Ice

 

{image credit: weird friends}

I slipped today, for the hundred-thousandth time in the snow. There are people who love snow, people who complain every day that it doesn't come down, saying, "When will it snow? Why doesn't it snow?" Upon hearing this plea, my instinctual gut reaction is to slap the person in the face. This strikes me as a disproportionate response, so instead I make a mere silent oath that should this person die while I am living, I will not attend their funeral.

I have a friend who gets migraines. And when I say she gets migraines, what I mean is that she's had a migraine every day for at least ten months. It is unimaginable. But what triggers her migraines, possibly more than beer or loud music or lack of sleep, is sunshine. Sunshine. The more beautiful the day, the worse she feels, so that when someone chirps sweetly, "I hope the sun comes out!" her instinctual gut reaction is probably illegal in most of the 50 states.

And so I slipped today, for the hundred-thousandth time in the snow, a patch of ice on a dark sidewalk. I swore, nearly fell, caught myself in time. I saw, a block ahead, a man walking toward me and I cringed. I wondered if he'd seen me, but as he neared I realized that he hadn't seen at all. He tapped his cane on the frozen ground, feeling for objects in his path. "It's icy up there," I warned as we passed. He said, "Yup."

Fall

I've been really happy.



Scissors

"What are we doing today?" she asked, draping the smooth black cloth around my shoulders. "Just cleaning it up?"

I'd been saving for weeks for a hair cut. A real one, not the kind with kitchen scissors and a dim light bulb. "I want to go short," I said, as we inspected my reflection in the mirror. "But I'm afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

He liked long hair, my last lover. He told me often. He told me, too, how lovely I was without it, that of course it was up to me if I grew it out or not, but maybe I could grow it out, just to try, just to see how I look. Just to see.

It ate at me, the hair. I knew he loved me, but with long hair, I thought he'd love me more. I worried about the long-haired girls he knew, flirty tails and low-slung buns, they had something I couldn't possess. He fucked one of them later on a camping trip.

With short hair, I was a rough-hewn stone: precious, perhaps, but not valuable.

So I locked my scissors in the furthest drawer. For the length of our duration, I never touched a hair. It grew in awkward, frizzy tufts, sprouting thick from my head like a bad witch's wig. I felt awful, ugly. "You can cut it," he said, disappointed, "But maybe just to see." I never liked long hair on me. I always look like some other girl.

Even when he left, it's so silly. Part of me thought that was why. My hair didn't grow fast enough. Nine months later, I still dream of pony tails, low-slung buns, curls tumbling over my shoulders. I hate it. Even in my dreams, I look like someone else.

"Afraid of what?" she asked, brushing my bangs from my eyes.

There's a certain transparency you take on when your heart is smashed, your skin gets thin like a gauzy curtain. You don't hide so much. "No one will ever love me again."

She looked me in the eye, not the mirror.

I nodded. "Ok."

An hour later, she spun me around. She smiled. "You look just like you."

A Summer Stolen

It's still August by a thread and last night the air smelled like winter. If summer came, I never saw it. There were no bronzed shoulders. There were no beach reads. There were no late night dances, no secret surprises. It was a season of quiet; serious and small.

In winter, the world is wrapped in gossamer. I am cocooned. The streets are silent but a hush, hush, hush. And then spring and green and light in my hair and yes, yes, yes, I am alive. Bronzed shoulders and beach reads; barbecues below the window where your homemade curtains hang. Fireflies and birdsongs and feet slapping concrete: I am alive.

But this winter there was no cocoon. There was a wailing, aching empty. I was stripped and bleeding and raw and when the spring came there was a scramble. If there were birdsongs I didn't hear them, only the rat a tat tat of my still-beating heart. There was a breathless grasping, a wanting; a pleading, desperate wheeze. There was a prayer.

I'm better now.

At night I sleep with two blankets. One for the summer night and one for my half-torn cocoon. I am shoring up; I am throwing away. I can be alright next year. I saw a crow last Tuesday and I'm letting this one go.

I'm letting it go.

To Make You

I mark on a calendar every day that I cry. I write down my mood for the day: hopeful, nostalgic, angry. For the past seven days, I have written a single word: sad.

I have been diagnosed with a rare and mysterious condition known as vasovagal syncope. It is neither rare, nor mysterious. Vasovagal syncope is a fancy way of saying 'falls down goes boom' and it means that sometimes, often, occasionally, my blood leaves my brain and I fall. "There's no cure for it," the specialist said, snapping my chart shut with a crisp, decisive crack.

"If you feel yourself going down, you just have to get low."

That's it. I just have to get low.

When I was fourteen, a boy I knew shot himself in the head. I'm sure I was not the last thought on his mind. In fact, he probably didn't consider me at all. He didn't consider me when he opened the cabinet, when he reached for the gun, when he sat on the floor with his back against the cool, hard wall.

What amazed me, in the aftermath, is how many people he'd told. He'd told everyone. I'm sure people said 'don't do it' or 'things will get better' or 'call me if you need something'. Maybe no one said even that.

But I wonder sometimes, in this year that I am twenty-eight and he is not, I wonder what might be different if someone had knocked on his door. If someone had held him tight and said, 'I love you. I need you to be ok.'  I wonder if that moment could have carried him.

Yesterday I saw a twitter account called 'preschool gems'. In it, a teacher shares pearls of wisdom from her four-year-old class. The quotes are funny and sweet and weird, and occasionally devastating.

My favorite is from July 20th:

"I would like for you to say wow when I say that you can never be in love with me again."

When I read it, I laughed. And then I cried.

I would like for you to say wow.

It's something that happens, depression. Like spring sneezes and summer rains and vasovagal syncope. Sometimes I go under. It may last a week or a month or through the rest of my life, but when it hits, it winds me.

There's no cure for it. I just have to get low.

I don't blame anyone for not calling him, for not knocking on his door, for not holding him tight. For not saying don't do it, please. We all have busy lives. And sometimes it takes a great loss to make us say wow.

You Don't Say

Coworker 1. I was on a health kick for awhile. I had so many wheatgrass shots I can't even smell the stuff now without gagging.

Coworker 2. I'm the same with Southern Comfort.

Black

 

image credit: melissabetty

She likes her coffee black and her juice fresh-squeezed. She asks for white, not wheat, and no butter, please. She wears dresses every day. She leaves a good tip. She waits on the bench, legs crossed at the knee, eyes far away, pretending to read the specials. You think she's on a diet. You think she works next door. You know nothing about her, really, except that she's kind, and she likes her coffee black, and today when you brought her change, there were tears in her eyes. You say 'have a good day' and you mean it.