
I’m offensive, lewd, crass.
I’m a mediocre mom with no goddamn blueprint.
I’m a half-assed daughter who doesn’t do enough.
I’m just ok at being the boss.
I’m nobody’s someone.
But I have this heart and for some reason it’s huge and cavernous
and there’s all kinds of back alleys in it where I keep people and animals.
One of those alleys is named after you.
It’s littered with all the debris you left behind and I don’t bother cleaning it up.
I just wallow in it until your scent is all over me.
And I’m not ever coming out of that alley.
So Listen.
If I may speak on behalf of Isis:
Please don’t compare her to a derelict like me.
Suppose I said the word “springtime”
and I wrote the words “king salmon”
on a piece of paper
and mailed it to you.
When you opened it
would you remember that afternoon we spent
together in the yellow boat
when the early whales were feeding
and we caught our first fish of the year?
Or would you remember that time off Cape Flattery
when you were a little girl:
your father smoking, telling stories as he ran the boat,
then the tug and zing of that very first fish
spooling off into the gray-green world;
you laughing and brushing back your hair
before setting the hook?
I know I am hard to understand sometimes
particularly when you are standing
at the post office with only a piece of paper
saying “king salmon” on it
but just think of it as a promissary note
and that electric tug, that thrill
pulling your mind into deep water
is how I feel about you every,
Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you’re still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don’t you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn’t the backyard
that you’re so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —
don’t you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren’t you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven’t they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn’t it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it’s time. You’ve rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there’s one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they’re howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors’ dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won’t shut up.
{Blank}
Forwarding blank emails a million times just to see if they go through
Followed by:
Oh, J, my heart is all aching for you and I can’t stand the thought that you might have blocked me or closed your email account. Everything keeps getting returned. I don’t understand why. I’m so sorry if my email came across as insensitive. I only wanted to make you laugh. I know it was a horrible situation but I thought I was making light of it. Upon rereading it, I can clearly see that it was not the right response to send to you in your emotional state. I hate myself for thinking it was. I’m so sorry.
And:
I wish I could talk to you. I’m losing my mind
Also:
Please get this
Then:
I am devastated and feel like the air around me is suffocating me.
HOW IT FEELS NOT TALKING TO YOU:
It feels like suffocating
It feels like drowning
It feels like heavy thick molasses air
It feels like a sturdy rope suddenly severed
It feels like looking into the bottom of a well
It feels like staring into a starless and moonless night sky
Void all the way around
You reach out to the air around you but it’s not air it’s rubber and it’s closing in on you
And it’s squishing you there between it until your heart beats so hard against it
That all of the walls start to vibrate to its rhythm
And then you can’t breathe
And then your heart actually really explodes
And it rains down all around you until your cheeks are hot with tears
And you’re in your car
You say his name over and over again
Then you switch to God’s name
Asking, pleading
DEMANDING
Downright ORDERING
Contact
Just make contact
You plead to him and to God
And the ant crawling along your steering wheel
The leaf on your windshield
The darkness of your car
The greenish glow of your radio dial.
You plead.
Silently
When you pull up to the drive -thru window
Because the kid’s gotta eat
But the kitchen feels like death
Because there’s the table
You sat at when you wrote your things to him
And there’s the speaker on the counter where you played the songs he sent
While you cooked
And the bottle of Jameson you bought just last weekend
Because he likes Jameson and you like him
And that’s what you do when you like someone and oh, god! You do like him!
Swollen, your eyes
The tears collecting in the bags beneath them
Made more cavernous by the silence
Your cheeks red
Your voice tiny and timid
As you order the kids vanilla frosty and cheeseburger
Hastily wiping your eyes as you pull around to pay
Allergies is what you’ll tell her
She’s going to ask
Only she doesn’t
She says ‘it’s going to be ok’
And closes the window to swipe your card
You don’t believe her but her kindness unleashes
The downpour
And your cup doesn’t just runneth over
It floods
And she’s running out to meet you in the parking lot
Of the drive thru at Wendy’s
On a Tuesday night in the rain
And she opens your car door
You rise to meet her
And throw yourself into her short arms and hold onto her
Hard and long
Your face buried in her shoulder, your stomach heaving in and out
Her hands running circles on your back
“It’s going to be ok it’s going to be ok”
The tears dry and you get back in your car
“I love you” she says
“I love you too” you tell her
Poof
Gone then, back into the hamburger joint
The person at the window hands you the burger and ice cream
And you cruise out into the night
Wondering if that lady knew
Are you tightwad and are you mean, those are the true sins, and sin is only a conception of ours, due to long habit. Are you generous and are you kind, those are the true virtues, and they’re only conceptions. The golden eternity rests beyond sin and virtue, is attached to neither, is attached to nothing, is unattached, because the golden eternity is Alone. The mold has rills but it is one mold. The field has curves but it is one field. All things are different forms of the same thing. I call it the golden eternity-what do you call it, brother? for the blessing and merit of virtue, and the punishment and bad fate of sin, are alike just so many words.
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I’m sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I’m trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I’m doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right. I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I’m addressing you. Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me. I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance. I’d better consider my national resources. My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and twentyfivethousand mental institutions. I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic. America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys. America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy. America you don’re really want to go to war. America it’s them bad Russians. Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages. Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct? I’d better get right down to the job. It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
I used to have a friend in college who would get so discouraged about her life, about her relationship, that she would break down in tears nearly every day. She didn’t know if she could go on. She was lost. She was beaten. She was way down at the bottom of her spirit and she wasn’t sure how she was going to rise to the top again. We spent so many afternoons after class or work on the balcony of her third floor apartment, sitting at her white, plastic table in her white, plastic chairs and smoking cigarette after cigarette until the afternoon turned to twilight and beyond.
We never solved anything but we always felt better afterwards.
The truth of it is, I was just as lost as her. Just as down-trodden. We were a pair, the two of us. Debbie-Downer twins, that was us. Still, we managed to laugh. Somehow. Someway. I don’t remember how we did it or what we found to laugh about, only that we did. A lot.
They were sad times. But they were good times.
I used to have this thing that I would tell her and it went something like this:
“M. Life is shit. It’s a fact. There’s going to be more and more shit before it’s all said and done and the only thing we can do about it is find little, tiny pockets of happiness here and there and sew them into our hearts with little, tiny zippers so that we can open them from time to time and let the happiness out when the shit gets really deep.”
I had forgotten all about that. I had forgotten I used to say that to her until I came across a note from her in which she reminded me of exactly that.
It seems unreal to me now, lost as I am, as I always have been, that I would have said something like that to someone else. I am almost ashamed of it. Who was I to be telling her something like that?
Anyway, after I read that note, I started thinking about what I meant by little, tiny pockets of happiness. What were they? What were mine? Could I remember them all if I tried? I wasn’t sure but I thought I would at least sit down and get as many out as I could. Whatever came to my head first, that’s what I would write.
And so that’s what I did.
And that’s what I present to you below. Unedited. And in no particular order. Just thoughts as they came, trying to capture them in words as fast as I could because once I got started, another one was waiting to get out. I’m sure I haven’t done justice to many of them, maybe even all of them. I don’t know. But I’ve found it doesn’t matter. The memories are inside me and that’s all that really matters. They live in me and there they will stay long after this blog is gone, long after my computer has died, long after the word document they were written upon has been deleted.
They live in me until I live no more.
Here’s to you, M.
Dancing with my mother to Paul Simon’s greatest hits when she came to visit me in college. We were drunk, giddy with wine, and dancing all over the house, one behind the other – through the living room, into the bedroom, out through the kitchen, and back to the living room. A fit of giggles. Collapsing on the couch. Refilling our wine glasses. Changing CD’s and dancing some more.
Understanding, many months and many days after the fact, that no fight was too big to keep me from my sister. I don’t know exactly when we forgave each other, the exact date. I doubt we ever said the actual words of forgiveness that are so often meaningless anyway. I only remember being in my mother’s old house on Barnes Street when we finally spoke on the phone. Cautiously at first, and then as if nothing had ever happened. That’s one of my most treasured pockets of happiness.
My brother’s embrace the day I returned home from Atlanta. Out of a job. Out of a five year relationship. Depressed. Not wanting to be here at all. He hugged me to him so tightly and held on longer than he ever had before or since, whispering in my ear, “I’m so glad you’re home, Steph.”
Saying goodbye to Fischer before he left for Hawaii. Standing outside with him in the cold. Looking at his beautiful, sweet, never-could-never-will-hurt-a-living-soul face. His twinkling eyes looking back into mine. The lines at the corner of his mouth turning up into a smile. His arms around my waist. My arms around his shoulders. The warmth of his body. His body sturdy. Strong. Knowing I was kissing him for the last time ever in this lifetime. Happy just for the chance to know him. Happy for the few short years he graced my life.
Brenda’s gifts to me the day I left my job for good. Three boxes of tampons and a bag full of lotion in every scent imaginable. How we fell down in fits of laughter when I opened it. Beautiful in its simplicity, this gift from her to me. Beautiful in its significance. A secret between friends. Really knowing someone. Really understanding someone.
My brother-in-law saying over the weekend: “We don’t love people because of what they do, Steph. We don’t love them for their jobs. We love them because of who they are.” Thank you, brother. I needed that.
The old man at my table who only wanted a steak, rare, and a glass of red wine. Watching as he cut into it. Sending it back again and again, while all the while, he never complained. I believe he would have taken it the first time just the way it was. He ended up eating it medium and asking me to sit down with him and share a glass of wine. I did. I was drawn to him in some way I couldn’t define or explain. He was kind. He was old. He was not long for this world. I don’t remember his name but I remember the feel of his arms around my shoulder as he hugged me on his way out the door. I watched him leave, walk down the street, until I couldn’t see him anymore. I remember thinking to myself that he was an angel but I didn’t know why I thought that. I cried feverishly after he was gone.
Listening to Concrete Blonde sing Joey (the acoustic version) with my friend, Kenneth, over and over again in his car. Belting out the lyrics at the top of our lungs and not caring how horrible our voices were. Being out of breath at the end of the song and pressing rewind to play it again. To sing it again. To feel every single lyric, every single note………
I could write for days and still the memories would come. I know this.
That’s all life is. A series of moments, of memories. Little, tiny pockets of happiness in the midst of pain, struggle, and despair. These pockets are the only things that keep us here, the only things that allow us to wake up and face another day.
The hope that we will make another memory.
The hope that we will see something beautiful.
The hope that we will feel something sublime.
The hope that we will learn something unknown.
The hope that we will forge a connection.
And knowing, without a doubt, that “sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” (Scarlet Begonias – Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia). Knowing, that in our darkest hour, in the darkest places, there is kindness, there is beauty.
Because it’s fun. And I got nothing for you today. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Come back another time.
And now, in totally unrelated news….. Johnny Depp. Because he’s gorgeous, intelligent, and weird (in other words, PERFECT). And also because I got nothing for you today. I told you that already so why are you still here?
You have overwhelmed me, Joel. For many days now. You have been banging against your steel door in my heart. So tonight I am yours, once again. Speak to me and take me back to a life I no longer know. I am giving you your voice, the one that has lived inside me, quietly, all these years. I want to hear you. I want to feel you.
I need to remember you.
I was so in love with you. Did you ever know? If you did, did you fully understand what that meant?
So many nights we spent drinking after work…and talking. Talking all night long. Talking until we had grown weary with each other and couldn’t imagine what we would have to say the next time around. But always…always there was a next time.
We would find each other in the middle of a crowded room and, with one look from you, I would know. I could feel your hurt as if it were my own flesh bleeding. I could taste your tears just as surely as if they had fallen from my own eyes and traveled down the hills of my cheeks to land, salty and raw, on the chapped planes of my lips.
It was late at night or early in the morning, depending, the first time you called me. We had just spent the night in a glorious mind-fuck, dissecting our souls and offering, each to the other, little pieces of them – as we often did. “What do I need to do,” you asked. “Do I need to take you out on a date? Do I need to buy you flowers? What, Stephanie? I’m asking you because I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
You didn’t need to do any of those things and I told you so. But two nights later, we met at a bar for drinks and called it a date anyway. In the parking lot, on the way to some party, you grabbed me and kissed me for the first time. It was everything I had ever wanted in my life.
I’m sorry if I never told you that.
Later, at the party, I was sitting on a window ledge on the balcony of a second story apartment. You were kneeling between my parted legs. You looked up at me and asked, in all seriousness, why you felt the need to kiss me all the time. I didn’t have an answer for you. I was too busy hoping you would just do it again and never stop. I looked down at you, speechless, and you looked back up at me….and smiled – one of those rare things you did sometimes.
(That was something we could never figure out, you know. Our attraction to each other. We tried so many times to understand it, remember? It was way past physical. Had gone beyond that realm two seconds after my eyes found yours for the first time and words flew out of your open mouth right into my soul.)
That night ended in fire. Literally. Kenneth and Shannon’s duplex burned to the ground. You looked at me after you took the call and we both knew we had to go. We stood there with our friends while the flames licked the side of the house, the cops took names, and the firemen turned on their houses. Kenneth ran into his burning house at the last minute and returned with a CD that he handed to me. I still have that CD.
We left after the flames were doused. We sat in the car under the lights of your dashboard and you turned to me and said, “Well. That wasn’t exactly the first date I had envisioned but I guess I somehow knew it wouldn’t be that way with you anyway.” And then you turned to me and we kissed as if The War of the Worlds was happening right outside the windows of your car and it was our last moment on earth together. The War of the Worlds could have happened that night. Or any other night I was privileged enough to share space with you. I would have gladly followed you into the dark.
Weeks later, you sat down beside me at the bar. You didn’t speak. You needed to tell me something. I could feel it. You ordered your drink then put your hand on my knee. You looked over at me with those eyes of yours. It was always in your eyes, wasn’t it? At least for me it was. I could read you a mile away. You knew this and you hated it.
You told me about your demons that night.
How they were wrecking you.
You were so ashamed.
And the fucked up thing about it, J, is I already knew. And I loved you anyway. Maybe even because of. Probably in spite of.
Because none of that diminished who you were when we stared at each other across the table, saying nothing and yet everything. Or how you would come to me at night, put your hands on my shoulders, and touch your forehead to mine until the tips of our eyelashes brushed together.
I loved you crazy. Messed up. Perfect.
I didn’t need you to wrap yourself in a neat little box and tie it up with a bow for me. I wanted your broken and beaten, your strength and courage, your flawed perfection.
I wanted every little piece of your puzzle. I did not need for you to assemble it for me. We could do that together.
I loved the black t-shirt you wore to work and the blue bandanna you tied around your head. I loved the glass in your eyes when you had spent the night thinking too hard and too long. I loved the quiet way you called me ‘baby’ so no one else could hear; the way you could walk up behind me and wrap your presence all around me without touching me at all; mornings when you couldn’t speak to me because the night had been too hard; how you brushed the back of your hand against mine so our knuckles were perfectly aligned; the way I could feel you before I even knew you had entered the room; your anger when you would yell at me to get out of your head, and the laughter that would always follow after.
I loved every dirty, ugly, despicable, beautiful, clean, holy, magnificent thing you were.
The drugs were only a part of you and I knew they were not the whole. Just like the darkness in me is not the sum total of my being.
They never disguised you, J. I think you thought they did. I think you thought they were a shield you could hide behind. But they weren’t and you couldn’t. I could still find you. I knew you were in there. And I knew you didn’t want to be lost in there. So you never really were. Did you know that? Do you know that you always kept a piece of yourself so close to you that nothing could ever take it away from you?
It all ended that night in the parking deck, didn’t it? We had been fighting and when you tried to kiss me, I slapped your hands away and grabbed your face instead. I asked you if anyone had ever loved you before, if anyone had ever given a shit about you. We were standing so close I could feel your stomach contracting and expanding with each hard breath you took. You cried, holding on to my hands around your face. You touched your forehead to mine and for a moment, only a moment, stared into my eyes, out of breath. Then, you pushed my hands away and said, “Fuck you, Stephanie. Fuck you for arousing emotions in me that don’t need to be aroused.” You turned from me and walked away. I called your name and you turned, walked back toward me and said, “You’ll be just like all the rest. The minute I show you, you’ll leave me. The minute you see the scars, you’ll be gone.”
Never.
I would have never turned my back on you. Just the thought of you believing I would was enough to break me. And it did.
I’ve never told a soul about your tears or the way I screamed after you that I loved you while you slammed the door to your car and raced off. How I crumpled beside my own car, too weak to even open the door and get in. How I cried for you on the cold, hard floor of that stupid parking deck.
I had already seen the scars on your soul and I loved them. How could you think I wouldn’t also love the scars of your flesh?
You called me months later, after I had left town. I drove back to see you and you told me you were sorry about that night in the parking deck. Your apology meant nothing to me because I didn’t need it. I never needed you to apologize for anything you did, were, or felt. It wasn’t that way with us and you knew it.
That was the last time I ever saw you.
I know you are out in the world, J, because I looked you up. I hope life hasn’t changed you much…your core, your center. I hope you are the same J I knew and loved. Mostly, I just hope you found a way to finally wrestle your demons. I hope you have made peace with yourself.
I’m sorry I could never help you do that.
Maybe my memory of you is stronger than the one you keep of me. Maybe our time together meant more to me than it ever did to you. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t love you because I hoped you would love me back. I loved you because I had to. Because it was all I could do. Because it was the only thing I could do and it didn’t matter if you felt the same. I can no more choose who my soul connects with than I could have chosen my parents at birth. We are all free to love but we are not guaranteed that our love will be reciprocated. If any of you are waiting for someone to love you back before you give your own love freely, then many are the moments of life you will miss out on. Beautiful are the people you will never know.
I’m glad I didn’t miss out on my moment with Joel.
Anyway, I’m locking you back up now, okay, J? I can only take so much. I wish the best for you and I always will but it hurts to think of you. I’ll love you always but I have to say goodbye for now. It isn’t forever. I know your memory will pound on my heart again and my soul will set you free.
————————————————————————————- For several days now, I’ve had this song on continuous loop…in my car, on my computer, anywhere I found myself alone and had a moment to listen. I knew it was speaking to some deep part of me but I couldn’t figure out why or what it wanted me to know. When I started writing this to J, it all made sense and I finally understood. Even though Conor is telling his own story in this song and it isn’t mine, I found Joel in the lyrics anyway. Not in the individual words, because the story Conor tells is a very personal one, but in the song as a whole. Like the way a good book can take you places you didn’t even know you could go. That’s what Conor did for me by sharing his story and I want to share it with you.
You will need to turn the volume up as loud as you can stand it. It’s the only way to take this ride.
Guess what? I don’t have liver cancer (yeah, I actually thought I did). Well, at least the blood work came back normal for liver function so whether that means I’m in the clear or not, I don’t know. But it has at least quieted the demons in my head that are trying to kill me.
Although, last night I couldn’t fall asleep until well after 2 a.m. because I was sure my head was going to explode. It’s true. I had a shooting pain in my left temple and could feel this intense pressure mounting. (I’ve been afraid of aneurysms ever since I learned how to look up words in the dictionary.) Every time I nodded off, I jerked myself back awake. I guess I don’t think I can die if I’m awake? Don’t know. I tried to explain to the creator that I don’t actually want to die yet even though I keep saying to just off me now seeing as how my life is one big ball of shit. Maybe he listened? Again, don’t know. All I know is I’m alive this morning and that’s good, right?
This is what I do, in case you are not familiar. I don’t think I’m a hypochondriac per say. I just worry incessantly about the Grim Reaper. A few weeks ago when I fell and busted up my face, I was sure of two things: 1) The fall had caused a blood clot so deep in my brain that it would be inoperable, and 2) My nose was broken but since I couldn’t afford to do anything about it, it would eventually heal on its own causing all the cartilage to be damaged, thereby causing the decay of said cartilage and resulting in my nose collapsing sometime in the near or distant future (I still worry this could happen).
Then there was the time in college I was staying over with my boyfriend. I woke him up in the middle of the night to tell him I was going to have an aneurysm (see what I mean about the aneurysm thing?). I think he called me a crazy bitch before he rolled back over. I drove myself to the ER and sat in the waiting room, thinking (logically, of course) that at least I was in the right place if my head was going to blow up. I never even checked in. Just sat there. After a while, the sun started to come up and I felt safe again, so I drove back to my boyfriend’s house and let myself in. He didn’t wake up. Or if he did, he didn’t acknowledge my return. Can’t really say I blame him either way.
I wonder why we broke up?
When I was little, I was petrified of lying on my back in bed because I was sure baseballs were going to rain from the ceiling and crush my chest. I thought that if I slept on my side, the raining baseballs would do less bodily harm. (What are you laughing at?)
Strangely, I don’t worry about common things like burglars and rapists or even the swine flue. You know, the kind of things that are more likely to actually happen.
I worry about things like this: blood suddenly pouring down my walls from the cracks in the ceiling, my door opening of its own accord and a ghost child glaring in at me, my bed taking on a life of its own and levitating, apparitions accosting me in the hallway in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom (I used to have this thing where I had to make it back in the bed, feet up, under the covers, before the toilet finished flushing. Something bad would happen if I didn’t. Luckily, I never found out what because halfway back from the bathroom, I would take a sprinting leap and land on all fours in the middle of the bed before the toilet even had time to finish its twirling. My boyfriend at the time was not fond of this behavior but he didn’t have to live with the dark images so there’s no way he could understand). And, of course, the liver cancer, lung cancer, aneurysms, blood clots. Those kinds of things.
Meanwhile, I skip merrily through a darkened alley looking for ghosts and get my ass snatched, raped, killed, and thrown in a dumpster.
In Between Days 