In this fuzzy eyed world, she came to me. My heart was pounding, my fists were clenched, a deep inexplicable anger welled up inside of me as she walked towards me and asked me if I was Erika.
But her words hit like sweet honey, and began to slowly melt away my anger. We walked and talked slowly, not sure what to say to the other — not sure why SHE was the one who had to come for me.
Two strangers brought together by one terrible thing.
When I arrived at my new home, I was still confused as to how all of this had happened. How I was going to live with these two people. How I was going to watch love unfold in front of me. I had hated without knowing why. I had loved without knowing why. Each of them, and now here I was.
As the days in this hazy land continued, I was unsure of what to do with myself. I had thought someone else would be my savior (I had someone very specific in mind), but every time, no, there she was. With a hand outstretched. Part of me still wanted to hate her, but another HUGE part of me wanted to explore her, to know her, to see everything beautiful she had to offer and to see what made her something I could never be.
One night I did something terrible to her. Why I did it, I don't know. It wasn't physical harm, I didn't say anything to her, but it's what I didn't say, and it is what my actions said more than anything. I tried to steal the most precious thing in her life away from her... and I almost did. Ultimately, she won, and that is the way it was supposed to be.
Instead of shunning me, instead of hating me as she should have, she accepted me. She wanted to still be my friend, she wanted to understand my pain. And the next morning, when I awoke feeling alone and ashamed, she was waiting for me. I walked downstairs to see her standing in the door way, a heated summer breeze blew her golden locks around her crystal sea green eyes and the sun almost eerily shone on her dress making it translucent and casting soft, beautiful shadows on the wooden walls of the room.
She beckoned for me to come, and I did, although I could not understand why she could smile at me or love me after what I had done. For so long I thought she had been the one doing wrong, but the more I thought about it, the more I really looked at what I was doing, the more I realized I was completely wrong. I was terrible, I was awful and she forgave me without me even asking.
I began to cry and tell her all of this; she wiped my tears and smiled at me and told me it was ok, that I should stop this, and that we should be grateful for and enjoy our friendship and not fuss over the small things.
But this did not seem like such a small thing, but to her it was. To her, the value of friendship and forgiveness meant more to her than this sin, this crime. She saw the beauty in the dirt, and she picked me out of it and still held on to me. She considered me precious, and I considered her the same.
6.12.08
28.11.08
Lazarus and the Lizard
One foot in front of the other. Pound the rubber track until your feet burn and throb. One foot in front of the other, keep going until you can't breathe. Shed the pounds, build the muscle, one foot in front of the other quickly — faster now, don't waste your time here.
I was at the gym because I have veered from the healthier lifestyle I had last (school) year — I used to cook nearly every meal for myself, and at least get to the gym two times a week. This year, I got way too caught up in everything — eating out way too much and I hadn't been to the gym once this year up until a few days ago. I have now been going every day and spending a couple of hours. And each day I have noticed this same girl.
She is a very beautiful girl with bright blonde hair and these fierce brown eyes — eyes that say, "Don't f*** around with me, I mean business." But upon further inspection, I have realized that maybe these eyes are saying something else. I think they are scared. I think the girl behind those eyes is trying far too hard to reach a level of beauty that the world presses her to achieve — something that she doesn't realize she already has inside if she just got off the treadmill and showed it.
Every day I walk up those stairs to begin my stretches and she is already there — face slightly red and that fierce determined look on her face. As I stretch, she is running — so quickly that every time I feel she will have to collapse soon. But she continues onward! As I move to my cardio — elliptical and treadmill — she continues to run, then move to the elliptical with me. I do the elliptical for 45 minutes, she does it for an hour. I move on to lift weights for another hour. This entire time, she is still working on her cardio — her skinny legs looking as though they might break at any moment. So frail looking, yet the spirit driving her seems to scream strong and determined. When I finish with my weights and wrap up after about 2 hours and 15 minutes in the gym, she is just beginning her weight lifting routine. I continue to the locker room to enjoy the steam rooms, sauna, showers, hot tub, etc — all pleasant rewards for the rather long intense workout. But she never enters the locker room while I relax. Ever. She must still be upstairs working out. My guess is 4 hours a day.
And today while pounding my elliptical and reading a book about the beauty of women entitled, "Captivating" (thanks, Rachael!) I looked around me... and I saw this skinny girl who seemed to be addicted to working out. I continued to look around and all I saw was a mass of fake people swarming and sweating around me — people who are always there doing the same thing — all watching the same things on TV. There are 12 TVs at my gym, nearly all of them tuned into TLC's, "What Not to Wear" or E!'s "Girl's Next Door" I saw a woman in her mid-40s reading a beauty magazine, she was infatuated with an article detailing special creams proven to hide your age and smooth your wrinkles. Some of the guys seemed busy to impress with their 3940832904832094 pound weights and watching shows about the stock market or reading the New York Times as they pressed their brand new fresh white Nikes onto the machine.
And as I took all of this in, while reading my book, I became almost ill about what society has amounted to, and partly what I myself had amounted to.
Yes, of course, going to the gym is a good thing — living a healthy balanced lifestyle is so important. But these people were all obsessed with things that in the end will not matter. And not just the people at the gym, people everywhere in life. Not just stupid Americans! In many countries now, I feel as if I see this happening. The "American Dream" has caught on, but it has taken a turn for the worse.
The American Dream originally meant so many beautiful things: being able to work from the bottom up and create a beautiful life for your family with honest hard work, being able to do what you love without being judged and with the possibility of a practical income, freedom to be any religion and freedom to speak. Freedom to love and laugh and dream and prosper — the freedom to show the true beauty inside of us and offer it to the world without judgment being cast.
But what has happened?! This idea of beauty is gone, no one stops to see the beauty in anything. In the book I am reading, it makes the reader stop and take time to think about the fact that not everything has to have a function, sometimes things really are just here to be beautiful and we need to stop looking at the function of everything and focus more so on the beauty of things - not just outside, but in.
Instead of this, I see nearly everyone — my family, my friends, mere people on the street — making decisions that lead them to a perhaps financially comfortable lifestyles but nothing more.
Where has the joie de vivre gone? Where has the love for adventure and the pursuit of dreams over the pursuit of financial stability been lost? Why has the love for outward beauty overshadowed the deep need for inner beauty? To be truly outwardly beautiful, it must be an accurate reflection of the inside. And recently, I have not seen much of this at all.
It seems that none of my friends have been very happy lately. It seems that as we get older, we wonder why we are here and why we are living? And then we start doing things that society tells us to do or what we think we must do to be higher on the ladder of social statuses... or what we must do just because of all we have accomplished so far.
At the end of your life — does all of that really matter?! Does your grade in Organic Chemistry matter? Does the amount of money you made and the car you drove matter? Do the awesome clothes and your big plastic surgery boobs matter? What you ate and where you slept? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Above all else, what holds most importance is living the life that makes you truly happy. STOP thinking about societal expectations. STOP thinking about what is going to get you that trophy husband/wife. STOP thinking about money and STOP thinking about what other people will think of you if you pursue the innermost desires of your heart and soul and embark on an adventure! Your entire life should be an adventure. Not something that you wake up every morning and dread because of the tasks that lay before you.
Do them if need be, but realize they don't matter, so don't do them with such bitterness. They do not do not do not matter unless they are tasks that relate to your well-being, tasks that provide another part of the adventure — something to add a twist in the plot to the book of your life.
I used to think I would try to be the editor of a magazine, or a columnist for a newspaper, or a photographer for National Geographic or something really lame like that. Admirable goals, sure, all things I am good at, sure, but all of them require something I do not have, which is a desire to spend 1/2 of my life doing shit that I hate to work my way to the top. I can write in my stupid blog when I feel like writing. If I want to write a book at some point in my life — absolutely nothing is stopping me. If I want to capture the beauty of the world in photographs, I can do that, I don't have to my photos of my words published anywhere to be happy about what I have done and accomplished with them.
Instead of deciding right now on some career that I could work my ass off for and do and make a lot of money and rarely see my family or just simply not be happy... I have decided to choose the life of adventure.
So what if I go into debt. So what if I have no idea what my next move is. So what if I possibly fail one of my classes. So what that some of my friends have chosen to desert me? So what that I will be away from my "home" for 1.5 years? I am pursuing my real dream, and I never know what is going to come next, and for that I am so grateful and excited.
I am happy that I am not you. I am happy that I am not stuck making a butt load of money doing something I am so unsure of and stuck in a place I am unsure of being for the rest of my life with a person I am unsure of being with for the rest of my life.
But then again, there's still hope for most. You probably are not really stuck. If you want to breathe, if you want to really live, if you want to stretch out and feel the world around you and discover the beauty in life still available to you and located everywhere, you can. Take a chance. LOVE who you want to LOVE. Show them. BE you want to BE. LIVE where you want to LIVE. LIVE HOW you want to LIVE. BE SCARED! BE EXCITED. BREATHE IN AND TAKE IT ALL IN. Do something no one would expect. Do something that quakes and shakes the barrier of normalcy in society. In fact, break it, break the barrier with a shout of joy and pursue the real you.
Honestly, it's scary. I am scared shitless, but I have never been happier or more excited in my entire life — and it's all because I am letting God lead my adventure and not worry about where I go.
I do realize I just used shit and God in the same sentence. Sorry, GOOODDDDdDD but U FEEL ME, YESSSH?!?!?!
I was at the gym because I have veered from the healthier lifestyle I had last (school) year — I used to cook nearly every meal for myself, and at least get to the gym two times a week. This year, I got way too caught up in everything — eating out way too much and I hadn't been to the gym once this year up until a few days ago. I have now been going every day and spending a couple of hours. And each day I have noticed this same girl.
She is a very beautiful girl with bright blonde hair and these fierce brown eyes — eyes that say, "Don't f*** around with me, I mean business." But upon further inspection, I have realized that maybe these eyes are saying something else. I think they are scared. I think the girl behind those eyes is trying far too hard to reach a level of beauty that the world presses her to achieve — something that she doesn't realize she already has inside if she just got off the treadmill and showed it.
Every day I walk up those stairs to begin my stretches and she is already there — face slightly red and that fierce determined look on her face. As I stretch, she is running — so quickly that every time I feel she will have to collapse soon. But she continues onward! As I move to my cardio — elliptical and treadmill — she continues to run, then move to the elliptical with me. I do the elliptical for 45 minutes, she does it for an hour. I move on to lift weights for another hour. This entire time, she is still working on her cardio — her skinny legs looking as though they might break at any moment. So frail looking, yet the spirit driving her seems to scream strong and determined. When I finish with my weights and wrap up after about 2 hours and 15 minutes in the gym, she is just beginning her weight lifting routine. I continue to the locker room to enjoy the steam rooms, sauna, showers, hot tub, etc — all pleasant rewards for the rather long intense workout. But she never enters the locker room while I relax. Ever. She must still be upstairs working out. My guess is 4 hours a day.
And today while pounding my elliptical and reading a book about the beauty of women entitled, "Captivating" (thanks, Rachael!) I looked around me... and I saw this skinny girl who seemed to be addicted to working out. I continued to look around and all I saw was a mass of fake people swarming and sweating around me — people who are always there doing the same thing — all watching the same things on TV. There are 12 TVs at my gym, nearly all of them tuned into TLC's, "What Not to Wear" or E!'s "Girl's Next Door" I saw a woman in her mid-40s reading a beauty magazine, she was infatuated with an article detailing special creams proven to hide your age and smooth your wrinkles. Some of the guys seemed busy to impress with their 3940832904832094 pound weights and watching shows about the stock market or reading the New York Times as they pressed their brand new fresh white Nikes onto the machine.
And as I took all of this in, while reading my book, I became almost ill about what society has amounted to, and partly what I myself had amounted to.
Yes, of course, going to the gym is a good thing — living a healthy balanced lifestyle is so important. But these people were all obsessed with things that in the end will not matter. And not just the people at the gym, people everywhere in life. Not just stupid Americans! In many countries now, I feel as if I see this happening. The "American Dream" has caught on, but it has taken a turn for the worse.
The American Dream originally meant so many beautiful things: being able to work from the bottom up and create a beautiful life for your family with honest hard work, being able to do what you love without being judged and with the possibility of a practical income, freedom to be any religion and freedom to speak. Freedom to love and laugh and dream and prosper — the freedom to show the true beauty inside of us and offer it to the world without judgment being cast.
But what has happened?! This idea of beauty is gone, no one stops to see the beauty in anything. In the book I am reading, it makes the reader stop and take time to think about the fact that not everything has to have a function, sometimes things really are just here to be beautiful and we need to stop looking at the function of everything and focus more so on the beauty of things - not just outside, but in.
Instead of this, I see nearly everyone — my family, my friends, mere people on the street — making decisions that lead them to a perhaps financially comfortable lifestyles but nothing more.
Where has the joie de vivre gone? Where has the love for adventure and the pursuit of dreams over the pursuit of financial stability been lost? Why has the love for outward beauty overshadowed the deep need for inner beauty? To be truly outwardly beautiful, it must be an accurate reflection of the inside. And recently, I have not seen much of this at all.
It seems that none of my friends have been very happy lately. It seems that as we get older, we wonder why we are here and why we are living? And then we start doing things that society tells us to do or what we think we must do to be higher on the ladder of social statuses... or what we must do just because of all we have accomplished so far.
At the end of your life — does all of that really matter?! Does your grade in Organic Chemistry matter? Does the amount of money you made and the car you drove matter? Do the awesome clothes and your big plastic surgery boobs matter? What you ate and where you slept? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Above all else, what holds most importance is living the life that makes you truly happy. STOP thinking about societal expectations. STOP thinking about what is going to get you that trophy husband/wife. STOP thinking about money and STOP thinking about what other people will think of you if you pursue the innermost desires of your heart and soul and embark on an adventure! Your entire life should be an adventure. Not something that you wake up every morning and dread because of the tasks that lay before you.
Do them if need be, but realize they don't matter, so don't do them with such bitterness. They do not do not do not matter unless they are tasks that relate to your well-being, tasks that provide another part of the adventure — something to add a twist in the plot to the book of your life.
I used to think I would try to be the editor of a magazine, or a columnist for a newspaper, or a photographer for National Geographic or something really lame like that. Admirable goals, sure, all things I am good at, sure, but all of them require something I do not have, which is a desire to spend 1/2 of my life doing shit that I hate to work my way to the top. I can write in my stupid blog when I feel like writing. If I want to write a book at some point in my life — absolutely nothing is stopping me. If I want to capture the beauty of the world in photographs, I can do that, I don't have to my photos of my words published anywhere to be happy about what I have done and accomplished with them.
Instead of deciding right now on some career that I could work my ass off for and do and make a lot of money and rarely see my family or just simply not be happy... I have decided to choose the life of adventure.
So what if I go into debt. So what if I have no idea what my next move is. So what if I possibly fail one of my classes. So what that some of my friends have chosen to desert me? So what that I will be away from my "home" for 1.5 years? I am pursuing my real dream, and I never know what is going to come next, and for that I am so grateful and excited.
I am happy that I am not you. I am happy that I am not stuck making a butt load of money doing something I am so unsure of and stuck in a place I am unsure of being for the rest of my life with a person I am unsure of being with for the rest of my life.
But then again, there's still hope for most. You probably are not really stuck. If you want to breathe, if you want to really live, if you want to stretch out and feel the world around you and discover the beauty in life still available to you and located everywhere, you can. Take a chance. LOVE who you want to LOVE. Show them. BE you want to BE. LIVE where you want to LIVE. LIVE HOW you want to LIVE. BE SCARED! BE EXCITED. BREATHE IN AND TAKE IT ALL IN. Do something no one would expect. Do something that quakes and shakes the barrier of normalcy in society. In fact, break it, break the barrier with a shout of joy and pursue the real you.
Honestly, it's scary. I am scared shitless, but I have never been happier or more excited in my entire life — and it's all because I am letting God lead my adventure and not worry about where I go.
I do realize I just used shit and God in the same sentence. Sorry, GOOODDDDdDD but U FEEL ME, YESSSH?!?!?!
24.11.08
What a Realization
Life is so weird to me. I realized that I have been a complete idiot for the past few months. I have been depressed and upset and whining about life. Sure, they are some pretty enormous things I am dealing with, but how I was I unable to see all of the positive in my life, too?
So, I have decided I have to write 10 positive posts in here before I am allowed to write anything negative. No matter how upset I get about something — I am sick of you guys all probably thinking that I am some depressed crazy lady. :)
I have a lot of good things coming up in my life and I cannot wait to share all of them in here and change myself a little bit, too.
Ready?
So, I have decided I have to write 10 positive posts in here before I am allowed to write anything negative. No matter how upset I get about something — I am sick of you guys all probably thinking that I am some depressed crazy lady. :)
I have a lot of good things coming up in my life and I cannot wait to share all of them in here and change myself a little bit, too.
Ready?
20.11.08
Black room black blackness
I wrote this tonight...inspired by my drive from Omaha to Lincoln tonight...it's possibly the very beginning of a very long short story. I'm not sure if I want to develop it anymore into the idea that I have for it... which involved her taking a cross-country journey through her life and coming to some strange philosophical realizations... hmm... we weill see.
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As she looked around her, she saw nothing. It was as if she were blind, and almost as if she had never known the joy of sight. She felt around in the dark for something — anything at all to clasp onto — but what she felt was just as empty as what she saw. She sat down, hopeless; she wanted to cry. She was overwhelmed by her life’s journey thus far and was almost ready to end it. She didn’t feel like the carefree joyous girl she once was, and that hurt almost more than the fact that she had been hurt by so many other people and events in her life… the fact that she had experienced so much and always been able to keep a hold of herself even in the toughest of times made her hate herself for losing herself during these tough times.
She sat and thought about you, and you, and you, and that death and this death, and this rape, and that abuse, and this mistake and that mistake, this hurt and that hurt and this hurt and that hurt and the list did not seem to end. And just as she was about to completely lose all hope and give up and just lie in that cold, black room for an eternity waiting for something to happen… a thought came to her. And as that thought came to her, she began to see the stars in the sky. Lit one by one like an old set of Christmas lights slowly flickering and every single one eventually finding the energy to light the entire string and brighten the night sky.
And as each one of those stars flickered and new ones slowly came to sight, she noticed the waxing crescent moon in the north sky. She saw the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt and for the first time in so long; she had an inexplicable feeling — something that tingled every bone of her body telling her to GO. Soon, she realized the ground she was sitting upon was not wooden boards, but a road, and the room she thought she was stuck in was not a room at all, but wide open earth.
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As she looked around her, she saw nothing. It was as if she were blind, and almost as if she had never known the joy of sight. She felt around in the dark for something — anything at all to clasp onto — but what she felt was just as empty as what she saw. She sat down, hopeless; she wanted to cry. She was overwhelmed by her life’s journey thus far and was almost ready to end it. She didn’t feel like the carefree joyous girl she once was, and that hurt almost more than the fact that she had been hurt by so many other people and events in her life… the fact that she had experienced so much and always been able to keep a hold of herself even in the toughest of times made her hate herself for losing herself during these tough times.
She sat and thought about you, and you, and you, and that death and this death, and this rape, and that abuse, and this mistake and that mistake, this hurt and that hurt and this hurt and that hurt and the list did not seem to end. And just as she was about to completely lose all hope and give up and just lie in that cold, black room for an eternity waiting for something to happen… a thought came to her. And as that thought came to her, she began to see the stars in the sky. Lit one by one like an old set of Christmas lights slowly flickering and every single one eventually finding the energy to light the entire string and brighten the night sky.
And as each one of those stars flickered and new ones slowly came to sight, she noticed the waxing crescent moon in the north sky. She saw the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt and for the first time in so long; she had an inexplicable feeling — something that tingled every bone of her body telling her to GO. Soon, she realized the ground she was sitting upon was not wooden boards, but a road, and the room she thought she was stuck in was not a room at all, but wide open earth.
17.11.08
Abandoning Abandonment
I had to write a fictional short story for my English class modeled after one of the short stories we read in class. I chose to model my story after "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"...about an old lady lying on her death bead and all the senile strange things going through her head until she finally (maybe?) dies. My story is probably the dumbest thing in the entire world...and as EMO as it is...I kind of laugh when I read it. Have fun.
Abandoning Abandonment
(Modeled after the Jilting of Granny Weatherall)
She lies down on the bed staring at the empty pill bottle — the contents of which were now being released into her blood stream. She could not believe what she had just done. But then again, she could not believe what he had done to her, nor could she believe that it had happened so long ago, yet the depression of it all made her unwilling to live. Before she had chosen to end her life, she was already lifeless for quite some time. She tried to bounce back and recover from the sudden abandonment that came right after she had just given birth to their second child, but she simply could not.
Her entire life was a story of abandonment. Like a slow motion film stream, she sees her mother’s taillights leaving the driveway for the last time — leaving her to raise her two brothers and three sisters — and then she sees him. The first person she ever fully trusted again, and the last person she ever thought would jilt her like that. Things were starting to get fuzzy though. Maybe he wasn’t really gone. Maybe this is him walking into the room right now. Who could be disturbing her peace? She wanted to die in peace — no interruptions. Raising children as a child and then growing up to raise more children made her prone to constant interruptions. This was her time, finally, couldn’t everyone leave her in peace during her final moments?
“Oh my, God. Mom, what have you done? Oh my, God, Claire, call an ambulance! Mom! Mom! Can you hear me? What were you thinking? Oh my, God, how could you do this to us? We need you!”
“Now you tell me that you need me…couldn’t be bothered to say that as I went unnoticed all of these years washing your clothes, doing your dishes, curling your hair, making you dinner, helping you with homework, driving you to your 500 activities…now you will see what it is like to do those things for yourself.”
Violet didn’t say anything. Had she heard her? Was she really that out of it? Was her death really coming this quickly?
“Oh, Mom. You are moaning. I can’t understand you! Stay with me. I’ll stay here and hold your hand the whole time. You’re going to be ok.”
“You’re hands are cold, Violet, you got that bad circulation from your goddamn father. Or was it Lenny? Where is Lenny? If anyone is in here with me it should be Lenny or Claire, even Joad would be better than this, although Joad contracted the grippe a few days ago and hasn’t fully recovered right? Violet, if you insist on all of this fuss, at least get Claire or Lenny in here.”
Again Violet said nothing. But that was Violet for you. She was either as quiet as a mouse, or saying things that pierced your heart like a thorny branch. Were there show tunes playing downstairs? What was all that racket? Could they not see she was trying to die in peace!
“Claire, make them all go away! Just let me be.”
“This is Violet. Do you want Claire here, Mom? Oh, I knew you always loved her more. But, Mom, sometimes…be sensible. I can’t understand…saying…mumbling. Stay…I…take care…you.”
Was this it? Had she really chosen to end her life? Everything was starting to become more distant, but she could still feel a hand on her…and now she realizes what those noises were…the ambulance, the ambulance was here to try to revive her. No, no, no. A herd of men stampeded into the room like mad elephants.
“No! Leave me! I’m fine. It’s all better this way.”
She picked up her arms to flail them in disapproval of being placed onto a stretcher, but they stayed limp at her side. It was hard to believe that these strong arms that had been constantly forced to work for 45 years were now incapable of moving the one time she really wanted them to. The only other time these arms had disappointed her was when they would not move to beat the shit out of Monroe when he embarrassed her and abandoned her in front of the children the perfect gift on their 35th anniversary — which he had forgotten, and for which she had saved up and bought him the car of his dreams — a suped-up red Cadillac straight out of a 1950s movie.
Where was she now? Was she floating? She thought perhaps this was part of her descent into heaven. What a relief, she was so prepared to die and see her Heavenly Father waiting for her behind those pearly gates.
“Mom! Don’t leave me!”
Now she knew where she was. That was undeniably sweet little Claire’s voice and she was strapped to a wooden bed and being carried down the stairs by that stampede from earlier.
And that was it. When Claire’s angelic voice hit her ears and begged her not to leave, she realized what she was doing. She had been abandoned and jilted time and time again in her life, and that feeling is the last thing she would want anyone whom she did love to have to experience as well.
But there she was. Doing the same thing her mother had done to her. She couldn’t die now. Just minutes ago (or was it hours? Her sense of perception is fading quickly) she was ready to die. But now, just as it is probably too late, she realizes that she has left so much undone. That letter neatly pinned to Claire’s pillow wasn’t enough — she was leaving her two teenage children — and leaving Violet to do all the work. Why had she been so hard on Violet? Well, she knew why, because Violet had been so hard on her, but Violet was strong. She would have to hold everything together. Why had she only given Claire a letter? Violet would be the one to take charge, Violet would be the one who would need her advice.
She had left them perhaps worse off than she had been by her mother.
“Violet! That letter to Claire is for you, too. Violet, the dishes have to be done in a certain way. Do not ever give into buying a dishwasher. Hand washing is the way to go. And don’t let Claire drink milk! She’s lactose intolerant and I know she’s been sneaking it. Church every Sunday! Eat the yogurt before it goes bad. What is Lenny doing here? I told him to stay with Claire! I am too young to go. What have I done?”
Violet and Claire watched their mother be transferred onto the stretched and then into the ambulance. Her real thoughts indecipherable to them — they were only mumbles, moans and groans with random names and words littered in between.
She stared at the back of her eyelids. No more whirring and whizzing to be seen — she did not even have enough strength to open her eyelids, and her thoughts were moving slowly, slowly, slowly. Her body grew heavy, heavy, heavy. This was empty and hopeless feeling. If this was death, she really did not want it anymore. Emptiness, emptiness — or was she full — she was heavy — she was full of emptiness and full a sense of abandonment and a sense of overwhelming guilt for abandoning the only two people who had never really let her down and never really would have left her. She was trying to abandon abandonment by leaving this world, and instead she was doing the opposite. This is it. She probably won’t look at the world again, just continue to drift towards these dimly colored lights, all the colors of a magnificent sunset.
Abandoning Abandonment
(Modeled after the Jilting of Granny Weatherall)
She lies down on the bed staring at the empty pill bottle — the contents of which were now being released into her blood stream. She could not believe what she had just done. But then again, she could not believe what he had done to her, nor could she believe that it had happened so long ago, yet the depression of it all made her unwilling to live. Before she had chosen to end her life, she was already lifeless for quite some time. She tried to bounce back and recover from the sudden abandonment that came right after she had just given birth to their second child, but she simply could not.
Her entire life was a story of abandonment. Like a slow motion film stream, she sees her mother’s taillights leaving the driveway for the last time — leaving her to raise her two brothers and three sisters — and then she sees him. The first person she ever fully trusted again, and the last person she ever thought would jilt her like that. Things were starting to get fuzzy though. Maybe he wasn’t really gone. Maybe this is him walking into the room right now. Who could be disturbing her peace? She wanted to die in peace — no interruptions. Raising children as a child and then growing up to raise more children made her prone to constant interruptions. This was her time, finally, couldn’t everyone leave her in peace during her final moments?
“Oh my, God. Mom, what have you done? Oh my, God, Claire, call an ambulance! Mom! Mom! Can you hear me? What were you thinking? Oh my, God, how could you do this to us? We need you!”
“Now you tell me that you need me…couldn’t be bothered to say that as I went unnoticed all of these years washing your clothes, doing your dishes, curling your hair, making you dinner, helping you with homework, driving you to your 500 activities…now you will see what it is like to do those things for yourself.”
Violet didn’t say anything. Had she heard her? Was she really that out of it? Was her death really coming this quickly?
“Oh, Mom. You are moaning. I can’t understand you! Stay with me. I’ll stay here and hold your hand the whole time. You’re going to be ok.”
“You’re hands are cold, Violet, you got that bad circulation from your goddamn father. Or was it Lenny? Where is Lenny? If anyone is in here with me it should be Lenny or Claire, even Joad would be better than this, although Joad contracted the grippe a few days ago and hasn’t fully recovered right? Violet, if you insist on all of this fuss, at least get Claire or Lenny in here.”
Again Violet said nothing. But that was Violet for you. She was either as quiet as a mouse, or saying things that pierced your heart like a thorny branch. Were there show tunes playing downstairs? What was all that racket? Could they not see she was trying to die in peace!
“Claire, make them all go away! Just let me be.”
“This is Violet. Do you want Claire here, Mom? Oh, I knew you always loved her more. But, Mom, sometimes…be sensible. I can’t understand…saying…mumbling. Stay…I…take care…you.”
Was this it? Had she really chosen to end her life? Everything was starting to become more distant, but she could still feel a hand on her…and now she realizes what those noises were…the ambulance, the ambulance was here to try to revive her. No, no, no. A herd of men stampeded into the room like mad elephants.
“No! Leave me! I’m fine. It’s all better this way.”
She picked up her arms to flail them in disapproval of being placed onto a stretcher, but they stayed limp at her side. It was hard to believe that these strong arms that had been constantly forced to work for 45 years were now incapable of moving the one time she really wanted them to. The only other time these arms had disappointed her was when they would not move to beat the shit out of Monroe when he embarrassed her and abandoned her in front of the children the perfect gift on their 35th anniversary — which he had forgotten, and for which she had saved up and bought him the car of his dreams — a suped-up red Cadillac straight out of a 1950s movie.
Where was she now? Was she floating? She thought perhaps this was part of her descent into heaven. What a relief, she was so prepared to die and see her Heavenly Father waiting for her behind those pearly gates.
“Mom! Don’t leave me!”
Now she knew where she was. That was undeniably sweet little Claire’s voice and she was strapped to a wooden bed and being carried down the stairs by that stampede from earlier.
And that was it. When Claire’s angelic voice hit her ears and begged her not to leave, she realized what she was doing. She had been abandoned and jilted time and time again in her life, and that feeling is the last thing she would want anyone whom she did love to have to experience as well.
But there she was. Doing the same thing her mother had done to her. She couldn’t die now. Just minutes ago (or was it hours? Her sense of perception is fading quickly) she was ready to die. But now, just as it is probably too late, she realizes that she has left so much undone. That letter neatly pinned to Claire’s pillow wasn’t enough — she was leaving her two teenage children — and leaving Violet to do all the work. Why had she been so hard on Violet? Well, she knew why, because Violet had been so hard on her, but Violet was strong. She would have to hold everything together. Why had she only given Claire a letter? Violet would be the one to take charge, Violet would be the one who would need her advice.
She had left them perhaps worse off than she had been by her mother.
“Violet! That letter to Claire is for you, too. Violet, the dishes have to be done in a certain way. Do not ever give into buying a dishwasher. Hand washing is the way to go. And don’t let Claire drink milk! She’s lactose intolerant and I know she’s been sneaking it. Church every Sunday! Eat the yogurt before it goes bad. What is Lenny doing here? I told him to stay with Claire! I am too young to go. What have I done?”
Violet and Claire watched their mother be transferred onto the stretched and then into the ambulance. Her real thoughts indecipherable to them — they were only mumbles, moans and groans with random names and words littered in between.
She stared at the back of her eyelids. No more whirring and whizzing to be seen — she did not even have enough strength to open her eyelids, and her thoughts were moving slowly, slowly, slowly. Her body grew heavy, heavy, heavy. This was empty and hopeless feeling. If this was death, she really did not want it anymore. Emptiness, emptiness — or was she full — she was heavy — she was full of emptiness and full a sense of abandonment and a sense of overwhelming guilt for abandoning the only two people who had never really let her down and never really would have left her. She was trying to abandon abandonment by leaving this world, and instead she was doing the opposite. This is it. She probably won’t look at the world again, just continue to drift towards these dimly colored lights, all the colors of a magnificent sunset.
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