Welcome to the Occupation

It’s been awhile.  Whatever that means:  awhile, a dash, a pinch, a scupper, undefined forms of measurement.  However, I imagine there are some cooks that would argue with me on a couple of those at least.  Anyway, it’s been some time, because I don’t have any as of late.  I’m busier than the busiest of the proverbial beavers, but at least I’m preoccupied; I have less time to worry.

I wanted to make my argument simple the other day at work, and I did.  If I didn’t have a child, I could and would “live” in the laboratory, my life would be easier, I’d be more productive, and I probably wouldn’t feel like I was missing out on anything.  I wanted to believe it, believe it whole-heartedly, as if the secret to my success would have been to not get married or at least not have a child.  I wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to pay for childcare or health insurance or diapers.  My budget would be stretched, but I could cut some obvious expenses then and be fine.  I wouldn’t need TV or a home phone and I could keep the heat low most of the time, because I simply wouldn’t be there.  It would be easier.  I could progress more rapidly in my career and maybe in relatively short time I’d be full-time faculty somewhere making real money, not Monopoly money – my poor attempt at humor.  My days would be simpler.  I wouldn’t have to rely so much on my family.  I wouldn’t have to ask my mother to put her life on hold for us.  Life could be “normal.” 

But I don’t mean it.  This morning I choked back tears and didn’t want to leave for work.  I wanted to spend as many more minutes as I could with my son before he left for my parents’ house for two weeks.  It’s only two weeks I tell myself, but that is several lifetimes from now.  Two days was nearly impossible before, although that was mingled with other problems.  How will I ever manage two weeks?  I will be busy, I will be traveling, I know the time will fly by, but when it actually sunk in this morning that my little man wouldn’t be saying “Momma” as I came into the house tonight, I felt empty and shattered.  I said once that I don’t mind being alone, I rather enjoy it.  It’s true, but now it’s different.  My argument is not simple, it’s convoluted.  My life would be simpler if I hadn’t had a child, but my life would be empty, and I wouldn’t be content.  Time at work is nice, because it’s a treat, all the same time at home is nice, because it’s a treat.  It’s like the way good needs evil to be good, and evil needs good to be evil.  Without my little man, there’s no home to go to, so it wouldn’t matter anyway.  I’m so worried about money, about loosing my home, but it’s not my home I would loose – it’s only a building, a house. 

My home is somewhere inside my son, in his smile, his laugh, the little games he plays, the excitement and enthusiasm he brings to everything.  I cannot say that I don’t wish that there was a way we could be financially secure and happy together, a way to keep our house, a way to stay near family without relying on them for our day to day survival.  I cannot say that I do not wish and pray for miracles.  I cannot say that I do not sometimes forget the blessing we do have and wish for better, knowing that there are many less fortunate, knowing that we have not been forsaken and cast out.  I gave up my marriage, my financial stability, my stupid hopes that it would someday be right or at least better with my husband’s drinking.  I gave it all up for my little boy.  He can grow up poor, he can grow up on hand me downs and familial charity, but he cannot grow up on hurt and anger and danger and spite and abuse.  So here we are.  Here we are.  We’ll be okay.  I have to believe that we will be as long as we have each other, as long as we have family, as long as we have love, as long as we have hope…we’ll be okay.

American Dream

A nightmare, the dream becomes.

A tree of forbidden fruit grows out of white picket fence post.

The dream, American, budding into brainchild, evil progeny become.

Suspending nothing of promise, only midair collision, plummeting bricks.

Rocketship space races challenged of explosions, like bombs burst into air,

yet giving no proof, airing no truth.

Word made flesh, made rotten meat, sinks into muddy ground,

no longer hallowed, only hollow.

Dead roots twisting into swamps, snakes through human bone remains,

no pyres, no wires, no Indian bone spires to Heaven upward proclaim…

            This innocence of man.

No 1950s drive in.

No 1960s peace sign.

No 1970s bell bottom.

No 1980s Nintendo games.

No 1990s laser tag.

Only 2000 and 2010 sex bracelets, sexting, and blow job competitions.

Eve’s apple lays rotting in fetid soil, no rolling, no tumbling,

only ingesting garbage,

empty calories plentiful, dripping of trans fat and partially hydrogenated oil.

I dreamed of things that were pleasant once.

But all I dream now there are wolves knocking at the door.

Their teeth drip and gnash, becoming the teeth of Hell,

nothing to drown out the weeping-wailing of torment, of lost souls.

I had the American dream once,

but it swam in alcohol and bathed in sin.

So the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.

They writhe, they conquer, they devour,

until the last curtain call come.

But no rush, no storm sweeps,

only pallid, only pallid and tired me.

I had a dream of a future,

but it struggles to breathe now,

because I am crying out until my lungs are empty and without oxygen:

Help me!

But the Lord answer no selfish prayer.

He often answer no prayer at all.

Running Scared

Hell week continues, makes me think of try outs, pledging, things synonymous with the term “Hell week.”  My hell week consists of something different, back to back biofilms from 8 am to 10:30 pm with 2 hour dinner breaks wedged in between, means more driving back and forth, but worth it to see my son, so hard to leave him again.  I started to cry in the bathroom today, probably overtired, a lot having to do with worries about money, bankruptcy, and failures.  I was doing my best not to panic, but it sets in now.  I guess I kept foolish hope for miraculous help, child support payments finally debiting or something along those lines – been offered help, but I don’t think I’ll take that.  I don’t need strings between us, strings tie together, but they also have a way of tearing things apart when you pull.  It’s not so cute as when my son tugs the blanket off the couch and says “pull.”  Now I’m singing instead my headspace.  “There ain’t no strings on me.  There may be strings on some of you folks, but there ain’t no strings on me.”  I am relatively sure that those are lyrics to some song I can’t really remember.  I’m not sure if it’s some of my crazier music or a kid’s song.  How can that be?  I am actually at a point where I can’t decipher metal from children’s music…so much noise in my life, walking around helmet head, ears encased in red plastic earphone so much like firing range ear muffs, resounding the gut shot in this painful life of mine.

I feel broken and bone tired, bone driven.  Greedy Fly made its way into my car CD player today, high school snowboard memory ablaze even when the snow piles wane in this warm February climate…unusual.  I think I am either expending a ridiculous amount of energy or I am devouring to comfort myself or perhaps I think it’s funny to jam a lot into my mouth while sitting at my lab desk where food is banned.  It’s difficult to justify 2 granola bars, crackers, and a fruit strip as a simple snack.  I didn’t have a big lunch, so perhaps it’s okay; I might as well enjoy the food while I can.  It will be more difficult to enjoy later when I have to pick and choose based on a strict budget when there’s no money there.  There was such youthful hope once, boarding with the Sheez, fantasizing about what my life would be someday.  Now that’s all gone – the hope, the pretense.  What if I had been bolder in my pursuits?  Would that change the course of my life? 

The weather teases of Spring and I feel like I need to put on the New Balances and start running, but if I do, I might run like Hell and I there’s no guarantee I’ll be coming back.  Why am I reading Updike right now?  Am I really that stupid?  I wish I was like Rabbit and others would pay for me, not the other way around.  Unfortunately, I know just what end of the stick I’m holding – it’s the warm and gooey end.    

My Funny Valentine

Woke up this morning with my eyes like two sore pissholes in a snow bank, this all after I’d promised myself no more mornings begin like this – no more canker sore mornings.  He’d keep me up and cut me down, a few scattered hours of rest between his drunk sleep talk and snores.  I was stupid enough to cry for him, cry for us, cry in front of him, a writhing weeping worm hiding my shameful eyes, the seat to a soul that was never there.  Another day begins bleary and puffy-eyed, bring memory of my attempts to cake on makeup to disguise the red-lined eyelids only worsens and eyes burn, grateful for the glasses to help hide them.  Legally he’s not allowed to hurt me now, but he still does.  They take away the weapons, but the wound’s still there, bleeding.  What if I hadn’t seen the gun until it was pointed at me?  I am not so sure I care about that, but what if I hadn’t seen it until it was pointed at our son?  The terror in that thought…unbearable.  Even the concrete cracks with the weight of that thought - no graceful fall scene, Martin Sheen.

February 14, another disaster beginning the same way without being at all funny like the mayonnaise explosion-disaster.  I think I went skiing on the happiest February 14, the February that followed.  I had my day over the weekend, but the weekend’s already miles away from me, the moment’s passed.  It felt good to listen and not talk so much, to hear something and not give opinion, not chime in.  I don’t want to talk at anyone anymore.  I want to listen.  I want to be confided in.  I want to feel human and no longer play myself recorded, wrapped in canned speeches, repeating myself, watching glassy eyes reflect my words.  I want to be connected, yet we can hurt each other when we connect.  Why is this the design?  I would have planned it different.  Eve would have come out of the trees and ocean breeze, an essence, not a statue carved out of bone and tallow.  Maybe then the apple would not fall from the tree or it would roll endlessly, no human hand to catch it.

Insane in the Brain

I don’t know why I’m not frantic; I should be.  I guess I’m at a point where I don’t see how the luck can get any worse.  I could loose everything I own I guess or find out I have cancer, but maybe that would be fine.  Family would take me in.  Jesus owned nothing – maybe that’s not a good example.  I’m overhearing a conversation about alcoholics – more reminders, more pointless hints.  I really screwed it all up.  Why did I choose this life?  I think love makes us do many a strange thing.

I’m focusing on the few positives.  I didn’t loose my MP3 player after all.  My boss isn’t terribly bothered that a contaminant has ruined my latest biofilm, although that spells hell for next week.  I have pleasant weekend plans.  Court again tomorrow, so there is some apprehension, some uneasiness, but that’s the score I suppose:  visitor many, home team none.  I don’t want to be trapped anymore, but what choice do I have?  I’m still married to the wrong person.  If only the course of our lives had been different.  Maybe I’d be completely happy, instead of settling for the pleasant moments I get, nestled between horror, shock, and disappointment.  My life feels a little surreal.  Maybe that’s why I’m not frantic.

It’s all a little hard to believe sometimes.  It’s like it’s happening to someone else and not me, my life a tired blur.  Maybe I’m only me every other weekend and the moments we share in between.  Maybe that is enough for now, my heart singing melody from time to time, otherwise rasping angry sentiments, filling my life with its noise metal and poetry.

INTRODUCTION

Seven days make a week, and even the ostrich knows that he has to pull his head out of the dirt before he can breathe.  Unfortunately, this was not innate to me and it took many years to learn what the ostrich knows from birth.  You can hide yourself and drown yourself in sand, but you cannot breathe or live that way.  Even microscopic organisms respire, oh why, oh why, can’t I?

Warning bells should have gone off when he was slurring his words on every phone call, got lost on his way to my apartment in the cozy and familiar Midwest town in which I was a student, and especially when he shit my bed, which occurred surprisingly early in our relationship.  I myself cannot adequately explain how a man you are just getting to know, no matter how charming, can shit your bed in the middle of the night in a drunken stupor and not have that be the end of the relationship.  I cannot explain how I could choose to marry a man that had less restraint with his bodily functions than a hemorrhagic EBOLA patient.  Some voice should have shouted “do not walk down this path,” but it merely whispered and stubbornly contested my mother’s reproach.  I should have immediately recognized that he was nothing more than a drunk in this town, and I was indeed something more.  I was a doctoral candidate and not a girl with nerd or future breast cancer survivor stamped all over her.  Why couldn’t I see that then?  Why did I think that I could save him like some lost puppy with his sad puppy dog face?  Christian or not, there is no glue or tape or lengths of string that could bind together and fix his brokenness.  Neither could I tie together my own hurt with my crusading love.  Eventually all that could stand between us would be a sucking vacuum filled with lies, hatred, and broken promises…a vacuum I might be too scared to climb out of because I no longer knew anything else, a vacuum that threatened to consume me and the ones I loved.  So I pray, give me this day my daily bread and Lord deliver from the swirling vortex…Amen.

There is no chronology to this story.  I may not have come unstuck in time, but nonetheless, I am telling a story that has no middle, no end, no beginning.  I am sure that all true stories are like this.  Yet as a scientist, the clock is my master.  I wear a watch, a cell phone, and a timer, and I check them all several times a day, and sometimes for no reason at all.  I put things in order of occurrence, date, and incubation time.  I record minute details that bore even me, and I make observations for everything, while attempting above all to be clever and insightful without sounding overly passionate and perhaps a little crazed.  Yet, I still wonder why there aren’t more shows about “real” scientists on television.  I think that I am hardwired this way, meaning I do not know how to behave otherwise.  I can sense time fairly well, and I can usually guess what time it is, unless I have become so absorbed that I loose track of time.  I am still not sure what it means to loose track of time, because time never looses track of me.  And yet when I peel off the lab coat, everything falls to hell and I cannot explain it.  I can critically analyze everything and everyone around me, but I am a vampire at home with no reflection and no way to gauge myself. 

Stuck in the middle with you

I'm trying to get serious work done in the lab, trying to make the most out of time with my son and mother, trying to write a novel, trying to write a blog, trying to keep a clean house, trying not to worry that the money in the bank account probably won't cover the bills this month, trying to figure a way out, trying to be pratical about things, but trying to be hopeful, trying to buy lottery tickets under stupid optimism thinking anything can happen, so why can't it be good.  But I don't know how long I can tread water before I drown.  So, I am trying something new.  I'm going to try to blog the novel and perhaps kill two birds with one stone, if anyone even cares.  Oh well, writing is good therapy in any case.