the welt

it sits on me like a burn, sometimes I poke at the strange hull that is my skin's way of throwing up a tent over a hole in the ground to protect it from infection.

I know I shouldn't look anymore, and I look. I look for so many reasons. Sometimes it is, I wonder if he doing well? then it might be, I wonder if his photo has changed, next I might say, I want to see the man and the woman that fucked me up emotionally for too long and face them and say to their likeness, you didn't win. Sometimes I am scared that if she is gone from the picture he might come back to me.

I looked today and it was the first time I really spoke aloud, screamed at the screen, said mean, terrible, horrible things that no one would say unless provoked or angry, because sometimes I think it's bad to be angry. I am always trying to be nice that when I am mean, on purpose, intentionally nasty, it seems so harsh.

I hate that he still has that effect on me, that he can still incite my passion and rage and yet it has been over a year. I hate that I can't stop thinking about that image. For some reason the other one didn't enrage me, because he looked different, not the same, some face I had never seen before. This one, the newer one, she was ignoring him, he was holding a drink and the only one looking at the camera and he had those same beady eyes of terror, the tragic yoke of "I was dragged here by the woman I'm standing next to against my own desire to sit at home and get high and watch tv on the couch the way I do night after night."

This one is so familiar to me, the sight of him that way, that it was like I instantly relived all those moments of his behaving that way, like a fucking petulant child; I screamed out loud at the image. And I know this sounds fucked up, but in a way I was kind of mad at him for doing that again with some other girl he left me (not just any me, but me!) for. Because if he left me, it had better been worth it, and that face told me it wasn't worth it for him anymore. He was now doing to her what he did to me. And he pretended it was all my inducing, causing in him, that I forced him to be that way.

I had hoped that he was right and that by leaving me, he could be free and find what he really needed. That face showed me the discovery that he is the commonality and maybe I was right and in the right about so many things we argued over. But it is no victory if he is miserable.

thanks to Patty:

I discovered a very thick cord of my mental state of mind on a subconscious level. I will try to explain it as best I can.

Essentially, my identity was wrapped up in my mother's constant anguish (never a sadder Job has one met) and I began to try to help her carry that burden, though I doubt it even felt like I was there, it was so big, and I began to view the world as a threat, every single thing a potential disaster, trusting nothing and no one, and hiding.

I hid in books. I hid my personality. I was always a weirdo. I used to like to wear two different earrings until someone in my family made fun of me for that. I shrank myself down to a pixel and then wore the shell of my mother's anguish like a tortoise settles into it's house. It felt like that, a heavy shell, a burdensome clunking thing that I wanted so desperately not to wear but I had no idea how to get out of it once it was on me.

I went through my world oblivious for a long time.

I was a jerk. I threw emotional grenades at my mother and brothers constantly and tried to break down the cheerful love I had. It is probably hard to explain that even though I knew what I was doing was wrong, I couldn't stop doing it. I had this overwhelming urge to constantly test the people around me, forcing them to be reduced to walking on eggshells when I entered the room. I hated that in order to prove that everyone loved me I had to be mean to them and see if they stayed.

I don't want to blame her because it's not her fault that I turned out that way. She didn't know how to stop it either. And she was so young.

Interestingly enough, I didn't develop this at a younger age, because I was always a bit carefree and caught up in my own thoughts and, what people describe about me now: chill. I let things slide, I was always a willing volunteer, I constantly showed my affection and was very happy to be myself in general. The five of us squished in there, sometimes I just can't fathom how we didn't kill each other, all angry about the anguish and pissed that we were poor, it sometimes was very good not to be home at all.

This tortoise shell of anger came after I allowed myself to let my studies at DePaul lapse to the point that I--an honor roll student consistently in the Top 10 or 20 of my high school--I flunked out of college. Part of me was absolutely aware that the two and a half months in which I pretended to go to school I was fucking up, but I was so disheartened by an F on an essay I wrote in English Composition, an essay in which I essentially showed off in the most cocky way I could that I was not just a good writer, but a great writer.

When I look at it now, I can see how ridiculous it is that I wrote that as a first essay for a class. My teacher was harsh in giving me an F, but not unreasonable for doing so. I missed the point of the assignment and I wasn't in Fiction class. But for those nine weeks after, my brain was in shut down mode and I felt stuck in only being able to lie the lie. One of the reasons I'm so honest now is that life smacking bout with dishonesty. If I had just sucked it up and told the truth, I could have not flunked out of school and withdrawn instead, and saved myself the cost of the classes.

I knew I was not very good at being in college, from the very beginning, I was the weirdo that no one got. I didn't even have a personality, I was like a walking zombie. Sometimes it was like we were speaking two different languages and I learned not to open my mouth and that not saying anything was better. So the flunking out was the culmination of having spent the first year of the thing I had been waiting for my entire life to do, that my mom had been waiting for my entire life to have me do, and finding out that it was a huge fucking disappointment.

This was the first time I ever fucked up something big. I had a few things happen that were similar but much less minor in their impact. Everyone else in my family had experienced some horrendous bouts of consequences from bad decisions, except me. I was Little Miss Perfect. I had values. I believed in things. Eventually this would be one of the more noxious behaviors venting out of the tortoise shell. Back then I just was a good girl. It was like my job and I was really good at it. So when I flunked out of school it leveled the emotional playing ground and suddenly I was paranoid and uncertain and they bullied me and the defense I had to use to get by was that tortoise shell. It was like a shield and a sword.

The tortoise shell got stuck at some point in my relationship with him, which I feel terrible about, that he endured such an endless array of my bullshit with such good spirits. As a kid, being gangly and awkward was something I got used to, but suddenly being an "adult," I always felt big and in the way. I gained a lot of weight after high school and felt so uncomfortable in this new body. I was extremely insecure and felt so ugly. Yet he still loved me. Then the abyss happened and created an emotional chasm too wide for me to cross. So we stayed for what we had and I hated myself for the abyss. I sometimes wonder if we met now if we'd be able to even be in a relationship. Probably not. And that is okay with me. I used to really regret that choice but I think it was for the best. I hope he is happier for it, too.

Then I fucked up that relationship to the point of you'd have to be crazy or really love me to ever talk to me again. I had no idea how to do it, and I did it very badly. I was stumbling through the dark trying to find a way out is how I think of it, and when a door opened underneath me, I fell. It was exactly what I needed. I didn't realize I had been looking for it until it happened, but I needed someone to teach me how to relax and be cool as an adult and that's what he was for me. He was someone I both admired and secretly disdained, for his values were not as tidy as mine were and they didn't line up next to mine, but I was so thirsty for what he said that it didn't matter what he did.

Added to that was a crazy plan to visit Europe for three weeks. The day after I moved out, I was on a plane to Rome. I decided to go on a whim; one day six months or so earlier when my friend offered I join her there. The biggest trip I took prior, was to Disneyworld with someone else's family. To go to Europe, I had to get a passport, buy rail tickets, consider what I might do there and relish in the fact that I was going to spend five days in Paris, a place that I always felt some weird affinity for without any sort of good reason. And in Paris, and Europe, really, I saw in the people the image and personality I had been vying for all those years, but unsure about enacting. I saw a refined sophistication that I felt I was too beneath to practice, a style of dress I immediately felt at home with but again, thought I was not good enough to be wearing nice clothes; and the manners, a real honest to goodness conscientiousness for their fellow man.

Basically I learned that I don't have an American sensibility, I don't have a particular fondness for rampant consumerism, widespread consumption of plastic in all its forms; and garbage, I really hate garbage. And of course, it's not that Europeans have it totally perfect and no one ever litters, but they at least try and their trying makes more sense to me. It's been nearly ten years since I went and they had recycling stations on many street corners in Paris with holes that only fits the product being recycled, instead of a giant garbage bin with a wide mouthed lid and some blue recycling logo. But it's not just that they do recycling better, the people actually want to recycle, it's part of their lifestyle, it's part of them being an older country than us and having to resort to clever ways to rid the small space of excessive trash.

And, I purposefully didn't wear sneakers the entire time I was in Europe. I left them at home. I took shoes I hadn't worn before, they got broken in on my trip, they were black dressier shoes for me and I got numerous blisters and felt so much discomfort, but when I got there I realized that no one knew I was American until I opened my mouth. And that made me very proud. That affirmed something in me that began to break up the tortoise shell.

I also decided to go back to school. It became the kind of point that I just couldn't argue anymore without sounding ridiculous. I didn't believe in matriculation. Higher education wasn't for me. I don't need school to do what I want. I can't tell you how many times I said those exact phrases and how glad I am that everyone pestered me so much into going to school which was one of the most valuable, self-validating, life-changing experiences for me. You'd think I'd remember what exactly it was that gave me the permission to say I wanted to go to school more than anything. Maybe it was that place, where I learned so much about speaking your desires and having them come true but first you have to say them. They certainly opened a door under me that I fell in and learned how to conduct myself as a human being in a world of six billion human beings. I lost my obliviousness and was able to create huge cracks in the tortoise shell, but it wasn't enough.

It was him, the love of my lifetime, the burnham, that helped me take off that shell, and loved the shriveled and atrophied parts of me just as much as the personality I purported to own, which I had not finished melding against myself, which later he was able to peel up sometimes and expose me and I picked up the shell when I needed it. I was done wearing it in some areas of my life but it still functioned and I still used it as a defense.

Sometimes I imagine that girl I used to be and it's so painful. I just think about her and feel so bad that I was like that and was so unhappy and made other people around me miserable. Sometimes I think about how I sought out approval, constantly baiting everyone around me. Ugh. I hate that girl. And I'm so glad I'm not her anymore.

This last year has really been the cementing of my self, a full acceptance of who I am and why I am with no reservations, concerns or fears. And it has been a very good year. The tortoise shell is so broken I can barely use it, and rarely do.

Gary does wood

Fwd: no subject

:)

cheer up, honey, I hope you can...there is something wrong with me

This is what I have to remember:

My life is a house of cards. It takes nothing to upend me. I have nothing stable, nothing solid, nothing that I cannot throw away at a moment's notice. The only thing I have is my self, which I earned over a period of fifteen years in which I trampled through all that I had just to get to this empty space. I killed love at every turn and fucked up every relationship I had, romantic, friendly, family, nothing was sacred and nothing was left unsaid or alone.

In my exploration, my search to find my self, I let many things happen to me that I know I would never let happen to me if those same things approached me now. I'd be able to say no, thanks and walk away instead of trying to puzzle over and figure things out. I thought that I had managed to muster a fairly accurate divining rod for the people I came across.

Sometimes I am wrong and I think I know what I'm getting into, I give people too much credit and hope so hard for the best and then I understand that it is just an upgrade from where I was, the paper is prettier, the ribbons finer, the potential for loveliness so great that I overlook things that I finally see later, when it is much too late.

I want to have the good things that other people have, the joy, the pleasure, the stability that gives them freedom. I know I have felt it, I know I have faked it, but I am tired of waiting for it or getting half of what I need. They leave me constantly thirsty, desperate for approval, aching for satisfaction. I get joy from life, the nests in the naked trees, the bats swooping overhead, the feel of fabric against my skin, but it is with them that I cannot find pleasure. Lately I have suffered from a string of disappointments they imposed on me, tired of my standards and sick of my demands.

Should I bend or break? that is all I wonder.

Moreover

drawn and quartered

I want to forget him. I want the vapors of my infatuation to fade and each time I see him again, days, weeks, months pass and there it is again, that same giddy drop in my stomach, I am launched back to the moment I first laid eyes on him and when his eyes landed on me. It is thrilling, that moment, and I don't even remember out of nostalgia, it is just a visceral pull of myself to a moment I nearly forgot until I see him again.

He was sitting across the bar. He was all smile. Seriously. His smile was huge and wide and bright in that dank place. His hands tried to hide the bigness of his smile, but they just shyly covered the mouth and not the smile. I felt the electricity of his stare before my eyes adjusted to the dimness of that place. I'd arrived and was being heartily greeted by my friends, all of whom were happy to see me, and his sister, who seemed most pleased to see me. When I turned to look at him, not because I was scanning the bar to see who was there, or to wonder at who this new man with the smile was, I was merely aware from my periphery that someone was staring at me very intently and very bemusedly. And our eyes met. And his smile walloped me from across that space, as if no one else was there and we were not thirty feet apart but standing nose to nose. His smile arrested me; I remember not being able to move for a moment, paralyzed in his gaze, like a deer standing in the woods suddenly startled by a foreign sound. And he was foreign, he was new, and it settled into my consciousness that he was different and interesting and interested in me. I was aware of it that fast, no questions, no concerns, just a knowledge, fast, quick and hard, that he was very much so interested in me. And that was how it began.

The people around us disarmed him and for a while he was just a figure in the shadows, known to everyone but me, can you imagine it? I didn't even know he was due to arrive, I had no idea she was his sister or he her brother. We began the task of drinking ourselves into happiness and slowly the room began to settle back into focus. Details of his presence emerged like messages in a bottle--first it was his laugh that he bellowed out like a foghorn, then it was his gestures, wild and unpredictable and then it was his words, a series of vague grunts at first, something that resembled language but not familiar until I realized it was because he was like her, he was like him (the crow) and that was when the beating of my heart began to ring out in my ears, because it was a show, it was a hunt and I was his prey.

I shrank in fear. I knew enough to know that I wasn't ready yet, I think I knew that instinctively and I began to panic, hoping he would talk to me and then worried about what I would say if he did, then hoping he wouldn't talk to me at all. I try to remember when they lifted the confusion, but it was a while before I realized who he was, that he wasn't just some new regular, some new guy, a visitor, but part of the web of people we knew there. I know it was a while, at least an hour before I knew, and his cajoling and laughter were like delicious pain, searing across my face from that distance, his eyes smiling at me then, his smile overt and unobscured by his hands and shining in my direction so brightly.

Once I realized who exactly he was (her brother), I felt some sense of relief, I stopped feeling adrift and grabbed onto something solid and was able to quiet the panic in my body, enjoy myself and even talk to him about nothing. And I assumed that intensity I felt was one sided as usual as I noticed his smile was wide for us all, not just me, and I let it go.

Later, I moved closer to him and finally began to make out the details of his face, the proportions of his body. He was very lean, with a swimmer's build and had a balding hairline and thin wire frame glasses. It wasn't his body I liked at first, but the way he moved it, almost as if he was a marionette and his limbs were being controlled from a separate place. He moved like a soccer player, light and smooth, but most of all with ease. The ease he wore was evident from the big grin plastered on his face all night. He was at peace with the world and he smiled like the buddha and I wanted to feel that, I admired it, I adored him for it and the thing I didn't realize is that he was only like that because of me.

Sure he was happy to be there, on vacation, visiting his sister, but most of all, as he would tell me later, he was completely startled by me and how beautiful he thought I was and how smart and amazing and pleasant he found my company. I see it now, and I know how he felt because he told me, but it never occurred to me then.

And the night fell away, his laughter echoed mine, his appreciation of me was almost unbelievable, I remember that I found it all heady and surreal. I don't remember if he left before me or if I left before him, all I remember is that when he wasn't there (having gone to the bathroom or outside for a smoke) the room fell flat and time felt stagnant and then crackled into aliveness when he returned.

At one point we found ourselves outside together and I told him how much his arrival must mean to his sister, for she'd been speaking of it for weeks and we had the kind of conversation that is deep and meaningful without being awkward or strange (something I found happened a lot to me; still does on occasion).

His gregariousness was infectious and soon the entire bar rested on his voice, alert to his noises, he became our forest. We sat close and talked; helped grade papers for my friend's fourth grade class and he made it a game with me and we played there for a while. I had often wished to have such fun, especially there, but never had before.

That was almost a year ago now. He has moved on, having loved two women he chose over me and I try to feel some sense of relief that I wasn't chosen because it would have most certainly been like being adrift at sea with no hope of survival. He would have drowned me and been a terrible person to have in my life; he is reckless, a drunkard, a foreigner here illegally and worse than all that, he is not well regarded by his friends anymore, or anyone anymore.

So why when I see him do I still search for that smile and why when he sees me does he give it to me? Not her, the girl he's with; not her, the prettier woman sitting next to me. Me. And why won't that feeling go away? Despite what I know, the ending that we had, the nothingness we share (we can barely muster up conversation together now) why do I still feel like I'm being pulled inside out and I don't care? I want it to stop, so I will continue to do as I have done, to avoid him and the web, to keep away.

Brain!

Dog

Conifer Garden

pressings

[the imperceptible furrow]

I have begun to notice the telltale signs of a burgeoning furrow in my brow. It has always been in the same spot, but now, now there is a shadow there when my face is still because it must rest in the muscles of my face more when I am not paying attention, and it troubles me that my recent state of mind means that I sit with a crease between my eyebrows, a skeptical glance, a puzzlement and soon, it will be permanent. Sometimes I get up and go the bathroom and when I catch sight of myself, almost like a surprise, because I don't always recognize the face that stares out from that glass, I see it, the furrow, and I force my face to relax until it is gone.

Also, there is the recent exhaustion I face on a nearly daily basis, where I want nothing more than to crawl into bed at nine o clock and sleep until the next time it is nine o clock and hope that no one notices that I am hiding away from them, haven't been to a bar in over two weeks, haven't talked about myself in two weeks, haven't cared in two weeks, just want to sleep. I'd guess that I might be depressed but there's nothing really to be depressed about. And if there was, it would have began sooner than two weeks ago. Two weeks ago (and just a bit longer) I had The Fall, which has become an important event in my world and I suspect the marker of my getting older, because I have not been the same girl since then.

It is cold here now and unlike before, I must have gloves and a hat and a scarf and I am a whiny baby without them, my coat snuggled under my chin, three layers on top, two layers on bottom, I am a bundled mass attempting to block out any chills. I used to be immune to the cold. I used to laugh at the cold. Now it laughs at me.

When did I begin to enjoy prunes? Really, prunes? I remember when he offered me one. It was the first time I had ever seen a prune up close. He kept his in the refrigerator, in a plastic container and when he peeled open the lid the smell offended me. It was like if you could smell wetness, if wetness had a smell mixed with a sickly sweet forgery of raisins. They had a similar wrinkle, but they were so big. And some of them were puckered and dimpled and others were like grotesque belly buttons and he shoved the bucket under my nose to make me see them up close and that smell filled my nostrils and I was so grossed out. He thought I was just grossed out because they were prunes and prunes aren't cool. He asked me, the way he asked me everything, the reason I loved him so, if I had actually ever eaten a prune because I might find that I quite liked them. He smiled and I ate one and he was right, I did quite like it. Now, I don't keep my prunes in the fridge, I keep them in my pantry and I try to eat five a day.

[time passing]

"She's been sober for a year," she told me. I can't quite say why this statement has been pinballing through my mind and setting off all the bumpers. The initial ones were all typical, shock, alarm, awe. Then as the details emerged, I felt a sense of affirmation, a prim nodding of the secretary in my mind who manages all the affronts incurred against my good name and even in that moment I could not resist saying, see, this is why I stopped being her friend. After that, I just felt kind of sad for her, that she's obviously looking for something and still hasn't found it yet, and maybe this is it for her. I hope so.

there was a suggestion that sobriety was part of growing up. I don't know what that means. I wish I did. I wish I hadn't held on to a semblance of what felt good for so long because I'm stuck now, this is it, I'm in the rut, I look up from the curb and see everyone passing me by, I'm in that last group of marathon runners who trained for nine months only to end up walking it, bathed in sweat which makes the perfect mask for tears. If I ever grow up it might be because I leave Chicago, because I'll be forced to do something else, anything else. Or it might be a slow steady crawl toward adulthood that I've already seen the signs of and once again I will know it's because I'm a late bloomer.

I want to be steered, to be shown what to do, because the ways that I used to do things haven't been working for me anymore. The impetuous decisions based on nothing more than a whim, it has failed me two years in a row. That has been my saving grace for two years, the one thing I could rest my fucking laurels on when cornered about what exactly I was doing with my life, I could say, with a sense of smugness and pretentiousness, I'm applying to grad school. Or, I'm applying for a master's degree. Even just the idea that I could say such a thing was a novelty, so I said it as often as possible. And now, it seems I've been bested, having failed to win those odds two years in a row, maybe I will not bother this year. Even then I could not say I will not bother. Part of me still wants to apply, part of me still considers it, and probably will until January 4th passes and I can say with a sigh of relief, maybe next year. And maybe the year after, ad infinitum until I die.

[them]

He comes to me at night for assurances. It has a pattern now, like everything; a couple weeks go by, I haven't heard a word, and I usually break my vow of silence. Lately it's him that wanders into my scope, greedy with questions, searching for love, wanting someone to tell him it's all gonna be alright. I do the best I can, for my heart is not for him and my answers seem to drop into an endless well of his own narcissistic making. I imagine all the good times we could have had if this well was absent, but even then, I was never someone he wanted that way, though somehow he desires the mother hen in me and I love soothing him. It makes no sense to anyone else, and so he will remain an enigmatic stain on my subconscious.

The day is arriving that I will meet him again, he only knows my past self from years ago, and I wonder what he will see in my future self, if he will have the same lure to me he once had, I am terrified that he will and even more concerned that I will not be able to deny him. Meeting him again has loomed over me these past two weeks (strangely coincided with my abrupt descent into exhaustion) and I know it's not worth the effort of trying to imagine how it will go, what I should wear, how much of a wall to hold up, but I endlessly find myself scraping away at those thoughts, even when I reprimand myself I still wander back absentmindedly and imagine it all. And it might seriously turn out to be nothing. A joke.

Except there is him and he has captured me with so many moments, so many reasons, but this one in particular might be the exact moment I fell like a great thunderous tree, boom! he was sitting in my kitchen and we were talking, talking about nothing, which we seem to do so well, and he was smiling and happy and we had already spent two hours next to each other, but there was no rush, and my roommate was in the other room unaware, but in the middle of saying something, he was struck by me and he whispered that I looked wonderful and me, typical me, I shied away and refused the compliment, even waved my hand as if to bat it away, but his sincerity in that moment, his carefulness in that moment was exceptional and I crashed.

Xmas Tree

our park

The leaves from the willow trees have covered the dying grass like a blanket. They've been cemented there by snow and ice. They are long and taper at both ends, yellowing, brownish, finger-like. Occasionally there is a slender branch tossed by the wind, stripped of leaves, but lying on top of them because it doesn't know how not to hold the leaves.

The ground crunches under my feet, and the park, my park, our park has undergone a drastic change from when I first encountered it with her, lying in the chaotic grass of summer and looking up into the sky at the stars. The prairie we watched change and grow is flattened, with signs posted detailing it's imminent burning. To imagine that it might someday be a razed, singed, blackened scab on the ground and in six months be full and lush and tower over me is incredible. The trees we watched change are barren now, and all the cement those leaves obscured make the park seem smaller now, less of an oasis.

What catches my eyes the most are the baseball diamonds, like an ice-skating rink, the street lamps cast long gold garland across its mirrored surface and at night, they look like silver circles. I remember how we used to race across them to chase the fog, finding that it could only be seen from far away, and discovering that the sandy surface was soft, like walking on sponges and now it is covered with a disc of ice that I skate on in my sneakers.

To say that I miss her is far too simple. Every single day I think of her, every single day I am disappointed by someone and I know in that instant, had she been there, her appreciation of my observations, my thoughts, my words would have been paramount and the person I am with cannot ever compare to her. In a way, it's worse that I knew her, because it hurts that much more that I don't know her anymore. It makes everything unbearable again. To be known, to be appreciated, to be loved, she gave me that so freely that I felt as happy as I have ever been in my life. I only hope I was able to return that gift to her.

Today was the first day since she has been gone that I traipsed through our park and it was the most I have missed her since her departure, the most angry I have been that she left (even though I do sincerely wish her well and hope she finds what she is looking for, but still angry in a selfish way) and the most sadness that my friend is gone.

Oh boy!

City scape