8-24

Glimpses into the past today. 

A scene of violence that makes me shake with the urge to intervene, but all I can do is stand in the doorway and use my Calm Voice. Sir, you're scaring people.

For a moment it seems to get through to him and he pauses, for a moment he looks ashamed, and it's enough time for the boy to put space. 

I pulse with the desire to do more but I cannot leave my post.  

Much later, when the police have come and taken the sheepish man whose temper has blown away with consequences, I wonder what will happen to the boy. 

Strangely you jump into my mind. I think I know what you would have done, and I see it so clearly I swell with panic. A part of me wanted you to be there. A part of me knew if you had intervened I would have gone blind with terror and I would have left my post in the doorway and disappeared inside my animal.  

I am shaking still and I wish you were there to hug me. 

I think of the time in the store when the nameless anxiety was swelling up and I asked you to hold me and, for once, you didn't question it, you didn't become aware and uncomfortable, you just put your arms around me and the fear subsided. 

I wanted you to hold me much longer but I knew how you hated to be seen loving me and I let you stop. 

It stabs at me, these moments remembering when you were soft, following a night that brings up too many bad memories. 

8-31

I am acting, playing a part.

I smile and pull drinks, detached. She's someone else, she's the character in a movie. Inside the cold wall my mind is whirring on thoughts miles away. Outside she smiles, makes a joke now and then. I like her, she is fun and friendly. She's tired. She's put in 13 hours to make up for past mistakes. She's working hard to better herself. She has a vision and she plows toward it.

Her face changes and I adjust it, keeping it lightly smiling, a tweak here and there to hide the exhaustion and worry. She's moving fast and she likes to be moving. This is good for her.

Afterward, when things are quiet, the walls melt down and I reach out. We walk in the dark, using light from the bright half-moon to navigate a well-traversed path we could walk with our eyes closed but moonlight is more pleasant.

She's settling back into me, merging parts. I am tired, and when I am tired I feel how sad I am. I pause and try to cry, but nothing comes. It's locked inside me without alcohol, or someone else's pain to bring mine to the surface. I become aware of being ridiculous, and shake myself free of the shroud of self-pity I'm pulling around me. I do not have to be sad. It's not a sentence.

The dog knows the path better than I, and knows we will be turning soon. She looks over her shoulder, nervously, awaiting my signal, moves forward, looks again. I love the way she orbits around me, autonomous but connected. It is comforting to my weary jealous heart to know she will be there, even in the dark. We will always be an entity. I am more melded with her mind than my own, sometimes.

My future is opening up, and good men are waiting for me, patient and calm, hoping time will change my mind. They stand back, polite, respectful but I cling so tightly to myself, will there ever be room for them?

Do I want to make room? when I am whole with myself and all my pieces, and this animal before me whose soul is such a part of my own?

I never wanted to make room, before him.

I'm becoming myself again, and I like traversing the path in the dark alone, with the silent connection to the animal who moves in conjunction with currents around my body. I like the quiet. I like the peace and the solitude. I like the way trees make secret shapes in the dark and some of them frighten me.

I force myself to stop and confront them so I can grow and quit making monsters of shadows.

I don't think there's room, when I have so many pieces of myself to gather up.

8-30

I temporarily lose control of myself for a little while each day.

I check her. I check you. I try to glimpse inside. I want to know what's happening but I've been shut out, I can only speculate. You said I just have to trust you and I'm trying. Is it as worthwhile, to trust someone after they've gone? I wish you had helped me to trust you before I went mad. I wish you had given me reasons to learn how to trust.

I look for clues. I look for hints and signs maybe you still think of me. I can't tell, from your cryptic words, if it's her or me you miss. Or no one? Or everyone. I press down the panic and I try to trust.

What we had was complicated, it was raw and confusing. It wasn't what I expected. It was more hurt than happiness. I don't know that it had to be that way. That's what hurts most of all.

I try to tell myself it was special, because it was for me. Despite it all. But does that make it special for someone else? All around the world someone loves more than the other. I trace the patterns back in my brain and they point to the negative. I knew it from early on, that I loved more than you, and it made me want to leave. Until you realized. Until you missed me and decided to love me just as much.

But you didn't, because people don't work that way.

I don't know if leaving you ruined a possibility, or an inevitability. Would you have stayed or gone, if I had made no move to leave?

I don't know. I want to tell you I hate you, I miss you and love you but hate hate love you. I want to say anything at all. I want the wall to crumble. I want you to be happy, but not without me, and then I feel guilty for that, and then I feel angry, and then I feel empty because you are not thinking these things for me and I am wasting so much of myself away.

I focus on my own life and I love my life and I am happy, but my mind pulls back to you, a compass to true North and the happiness dissipates.

What do your words mean? Am I in there, at all?

It is sunny, my life is good, but for a while every day I swim in the darkness. Who is in your words? Where am I in your mind?

I think I could be stronger, if I knew.

But what do I know.

8-30

I run, though I am tired. It feels good to move, to send my mind down into my body and feel the strength building within.

It's a glimpse of old routines; the familiarity comforts me. I have been gone from myself too long, and I am welcomed back. My old self is still vaporous and undefined, but she is stirring in my blood, warming it.

My new self is within grasp. I see her before me, and I run, detaching my brain before I sense the usual conceptual urgency to breach old and new.

I must be patient.

I'm not good at patience. I want to fight, leap forward, to skip ahead, and my feet on the dirt ground unconsciously pick up their pace. I am uncomfortable on this bridge between what I was and what I will be. I want to see the fruit of my efforts. I run toward an image of fulfillment, contentment. Cut lawns and cement floors in the morning, watching the sun fade slowly through the trees at night.

I am not my old self, not truly, and never will be again. Thank God. I have faith now. I trust in my own strength and determination. I have seen the worst in me and accepted it. I have seen the best and I know how to feed it.

Now I only wait.

The air is cool and I am running farther than I expected; my body feels light and charged, this is my weather, this is my territory. I run and I try not to think, to only see and appreciate. I race past the thoughts that begin to swell and whirl. Concerns and worries about my future. Images from the news that make the pit of my stomach blacken. Thoughts of you and of her and of what if and maybe and how.

I tamp them all down and I run, because I need to do something to feel I am moving forward, and I am not a patient woman.

8-29

There’s an interlacing of the seasons and I’m in love with it. I can’t get enough, I’m obsessed, I’m infatuated, I can think of little else (as seems to happen when I fall uncontrollably in love). Light creeps down, peeking between the thick tree and brush where the boldest leaves are beginning to mimic the sun’s fading glow. Red sumac tinged with brown hangs heavy with vines, climbing persistently in defiance of their inevitable desiccation.

Now is my favorite time of the year, and I welcome it. Soon I’ll be in orchards biting crisp apples and sitting on the grass, wandering through mazes tan and gold and rippling in the wind, everything smells like cider and Jack and cinnamon and mulled wine and the twisted black wrappers of cheap candy. 

There will be white tents and jars of candles and I will smile and chat with strangers who will hand me crumbled green bills. 

I’m entering my own new season; I’ve been chasing an image of myself for years and now I’m catching up with Her. My chrysalis is cracking.

She’s watching my foot bounce frenetically and I can read her thoughts on her face.

I gesture to my large bag, where the soft top of a ball of yarn is eavesdropping. 

“I crochet now, when I go out; it helps my nervous hands.”

Nervous hands.

A curious tongue, my dentist once told me when I couldn’t stop exploring his work.

A sly grin. I didn’t like that. I can’t help that my smile pulls more one way than the other.

My body is an assortment of personalities I must try to control.

My crochet hook falls out of the bag while I am drinking cocktails and mispronouncing fancy menu items, and the busboy hands it back to me, confused, and I flush.

My fingers twitch now. I try to still my foot but the electricity must go somewhere. It’s autonomous from the rest of me, it’s a channel, a vessel, for the lightning in my blood.

She asks if I’ve ever been treated for my anxiety.

The white pills are smaller than I expect. She wants me to break them in half for now, but they’re small and delicate and it would be cumbersome to clumsily crush them, so I take it entirely. 

Depression and anxiety. It was smart to come, she says.

I tell her about the pills I took in another stage of my life, the ones that made me swim in and out of existence, and she’s horrified. Their purpose has changed since my worst times.

How many semesters did I complete--did I work two jobs or three?--while doped up on high doses of sleeping medication, purchased to make me not feel doped up and sleepy.

My foot vibrates back and forth but the rest of me is always still. I like the energy. I like the bright beautiful thoughts in my head--will they go dull and quiet?

I like the thoughts, but they are simply a response to the bright and beautiful things around me. The smells in the air and the way the light hits bark soft with moss. I will not lose these things but perhaps I will quiet the monster in my head that sharpens his teeth on me while I lie in bed at night, the lightning charging through my limbs and the dread settling into my thoughts.

I take the pill and I love the seasons and I succumb to inevitable changes.

8-28

It’s odd to look back at my history, the violence and the fear and the incredible strange things I have gone through--human shit on the floor, rides from strangers, handing back a key and closing a door, striking out with my fists, sirens and red and blue lights piercing the thick night over and over.

Yet I look back and that was my life. People adapt. That was my life and I lived it. What else was there to do?

Maybe enough time has passed now that the memories are just dull. The depression and throwing up my meals in secret, the overall fear fear fear, knives under the pillow, sleeping with the lights on so I could protect myself--the memories are in my head but they’re not a part of who I am anymore. 

They happened to another woman, a girl who outgrew her fierce existence and settled into expectations. A feral child from the woods who was given language and societal restrictions. Pocahontas, carried from her open land to waste slowly away in smog and cobbled streets and restrictive clothing that shifts the organs.

I am adapting to my new life. The mundane things become enormous when they are the only sparks on the horizon. I have to stop myself from making specks of dust into supernovas. I am past the rapids and I coast, catching my breath. In my heart I am still alert and defensive, an animal in the zoo. A fed creature in a cage, you must keep your fingers from the bars.

I was past the rapids but I let myself be carried away in the current.

New life. New love. New home. Overwhelming. Frightening. I fought the peace. Peace comes before the war, so I trained for battle.

I wish I had lain down my sword earlier. I am trying now. I keep it close, my armor on, but I must give myself time to rest. I must not continue to make my own enemies of shadows.

I would start over, if I could. It’s a pretty image, letting go of the things behind us, but in truth my fingers are always twitching toward the hilt.

I wish I could have broken open and let you see within, see how much I loved and wanted you. Perhaps then you would have lay down your sword and we could have rested together.

But perhaps not.

Life is life and we adapt.

8-23

I did not take the pill, and predictably, I wake at 2 a.m. They say if you wake at two in the morning it is because spirits are attempting to communicate with you. I’m not sure why the spirits are tormenting me with an obsessive circulation of Jon Bellion lyrics, but who am I to try to divine the motivations of the spirit realm? Personally, I think perhaps I was just very bad in another life, and I will always be punished in small obnoxious ways.

Beneath the rolling lyrics, at least, there are beautiful words. I want to hold onto them but I know they will be gone by morning (they were) so I let them ebb and flow over me, a gentle saline tide. I am simply grateful they are there. For so long my head was empty of anything but you, and that piece of me quieted, overwhelmed. I am happy they are coming back, creeping in like an ice flow, a million pretty thoughts and images, disconnected, glimmering.

They say being highly sensitive is an instinct left over from our animal days. They say anxious people have a stronger survival drive. They say overthinkers like me are smart and protective and act most wisely in an emergency, because in the back of our brains we are still fearful soft creatures looking for escape. They say a lot of things.

He was angry at me once, for knowing him. No, not him, another. Their faces are bleeding into each other, these lovers of mine who are somehow the same man underneath. He asked me how I knew when his mood changed, and he was angry, I think, because he was an actor and a writer and he prided himself on being an actor and a writer and fooling the world (I truly need to stop dating artists). I can’t explain an instinct.

I know because you shifted like a change in the wind. I know because it clings to me, static on a blanket, and it transforms my mood into yours. Is that fair, when someone hijacks your emotions? It’s hard to keep them sorted out sometimes- what is mine, what have you given me? What a frustrating gift, sometimes, to be given someone’s moods against your will.

I have a choice coming. My mind chews and worries it from every angle, checking for danger. Monitoring the escape routes. Fight or flight.

But if the choice comes I know what I will choose. I will choose good. I think perhaps I was very bad in another life. I will be good in this one.

I have slept on floors and erased myself in the morning. I have clutched leather and metal in my hand, preparing a weapon. I have walked barefoot for miles, drenched after a rainstorm. I have done good things and I have done terrible things I will never forget but also do not regret because I am a human and I have a breaking point. Fight or flight. I have done both.

My circumstances do not change me. I tap back into who I am with wires and songs at two in the morning, drinks with friends, morning sun on the water, the dog’s leg propped over my hip as she sleeps. I am already built. These little things are what has always defined me. Not living nowhere, not owning nothing, not the gun he pressed to his head after he told me we had only each other and then he tried to put that bullet through himself and leave me on my own. He told me I had no one but him and then he tried to leave me alone, but I grew and learned that he was lying. I have everyone, and I have myself. I am never alone but they will always try to leave me. He left me on the dock alone, strange men whistled at me quietly. 

I have been tormented by weak men for far too long, this flush of memories at two a.m. I would rather do without. I wrestle my mind back from them--it is mine, I have wrenched it back, they have no ownership here. I am tired of being told who I have and what I feel.

My instincts guide me, and I know my choice.

8-22

There’s a girl on a page I follow, where normal people become interesting, and her eyes are red from crying, and her hair is pink like mine. She’s in love with someone too, a bad someone. Someone who makes her eyes red and, perhaps, makes her dye her hair pink overnight because if her hair is pink, things are different for her, aren’t they? 

I meet her tired eyes through the screen--she’s a million miles away, non-existent--and I cry for her. The world unites for this girl. I want to hug her and cry with her. 

The world feels her pain. They tell her to leave, to be strong, to remember she is beautiful and worthy. 

In such a world of hate, with so much anger, it is a gift to read these comments from strangers a hundred or a million miles away, pulling together to support a young woman they will never meet. 

I haven’t cried for myself, beyond the whirling tequila breakdown, but this stranger in her bright plaid shirt, hugging her knees for self-comfort, while the world bleeds for her, brings me the catharsis of tears. 

She looks like me, with her snub nose and stubborn chin, and the world clamors to boost her, and their words, in turn, boost me.

It is not such a bad place, is it? when there are people in the world crying for a stranger whose heart is broken.

8-22

The moon came and blotted out the sun, bathing the earth in transformative energy. Or so they tell me.

Do I feel transformed? In a sense. I feel like I have come back to myself. That is a transformation of sorts, isn’t it? Returning full circle. A snake finding its tail.

I am not entirely back, but I have reconnected with the calm voice in my head. I have regained control of my words and my actions. The desperation, the blind desire to stick my hand in the fire, has faded, and I can shut it out of my mind now when it tickles and itches. 

The rationality took over, and I erased him. No more hesitant attempts, no more crafty undermining my own efforts. He is gone, I cannot reach him. He said goodbye, and goodbye again, and goodbye, and I wanted to rage at him, but I for once bit my tongue and I let him go.

What was left of him, anyway? What was there for me to need to hold on to? Clutching hard to a memory, a fantasy.

I feel whole again. I never knew what it was to not feel whole, until he showed me, and now I love myself more fiercely than ever before. Maybe that’s my lesson. Maybe this broken love affair’s happy ending has always been for me and mine.

It’s dark outside and green, and the long grass shivers as the cool air sweeps inward. I am bright and vibrant, internalizing the changes, anticipating. I am looking forward. Bursts of creativity propel me, gentle and encouraging words keep my chin up. I see glimpses of fun, parties and laughing, dancing and singing off-key, crisp corn stalks, apples, making warm and cinnamon-scented food in the kitchen with people I love so deeply it’s simply become a part of who I am.

Did I have fun with him? I don’t recall. I remembering wanting to, but I suppose that means no. I think I was afraid to show him that side of me, the wildness and exuberance. Why did I censor the best parts of me? I thought he would be overwhelmed, perhaps. Perhaps I was subtly trained with his sideways looks and jealousy to water down the parts of me that bubble like champagne.

The blame is my own, for losing myself.  

But I am back.

8-21

I’m mourning someone who no longer exists. I’m not sure if he ever did, or if I just fell for a sweet act. A face. An imitation of who he wishes he were.

It’s time to let it go. I struggled, but I’m missing a lie. Holding onto it gave me some relief, for a bit, like scratching a scab, but what’s the point anymore of dragging out the pain? I’ve poked at it here and there, enjoying the contact even though it was sick and harsh and I knew I was being unhealthy. 

But that’s an act on my part. I’m not being myself.

The weather is starting to shift. I can feel changes in the air, as the heavy humidity begins to sink down and coolness creeps above. My body is responding to the night, falling darker, ripe with sleepy crickets who speak slowly and quietly, their own bodies recognizing that their time is near an end. The birds fly overhead in great clumps, moving instinctively with the pull of the earth, and I feel disconnected and free when I watch them.

The earth churns, seasons move. I churn and move with them. I am ready to shed my old skin, this strange and nervous and desperate woman I became over the last year. I feel myself splitting, and coming forth. 

There is excitement and hope. I bury his memories away. I am clutching onto something that ruined me. I have my nails in a mistake, an error.

My old habits die hard, and I hate to admit I was wrong, I was fooled. I feel stupid and cheated. I close my eyes and seek within, feeling the newness unraveling, and I am trying to be kind to her. I am allowed to make mistakes. I am allowed to see the good, but I must leave before I shatter my wings beating against them like a bird on a window. Certainty was my downfall. I saw the reflection and it became my truth.

I will have the life I wanted. I adjusted you in--at least I tried--but it’s not such a hardship, I am finding, to erase you again. You were so careful to keep that distance, I’m finding there’s not much of you to remove, and what little there is, perhaps I fabricated anyway. I was making a truth for you that doesn’t exist. I’m kicking off the bitterness. 

I move with the air and the earth and my time has come to be born again.

8-18

I am coming back to myself, slowly. The woman inside has ceased her frantic scratching and instead gripped firmly. I feel her moving. She’s pulling free, stretching aside ribs and tendons and heartache with determination and strength. Pausing, catching her breath.

I am cold, still. I’ve shut myself off. Diverted my energy elsewhere. I don’t feel what I probably ought to, not yet. I’m not sure I feel much of anything right now. It’s a nice relief from feeling everything at once. A cessation of screaming noise.

I am Scarlett O’Hara. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, until my ribcage has expanded, my body bursts, and she is free of her cage. A messy birth. A resurrection.

For now my brain is quiet. It got the answer it needed. No more whirling. No more speculations. No more panicked, but-what-ifs?

Unfortunate, I think numbly as I sit on the carpet and look out the window. A detached thought settling like a feather in a breeze. Unfortunate.

No longer a tragedy. No longer insurmountable.

This is life, and I am good at life. I am a creature in the wild. I am evolving. I am adapting. I am survival at its more keen. I am the edge of a knife. I am lobotomized. I have nothing left to feel but the vague, distant resonation. Unfortunate. Unfortunate.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

The fire within has cooled to ashes. I stir them with my foot, curiously. The fervor kept me moving, but this detachment gives me strength. I am strong, I am moving. I am the sharp lip of a broken cup. I am rain on asphalt.

Fall is creeping into my hemisphere, and the cloudy days and cool air suit me. Leaves dry up and transform and their death births fresh growth. The tree sheds its most beautiful pieces to compress its strength.

I am forgetting why I loved you. It’s a sweet relief. You’re becoming entangled with the others in my head. Different faces, but the same man. Distant. Selfish. Charismatic.

That magic I felt in finding you, the one I had been looking for, that visceral shock that you existed, is fading.

I remember it, vaguely, but my mind pulls away. I will think about it tomorrow, tomorrow.

8-17

I can’t sit around waiting for someone who isn’t sure of me. Someone who thinks I serve the purpose of waiting.

Did it frighten you? I felt you put your foot back in the door, and I wanted to let you. I understand that fear. I’m frightened too. I’m terrified, really. I need definitives but I’m petrified of finality.

But it’s not fair.

You’re finding yourself, but I’ve been found. I found myself a long time ago.

I would have stayed if you said, maybe. If you said, give me time. If you said, you’re important to me.

But you said you don’t know.

I am not a back burner woman. I can’t wait for someone who doesn’t know. By not knowing if you want me in your life, aren’t you giving me the answer?

How can you not know.

We know. We always know.

You want to float off and come back to me, I think. Maybe one day you will, somehow. Maybe you’ll have that massive breakthrough and you’ll realize that I knew, and that means something. You’ll recognize that the way you treated me was confusing and cruel and that my madness came from that. Maybe one day you’ll come back and you’ll be kind and patient and you’ll give me as much as I wanted to give you and I’ll be generous and soft and you’ll make me laugh not cry and cry and cry until I hate myself for doing nothing else.

Probably not.

I have to leave the madness behind now. That’s what it comes down to, for me. You’re not sure and it makes me insane. You’re too rough with me and it’s made me sharp and prickly.

I dyed my hair light and I look youthful and earnest in a strange way. I put on clothes with color and flowers. I am in disguise. I am tapping back into the softer self I let go stale.

I am so afraid, looking at the shut door. I know what I deserve but I miss what lies behind. I even miss your foot holding it open, toying with me. Because if you were still toying with me, didn’t you care, on some level?

Sickness. Madness. I have to let it go. It has to rise out of me, oil to the surface.

I am not angry, for once. I feel a sort of resignation, that of a death. You have died for me. I will carry you on my heart, a wound, but scar tissue will grow around it.

You died for me the moment you said you weren’t sure.

I will mourn you. I will for a long time, I think.

But death is irreversible. Mourning will not bring you back.

Move forward, you said.

And I do. You’ll be amazed when you see how I move. I’ve been walking on my heels and dragging my feet in the dirt, hoping you’d catch up. But it’s time to leave you behind.

I’m sorry that’s what you wanted. I’m sorry you exist in a world of uncertainty. I’m sorry you dragged me into that orbit.

Watch how I move.

8-16

My head is filled with songs. Words twine in and out of my brain and my tongue, and I forget if they’re my own or if I’ve pulled them from a melody.

It comes and goes in waves.

I feel the words, but they’re not my own. Are they? I’ve made them mine. I’ve claimed them. Can I do that? Words are not honored like they once were. They’re possessed and stolen and recycled at whim.

I want to live in the world of golden shimmering champagne, gin with lime, where words are given the courtesy they deserve and not picked and discarded and claimed with fingers that have no right to touch them.

You’re teaching me to live without it.

The songs are keeping me awake. I want to share them with you. I want to ignore you. I want to cleanse my brain so I can sleep.

We did it wrong, you and me.

I can see that. I saw it. I didn’t know how to fix it. I thought I would knew, when I hit this point in my life, how to handle love. I had waited long enough. Surely instincts would kick in.

They didn’t. Panic and anxiety and fear kicked in. Overwhelming emotions that made my head swim dizzily. Everything was so much. I loved you so much my eyes spun. I hated you so much my stomach churned.

I am not a woman of middle grounds. How can I be rational when my reactions are visceral. How can I stay calm when just knowing you speak to her--more than me? More gently? More carefully? More sweetly? How can I know when you won’t tell me?--makes my throat close up with bile. How can I feign simple contentment when you kiss me and my entire being rises up? 

I can’t exist in a world where I can hide these things. People walk by me in their masks every day, but I can’t hide my flush, I can’t hide that when you looked at me with warmth my blood moved fast. I can’t disguise that when you speak to me sharply, I feel black and faint and I want to lie down comatose.

I am too much, I am too much.

I feel myself in there, stronger, though. You won’t speak to me, and it’s giving her the rest she needed. I’ll be back. I’ll put my mask on. Ice queen. Queen of swords. Frosty objectivity sharp and cold.

I’ll keep my softness for those that need it. 

The songs remind me of who I was, before I got lost in you. I pull their words around me, a cushion, lulling me back to sleep.

I’ll reign again soon. 

8-15

Calmer. I reach out to the world and touch it when I need. I use my nails and the tips of my fingers, testing the heat, scared to burn.

My friends sit patiently, quiet, as like a wild dog, I creep in and out, ridge up, teeth bared, wanting on some deep level to trust. They’re not used to seeing me like this and it worries them, but they stay still. They cross their legs and hold their hands out, and let me weave around them in suspicion as I growl and whine hungrily.

My cave is overrun, a disastrous explosion of distractions. The disorganization irritates and thrills me. The potential excites, then overwhelms. I have littered my retreat with the future. Projects cover everything, tools and concepts and sketches and broken-up pieces of books and colored rocks from below the surface of Lake Superior, twisted wires and piles of fur and lace and yarn, hot pens to burn wood and leather and little pleasant bottles of paint, jars of wood stain with wet ridges adhering stickily to their lids. 

I’ve nested, buried myself in.

When my mind begins to spin from one extreme to another, there is always something for my fingers to do. Soft and smooth things to touch, coolness and warmth. The physicality grounds me.

I wonder if you’ll come back. I need answers you won’t give me, so I turn to the cards. I don’t like what they say. 

Nothing’s ever definitive. Don’t they--don’t you?--know by now that I need definitive? If you leave the ends open, I will toy with them until they fray and snap. It’s a trap for you, answers. How can you give me something firm when your foot is always in the door. How can I relax when the wind blows at me through the crack.

You used to watch me. I noticed. I thought it was strange, at first, and then touching, how you turned me over like a puzzle in your head. Had anyone tried to understand me so deeply before? When your arms were tight, and your eyes turned toward me, I felt secure.

It was odd to me, then, when you squinted and puzzled and studied, how you refused to listen when I told you what I needed.

This is how I feel. This is what worries me. This is what I need.

I put it in my hand and gave it to you, and you discarded it. 

Maybe you think that was a trap, too. Too simple. Maybe my words were too sharp. Maybe you heard me saying, you have failed, rather than, I need your help.

I needed you to reassure and hand me back finality. I want you. I love you. I am listening.

I don’t know that it can be done anymore. I tried every way I knew to give those things to you. When the world rocked under my feet I needed you to steady me.

You would rather pull away and blame my balance.

I pace my cave. I have regressed. I am the wild, frantic child again. I am a creature of isolation and darkness and dirt.

I’m in there, waiting. I sit quietly, legs crossed, until the animal I have become stops pacing and settles.  

8-14

I cracked open.

Maybe one day I’ll learn that humans need more outlets for their emotions than writing sad captions on Instagram and setting t-shirts on fire.

I woke up with carpet imprinted on my forehead. I’ve cried off my makeup and run out of tears, but it’s still not enough. They’re caught up under my ribcage, pressing on my lungs and churning my stomach.

I was a mudslide. I was a hurricane. I disappeared from myself and became nothing but a maelstrom of all I’ve been tamping down, a swirling vortex of anger and anxiety and sadness and frustration and tequila with coarse-crushed salt.

I’m embarrassed. I’m tired and sore and my contacts have mummified my eyes in their sockets. I allowed people to see the inside. I brought my sadness out and showed it to them, and worse, I made them care for me. 

Am I no better than her, after all? A pathetic damsel.

I throw up in the sink and wash my face.

This year has broken me down to the truth, and I don’t like it. I don’t meet my eyes in the mirror. I don’t know her. She’s unhinged and uncertain and suspicious and tragic, and she annoys me. She’s too much work.

Somewhere, I’m still in there. Calm and cool and kind. I can feel her trying to get back out, but she’s caught up in the tightness in my ribs. 

She fights behind them, scratching to be free, and it’s just one more discomfort in my swirling body.

8-11

I have a new tribe, a People. I am a Person Who Has Loved now. An honor, frankly, I could have skipped.

But they tsk and shake their head for me. They hug me and smile. They say, “We’ve all been there.”

They smell like rising bread, and dabs of hemorrhoid cream under their eyes.

I crossed the bridge and became a Person Who Has Been Heartbroken.  

The others, they open their arms to welcome me.

A Person Who Has Gone Mad. I look around me at my new companions and I see their sympathy and their understanding. I know I will survive.

I dab makeup under my own eyes. I chased thoughts of you away last night, and let those eyes close. You were in my dreams, but it was the warm, open love of mine who whispered sweet words that felt real, who touched me with meaning in his hands, not the cold, distant lover who looked at me with disdain and uncertainty when I dared to be stronger than him.

I am. I am. I am. I am stronger and prouder. I am fiercer. I am more real.

I am not afraid of myself. I no longer feel shame when I stumble.

I feel guilt, though, for the broken trail I left behind me. Lovers and friends who broke free of my falsely self-assured wake and crossed the bridge.

You are that dream, unsubstantial. Your love was confusing and conditional. Now you seek someone else to give it to, until she sees You, and your adoration turns to anger. I saw You and you hated that, I think. Your carefully tended image crumbled.

I didn’t mind the pieces.

That’s what I wish you knew.

It doesn’t matter anymore though.

That’s what I wish I knew.

I move onto my Tribe, my People. My secret society of the broken who walk amongst us, unassuming. I have my mask on too, but I can sense them around me.

My card was Strength. I woke strong, the lion within had crawled out to curl beside me.

I remember back to the first glimpse I saw of You. I wish I had listened to myself and left.

My new friends pat my back and nod. They know.

Do you wish you had left, or was it easier when I pushed you away?

Always one foot in the door. I think I’ve finally slammed it behind you.

They stroke my hair and nod.

They know.  

8-10

How does a person learn to let go?

It’s easy to forget, that’s my problem. I close my eyes and try to think of why I’m angry, but I remember instead how your lips fit mine so perfectly and the way your neck tastes and how when you took the time to hold me tightly, it pressed out the darkness and I had no room left in my chest to be worried or anxious or jealous.

And then it swells up in me, remembering that, and your bare feet and silly songs and sharp mind and nervous heart, and terror that I’ve made a terrible mistake sweeps through. I reach out compulsively, my fingers and my brain want to touch you.

Thank you for letting that pass.

Because after a little time, I remember when you pulled away. I remember how you put your effort into making sure she was comforted, how everyone else seems to get your care and sympathy but when I need it, you leave me cold until my need makes me frantic and furious and unrecognizable.

I recall how angry you get at me when I try to express what I need. I’m not supposed to need from you, I suppose. Maybe you see that everyone else does--am I supposed to be strong enough to do without? 

All I see is you pouring yourself away and I am jealous in a visceral, ripping sense. 

You told me you can talk to her, but you wouldn’t talk to me. You got angry. You’re there for her, but when I am drowning in darkness, I am bothering you. I want to pour myself into you but instead I am a distraction. You pick me up when you feel like it, examine, scold, and set back away when the urge passes.

How is any of this fair. How is any of that love.

I need to let you go. You are a rock in my pocket. You are the pills by the bathtub. You will drag me to my end, loving you and desperately wanting to be loved back. Even a little. I crawl for scraps. I am a broken, pitiful being, and I want to kick my own ribs until they break. I hate myself, watching this weak animal scratch at you, dirtied and pathetic.

Let go, let go, let go you stupid woman.