Exorcism
When it comes, it is less like a blow and more like the long-ago echoing slam of a door in unseen distance.
Instead of crying, I grinned like the fool I am, like the great big oafish idiot peeking out from behind a door two sizes too small. Because otherwise the tears would rise -as they pressed already behind my eyeballs, reminding me- hot and steady, spilling out into a place they should never be seen.
How to say how I felt then; how to pull out of myself the words, even now? There seem to be none, yet with trembling hands they come tumbling out, clumsy and stuttered and altogether graceless.
I am my greatest traitor. In front of the people who least needed to see me to do so I cry. Through my humiliation, to my dismay, I find myself struck dumb as a post. He asks me if I want a tissue. I smile stupidly at him. Wordlessly he hands it to me. Two grown men, each accomplished in their own right, helpless as babes when it comes to dealing with a 20-year-old woman with watery mucus running down the little groove on her upper lip. My tongue lies thickly on its bed as a wave of hot fury barrels down my spine at my weakness, my own incompetence. I can't even stutter, for chrissakes. Jawlocked, I can only offer up that same frozen smile as sacrifice to the questions, the stern admonitions, arrangements and plans and all the pieces of advice fired off in-between.
I don't understand why my hands are shaking on the keyboard. Why my fingers feel the soft rebound of each individual key I hit, why each word forms faster than I think they should be able to.
"It's not a big deal, it's not a big deal!" laughingly they attempt to deride the little "bump in the road", try to make my going-over smoother. And so I tuck away my grief into the folds and fissures inside me as I entertain concerned churchmembers, comfort my increasingly unstable mother, snort over dad's bad jokes.
Dissect and analyze. Conclusion: am fine.
But it's not. I'm not. Too much, too fast, and suddenly I'm sliding down the wrong side of a morning with good weather. Hating myself for feeling this way when I. AM. FINE. is tattooed, I am sure, across my forehead in Barbie pink and other inch-high neons. My lips close themselves over words that aren't there, the emptiness moving further down with each escaped letter. Embedded.
But they're not gone, and in solitude they slip out again, unheld back anymore by Necessity and Society and Stiff Upper Lips. The spotlight is a harsh master, but at least I know the rules. In darkness, in formlessness I find myself a blind sculptor of clay gone bad. In the cracks between righteous anger and a veneer of worldliness I find my tears, feel my shame. And when I cry, this time, my nose is dry, and my eyes wet.
Hate. Fear. Anger. Disappointment, and shame. Guilt. Failed responsibilities. hurthurthurtpainpainpain Emptiness, a shell for all the other emotions to go knocking around in. Trepidation. Need. Pressure. Necessity. And through it all a single skein of hope to string it all together.
Taste the salt and taste the pain, I'm not thinking of you again
I pray to God. Hope he hears, through my webs, through the tangles I can no longer comb through on my own. Hope for an undeserved peace.
Instead of crying, I grinned like the fool I am, like the great big oafish idiot peeking out from behind a door two sizes too small. Because otherwise the tears would rise -as they pressed already behind my eyeballs, reminding me- hot and steady, spilling out into a place they should never be seen.
How to say how I felt then; how to pull out of myself the words, even now? There seem to be none, yet with trembling hands they come tumbling out, clumsy and stuttered and altogether graceless.
I am my greatest traitor. In front of the people who least needed to see me to do so I cry. Through my humiliation, to my dismay, I find myself struck dumb as a post. He asks me if I want a tissue. I smile stupidly at him. Wordlessly he hands it to me. Two grown men, each accomplished in their own right, helpless as babes when it comes to dealing with a 20-year-old woman with watery mucus running down the little groove on her upper lip. My tongue lies thickly on its bed as a wave of hot fury barrels down my spine at my weakness, my own incompetence. I can't even stutter, for chrissakes. Jawlocked, I can only offer up that same frozen smile as sacrifice to the questions, the stern admonitions, arrangements and plans and all the pieces of advice fired off in-between.
I don't understand why my hands are shaking on the keyboard. Why my fingers feel the soft rebound of each individual key I hit, why each word forms faster than I think they should be able to.
"It's not a big deal, it's not a big deal!" laughingly they attempt to deride the little "bump in the road", try to make my going-over smoother. And so I tuck away my grief into the folds and fissures inside me as I entertain concerned churchmembers, comfort my increasingly unstable mother, snort over dad's bad jokes.
Dissect and analyze. Conclusion: am fine.
But it's not. I'm not. Too much, too fast, and suddenly I'm sliding down the wrong side of a morning with good weather. Hating myself for feeling this way when I. AM. FINE. is tattooed, I am sure, across my forehead in Barbie pink and other inch-high neons. My lips close themselves over words that aren't there, the emptiness moving further down with each escaped letter. Embedded.
But they're not gone, and in solitude they slip out again, unheld back anymore by Necessity and Society and Stiff Upper Lips. The spotlight is a harsh master, but at least I know the rules. In darkness, in formlessness I find myself a blind sculptor of clay gone bad. In the cracks between righteous anger and a veneer of worldliness I find my tears, feel my shame. And when I cry, this time, my nose is dry, and my eyes wet.
Hate. Fear. Anger. Disappointment, and shame. Guilt. Failed responsibilities. hurthurthurtpainpainpain Emptiness, a shell for all the other emotions to go knocking around in. Trepidation. Need. Pressure. Necessity. And through it all a single skein of hope to string it all together.
Taste the salt and taste the pain, I'm not thinking of you again
I pray to God. Hope he hears, through my webs, through the tangles I can no longer comb through on my own. Hope for an undeserved peace.