The Less I Seek My Source for Some Definitive . . .

I am still hanging out in Des Moines with my sister and the kids. The place is small, cramped for the three (sometimes four if my oldest niece wanders her way home) people who live here, let alone me and my baggage. I sleep on the loveseat. Also cramped. I slept here before, a few years ago. I’d just moved back from Richmond with a plan of a better job and a bigger place with sis and her kids as well as my own kid. Plans changed. I fell in love. Made new plans. Plans change.

I am again in the process of plan-making. Trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. Except that I know what I want to be, what I am. I just have to decide how to make a living at it. And then make a living at it. In the meantime, I need to find a place of my own to live. I do best when I live alone, when I am responsible only for me and can’t attribute my failures to anyone’s actions but my own. Because I am to blame for my own mistakes. And sometimes I forget that. Even worse, sometimes I blame myself for others’ failings. I have to stop doing that too.

So in the tradition of giving up before you even begin  .  .  .

I met someone who was worth it – all the heartache and the risk – because she gave me something I’d never had before. She taught me what it meant to be happy, really happy. And she gave me hope. That things would work out. That I could always be that happy. That life would always be this good.

Plans change. People too.

I haven’t lived alone in six years. I guess it’s a lie that I always do best when I live alone. You know, now that I think about it. I was homeless there for a bit. And working two jobs. I was even robbed once and ripped off by a crappy roommate. And I missed finishing grad school because of one stupid thesis credit (and eight grand in tuition). Worked for a horrible woman who made me feel like shit about myself every single day. I couldn’t even afford to travel back to Iowa and pick up the kid (whose father had refused to put him on a plane as we’d agreed), so he ended up staying in Iowa an entire year longer.

Despite all of it though, maybe because of all of it, I found out for the first time in my life how to relax. How to let go. I mean, what can you do? At a certain point, when everything is falling down around you, the ever-growing pile of shit consuming you, there is only so much crying, so much worrying,  so much pain you can endure. There are only so many plans you can watch blow up in your face. At some point, you just have to say fuck it. Who needs plans anyway?

I don’t know where I’m going from here or what I’m going to do. I’m looking for an apartment. By myself as I mentioned. Mostly because I don’t have any plans, nothing long-term anyway, and it’s just easier to wander about aimlessly if you don’t have to answer to a roommate. Maybe someday I’ll find one who’s worth it. Maybe I already had my chance.

The kid is nineteen now. Grown. Independent. Still learning about the world. I wasn’t always there for him, not like a traditional mom. And this last year or so . . . it’s a daunting task to take care of someone else when you’re barely alive. I want to be more for him than I have. I want him to be the best person he can be and he deserves the same from me. I’m his role model (a fact I have both known all along and failed to understand) and though I always planned to teach through example (take chances, be more than you already are, learning is the point of life) I’ve found that some of my examples he learned far too well (always put yourself first, don’t get muddled down by emotional attachments, be greedy with your time – it’s all you have).

I’m looking for some place close to him, where he can come and visit. Maybe spend the weekend sometimes while I get it together. I’ve been a bit afraid to face him. Feeling like I failed, like there was no chance of success or happiness, I’ve been thinking I let him down. But I recently remembered what I taught myself all those years ago and what an amazing woman once helped me to perfect. I know how to be happy. No matter what my plans. No matter how they go.  And I want to make sure my son knows it too.

I won’t forget again. And I won’t spend so much time guarding against unhappiness. When I had nothing to lose, it was easy not to freak out. When I had everything to lose . . . well that’s where I am learning to relax. Other than that, I really have no plans. They seem to change anyway.

Zombie

I head back to Des Moines. Another greyhound bus, another city. My sister is going into labor. Maybe by the time I arrive. I’m sad to leave my friend, but it is different this time. I am different this time. I’m excited about this new life I’m leading, feeling energized about the new start and ready to get it into full swing. Ready to be happy once again. It’s a strange thing how you have to be ready for happiness, that it’s not enough for it to just be present, you actually have to be willing to take it in, to seize it and hold onto it with all your might. I haven’t been ready. Wasn’t willing.

For some time now, and I just found this recently, I have been feeling . . . well, I’ve been wandering about like I was pretty much dead already. I can only explain what I mean through story, and this is one I’ve been needing to tell for far too long now. I’ve alluded to it. And if you haven’t noticed, fallen completely apart over it and subsequently/concurrently kicked myself over it. But I can’t write the next part until I tell this story. About the accident I was in last year.

We were crossing a bridge. Two lanes. Completely iced over. A tractor trailer was about to enter the bridge at the other end, coming toward us. We watched him come down the hill, his trailer fishtailed into our lane. There was nowhere to go as he overcorrected. My fiancé (at the time) tried to avoid him, but we were sliding on the ice too. Into his lane. Just as he got himself back on track. For a moment, I watched the grill of a tanker bearing down on me as we slid sideways toward him. Fifty feet. Then twenty. Then death.

But we were out of it. In the next instant, she had pulled us out of it. We slammed into the side of the bridge and came to a stop. Finally took a breath. Contemplated sunlight. Then I heard it. The pop, the sound that occurs when two hurtling masses try to occupy the same space. And fail. My fiancé witnessed it in the rearview mirror. The car behind us sliding on the same patch of ice, too close to the semi. Matter becoming other matter. I was spared all but the sound. That sound.

There is more to tell, but as I said, I need to write the next part. This story is about all that came after – not the death, not the guilt, not even the second semi that almost took us out as we made our way back home that day. This isn’t even about the way my fiance’s sobs played in my head for months afterward, how that second sound, of her crying softly in the seat beside me and the popping of the ice and gravel beneath the tires, was like I imagined the end would sound. Lonesome. Heartbroken.

This is about the moment when I faced the grill of a semi-truck, and didn’t let myself live to tell about it.

I had a panic attack a few weeks ago. Couple of months ago, I guess. It came on suddenly as I sat watching reruns and playing a game on the computer. Trying to occupy my mind which has been so cluttered. Too much in one space. Within minutes, I felt as though I was having a heart attack. The heart attack that was to end my life. I don’t know how long it lasted. I only know how intense it was, how real my fear, how I finally for the first time since that moment on the bridge,felt and told myself what I should have then.

I am not going to die like this.

I repeated it over and over. Out loud to no one. Only the bright blue walls of the living room. After telling myself not to pass out (because I was certain that as soon as I lost consciousness, it would all be over) and fumbling through my phone for several minutes, watching the edges of the room go fuzzy and dark, thinking these blue walls would be the last thing I would see, I got in touch with Manny, who talked me through it.

As soon as the tingling in my chest went away and the room came back into view, I let him hang up and I went upstairs to lie in my bed. Now that I knew I wasn’t dying. And I cried. For an hour or more, I wept, sobbed, screamed a few times. For the woman on the bridge, who was killed instead of me. For the woman I loved who was forever changed by that day. For the woman I was before I stopped living.

In the moment that I watched the grill of the semi loom ever closer, I thought I was going to die. I have known it all along. I thought that moment was my end, but I only thought it. Believed it. Understood it. I just did not feel it. I’ve spent the last year or so trying to intellectualize, trying to think my way through. Emotionally, I have been in shock. Unable to move beyond that moment and unable to conceive of a future beyond today. It’s difficult to believe in anything when you feel you are pretty much dead already.

My fiancé, when she was still my fiancé, before she found herself engaged to a zombie, once told me (many times) that she was worried about me. She told me to go into the bedroom, shut the door and cry it out. I never did. I would say that I was afraid to do it, and it’s probably a little bit true, but it seems ridiculous considering the amount of time I spent in tears since then. I just didn’t think I needed to cry over the accident. I knew what had happened. I knew it wasn’t our fault. I knew what survivor’s guilt was and post-traumatic stress. I knew that all of it was just how the world works.

 I just forget sometimes that you can’t understand the world just by knowing about it, sometimes you have to feel it too. I know it might sound strange, but it took me a long time to learn that lesson. You would think it would be innate, especially to someone who fancies herself this amazingly sensitive writer, but I had to learn how to stop suppressing things and actually feel them. I’d spent much of the first thirty years of my life keeping it all bottled up until things exploded.

Then I met this girl. Who thought I was a brilliant writer (so we immediately became best friends) and who thought I could be an even better one if I actually felt the shit I wrote. Trying to become a better writer, I became a better person. I’d forgotten that lesson, and all sorts of other ones lately. I got lost somewhere, pushed off my path somewhere on an icy bridge. But I am finding my way back. It’s easier now that I’m alive.

I head back to Des Moines. Say goodbye to my friend. Ten years later and we are still as close. Proof that time still passes, will continue to pass. I board another greyhound bus, head for another city. The bus is full, loud. The guy sitting beside me yells into his phone and someone bumps my chair yet again, but I don’t care. Put on my headphones and watch the skyline as it morphs from city to suburb. I feel that tingling again, but it’s not the same this time. I recognize it. Life surging through my veins. It’s a strange thing how you have to be ready for happiness, that it’s not enough for it to just be present, you actually have to be willing to take it in, to seize it and hold onto it with all your might.

My Epic

I have written seventy-five pages. I didn’t take my laptop with me to Des Moines last month for my little hippie friend’s birthday, then I ended up leaving from there for Fort Worth again to see my friend for her birthday. I just made it back to Des Moines on Friday, in time for my niece’s actual day of birth. I’m staying with my sister for a bit, helping her get everything set up for the baby (who came early) and just helping her out since she’s still recovering from that whole growing and then expelling another human being thing. At least I hope I am being helpful. I have to watch out that I don’t become overbearing. I have a tendency . . .

It’s good to hang out with my family again. The first couple days were stressful, but it’s calmed down now a bit, and I am getting back to the writing. I bought a cheap notebook in Texas. One hundred sheets. Two hundred pages back and front. I am on page seventy-five.

As I said, I’ve been cleaning my sister’s apartment (she’s a hoarder – it’s okay, she knows), which has been an epic task worthy of a bard’s song and involved a mighty mouse slayer (me) and a dangerous journey (into the disgusting mess of my teenaged niece’s bedroom). I came across a file box filled with the only copies of several of my older works – a few short stories, quite a few essays, and the last known copy of what was once my graduate thesis. I thought I had lost all of it in my gypsy travels, but there they were, safe, guarded by the mice who left their calling card in the bottoms of the hanging files. Kind of made me feel bad about evicting them.

I’ve already started reworking one of the stories. Something my hippie friend Emily and I talked about the other day. Suddenly the story made sense to me. Suddenly I found it again.

I am getting things back in order. Maybe not back. Maybe just in order. I’ve given up so much time – to illness, to meaningless jobs, to standing in my own damned way. But kind of like the story, I have been putting in the hard work, facing my fears, fighting when I need to, and suddenly, amazingly, life makes sense to me again. Suddenly, I have found myself again.

Just to get it all out

Writing.

I am writing.