It was a Pleasure Then

The lunch thief strikes again – this time leftover pot roast vegetables.  Isn’t there a child’s fable like this, food disappearing to hungry mouths, the fat cat finally realizing there is real need and suffering, smiles, relents, forgives?  But I’m not the fat cat in this story.  I can’t afford to buy lunch and new Tupperware every time my lunch walks off.  I won’t let them at the meatballs; I’m working on those now, the sauce having stewed for days is a delicious treat.  It was deemed not as sweet or thick as Mom’s, but good tasting nonetheless.  I’m reminded of the gas stove kitchen smell of green apple dish soap, fridge pasted with our best quotations.  We argue over the necessity of seeing the Godfather, the scene where Michael learns how to make the sauce.  Yes, they added one cup of sugar.  He tells me I’m a fake Italian.  Who hasn’t seen this movie at least once?  The answer, my friend the wild man.

Still I will never forget the green apple smell, the humidifier running, Steal This Album playing, a Christmas tree pillaged from campus so nicely adorned.  It was a refuge and a prison - my choice in friends not well matched.  In time I’d learn the lesson I just learned again.  You can’t change people; hoping for the best and getting walked all over are two different things.  The year, my final in college, ended in radio silence – no green apple smells, other friendships renewed at the cost of one.  I thought they’d despised me, but it was the wild man that put them off.  Radio silence was the beginning of a new era of future failures.  Even now I am learning that you can’t reinvent yourself in each new city.  People don’t really change – not alcoholics, not parents, not siblings, not friends, not lovers, not family.  I’m guilty too, so why not go back to being myself?  I know at least three people that are fine with that, and maybe only one that might love the person I try so hard to hide.  Maybe I am beautiful, sing-shouting obscenities as lyrics under my breath, not quite dancing or strutting, but not walking either, head bobbing here and there as cells are counted or lysed or cultured. Maybe if someone looked hard enough, they’d see grace not gawkiness, skill not awkwardness, joyfulness not sadness.  Maybe.

BLINDS

Born dying like mice born blind,
but in time won't mend.
No victory of its kind,
but to the grave, descend.

Born lying like a poker blind,
big or small, it's all in hand.
No remorse there to find,
certainly not the love we'd planned.

Drag me out in the undertow.
Drags me into his world below.
No hope or happiness bestow,
rather in the cargo steamship stow.

So wound in possessed dance,
crouched in haphazard stance,
taking no greater chance,
not daring to dream of love's romance.

You Enjoy Myself

No rant today, no anger – the Holiday chaos beginning to fade.  The phone calls missed, but perhaps a welcome break.  This now being the real distance between us…silence.  Although a few e-mails sustain in the interlude.  Are we crazy?  This newness is like it is with teenagers first exploring a strange world.  We’re both too old to be this kind of young, yet I’m probably too young to be old, even when my age clock reads one-oh-seven.  How can these thoughts oscillate between light and heavy, reminding me of carbon and carbon dating?  I’m loosing focus, dragging feet on data analysis and computer jockeying – oh a necessary evil.  I can’t stop thinking about the town I almost grew up in, blossomed in the eternal summer of my mind, laughing, eating ice cream cones, walking to the lake’s shore.  Did I always picture him in this light of hazy sunshine glow?  Or is it in my mind now anew?  I say no.  I always saw it this way; I’m simply realizing it now.

I am cautiously optimistic, at least I hope…not crazy.  We’re both a little obsessed I suppose, so I won’t worry about embarrassing myself.  I tell myself that in all the wreckage of my life these days, I deserve to enjoy some small corner of this world, and so I do.  I treated myself to coffee today, a frivolous expense when I worry about financial ruin.  But, “Can't I live while I’m young?”  I am now reminded that I’m getting low on tea bags here.  I need to pack more soon.  Otherwise it’s back to hot water, and that’s something I’m already in.  The weather is cold, so my warm beverage consumption is up…2-3 cups coffee, 2 cups tea, take daily, repeat.  Lord knows I need the caffeine; doctors be damned.  But I do need to drink more regular water.  A New Year’s resolution?

Yet, I think I resolve this year to live for myself, my son, and maybe my family.  I don’t live for him anymore, maybe no one else again.  Although I don’t subscribe to head-shrinky philosophies, I know I need to not loose sight of myself again.  There is a person of value, not yet another leg to a table, a tripod, or easel.   

Well Well Well

Listening to Lennon…and I was never a Beatles fan.  But I was young and impressionable once, and now I’m under the spell.  Do I need time to heal the brokenness?  He didn’t beat me, yet the impression remains:  a heart with hole in it.  It started as a pin prick, then a biopsy, then a core sample, now a gaping hole.  Although time is short for us all, you can’t wallpaper over when drywall compound is required.  Why then do we try to take such short cuts with our emotions?  Is that where I am now?  I don’t think so, but I am afraid of how easy it is to become confused.  Where is my totem to discern the dream from the reality?  Am I running away or am I running towards myself?  I think finally towards, but I wonder how I could think soundly after the years of pain and abuse, after allowing myself to be controlled, after shaping my life around a dying limb from a tree growing out of a cesspool.  Everyone wonders that.  What happened?  Was I lusting after real tragedy in my life?  Was it too easy without?  Can I appreciate goodness better now?  Did I think I deserved it; a little girl sitting in a waiting room too tired to think about anyone but herself?  I wish I could tell that little girl that it is okay - that life will be filled with pain, with the unexpected, with the inconvenient, with joy, with moments of happiness, and that she never has to apologize if simply chooses to be herself.  She’s not a bad girl; she’s just complex.

There is real disappointment.  A little boy learning to speak says “Da Da Da Da Da,” eager to put his coat on, eager to go.  With the last minute phone call of cancellation, comes the let down.  He’s too young to understand now, but he will in time.  Will it make him stronger?  Will he realize we did nothing wrong, and that his mother finally did something right?  Will he know my love for him is bigger than our disappointment at not being the family I’d planned we’d be?  Will it give him character or will he blame me?  Will he be sober as the judge or could he become a drunk too?  If there is any justice on the Earth, he’ll turn out for the better.  I have to have faith that real love in whatever form it comes will be sufficient.  Some people never have any real love in their lives and they sometimes turn out okay.  My love for my son is the most real thing in my life.  It has to be enough.

Even our best laid plans fail.  I’m done with planning for awhile.  I’m walking down this path – we’ll see where it leads. 

No Rain

Christmas passed, but better late than never?

Don’t get me wrong, I like my job.  However, days when the lake effect is affecting everything and my morning starts fasting, no coffee, no food at 6 am driving without seeing my lane…it’s a bit much.  Then delay lunch until 2 pm – a cup of coffee guzzled hovering at the bench, two granola bars wolfed at my desk to tide me over.  I guess you can’t say I don’t work hard – I do.  My mind is adrift however, fixated on things I probably shouldn’t be fixated on.  But it doesn’t serve as too big a distraction, so I don’t worry.  I can multitask, hands moving, music blaring, singing, lost in my thoughts.  Less than a week to go until something good happens again:  the holiday bustle.  I’m near giddy, if I thought I could ever really be that way.

Somewhere my brain is stuck on the feeling of being 19.  Everything is new, everything is exciting.  But maybe, just maybe, I’ll actually learn something this time.  I can sometimes imagine myself on the back roads, Fiero flying, CD player blasting, on the way to Clark’s gym – never mind Hillary coming to town.  I settle down into the music of Dave Matthews, Blind Melon, jokes about mouth pipetting and PCR machines, and I’m working with radioactivity without having been formally trained; what a thrill.  I play music with obscene lyrics – I didn’t know; we laugh.  He sometimes says, “my life is a lie” in joke response.  I now wonder if there was some truth here.  But dwelling in the past is not the place for me now. 

There is a present and a future, which was so unexpected once.

I'm Gonna Crawl

Better late than never, I suppose.  I have been the busy beaver lately and am posting this more than a week late.

Sometimes the world is full of good omens, and yet my days would appear a bad omen, a warning sign to those foolish few.  I’m beginning to hate students – young, thinking the world revolves around them – their not so serious illnesses, their study sessions, and most annoying their lies about bar hopping.  They interrupt perfectly good RNA extractions, needing to be attended to.  I’m too busy to be someone’s baby sitter.  Being a mother is great, holding the hand of some foolish 21-year-old is something entirely different.  I would like to say I’m nice, but I was on the verge of yelling; my RNA mode not a joke, although it may seem comical with the labcoat-clad, half-dancing movements, singing and talking to myself, head bobbing to metal blasting out of the MP3 player.  But it’s not a joke – the tempo, my wild arm flailing while mixing phases – it’s critical.  There is a rhythm to it and interrupting my White Zombie/Poison the Well celebration of RNA is near unforgivable, especially when I planned my day around his schedule, which he changed last minute without warning.  I doubt there is any study session, because the time changed from 2:30 to 3:00 pm when we spoke – he seemed unaware.  He’s also interrupted “Black Angel’s Death Song,” which is almost a killing offense in my mind; standing there stupid-eyed, not sure if he’s coming or going, telling me about his girlfriend, all while Lou Reed is hissing his imitation of a respirator.  I was flying to the cozy brown snow of the East.  Now I’m annoyed, my work flow…interrupted. 

She's so Heavy

A revelation – tea two days in a row instead of hot water.  It’s only because my mother helped me pack my lunch, her virtual checklist reminding me about my lack of tea bags.  It’s a comfort in the cold weather and in the chill of my life these days.  Now I find myself craving a fire in the fireplace, if I can afford the wood.  But it is too confused with fond memories of the man I now resent.  We’d drink one, sometimes two, bottles of champagne in front of the fireplace on cold winter nights.  Sometimes he came home to find dinner started and candles lighting the way up the stairs to our open concept living/dining area.  We’d have sex on soft blankets there, both more or less a little tipsy.  Only…he was drunk, I know that now.  But we never made love.  That was something about us that a side of me found endearing.  I thought it was my hard and callous side, but I now know it was my fearful side.  I was afraid that if we used the word love here, it might become polluted like our professed love for each other, for our persons.  If we lost the primal act of fucking, we might loose ourselves and our love would cross a boundary I was afraid to cross after first love shattered my heart.  Maybe this is somewhere at the root of my problem.  I was afraid to say make love.  Maybe if I had, things would be different now.  But alas “done bun, cannot be undone,” and all in all, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.

Yet, I want to break ties with the old.  I want to be able to say it now.  I’m close, but I can’t say it yet – maybe next time.

He stumbles up the stairs, late, candles never lit, dinner cooling.  I remember nights like this.  Nights when I tried, but the allure of the bar won out.  Nights when we pretended it wasn’t over when it started.  Nights when he pretended that the odor of gin and stale cigarettes was not a litmus test.  Nights when I’d pretend to pretend there wasn’t a problem.  Nights when some small measure of hope within me died.

Maybe I never said it, because it would never be true about him.

Perhaps someone else…

Steel, cold as

Steel it from me again.

I might die, but I don’t know when.

So steel it from me now,

before it’s lost to you somehow.

Steel it from me and lock it in your vault,

before the vulture, shedding Halcyon days, begins to molt.

Our lives are a state of shock and awe, staging revolt.

My words, my hopes, a catapault.

A gamble to climb this wall,

without protection from the fall.

Finding the windows are brick and the doors are locked,

every entryway and every exit is blocked.

With all these booby traps about,

there’s no way out.

I might die, but I don’t know when.

Yet I know it’s time for the pen.

Write it and write down again,

so I may cast my seed amongst the fields of men.

Where they might fall along the path,

God will be in the aftermath.

Steel it from me, so I can’t steal it back.

I’m cold, I’m lost, and under attack.

Save it from me, foster it, husband it.

He was mine,

but husband he did not.

He ran bands of steel through me and impaled my hope.

So now even frozen steel isn’t as cold as my thoughts.

Charlie Stole the Handle

Somehow snow makes it just a little bit better.  Certainly not the driving or the shoveling or the snow blowing, snow throwing, but the brightness of it is an improvement.  I keep thinking and sometimes saying that it just doesn’t feel like Christmas this year, but the snow puts an upturn on my mood.  The regular DJ for my jazz station was inexplicably absent from the airwaves this morning, and the change to more light hearted, funky, and Christmasy tunes was of help.  The slow traffic and uninterrupted music ease my apprehensions a little.  Knowing that I will not see him (my husband) again until after the Holidays is a definite morale booster, and the possibility of seeing a good friend is downright cheerful. 

He collected his things this weekend under police escort.  I was nice, maybe too nice, but a small part of it is in fact selfish.  I want his clothes, his shoes, his things out of my house.  I want to begin to remove his traces and try to forget what it was like to live in his prison for years, unable to predict accurately if I would meet Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde at the door when I arrived home.  Mostly it was Mr. Hyde, but the brief and infrequent appearances of the good doctor were enough to string me along, give me hope.  Hope is a dangerous thing you see.  It was maybe hope that bound me to this man, my abuser.  I hoped that things would get better, that he would consent to getting help, and that the sham of a married happy ending for which I played my role day in, day out, would someday be a reality.  But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “if wishes were fishes, my room would stink.”  Now you know that I’m a marvel, full of bad analogies about rotten seafood.

I want to recount for you in specific the things that occurred during my six lost years, but I cannot.  It’s not that it’s too painful – I am just tired of telling the tales.  I can tell them with no chronology picking out the best morsels for you to devour, but I am tired of being fodder for vultures, no matter how caring and concerned these vulture are.  It sounds ridiculous when I write, almost as ridiculous as when I say it.  The questions are numerous, but always the same:  “that really happened, you’re not exaggerating?”  And the answer always the same:  “I wish I was, but these things and worse all happened.”  Then the sad, confused, not sure what to say eyes look at me and in their way say, “it’s a wonder you’re sane at all, much less a scientist with a Ph.D. and publications.”  And my only thought is that I’m a bull, an ox, tramping down the wagon trail with one hoof in front of the other.  My breath locomotive, no way to slow down.        

THICK

Thin is another man’s problem.

THICK is what I’ll be

            in my head

            in bed

            in my clothes

            indisposed.

THICK is what I’ll be

            in spirit

            though I think I fear it.

We’ll be in the thick of it, you and me, Briar Rabbit.

Cast amongst the thickets and the thorns.

Remembering the Sticky Wicket,

where I learned how to score a game of darts,

while in my college, learning about bacteria and the arts.

Thin is another woman’s success.

THICK is what I’ll be

            Plus sized, robust, haughty,

            and just a little naughty…

            so happy I will be.

Yes, THICK is what I’ll be

            eating cheese and crackers, shrimp, and wine…

            no lies, I’ll be feeling fine,

Because:

THICK is what I’ll be,

            Ignoring the obvious, ignoring my worry.

I’ll be THICK, because I’ll never be thin for you.

Low Desert

Like dominoes or snowballs rolling downhill, I am yet another day behind:  cause and effect. 

Another court day…wish I could say I was the lawyer and not the person being represented.  Listening to other women asking for orders of protection is scary.  “He ran my current boyfriend over with his car.  He beat me.  He tried to molest my child.  He can’t know my work address; that’s been a problem in the past,” this all from one woman.  How did I end up here amongst these tragic stories? 

I’m trying to force myself to eat.  What if he’s (my husband) there today?  What if he’s not?  What if they reverse the order of protection?  I’m moving on, but what if he’s not?  I don’t think you know that depths of hell you’re in until you’re out.  I can’t go back, my feet are to the path now.  I need to “keep on keeping on.”  I’m in sore need of a miracle.

How many forkfuls is enough to stave off a migraine and get me to the end of the day?  Five?  Six?  I doubt that.  Better than none, I suppose.  Maybe I can keep shrinking until I disappear from sight.  Maybe I can shrink to nothing and then I’ll be freed.  Maybe I am right and it’s meant to be.  I want to be, because it’s easier to cope then.  But maybe my friend is right and there is no fate.

Am I being punished for my choices then?  Do I deserve it just a little bit?  I drank and stayed out late with him, played hooky with him, shirked responsibility with him -- poor choices.  But he had to know that “a baby changes everything.”  He says I changed, but I’ve always been the same.  Some days I’m just more or less obvious.     

Begin the Begin

Yesterday's post a day late:  no surprise.

Mom would be disappointed in me, focusing on the inane and not the obvious here - it's snowing and I have no boots, no hat, no gloves, no winter coat.  However, she didn't caution me when I left this morning, as she predicted for the rain to turn to snow.  Maybe that was her gentle hint, but I'm obtuse as of late, and so today I will have to brave the snow in my fall jacket and sneakers.  I used to be five steps ahead, and I at least seemed to have the next five years planned.  Now, I'm ill prepared, drifting from moment to moment, still drinking hot water instead of tea.

Where do I begin and the nightmare ends?  Do I tell you childhood tales of the endearing and often comical sort chronicling my adventures with baby brother?  Or do I tell you tales of sledgehammers to bent lawn mower blades and bleeding hands in the kitchen turned to infection after weeks in a dirty ace bandage medicated with liquor and someone else’s pain killers?  Do I tell you about the frequent assaults on my freezer, husband yelling, strewing the contents on the counters and the floor?  "Tell me, what do we need with all this food?"  Do I tell you about how the he almost dropped our infant son on those counters after insisting he must help with the bath through stuttered speech?  Do I tell you about the hope and optimism of tunneling out the other side of this craziness?  Or do I tell you of the worry and embarrassment of having your mother move in to alleviate day care costs while you prepare to sell a house you've owned for less than a year?  Or do I simply pout and say, "life is not fair."?  I won't lie and say it's fine.  I won't exaggerate it either.  My life doesn't read like a Toni Morrison novel, but a fairytale it isn't.  I know Dr. Jekyll, but I know Mr. Hyde better.

I'm done being Jacques Cousteau - no more undersea adventures for me; I don't have the necessary breathing equipment. 

I'm yelling "Carolinas" in my head and I doubt you'd get the reference.  I woke up underwater and now I arise to breathe, so eventually when the dragon's slain, I can yell it loud and long with my broken lungs.  It's something from my childhood, but this time James Earl Jones doesn't scare me.  I'll pawn the red crown too, and still choose science over magic, any day.

Can't Get There From Here

If anyone had predicted ten years ago when I was graduating form high school that I would be ducking out of the lab and into the stairwell to call the law guardian in my son's custody case, I would have insisted that they were crazy.  At 18, the world was my proverbial oyster, and I knew I was setting out to do great things.  I probably wouldn't ever get married, much less before the age of 30, and kids, well they're full of germs (to quote myself).  However, I think very few of us can accurately predict where this life will take us, not even stubborn 18-year-old-going-on-35 future research scientists.  I wish I could say that it was because I followed my heart that I ended up here.  All I can say though, is that I don't know how I got here, because the line from point A to point B is anything but straight.  The line staggers and weaves like a drunk, like the drunk that I married, and the drunken foolishness of my thoughts, my optimism.

If someone had told me that I'd be sitting at lunch sipping a cup of hot water like some village variety lunatic, I would have laughed.  I knew someone once that drank just hot water, and I thought it was bizarre then.  Now I am doing it, because my life is too chaotic to remember tea bags and the coffee is eating a hole in my stomach.  It's cold outside and I feel cold inside, so I need a little warmth, which I'll take however I may find it.  How does an intelligent person and a confident woman allow herself to be abused for the better part of six years?  Is it because he didn't hit me, although he cut me to ribbons with his tongue?  Is it because I loved or needed him?  Or was it simply because getting married seemed like the next logical thing to do?  And why does it take finding him passed out drunk, face down on the floor, while watching our 15-month-old to force me to act?  When did I become a Hallmark movie or an afternoon Soap?  The world was my oyster once, and now it just smells like rotten shellfish.