Saturday, January 3, 2009

Margarita Night

"Tarani, play catch-up. We've already had ten shots each."
15 minutes later I'm caught up.
A phone call, phone falls into toilet, Lauren laughing, I'm laughing.
Knocks.
Silence.

Ally crying next to a wall after I cut her down.
"Fuck you, Ally."
Don't talk to Lauren like that.

Then I'm driving.
Then I realize Catie's in my passenger's seat screaming at me to stop.
I keep on driving past the Brassler's, past the curve, past the stop sign.
She's still screaming but fuck that.
"If you loved me you'd stop."
I pull into the bank. God damnit, take the fucking keys.

I start screaming and punch punch punch punch punch punch.
God fucking damnit. God damn. Why the FUCK am I so FUCKING MAD?
Why the FUCK did I punch my mirror!?!
Haha! Yes! I fixed it!
But still, Catie, GOD DAMNIT. fuck...
Whatever this is it really fucking hurts.


5 minutes later, Catie's house.
She's pulling the whole you-should-stay-here card.
And I'm not taking it.
Fine, her sister follows us as Catie drives me to my house.

I remember toilet, barf, naked on the floor.
Heather? God, Heather, don't look at me right now.
Please don't see me like this, Heather.
Heather, go away and don't look back.
This is about as far as I go.

Still naked. Drunkin' around the room.
World spins madly on, and I find my trash can.
Barf, barf, barf. Punch. Fuck!
Why does this hurt so fucking bad?
Fuck this. FUCK.
Heather, get mom.
Heather, get someone.
Mom, call 9-1-1.
My chest is ripping itself in half.
Someone is pinching my heart with a pair of pliers.
Please God, stop it. Fucking make it stop.

I think the whole fire department was in my room.
The paramedics walk me to the ambulance,
and the red lights are on.
Sirens? Fucking shit. What did I do?
"I'm sorry, guys."
There is someone dying in an alley because I was selfish enough to call an ambulance.

Hospital. Waiting in the hallway.
Mom? God, I'm so sorry.
If you think this is bad...God, you have no idea.
You would hate me.

Are you trying to come out to me?

Yes.

And we talk and I quote poems and literature and I try to sound slightly sober.
I wanted to kill myself.
She knows it, I know it.
Should I commit you?
Do it. I want to die. Do it. It doesn't matter.
You're going to where your sister went.
No, I want to live. Never mind.

Before we left mom said something to the nurse about having suppositories at the house,
and I go "hah, yeah, we've got an assload."

Not funny? Oh, I thought it was funny. Sorry I'm drunk, mom.
Oh sorry I'm sexually confused, too.

Drive home from the hospital she starts laughing:
One of my daughters is crazy and the other one is a lesbian. Great.

I laugh, but I'm broken-hearted.
The anger fades, and I feel two feet small.
And I still cry thinking about it.
I don't want to feel like being who I am means that I am broken,
like I have some sort of a glitch,
but I know she thinks I am.

----------------------------------------------------

I woke up to the smell of sour apples.
What the fuck? Oh, that's what it is...
It's fucking sick is what it is.
I took the trash out.
Mom made pancakes.

Then she laid in her bed and she slept the day away.
She told Lenny, "I just want to wake up when everything's changed."

I can't change it, though.

-------------------------------------------------

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Winter Walls

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.
The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.
It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me,
and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!"
I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand,
like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
-Robert Frost

Oh man, all the walls I build.
I meet people face to face only for a brief encounter and then focus on how I'm going to keep this wall up between us...and this winter I think a lot of mine have taken hits. There are holes. There are stories I tell that don't add up. There are things I've kept to myself that come bubbling to the surface.

In time the walls I build become more of a labyrinth, and I get stuck in the middle.
And I've lied. I lie in a frail attempt to stay detached from myself. I figure maybe if there's a part of me that I can't change that I can just bury it in lies. Maybe I'll get stuck in my own maze, maybe I'll become so lost that I forget what the truth is.
But I know I won't.
This is me trapped in the same spot by walls of lies.
It's zero progress.
It's nothing I want.

Vulnerability is never easy, but I think it's essential.

Lying is a habit.
I started telling Lauren the truth, but as soon as I started drinking I threw in about four other lies. I guess it's kind of like"I'm giving you the truth. But not all of it! I'm still guarded! So there!"

But what does that do?
I go to my room and lay there staring at the ceiling knowing that there isn't a single person who knows me.
I feel like the loneliest person in the world because I've spent all this time trying to protect myself from having anyone really see me for who I am--even if I'm not proud of who that is--even if I haven't been the greatest person this month, I guess I just want to be seen.

I think underneath all the lies, I might be a good person.
New Year's resolution? Less drinking, more productivity, more reading,more expanding on things, more delving, more truth,more fun, more depth, more connections, more finding me.

I need to find myself instead of trying to shut pieces of me down.