I'd tell them, you know, if they wanted to know. Cause I have a lot of things to say, but it’s the kind of stuff that no one wants to talk about. Or they just don't think to talk about it. But I do, and I wonder if they do too, and just don't say it for the same reasons I don't.
It's like, when you wake up and you can just tell that it's going to be a long day. Because of the way your feet hit the floor, or because of the way your breakfast tastes-different from day to day, even though you eat the exact same thing every morning. No one mentions that stuff, even though everyone experiences it (whether they notice or not) and it can set the tone for an entire day.
Then there’s that feeling, that feeling of inspiration undone. That poem, that sketch, that photograph or story or whatever it is that’s so important and at the beginning you were so excited but by the end, you’re only finishing it out of a sense of determined rebellion. You keep it, maybe even put it up on the wall, and feel a strange mix of pride and failure. I did it. I finished it. But it just doesn’t measure up. Or does it? No, I can’t bring myself to approve completely.
So I guess that's when a long day really starts; it's the buildup of all the times before when you try to love yourself but you really can't, not all the way. Or maybe it starts before that even, when you're lying fully clothed in the cold fake-porcelain bathtub in the dark bawling your eyes out and wondering what the hell is wrong with me cause it was really no big deal. But you can't stop crying for some reason and that just makes them feel worse which makes you feel worse which leaves you pushing away the love you want because you don't deserve it at the moment. But I said I'm sorry and Mom fixed me a pomegranate and put the transparent, fleshy red seeds in a bowl. I went upstairs with the little rubies to eat, glinting in the light of my art lamp and everything's ok again, but my eyes still sting and they'll probably still be puffy in the morning.
Maybe this is stupid. This fit of inspiration that'll probably be forgotten in a day or two. If I finished all of my projects, I'd have some pretty amazing stuff and some unique experiences.
Like if I'd really run away that time when I was thirteen. I had a pillowcase of stuff and I was walking away, out in the woods, but I knew I wasn't really going anywhere. I was going to, but not really. I told my friends that I was really going to do it if Dad hadn't found me, but I wasn't. There was this tree a few acres away from my house. It was on a hill, so I could always see it, and once I packed a bag with some food and blankets and my stuffed tiger and a book or two, and I went to that tree. I spread a blanket out under it and I stayed there for a few days. No one looked for me there. It was too obvious, too close. I even sneaked into my own house sometimes when my family was gone, to get stuff or to watch TV.
The whole time, I was sitting at my kitchen table, waiting for my toast, looking through the window at the far-off tree. Every time I looked at the tree for five years, I went there and was brave, but not too brave; run away but not far. Sitting above white tile, eating toast and running away to my tree where no one would find me but they really would; where I'd sleep under the stars but really I'd get chased back inside by the ghosts that are out there, cause they really are out there. And I'd be so brave but I'm not, so I spread the marshmallow fluff on my toast and pretend it was marmalade or butter or something else more mature; something my brother would put on his toast. I tried, but I didn't like the butter, cinnamon, and sugar that he used. Salty and wet and sweet and soggy and spicy and crunch. So I was filled with me and my toast was covered in fluffy, insubstantial sweet; no room for refined flavor combinations. No room for any of my brother in me.
Then at lunch I'd eat alone. I don't remember why; for some reason there just wasn't anyone else around most of the time. I don't know if anyone else ever has, but I used to play games when I was alone. I'd do whatever I was doing, but I'd be someone different: a Greek slave or an African tribal princess warrior or a cripple on the streets of 18th century London. It was pretty weird, I guess.
I hadn't been that weird before. It started with a wish that never came true. It was a stupid wish; an unattainable wish, but it crushed me when it was torn from my grasp at the last moment. I'm over it now, five years later, but the mention of it still pricks me a little, like an unpleasant tingle in an old scar.
Cause, you know, I don't think anything ever really stops hurting. Like that time when I was little and I made my mom cry. I don't even remember what it was all about--it couldn't have been that bad because I was only five--but she cried and I still feel guilty. I usually feel guilty for something. I can never just say "everyone makes mistakes" and move on. I can't just say that. Someone has to pay. The scales have to level out. I have to make it even; make justice. Someone has to pay and that's me, with years of those hot guilt-rocks at the bottom of my stomach. I'm not trying to be one of those martyrs. I can hardly even spell "martyr". Had to look it up. I'm not one; I'm just an 18-year-old girl-woman-thing who doesn't feel ready for whatever that means. Who's still not sure what to keep and what to let go of. I try to let go of some things, but I dreamed about one the other night; a dream all colorful and glowy. That person was there and we were close friends again, as if the last two and a half years had never been. It's one of those things that you think is probably your fault so you're too scared to ask what the hell happened, cause you're afraid they might actually tell you. Or worse, you're afraid that nothing really "happened" and you two just grew apart, meaning you were never that important to them in the first place.
So instead of thinking of that, I lie awake and schedule in my head. Making lists on the white paper of my brain with black ink that I'll never see, cause all my good intentions aren't worth blip anymore. I don't actually accomplish anything. I don't organize my dressers, I don't lose any weight, I don't burn that mix CD for a friend...but it kind of feels good to plan on doing it, even though it's just a set up for another failure. To think, I'll do it tomorrow, I swear. So I put little things on my to-do list; the real one, that I actually write down. Little things that I know I'll do, like shower or feed the ferrets. Because it just feels so good to cross it out, even though it's nothing more than a waste of ink. Because for all I do, the “don’ts” pile up so high that I can’t breathe and I wade through them, the guilt of undone tasks and favors nearly paralyzing me, until I manage to escape to the outside. The real world. Or is it the real real world? Cause sometimes when I don’t feel real nothing feels real. It’s like when you’re somewhere special, where you never go. You’ve gotten all dressed up and for once you feel cute and stylish and for once you talk to other people without choking on your tongue and you soak up the cultured atmosphere and look like you belong. Like I belong. But I’m not real there so none of it’s real. What’s real is an awkward tongue and dark-circled eyes and sweat pants in a messy room. There I’m real; I make there real. The special places are happy fantasy.
I feel like crying when I can’t remember the smells of those special places, cause I can never really remember them, and smells are so descriptive--tangible air--and they tell me so many things about the people and the streets and the flowers and the artwork and smells generate feelings of places and times that were locked inside me somewhere. The smells make me remember and feel and I do so love to remember the feelings by feeling them again. By having them sketched out on the insides of my nostrils by the smells while my subconscious fills in what’s missing. But not all of it, because something’s always missing and it hurts, but it soothes too because it means it was special, what used to be. It was special and it was mine and it happened and it’s gone but that’s ok, because it was. The bittersweet mourning at the death of a moment that will never come again. Because moments aren’t buried in the ground like people.
People come back, a little, even if no one knows it. A girl dies and her body rots in the ground, making the soil rich. The wind blows seeds on the grave and grass covers it. A deer eats the grass and grows strong. A hunter shoots the dear and mounts the head on his wall. He sells the meat, which is eaten by the girl’s family for dinner. So the family eats the girl, and some of her still remains, watching the hunter in his home from her place on the wall.
I once saw a piece of art that I think will haunt me forever. Three square cages, the bars formed from frosted glass, stuck out from the gallery wall. A strange smell hung about them. I came up to see what was inside of them, and the feeling never quite left me; stuck in the back of my brain like a barbed fishhook. And I wonder, who’s dried blood crusted the pieces of gauze and how were they hurt and what became of them and please please take the white white white and rust and smell away because it stirs some primal instinct of wrongness and dread inside me. Because blood should stay inside and only mine is beautiful to me.
That really shouldn’t be such a bother, I think. Because, you know, there are so many things that bother people that they don’t say. Or maybe they don’t notice. Or maybe just subconsciously. But they’re bothered cause we’re really not all that different, and everyone’s got their voice and that certain sadness in their soul and the weight drags them down and we’re all equal. We’re all equal but we don’t see it. Some think they have it worse and some think they have it better. And maybe they’re right, but something’s broken anyway; we’re all missing the same piece. Some know to look up to find it and know that when they die they’ll get it back and they’ll be whole like we’re supposed to be, but some keep looking at the ground to find it, and it’s not because they’re any more broken than we who are looking up. I think they’re just so afraid that if they lift their eyes long enough to check the sky, their one chance for wholeness will skitter by beneath them and they’ll be lost forever. Because not everybody was taught from childhood to look up. And sometimes looking up doesn’t make any sense, when you’re afraid you’ll trip and people will laugh at you and you know it doesn’t matter but it really does, and that little bit of self-doubt you’ve found curls up and lies quiet, but never really sleeps.
There are other things that stay too, though. Like that night you overheard one lady tell another that you looked pretty tonight. Or that time you helped someone anonymously and for a little while you felt like a mostly good person. Or that night you were out late and weren’t tired. All around you were four of your favorite people, one of which had donated his blazer to keep the night chill off of your bare shoulders, tastefully revealed by the chic dress you wore. Neon lights shone on smiling faces and you couldn’t breathe you were laughing so hard but you don’t need to breathe because those people are there, and their friendship is raw and happily exposed. And even though some of that friendship has been wrapped up and buried deep somewhere, the happy of that moment sticks with you and brightens the dark parts of your mind every once in awhile with the soft light of contented memory.
I love to drive at night, on the highway. Everything looks different in the dark. Somehow, it makes me feel like I’m going somewhere. Going somewhere not home, not familiar. It gives a melancholy feeling, the way the string of red goes out before me, like blushing fireflies in the night. The white coming at me on the left like stars on their way someplace, shooting stars with someplace to go--a specific destination. Headlights, taillights; the glowing lamps of travelers on their late-night, weary way. And the way I follow the red into the blackness makes me feel like I’m leaving something bittersweet behind me, heading nowhere but away from it with no plans to go back--only forward into some new bittersweet thing. A sigh of change, sad but right. I imagine I’m going to LA or Chicago to live in the grittiness of the city that the mouse in me would never really brave, to make a way for myself that the confused child in me would never really forge. But in the difference of the familiar all colored in charcoal around me, smearing itself onto my skin in shadow-shapes, what I really am is blotted out too and I feel like I’m really on my way somewhere strange and big. To change everything--every little thing. I imagine the city would bring on a new way of walking, a new way of looking at myself in the mirror, a new way of getting dressed in the morning. Different meanings behind my sighs, different small talk, even though I’m sure I’d still hate small talk. Maybe I’d look differently at that leather bracelet, though its view is already changing in my mind as futile thoughts chase each other around in my head, because I learned something today that renders that barely-sparking notion moot. But it’s still a thought to play with, entertaining me when I can’t sleep and making me think a little harder on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are yellow to me now, but in the city maybe they’d change color. Tuesdays might be gray. But, I think lots of things would turn gray in the city. That’s not bad, though; I like gray. I wear a lot of gray and I like days when the sky is gray and silver is sparkly gray and pictures from the world’s golden years are gray. So maybe I’d still like Tuesdays in Chicago. But I’ll probably never figure that out, because even though I pretend that I’m going to drive right by my exit, I don’t, so I go back home where Tuesdays are yellow and they make me smile but they’re just the tiniest bit sad, cause it’s too bad that things couldn’t be just a little bit different.
December gives me mixed feelings like that too. December has always been red to me, like August has always been powder-blue and May has always been pastel-purple. September is cobalt, October is black, November is navy, January is cream, February is green, March is robin’s egg, April is magenta, June and July are light and dark shades of yellow. One like a flower, one like the sun. But I never remember other months like I do December. It’s ironic, the circles it goes around in. Sickness and healing, both born in December. One December, I got heartsick. One, I was body-sick. The next, mind-sick. Bad December-memories piled like a child’s building blocks on the living room floor of my brain, in the way whenever I wanted to relax. But something else was born in December too, though for the sake of debate I guess I have to mention that it might not be exactly accurate. It doesn’t matter, though. It is celebrated in December and that’s my point. He was born in one of my favorite places--a stable. With the soft noses of cattle and horses snuffling His hair, maybe. Meeting His noble animal creations at the same time as two of His human ones. Maybe it wasn’t just His humility that made Him choose His birthplace, though I’m sure that was the major bulk of it. I’d like to think that maybe He enjoyed the presence of fur and gentle, soulful eyes. I’d like to think that He has a special place in His heart for His animals--innocent in ways that people could never be--and thought that they might be a comfort to Him in His infancy when He was stripped of heaven and thrust into a treacherous world. I don’t know. I like thinking that. If I could have chosen the guests present at my birth, the list would have included animals. But maybe animals weren’t even there. Stuffy historians might berate my ignorance and tell me that it wasn’t that kind of stable. And maybe it wasn’t, but they weren’t there, and maybe Mary and Joseph brought their donkey in with them, and maybe there was a stray cat, and maybe some sheep wandered in when the Shepherds got there. But anyway, that wasn’t my point. My point is, He was born with an eraser and a first-aid kit, and He was born to erase my long list of regrets and patch up various heart-wounds. So the worst I have done, and the worst that has happened, has been in December. But the best too, and the best far outweighs the worst so I can feel like dancing so much more in the Red Month, because “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” (Luke 7:47). So God cleans up my mind-living room with His Celestial Hoover, and chops through my many chains with His Holy Chainsaw. And I dance to His Heavenly Music, even in December. Especially in December.