Where Am I At

Some moments I see myself, and I wonder if I am overreacting.  Everybody loses people.  Sometimes in worse ways - frequently in worse ways.  Shouldn't I be past this?  It's done.  Shouldn't I be functional?

Your baby is dead.  It was years ago.  Your life has moved forward, sometimes without you.  Get over it.  Catch up.  WAKE up.

But then I think.

If I can survive without her.

It's like she doesn't matter.

If I stop talking about her, thinking about her, obsessing over her, she won't be a part of my life anymore.  I will invalidate her by breathing when she isn't.  By living when she isn't.  By smiling, occupying space, fighting for my needs, confiding in people, feeling happy, I stamp out her memory.

By not telling people about the date tattoo on my ankle, I lie.

By saying I have two children, I lie.

By saying I am happy.

I lie.

And should it really be this way?  Is my life so ruined?  I'm here.  But I'm not here at all.

I'm on the wrong train.  Speeding along as time chugs and spins, every minute taking me further away from those few days, weeks, moments we were together, whether I want to acknowledge, heal, or dwell.

--

A man walks into the shop and past Derek and I on the couches.  He speaks over the counter to Jeremy about the tattoo he wants to get.  A footprint from the hospital.  Stillborn.  The artifacts from a life missed, a body on the wrong train.  That mark in the skin, that small and audacious link, that tiny effort to connect across the dimensions, to keep the family together, to keep a baby with you when you never got to hold them.

I start to tap my phone.  I flip it against the back of my hand.  I stare at the sidewalk through the window.

I am thinking about those hours in my car, within sight of the front door.  Unable to go in, lost and unsure of where I wanted to be.  Wondering if I had the strength to go inside when I didn't want to.

Derek pops me on the arm with his drawing pad.  Says hey.  Gestures to the screen.

I don't have to say anything.  He knows what I'm thinking about.  He knows I need to watch The OA on Netflix.  Come back to the train.


Move forward.

Bracing in the Mornings

Some people wake up in the mornings and invest in themselves.  They drink a cup of coffee, take a shower, eat food.

Some roll out of bed, grab an energy drink and shoes, and run out the door.

Some laze about for a while.


It takes me about 30-45 minutes, on an easy day, to get up.

I sit up fast - I've undoubtedly slept through every alarm again.  I stare around the room I hate, blinking hard and reaching for the red bulls by the bed.  I might eat a couple bites of whatever food I had the foresight to put nearby.

I think to myself - okay, let's get up and do today.

And then I realize that I have to do today.

And my entire body tenses.  I am filled with an overwhelming, drowning feeling of terror.  I'm not ready.  I am not ready to wash tools.  I am not ready to interact with people who want to know about my life or their bodies.  I am not ready to use my words.  I am not ready.

Calm down.  Sip your drink.  Take your time.  Do your makeup.  Put on clothes.  It's okay.  You have twenty minutes to get it together and act like a normal person.

Breathe.

Act like a normal person.

Two steps forward

I'm eighteen.  Fit.  Fucked up.  Meek.  I've never smoked, never had a drink, never had sex.  Full of energy, full of big thoughts, full of questions for the world.  Full of everything - simply full.  The most novel thing is being able to drive anywhere I want at any time, and I grow attached to my vehicle as my home on wheels.  I may leave the car to go into other residences, but they are borrowed, not mine.  This car is mine.  This bridge and the rocks and life underneath it are mine.  This town is mine.  I fall into the earth every time I need to bring myself back to baseline.

It works - I inhale the grass and dirt and twigs.  I remember that they are my source.  I follow everyone like a stray waiting for scraps.  And at night, I lay down in the elements and I humble myself intensely.

I'm twenty-two.  Not fit.  Just as fucked up.  I've found a voice in my core, and I use it to voice opinions and defenses that I will never stand behind.  I can be loud.  I can be silent.  I swing between a hard headed determination to pursue what I want and a deep loathing that prevents me from ever really wanting.  I sit on the curb and read the chronicle while the sun rises in the cool, moist air above the treeline and lights my paper.  The beginnings of the fear of going indoors has been planted inside me.  Now I take maybe ten minutes to myself before stepping over the threshold.

How many times did I tell him and my closest friends that I wanted the relationship to end?  But my voice still had more compassion in it than personal interest.  I stayed.  I sat in the grass and distracted myself with rescues and waited for time to pass.

I'm twenty-three.  Fit in the wrong way.  Fucked up more than I have ever been.  I spin through life, I breathe in water, I choke and sputter and slip beneath the surface because at least it makes sense to drown.  I run.  I take my beloved car, my home, all over the state.  I take it to Montrose, again and again.  I have lost nature and found whiskey.  Found kamel reds.  Found xanax.  Found a gun.  My will exists on an unwitnessed paper towel in sharpie in the cabinet of the armoir.  I have no home and I do not go to it - I don't go to his parent's house, and when we move back into our own filthy hoarder's storage unit of a house, I don't go in there, either.  I stop at the doorframe.  I think about the shotgun.  I think about taking it out to the yard, way in the back corner.  I think about waiting for someone else to fire one off so I can time it just right, so the vultures will carry off my pieces before 7 am, before he comes home.  So there is no clean up.  So I can sink back into the ground that I miss, so I can nourish the birds that he so loves.  So I can fly, and be dragged, and be torn up.

But instead, I wait in front of the door.  I sit down on the bucket on the porch in the pile of filth that vomits out the entryway a little more each day.  I rest on that pickle bucket and I smoke a smoke and I rage at myself for not being able to simply. Walk. Inside.

I'm twenty-eight.

Not fit.

Probably fucked up.

I have little pieces of purpose in my life that float around inside of me like puzzle pieces.  Sometimes they fall into place, and some days I pull them apart.  Some pieces are under my couch.  Some are in my ear, like a buzzing bass humming through far away ear buds.  Some touch my lips and twist up my stomach.

Some days I walk through the door.

Some days I wait for an hour or more in the car.  Mustering courage.  Trying to be ready to step into that life some stranger in my shape created, fostered, cultivated.  I don't know who she is, but here I am in her place, trying to keep things together in case she comes back.  In case someone sees through my act.  In case one day I can get back to my own dimension.  The one with the right baby.  The one where we never got married.  Where nature didn't steal my child.  Maybe there we are together.  Sometimes I think that's not it at all - I'm just dead alongside her, rotting the way it was supposed to be.  Holding my tiny ball of a future in my hands like I have any way at all to express the love I carry for her.

I cannot live separated from her.

I can't breathe.

There are good days and there are bad days, but truthfully - none of them are really mine.

Maybe this year I'll find a way to live in my own life.  Find a person who allows me to grieve, survive, love.  Maybe I can forge a new direction in this other woman's life I'm leading and do right by both her and me.

I mean, maybe, right?

Reactions

I smile the entire day.  The more he speaks, the more I can't help it.  He's too new for me to read - I'm watching his face, looking for his responses.  Am I oversharing?  Is he upset?  Is he interested?  I'll back off and keep to shallow topics.  It's too soon for anything more.  We have time.

I exhale.  I calm down my need to run.  Because it feels good to be with him, just the two of us, spending time like we have it all.  I've never moved so slowly, never melted like honey, relaxing into the evening hours.  Attuned and dripping off of his words with comfortable, warm ease.

I grin wryly.  In the late evening hours, someone messages me.  I come back with responses that are quick, teasing, and unfair.  I know where I'm at now, and I don't need any specific reply.  I'm prepared.  I'm confidently lacking a base, and ready to move left, right, to hold out my arm and say, bluntly, no.  I make no excuses for myself.

I shake.  I tremble like a leaf, like a cat in the cold, out of control of my own skin.  Just like I was before.  Out of control.  I watch with amusement and frustration while my legs, hands, and voice tremble and ignore my commands.  Wherever my body is, my brain clearly isn't with it.  Disobedient.

I leave.  The woman on the television cries while she recounts her forced loss.  I simply go.  Out the door, around the corner, I just keep walking.  Close to home.  Too close - so keep walking.  When I come back, I dodge eye contact and sit beneath the counter in my booth.  By some stroke of kindness, nobody engages with me.  I breathe it out.  I exhale it.  This is not the time or the place.  I will be in control, for the next forty-five minutes.

I communicate softly.  He messages me now, to make plans, to continue our pattern.  I'm finished with patterns.  I'm finished with people who want to control me or guilt trip me.  I'm finished with being asked where my bite marks came from, or told I shouldn't get more.  I am not your possession.  That you would even attempt to assume control over me infuriates me.  You will not have it, you won't, and neither will anyone else who tries.



Maybe that's why I'm so blown away by this guy and his "old fashioned" date.  He didn't try anything.  He didn't push anything.  He verbalized everything.

Slow like honey.

Sweep me off my feet.

When I was a kid, I learned a lesson that my young mind promptly forgot about, until now.

My younger brother and I were playing on the carpet in the new house.  He had recently received an action figure toy, perhaps a power ranger?  It was scattered on the ground among his other loot.  I had my toys out, too, and we were imagining wild adventures and escapades.

I went to pick up his new action figure, and realized it had broken at the arm.  I didn't know how to fix it, so I showed it to him, and he immediately started wailing.  My father walked over to see what was going on, and I instinctively, as I have always done and still do, apologized.

Instantly, both my father and brother were scolding me for having broken the toy.  I knew it was already broken, that I hadn't touched it before.  I knew I wasn't at fault.  But at the time, I thought that the right thing to do was to take the blame so it could be resolved quickly.  Even if you don't mean it, you apologize to your brother.  And I felt bad about it.  So I said sorry, over and over again, without confessing the truth that I was innocent.

An hour or two later, when things had settled down, I realized what I couldn't articulate about the results of my actions.  Probably a realization other people have always known, but I've always had trouble with it.

An apology is an admission of guilt.

An apology is not a bandaid, or a salve, or a step toward resolution.  An apology is not a gift or a courtesy.

An apology is a fancy way to say, "I am at fault here."

And sometimes that feels good to say, even if it isn't true.  Sometimes it feels good to admit wrongdoing, because it takes the heat off of accusations.

But I apologize for everything, to everyone.

Why?

Other people don't.


So other people don't encounter the backlash of suddenly NOT saying sorry.  The assumption that you're just being a bitch this week, because your spine is in the way of someone else's convenience.

If I tried to view it from an outside perspective, I would assume that my apologizing does two things:

• It makes people uncomfortable.  They have to constantly reassure me, and that must be infuriating.  I'm...sorry?
• It gives people the impression that I am literally constantly fucking up.  If I'm apologizing nonstop, then I am doing things wrong nonstop.  And then they really begin to believe it - and I can't connect with anyone when they think I'm a royal screw up who can't keep her shit together.

He sits beside me in the car and listens to me insist that I will no longer apologize for things I have no responsibility for.  Listens to me say I will not be responsible for more than I can handle anymore.  Will not TAKE responsibility for them by apologizing out of turn.  These are luxuries most other people take for granted on a daily basis, common themes of adulthood that are simply assumed with anyone who isn't me.

And his response is, "Okay, but, you know, if you do that forever, it just kind of makes you a bitch."

If being a bitch means knowing my limits, knowing where to draw lines, refusing to be taken advantage of, and not being punished for things outside of my reasonable control,

then call me Bitch with a capital B.