Dispossessed

I have very few possessions. Little to connect me to the life I have lived, the person I've been. Mostly, what is left are words. I have only the words used to revive the memories, share my stories, connect my present to the past. There are a couple of totes in the basement. One photo album. A few random trinkets. Some journals and a folder containing what was once my graduate thesis. I have some clothes. Mostly thrift store bought and all within the last year. Three pair of shoes. A couple hats. A winter coat. I have this laptop (which is barely surviving) and the iPod my son bought me for Christmas two years ago. The bed I sleep in does not belong to me, left behind by Manny’s friend, the owner of the house. The desk is mine. Picked up for free at a yard sale. Wood. Painted white. Like a canvas, waiting to be filled.

If I Start Having to Raise my Hand to Go to the Bathroom . . .

Had last night off and I didn’t go in until the dinner shift today. It was a nice break after working split shifts all last week. I am tired. Very tired. This is probably not also helped by the fact that I have gone out after work all but two of the last I don’t know how many nights, one of those I spent on the sofa with a migraine (I am sure none of this is related). Sunday I had planned for rest, but found myself with a beer during the Vikings game at Manny’s friend’s place and somehow ended up closing down the thirteen hours later. This was arguably much more fun than sleep.

Tonight after cashing out my one and only table for the evening, I took a moment to step off the floor and relieve myself, and ran into the bartender, who was just finishing her business. We’ve become friends in the three weeks since the restaurant finally opened and have gone out for drinks (including Sunday night when  she was only going to meet up with Manny and I for one beer), but mostly we either walk home together or get a ride from her brother instead of walking separately, in the same direction, in the dark, with pockets full of cash.

All of this terrifies the tiny Albanian who employs us. He distrusts everyone. Assumes everyone is a crook. Consequently, he treats us only slightly better than he might treat a prisoner were he a guard. And he thinks that the bartender and I, because we talk to one another outside of the prison walls, are somehow colluding to steal his money and rip him off. I’ve been doing my best to ignore him. Trying not to chat with the bartender any more than necessary for work (even though I’m chatty and friendly with everyone else) because every time I talk to her, the tiny Albanian is suddenly standing between us, telling one or both of us to do some thing he just thought up.

So tonight, when I stepped out of the stall and found the bartender washing her hands on her way out of the bathroom, I knew we were in for it, and even made a joke to her about walking out separately so he didn’t think we were plotting in the toilet. When I got back to the nearly empty dining room, my boss was standing near the hostess podium, glaring at me. I looked past him to say good night to the guests on their way out the door, and he reached out, grabbed me by the arm, and growled at me, “Please explain why the two of you have to go to the lavaratory at the same frickin’ time?”

I just stared at him, his fingers gripped tight above my elbow. I still don’t know how I managed to keep my cool or my job.  

Grendel

Getting ready to go to work, which is to say I am sitting on the sofa after standing outside for not one but two cigarettes in the grey, dreary morning. I have twenty or so minutes before I need to shower and dress and catch the bus downtown where, even though I have told myself I don’t need one, I will smoke another cigarette in order to calm my nerves before walking  through those double doors to the darkened restaurant, where the owner will be sitting, waiting to pounce. No doubt he will have found something to piss him off, something about which to be suspicious, and the calm I have spent this morning cultivating will be replaced with anger and frustration that if I stick up for myself and tell this tiny Albanian immigrant what he really needs to be told, I will be fired. Even worse is the possibility of being kept on, and treated with even more suspicion and hostility.

Money is a bitch. And I think I’m working for her son.

Upstanding Citizen, Finally

Got a job at a new place opening up downtown. Had an interview with the owner who was a little crazy. In a fun way so I felt completely at ease. He reminded me of the men I met in Texas, my friend’s neighbors and the small businessmen having their business lunches while we were on our quest for the best burger in Fort Worth. I felt pretty comfortable and he kept asking all sorts of hilariously inappropriate questions and I just played and flirted along (confidence boosted by my especially spunky hair). He was testing my obnoxious customer/flirty drunk handling skills and since my roommate and a disproportionate number of the men I know fit this bill, I am an expert handler (I know how it sounds). Anyway, I found out after the interview that he owns another restaurant in Ft. Worth. So now I have a quick way to endear myself to him (and become his favorite). I have no problem earning valuable suck-up points for future use. I always seem to need them in the end. I inevitably speak my mind (I did not mention this in the interview). Anyway, seems like he will be a fun dude to work for as long as I work hard, which I always do. Of course, as soon as I say this, he will turn out to be a jackass, and I will end up hating him. Either way, I need the money. And something to do during the day.

The best part is that it’s fine dining which should mean better tips, and I get to learn about wine and get experience in fine dining, which makes it easier to get other such positions should the need arise, and I hope it doesn’t because so far everything seems cool. And the place is right across the street from the comedy club/piano lounge where I spend too much time and money. But I did the open mic on a couple weeks ago and it went great. I was the only woman in the line up. And the first one of the night to get any laughs, even some I didn't expect, and I even had to stop and wait for some clapping once or twice. Woohoo! It was amazing. Like, I think the point of my life has been revealed to me kind of fun. Like, I could write tragedy that would break your heart, but I'm not willing to go there anymore lest I break my own, so I'll just tell you funny stories about my idiot self and we'll all laugh about it, and I’ll feel connected and human and not so much like the conduit for all human suffering kind of fun.

My Song

I’ve been struggling as a writer lately. I think it’s partly because I’ve been struggling as a human being for awhile now, and I let the struggle get the better of me. But there’s more. I figured it out tonight while I was driving back from the apartment I used to share with the woman I was supposed to be with. My sister’s van full of my things. Things I left behind. Because I never meant to leave at all. But I did. I can’t change what I did. Struggling with forgiveness as well. Always learning to forgive myself.

I wrote her a letter. We were still living together. I was starting to crack and she was spreading her wings. I meant to tell her I needed help. Instead, I ended up saying something, telling her something that made her question the notion of us. Something that changed the way she felt about me. I only wanted to tell her I loved her and that I needed help. I was losing my mind. At the same time that I was losing her. Losing my entire life. It was too much for me to bear. I became self-obsessed. I can admit that. No need to pretend.

It’s been stuck in my head – the something I said – that I still don’t understand how I could communicate something that wasn’t in my heart. And I kept doing it. Keep doing it. Writing things that don’t convey what it is I feel, what it is I know, what it is I most devoutly believe to be true. That’s where I’ve been struggling. Doubting myself. I’ve been plugging away. Pushing myself through it. Hoping for clarity.

I’m looking for my voice again. I spent the last week reading through a copy of some work I did during grad school, the last time I wrote on a regular basis. I barely recognized some of it, didn’t remember writing the words, didn’t remember the story, but it was good. I was working hard then. I’d spent years narrowing my focus, studying my craft, pushing myself to be better. Always better. Reading through my old work, I felt a little like a singer whose vocal cords have been damaged, listening to her records, the songs she really just fucking killed, and wondering if she’d ever be able to do it again. If I’ll ever be able to do it again.

I’m trying. Trying to get my voice back in shape. Relearning the nuances. Relearning the joy of my art. Finding the confidence to bear my soul again. I know I can do it. But I still don’t believe I can. I hear it in my own voice. Wavering, wobbling. The fear resonates, but I am starting to hit the right notes and every once in awhile I kill the big ones and I hear something else, something new, something stronger and richer than I’ve ever heard before. So I just have to keep going. I can’t change the past. I can’t un-cause the pain I caused. I can only change myself. I can only vow to be better. Always better.

I have to push through the fear, past the failure, and toward the place where I can step back on that stage and belt out the song that’s in my soul.

Alpha

Spent the weekend at my sister’s place for her birthday. The baby is about six weeks old now, and I was excited to see her again. Not so excited about coming home. I had an inkling of how things were before I left – I keep up with my sister through texts and facebook – I could tell she was slipping again into depression. Post-partem depression. She had it with the other kids. When my first niece was born, I ended up keeping her while my sister was hospitalized and recovered. And when my nephew was born, I came home from Virginia in part to help out again as she got through it again. Despite her history, the doctor at the hospital refused to prescribe medication (apparently a graduate of the Tom Cruise school on psychiatric care), and sent her on her way. So, after sinking into despair while her body recovered from the trauma of having grown and expelled another human being, she finally saw her family practitioner (a woman) and started an antidepressant the day I arrived.

I am myself just starting to feel strong again. Wounded maybe. Maybe always will be. But I am finally starting to come out of the cloud I’ve been wandering through. Still making mistakes. Bad decisions that seem right at the time. Then I try to fix them. Make things worse. But I’m trying not to beat myself up about them so much. Trying to make peace with myself. Be at peace with myself (which is hard since the factions have been warring for almost four decades now).

I’ve been writing. Well, I was writing. Getting into a pattern. I submitted a story last week. It’s been years since I’ve submitted anything. Years since I’ve been willing to take a chance that I might actually be a talented writer. So I decided that I was being a coward. And that I was holding myself back in some combination of fear and punishment (for being such a coward).

I’ve been working really hard on forgiving myself lately. It’s been tough since I really betrayed  both myself and someone I love very much. And I thought I was done with betrayal. I haven’t been able to fix it or make up for it. I haven’t even known where to start. So I’ve just been rambling forward, one misstep at a time, trying to find the path in this fucking fog.

My sister is coming along, but the first few days were rough. A year ago, I sat in this same apartment, crying my own eyes out, so I understand far too well what she is going through. It looks different from this side. Other people call and stop by to talk to her, tell her to buck up, just shake it, just stop being depressed. I want to say it too. It seems so easy to just choose happiness, just choose not to be sad. It seems so easy.

It’s hard watching her go through this (not to mention exhausting helping to care for a newborn again). Made harder by the reflection of my own behavior over the last year. I know how badly she wants to feel better. I recognize how much she just wants that demon cloud to lift. I remember how it feels to think it never will end. So I am trying to remain strong. Be positive. Be happy, so I can show her how, even if I don’t entirely feel it on the inside. It’s a high, tight rope for me to walk helping her get through this. Last time I tried to help someone through, I ended up falling and made a complete mess of everything. I ended up crying in this apartment.

I'm not so good at this part. I don't want to have to be the strong one, all this weight on ny shoulders. Okay, it isn't that I'm not good at it. I am, sometimes, a little too take-charge. Which is the problem. I take on too much. More than my share. More than I am capable of doing sometimes. Because I think I owe the world. But then I start to turn into a bitch when I think I have to be in charge. Like the worst kind of bitch. The Alpha bitch.

I'm also not good at letting someone else take care of me. Terrible at asking for help and then just unglued when I feel like I have to depend on someone else. I start justifying it. Just to make myself feel better. And I also become a bitch.

But I can’t walk away. I have to be better than that. I've kept my footing before. Balanced between taking over and rolling over. I can’t keep walking away from the people I love, just because I think it will preserve my sanity. For one thing, I think the sanity ship has done sailed. For another, it gets lonely being sane.

Singing With the Dead

 Except for the random walks and a short trip out with a friend, I’ve spent most of the past two weeks hunkered over the laptop or my notebook (paper – they still make those). I’ve squeezed out a little over a hundred and twenty pages in the last month and a half. Plus done a revision (more like a complete overhaul) of a short story I wrote several years back. I’m writing again. It’s like the blood just started pumping through my veins. I am among the living again. It feels good.

The downside to this is that, well . . . I am among the living again. Before, my zombie corpse was overwhelmed by the fact that, you know, I was dead. Now, as the blood starts moving through, I feel it moving through. I feel every little pain, every ache. Too much metaphor?

Anyway, I am using this regeneration to do what I’m supposed to do in this world, what I do best. One hundred and twenty pages worth. The more I write, the more confident I become. And not just on the page, but in everything else. I assert myself on the page, and life just follows.

Others are still giving me advice. Talking. Telling me what I should do. Find a job. Make lots of money. Get a car. Move here. Move there. Don’t move at all. Change this or that or all of it. Stop being who you are. I know they are trying to be helpful (and I did seem pretty helpless there for a while), and it’s not that I don’t appreciate the help – at least the thought behind the help – but I don’t want it. I’ve stopped listening.

They exhaust me. Droning on and on. I tire of trying to convince them of the universal value of art, even as we sit watching television or listening to a band play. As if it’s somehow okay for other people to be artists, yet it’s beneath me. As if my higher calling is earning seventy-five grand a year and driving a glorified station wagon back to my house in the suburbs where I can watch art made by other people on my big screen tv, just to unwind from selling all those widgets and earning all that money. And doing it again tomorrow.

I don’t want to explain myself anymore. And I’m not going to. Okay, maybe here on the page. I’m just going to keep going. Pour as much of myself into writing as they do into their trinket-earning. If I can’t make a living at it, well I’ll find something to pay the bills, but if I never try, if I never put my art first, how will I know?

One hundred twenty pages. And I'm not a zombie.

What if?

Been up for hours. Wandering the house. Wandered out for a pack of smokes. I need to quit. Still feeling the restlessness. Wish I could keep more of it focused on the work, concentrate on the writing. My mind is cluttered. Too many thoughts bumping around in there at once, and at last they are not the thoughts of others, the suggestions from others, the doubts of other people creeping in and taking over. Just my own doubts. I try to pay them no mind, stopping the thought before it gets too far. You don’t have to follow it, a counselor once told me as I stared at the shabby gold curtains in her office. It’s not advice to which I’ve always adhered, but it works. Almost all of the time.

Still, the thoughts – the what if thoughts – don’t just go away. They still show up, knock around in my head a little while, trying to get my attention. Those days, like this morning, it is all I can do to shake those thoughts loose, focus on the positive ones, follow the trail that will lead me far away from the doubt.

I read recently that the difference between people with high anxiety and stress levels and people without them is the question of if. People with normal stress levels go about their lives telling themselves, if I do this, then that will happen. And most of the time they are right, so they keep going about their lives. People with higher stress and anxiety are more likely to ask themselves one question. What if? What might happen if I do this? Sometimes, the question and the infinite possibilities become too much, overwhelming a person into a point of immobility.

The counselor with the gold curtains once told me to let go of that question. I understood what she meant. I knew I couldn’t continue obsessing, fearing the worst possible outcome at any given moment. But I know now that I can’t ever let it go completely, not without sacrificing who I am at my core. Without the what if – I wouldn’t be much of a writer. The more they try to counsel and medicate into no longer asking the questions, the less I’m able to write. Writing is itself therapy. On the page, it is safe to work out the what ifs, let them out, let them move through me without making me paranoid. On the page, they cannot hurt me. When I am writing, I forget all the other questions. I eventually forget to even ask them.

A Clear Day

 I went on a major cleaning spree this morning. Brought my desk upstairs. Rearranged my bedroom so it would fit and I could look out the window as I sit writing. I also hung some curtains as I have been awakened each day since my return by the sunlight flooding my empty, white-walled room. I’m not much for going back to sleep. I have weird, Prozac-infused dreams when I try to go back to sleep.

This morning I woke on schedule, but managed to sort of doze until shortly after my roommate left for his job. After the zombie-lion chased me into the spooky old house on the hill and I woke up, I was still tired. Am still tired. Thinking about a nap, but I need to write a little. That’s what started it all this morning. I sat down to write, several times in fact, but found myself instead fumbling through the cable channels, smoking yet another cigarette, and just generally wandering about the house and yard. I even went for a walk through the neighborhood. I am restless. Something slightly beyond restless. And all the walking and not-writing didn’t cure it.

So I brought my desk upstairs to the bedroom and hung some curtains (I’ve heard this is an old folk remedy for getting over restlessness and writer’s block). Since we aren’t really sure how long we’re going to be here, I never really bothered unpacking anything other than my clothes. Not that I own much else. Not that I possess. The room has been sterile – white walls, a bookcase, a bed, my dirty laundry, miniblinds that let in far too much sunlight – and I haven’t done anything to change that. Like I’ve been waiting.

I guess it seemed strange to me to start now. You know, start living in the house I live in. When I moved in with Manny, I knew this space wasn’t permanent. Not even long term. Even if we continue living together, this space is temporary. But I must have figured out that it’s all temporary – even the stuff we are foolish enough to let ourselves think is forever – and I can’t go on another day, waiting. Waiting for the future to come through. Waiting for the past to fade away. If it’s for another day or another month, I’m not going to wake up again staring at stark white walls, like I’m in a hospital room or a Stanley Kubrick film.

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.

The Lunatic You're Looking For

I am done apologizing for getting sick. I get sick. I don’t want to. I try to stop it. I try not to let it happen, but it does, and you know what, fuck it. I get sick. Ill. Unwell. Instead of making my back hurt or my nose run or my heart beat irregularly, it makes my brain malfunction. Run overtime. Fill itself with unnecessary thought.

I have spent half my life trying to make up for it, for those short periods when my disordered brain causes problems, but I am done with that too.

I get sick.

When I’m not sick, I’m amazing. And that’s all that matters.

Because There's Always Time for Art . . .

Lady Lazarus
by Sylvia Plath
I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot-- The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash-- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. 23-29 October 1962 Reposted from Poets.org, which I browse when I need to be inspired.

Lost

I still miss you. It will stop someday. Someday, with any luck, I will wake up and won’t remember that I miss you. Maybe. Someday.

Even more than you, I miss the person I was when I was with you, the person who was so confident and sure of who I was and what I wanted. I saw life laid out before me, waiting to be explored, to fill me with awe and wonder, each turn leading to something new and fantastic. I can’t seem to find that woman anywhere. The worst part is that I think I know where she is.

I’m just not welcome there anymore.

So I’ll keep wandering. All the way to Mexico if I need. And maybe someday, with any luck, I will wake up and won’t remember to miss me.

Can't Take Direction, and My Socks Are Never Clean

I should have left sooner. I always should leave sooner. I’m never very good at goodbye. At the very least we could have salvaged our friendship, but I’m not so great at that sometimes either. We needed to take care of ourselves. I saw it just as much as you did, but I was afraid. Afraid that if I left, you would take it as a sign that we were never meant to be, that we were better off apart than together. And you did. Anyway. We really just needed time. We just needed to heal. We each had to figure out for ourselves why the truck had missed us and killed her, and we weren’t strong enough to do it together. But that was all it meant.

I hope you’ve found it. The reason.

That there is no reason. It just happened. It is just the way the universe works, and we have no control over such things. It’s taken me a long time to get here. Probably too long. I’ve destroyed a lot in the meantime. Love. Relationships. Myself. And all I’ve figured out is exactly what I knew all along – there is no reason. I control nothing other than myself. It’s a hard, clobbering fact that I have spent my life trying to teach myself. Sometimes, I am a horrible student. Sometimes, I refuse to give the right answer just because I don’t like the way it’s been taught to me.

Sometimes, I fail. On purpose. Just so I can be right in the end.

Maybe the Wizard Can Help

I need to go home. I have responsibilities to other people. Obligations. They are depending on me. Always depending on me. I am not ready to go.

I’m not writing.

I have not been able to write for some time now. I mean, I’ve filled up steno pads and the pages of various journals with the ramblings of a crazy woman. Even thrown a few of those up here. But to write, to sit down at the computer and put my thoughts on the screen and be able to do nothing else for hours, let alone days at a time . . .

It’s been years.

I can hardly take it anymore. I am carrying the weight of too many words unsaid. I feel numbed by their force, pressing me down, keeping me down.

I could always write with you. I could always write better, more honestly. But I’m not writing. Not even now. Here. With you.

I am not ready to go home.

I am not ready to go home because I know my home, but I just can’t find my way back.

Hey, I'm Not Trying to Be Nobody

I’m in Texas. Have come to see my dearest friend. I’m wearing a cowboy hat that makes me feel only slightly self-conscious and that I only tried on ironically because I am, after all, in the great country of Texas, but my friend told me it looked great on me (which was not the reaction I expected to get from a woman who has only to raise an eyebrow to portray her disgust at how wrong I look in something I think makes me look fabulous). She insisted I buy it. Was adamant about it, and I had to get it. So I am now sitting on the bed, writing, and looking fabulous in a cowboy hat in Texas and only feeling self-conscious about the fact that I am not wearing it ironically.

Practicing My Purpose Once Again

I stand outside, smoking a cigarette. I’m sure I reek of paint and pot and sweat, and I lean back against the brick wall, exhausted, and blow smoke into the night air. One foot against the wall, I think to myself I must look pretty cool. Like a James Dean poster. Or a Marlboro ad. I hope my friend comes out and sees me. Standing here. Relaxing against the brick wall and smoking a cigarette. She should come outside and see me right now. Take a picture of me, standing here, as if I don’t notice she’s there, taking a picture of me. The kind of picture that would end up being on the jacket of my memoir and would make people want to buy my book simply because I look like the kind of badass bitch who could write a really awesome story. The kind of bitch who has lived a really awesome story.

Yeah, she should come outside and see how cool I am.