let Her sleep

Walking isn’t peaceful anymore. Each step is a syllable marching forward through some remembered story. It feels like an addiction, this retelling. It’s how I feel when someone describes a particularly flavorful beer or a perfectly balanced whiskey. After months of blissful indifference I want it, suddenly and immediately, transfused and coursing through my veins. Even though I know, I know, that it will pull me apart me from the inside out, chomping at the liver and love I’ve been working so hard to heal.
step, step, step.
In these old stories I am a cursed villain or a stumbling idiot. A naive child or a crook caught red-handed. In more than one, the village laughs with mocking disdain that I, mistakenly, take for sincere glee.
ha, ha, ha.
It is not until later, until the inevitable dissection, that I realize my error.
My ignorance and my mistakes—they are the things I wish to flush from my system. But the toxic slurry of loathing I am pumping in to take its place kills indiscriminately. It might rid me of my shame, but is it worth my softness?

Regardless,
for fear of waking Memory, I tread lightly.

Storied Past // Notes on Moths

(TW: mention of rape)

We sat in a coffee shop and I could feel my eyes wide in my sockets.  The leather chair beneath my body was tucked into a windowed corner, overlooking the edge of campus.  Concrete steps and brutalist architecture surrounded us.  We sat in contrast to the harsh angles and hard surfaces: bleeding warmth amidst a starkly frigid landscape.

She told me the latest story: how she had gotten into a car accident that weekend.  How her clunker car was finally totaled.  She continued on, telling me about her bike ride to work that morning.  How she fell, yet again, down the slick, grassy hill outside the dining hall.  She raised her hands to show off the road rash: red gouges in her pale skin.

“I’m so sorry that happened,” I whispered. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”  She brushed it off, bravely.  I admired her for that—the bravery.  Did she ask me about my life then?  I don’t remember.  But inevitably the time came for us to go our separate ways and I wished her well, uttering a silent prayer as I watched her leave.

. . .

Was I the opposite of a fair-weather friend?

. . .

I kept suggesting that she write a book, to tell the world all the things she was telling me.  Her life truly seemed to be one unbelievable event after another, walking some line between adventure and insanity. When I said that to her, though, I can’t remember: did her expression falter?  Did she change the subject?  In those moments, what did I fail to see?

. . .

Months prior, a mutual friend had introduced us.  He said she needed some female friends to ‘love on her.’  That was one of those phrases we threw around at the time.  As in, ‘to heap love upon someone.’ Anyway, we took her in as if she were some sort of stray animal in need of a home.  There was backstory that I didn’t know about until later, yet my little ministry-molded heart was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. 

Early on in this new friendship, a few of us got a call.  It was late and we all had class in the morning, but she needed help.  There was alcohol involved, without a doubt.  Possibly other substances as well.  We drove across campus under the stars.  The car was left to idle illegally in the parking lot, risking the ever-vigilant tow trucks, as a foot chase ensued. After we knocked on her door she somehow snuck past us off a balcony. 

. . .

Or, at least I think that’s how it all went down.  I don’t mean to mix the details—but has been over eight years since that night and these events. Those memories sit strangely in my sleep-deprived memory. But also, I have to remind myself: it was hard to keep all the details straight, even then.

. . .

In the days that followed, we were informed that this binge was prompted by a traumatic event.  She confided in us that she had been raped.  Understandably, she did not want to go to the police or file charges.  I scrambled to do what research I could for her, in case she changed her mind.  I made a visit to the women’s center on her anonymous behalf, making time between classes.  From my meager savings I bought her a pregnancy test, just in case.

With her consent, I left the pregnancy test outside of her door.  Hours later she informed us that it was positive: she was pregnant.  Presumably with the child of her rapist.  This led to a wider circle of people involved in the frenzy.  Potential adoptive parents and scheduled doctor’s appointments. Research and conversations.  All the while, the semester continued on. 

Against the guidance of our ministry leader, she made an appointment with Planned Parenthood. The matter was settled. After a while, the entire situation dropped from our minds.  

Well, as much as something like that could be forgotten, I suppose. 

. . . 

That was all at the beginning.  That was before the late-night darts in my bedroom or the dress shopping.  That was before the talks of fruit dehydration and long before the texts from her roommates or the calls from the rehab. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The summer after she graduated, I received a call from her.  I was driving my little blue Corolla and she was on speaker phone.  She told me about her summer.  About some volunteer work she had been doing at a hospital involving legal aid.  She told me about this child she was helping in an abuse case. She built up the story with gut-wrenching detail.  She described this feeling she had that things just ‘weren’t quite right’ with the case, or with the child’s guardians.  She decided to sneak the child out of the hospital to safety.  It played out like a plot to some movie.  Dodging personnel and feeling out the back exit.  Driving off with the child and being chased by the police.  Being accused of kidnapping.  Luckily, she said, she got off scot-free because she made a deal with the police.  They said that the charges would be dropped if she agreed to help the cops bust a criminal ring.  So that’s what she did.  And that’s why she hadn’t been returning calls or texts recently, she said.  That’s why she bailed on a camping trip.  It was top secret stuff so she really couldn’t say more, she said.  But they got the bad guys because of her.  She said. 

I was driving down the road and that sense she described of things feeling ‘not quite right’—a sense that had been building below the surface for years—suddenly felt all too relatable.  “Wow, that’s remarkable,” I said aloud, feeding her what she wanted.  “Sounds like you need to add that to the book!” I said, desperately wanting to cling to the belief in my friend. 

. . . 

Wanting to see the best in people really does blind us to reality, doesn’t it? 

. . . 

Years later, after one final visit to her new post-college city, I was settled into a nannying job that I adored.  The little one was napping and I was checking my phone. There were some odd texts.  We hadn’t been in touch for a long time, but the messages were from two people claiming to be “her new roommates.” They had some questions as they were trying to piece some things together and “could we talk?” 

A few of us involved in her life during college coordinated with these new roommates.  As details were shared and information was swapped, the truth, or at least a sliver of it, had become obvious.  

Journals and empty bottles in hand, the new roommates confronted her.  Her mentor may have gotten involved too, if I remember correctly.  She went off to rehab and I secondhand wished her well.  I sent no silent prayers this time. 

A week or so later I received a call.  A rehab employee, pushed to the brink, was forced to break confidentiality agreements for the sake of the patient.  “Can you corroborate any of this information?” he asked. 

“I can,” I responded. 

She was lying to everyone at rehab, it turns out. 
She was lying to everyone, period. 

Was it always that way?  Was it ever a mixture? 
Truth coated in lies? Or lies wrapped in truth? 

Or was it always solidly deceit, through and through? 

. . .

I just remembered: the conversation on the chairs in the campus coffee shop—that was when she told me about the cancer, not a car accident. Stage 4.  Something rare and difficult to research.  There was the possibility of an experimental treatment at a hospital in a nearby city. 

“You’re taking this better than I expected,” she said.  Had she wanted me to cry?

Is it worth going back to fix those details?  The story I’m telling is not meant to be fiction, yet it remains riddled with it despite my best efforts.

. . .

I so desperately wanted it to be her, writing this into a book.  Because I so desperately didn’t want to believe that she was lying to me.  To my face. Over and over again.  

And I didn’t want to face the fact that I had believed her.  Over and over again.  I twisted my brain into knots, justifying.  Lying to myself, while she lied to me.

The worst part of it was, I genuinely thought I was helping. 

She filled herself into every crevice I had in my over-scheduled life.  Her roots wound their way in and I kept pouring the water, egging them on. 

I was feeding the little moth-monster inside of her, drawn to the flames of attention and adoration.  Drawn to a place where she could tell stories and someone would listen. 

And she was feeding the little moth-monster inside of me, drawn to the flames of the ‘needy’ and ‘hurting’.  Drawn to a place where I could feel important and useful. 

Together, we created a whirlwind of drama and lies and so much hurting.
Or maybe, she created it, and I was simply sucked in.  

Either way, after all this time, I’m still not sure: 

Am I the only one with wings burned?

reflection // dual dupability

It’s fascinating
to watch someone lie to themselves
and, by extension, to you.

You want to be mad
To shake them, to wake them
To hold a mirror and say
“See. Here.”

But Alice is not an English teacher
or a psychologist.
To her, her dreams are just dreams.

So even if she does climb through the looking glass,
there’s no telling what she’ll take from the encounter
and bring to the waking

But I’ll tell you one thing:
It’s unlikely to be the truth you were hoping for.

Our brains work so hard
to protect us from our own reflection
But eventually we’ll catch an honest glimpse,
in a storefront window or a glassy puddle
or the eye of someone we love
And we’ll realize, with a jolt,
all the truths we’ve been running from.

And we’ll start to wonder who else knew
but was gracious enough to let us see it for ourselves
And we’ll start to wonder who else knew not
and was as gullible as I.

(08.24.22)

reunion

I got back from my high school reunion a few hours ago and I can’t sleep. I have four hours of conversation and interactions replaying in my head and as much as I want them to stop, there’s part of me that allows them to keep going. The masochistic part of me? The part that believes that this is a healthy way to process the evening? I’m not sure.

Tonight was a reminder of how much has happened in the last ten years, of how different I am, of how much I’ve grown.

Tonight was a reminder that there’s continuity in who we are, some things never change, and ten years is but a blink of an eye.

A reunion in the age of social media is a weird thing. We put so much of our lives on the internet, but don’t ever fully know who’s paying attention. And of course, even if they are, that doesn’t mean they know the whole story. Or even the half of it.

Did a couple dozen conversations over the course of a few hours go any deeper? I mean, no, not really. Yet something about it was so much more connective. We bounced around and gave the elevator pitches of our lives, but we looked each other in the eye as we did it. The character limits were fluid, the status updates punctuated by the popping of balloons.

This wasn’t the same as the small talk I’ve been swimming in the last few months. Which is its own kind of beautiful. This wasn’t a bunch of strangers trying to figure each other out, antenna reaching out, exploring. This was slipping into an old and dearly loved pair of jeans. It was a rubber band snapping back. It was that specific scent that always reminds you of home. It was a mushroom appearing overnight even though the mycelia had been in the soil for ages. It was the fingers that fit so well in yours, even after all this time. It was a fleeting glimpse in the rearview mirror, wondering who will still be there after the next hairpin turn.

I hope you are.

To everyone I got to reconnect with, thank you.

on a train

I feel trapped and surrounded yet disconnected and aimless. Like I’m on a railroad going nowhere, alone in a train car full of people. Backpacks packed with stuff that I can’t access or use. People I know but not people I can talk to. The view outside is a blur but somehow it’s also blurry in here too. I took my glasses off, I don’t wear glasses. The train engines are hard at work and my legs are tired from constant running. I remember getting on this train but I didn’t choose to. I could get off if I wanted, but have no power to stop it.

I move to the conductor’s car but all I find is a mirror and a note that says “don’t touch” written in familiar handwriting. I look around for something to touch but only my face is visible, hollow eyes staring at a point behind my shoulder. I reach out for the glass, cold and contoured under my fingertips. Sliding into the canyon below my chin the train lurches and I grab the collarbone with a death grip, a parent as their child learns to drive. We’re falling and my stomach rushes up my throat. It bursts from the lips of the reflection, rests unmoving on the floor. I stare at it. I return to my seat.

Hard orange plastic sticks to the back of my thighs as I rest my head against the window. The man behind me starts to breath audibly, panting, hot air filling up the car. The others join, their humid breath fogs the windows, condensation drips into my eyes. It slides down my cheeks. Into my mouth. It’s salty and sweet. It burns like acid and as I stick my tongue out I see holes forming, blackened at the edges.

I rub my forearm on the window to clear a portion and look out. Electrical wires run parallel to our movement, pen lines running smoothly over an impressionist painting. They buzz and spark. The holes in my tongue start to ache. I close my eyes and go to sleep. 

I dream of a restaurant I went to once in the city. The waiter is an ex-lover dressed in black. She sets a pitcher full of ice on the table. There is no water. When the food comes it is piled high on platters—fresh, colorful, appetizing. I know that my fingers, if I reach out, will pass right through every morsel so I lean my face down, like those cows I saw at the edge of a river on vacation. About to take a bite I glimpse the flutter of a bird wing from the corner of my eye. Turning my head I realize the table next to me is occupied by two ravens, tearing into a carcass. I look back at my food, beautiful and alluring. Silverware glints beside my plate. I reach out and the metal sears my skin, pain radiates up my arm, frying every nerve, and wraps around my heart. I wake up screaming.

I’ve been here for weeks now, huddled in a luggage compartment. An announcement came over the loud speaker, mentioning tickets, and I knew I needed to hide. Yesterday a child came looking for their backpack. Her eyes slid past mine easily as she pulled out a yellow bag covered in black birds. I couldn’t help but wonder if that bag had, shoved into its lining, memories of a life before this one.

I am not eating my feelings

I am not eating my feelings

My feelings taste

like salty ocean water in my lungs

like pine sol

like biting full force and without warning into that terrible chewy bit in a chicken sandwich

like mediocre overpriced food from an otherwise beautiful memory filled with people I’m supposed to be trying to forget

like antacids

like those peanut butter sandwiches that used to get smushed at the bottom of my high school backpack and get eaten covertly in the art room

like those bottles of Pinot grigio I drank alone as a “fuck you”

like her

like that blue drink my uncle bought me be because “you are more fun when you’re drinking”

like carrots when the other kids are trading gushers for goldfish

like the dissolvable cardboard of a Catholic eucharist wafer

like that mouthful of dinner when he says “wow, you must have been hungry”

I am not eating my feelings

I am eating ice cream

And it is delicious.

A Day In June

The sunshine is a bully

You’re wasting your life, it whispers, draped over my windowsill.

The anxiety that has settled, resting in a puddle below my belly button, swirls up like the oat milk in my morning coffee pale as my legs, resting here inside.

I’m tired, I whisper in response because I am. I feel worn down, as if I’ve been sprinting for weeks and my body is finally fighting back.

You’ll regret it, the light taunts. And I know that’s a broader statement than it seems.

To stay inside on a day like today, alone. To read in quiet rather than exploring and mingling. What am I giving up by choosing to rest?

There’s a lyric that plays through my brain:

“death inspires me like a dog

inspires a rabbit”

Go outside, it taunts, before you miss it

I won’t be here forever

And neither will you

balloons

Things were straightforward.

The homeless guy is hungry,

Give him food.

There is trash beside the road,

Pick it up.

Someone feels left out,

Invite them in.

It felt easy. Obvious.

Don’t be a jerk.

Treat other’s the way you want to be treated.

Take care of the earth and each other.

but then things became layered

and connected

and expanded

and tangled

and messy

and one day you woke up and realized that your face now makes the same look that you saw above you all of those years

the skepticism, the dullness, the eye bags, the frown lines, the tiredness, and just a hint

of envy.

margaritas

I was going through my phone notes and found this entitled “Tipsy Rambling 04.10.20”:

There are things that I make that have a lot of hidden meaning and there are things that I make that you could just take for surface value and there are things that I make that could really go either way and because it’s art, it really is up to you and not up to me, to find meaning and value in it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?  There are things that humans tend to find innately beautiful and things we tend to find innately disgusting. But it can also be said that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. So is everything to some degree subjective? There are things that science agrees upon, as if science itself is a God and the maker and keeper of truth. And there are things that “science has agreed upon” that have been disproven. There are things that we thought we knew and believed, things we live by and fought for and died for. And some of those same things we now relegate to fairy tales and fiction books. So really who is to say what is true what is meaningful what is worthwhile what is right? Does it make you happy? Does it calm you down? Does it make you want to get out of the bed in the morning? Does it make life worth living? If yes, then does it matter if it is good or true based on the standards of the world? Everyone else can find something to be useless and ugly, but if you can see life and purpose, well then by god, perhaps that’s the reason that you’re here, the reason that you have been given life, the reason you are different than the person beside you. Every one of us has a different story, different things resonate with us. Different things repel us. Different things terrify us. And isn’t that fucking incredible?? We are all so unique, so different, so individual. Yet at the same time there are so many things that bind us, connect us. There are so many overlaps and similar stories. Nobody is ever alone, yet somehow we are all alone always. Being humans is crazy, it’s beautiful, it’s scary, it’s hard, and it’s better with margaritas. You still reading kiddo? Because this is just the ramblings of a 26 year old stuck in quarantine so you might as well give it up now, but thanks for playing! Love you all, here’s some art (if you can call it that.)

A Mile in Their Hair

I had a conversation recently about the widespread frustration regarding the closure of the hair salons due to the pandemic.  I carelessly rattled on about finding it amusing how desperate people were to get that luxury back.

“I’ve been cutting my own hair since high school,” I bragged.  “So it never occurred to me that people would prioritize salons and barber shops amidst a global health crisis.  There are so many recent YouTube videos of people cutting and dyeing their hair at home for the first time.  It’s kind of comical really.”

Still chuckling I glimpsed an expression out of the corner of my eye and could tell immediately that I had said something insensitive.  “Oh shit, she misses the salons and she gets her hair cut and colored.  Way to stick your foot in your mouth again, moron,” I thought, mentally chiding myself. After backtracking, trying to recover from my blunder with mildly self-deprecating mentions of my own lack of self-care and the past mistakes I have made in home haircuts, we let the topic drop.  However, it has continued to linger in my mind since then.

Gray hair.  Assuming I live long enough, I will eventually get gray hair.

And that will probably start happening way sooner than I realize.  But isn’t gray hair for old people!  60 and 70’s, right?

But the more I have thought about it, the more I have realized, no, probably long before then.  (An article I just read said that on average women begin to notice gray hair at age 35.  THIRTY-FIVE?!) Older women all around me probably dye their hair now and I have no idea.  Am I that naïve?  Have I been fooled by the media, the beauty industry?  Like hairless armpits and bikini lines, chiseled abs and toned thighs. Like blemish-free skin and unnaturally long eyelashes.  There have been so many times when I have wondered why I can’t look like my friends/colleagues/peers on social media?  Usually I write it off as a good angle, a well-designed filter or photoshop.  But that all goes out the window when they also look flawless in person!

I have only just recently started to wonder if it is less that I can’t look like them, but more that I don’t.  I choose not to.  I generally haven’t prioritized going to the gym or buying makeup products.

I recently (pre-pandemic) bought my first make-up brushes and palettes since the hand-me-down ones my mom gave me to putz around with in middle school.  And to be honest, I feel really good about it.

I thought it would make me feel vain to care about my appearance, to spend money on something I have deemed frivolous for so long. I thought it would feel like I was giving up this crucial part of who I am, like I was succumbing to some sort of peer pressure, complying with the unreasonable societal standards of beauty, selling a part of my soul.

And maybe some ways that is what’s going on.  But let’s face it, the fact that I struggle to feel attractive when I’ve put on a few pounds or haven’t concealed the circles under my eyes… Isn’t that proof that I am a already a product of this image-obsessed society?  Just as much as the women dying their hair?  The women wanting to erase their wrinkles? The women comparing themselves to their friends and coming up short?  I make the same comparisons, I feel the same inadequacies.  I just don’t do anything to change it!

I thought it made me stronger, better, to resist the beauty industry.  But all it has really done has brought about a sense self-righteousness and put another barrier between me and my fellow women.  It has made me judgmental in a subconscious effort to ignore my jealousy and insecurity.

Not feeling like I’m good enough has caused me to push away more people than I can count.  To put up an innumerable number of barriers.  To close myself off without realizing what was happening.

How do I stop that?

How do I stop judging the people around me? How do I stop judging myself?

How can I cultivate a deep and unrelenting sense of empathy and understanding?  And will that stop me from making dumb comments in conversation?  Or will I just need to have more grace for myself, because that’s always going to be something I do?

How do I love myself?  And will that help me to better love others?

 . . .

It is interesting how each stage of life seems to have its own defining factors, its own standards for comparison.  Gray hair just isn’t something I think about or pay attention to yet.  My peers are all having babies and buying home or else they’re advancing in their careers and doing CrossFit.

But eventually my hair will go gray and I will need glasses and technology will feel overwhelming and I will start to forget things. And then I will think back on 26-year-old me and realize that I have never been as immune to the naivete—or the illusions of invincibility brought about by youth—as I imagined myself to be.

And maybe by then I will stop comparing, stop judging, stop with the constant insecurity.