(no subject)
I spent the last week in the hospital.
Driving home with wide tired eyes-- and that doesn't make sense to anybody who doesn't understand the way it felt. I saw double of everything and I didn't dare catch a glimpse of my reflection for fear of seeing triple. I know what my mumsie meant when she said driving home singing at the top of your lungs just feels different. You want it to feel better, but you don't know what better is so you just feel louder. Feel heard. Feel audible even with all of that road noise .
It took almost three hours. Empty roads make it easier to count the lines. Each single slice of line is like a day. I counted with the dedication of one whos life depends on falling asleep-- the way they might count sheep. Pleading with each, begging, making promises in hypothetical terms. Just please, just tonight, I'll never ask again. I counted the days. Added them, stacked them, filed them away mentally. Those lines are yellow-- as were those days I like to take out and look at like treasures from childhood packed away. Yellow days of yellow hair. But just like not all lines allow you to travel at your own pace-- to pass those traveling too slow for your fast paced heart-- the road turns inevitably to two solid lines.
I would have snatched every solo had I projected this way. Had I said each word with the determination and the intent that I did on that drive. Had I meant them even half as much as I seemed to that night. Maybe we all just have something to prove. Talent is something youre born with, some argue, and I am willing to bet that talent has more to do with your internal need for some way besides the words you know to express what's screaming inside your heart.
I'm talented at silence. Both literal silence and also expression through silence. My heart will beat forever for the wordless ideas, feelings, and memorys that hang forever like a silver tear.
They said my veins were too small and collapsed. ANd I dont even do drugs. They said over my body to push harder and thread the catheter through and tape it down quiclkly so it wouldn't fall out again. Five times. My arms are bruising and I am not going to show that this trembling lip is a result of pain. I have known pain five times more intense than this digging in my veins-- I have felt the pain of sword-words digging at my heart and soul and tearing at the sutures my broken heart stitched in attempts to close the bleeding gash. You were never very good at sword fights. But man oh man, if words were bullets-- you had impecable aim. Nobody would argue that. You weren't out for blood, even still-- are tears enough? I hope thats not another form of me dissapointing you. Someday I'll give it up. You know that. That's why you dig deeper.
Finally they got it to stay. Then they talked about the contrast. I signed the papers. My name looks so foreign to me. It sounded foreign in your mouth. If you ever did utter it. Except at the top of lungs that never took the time to breathe me in. They said it felt like a warm rush over your body. That it was necessary so they could see my organs and my veins and see where the problem happened. It would only last fifteen to thirty seconds. And wouldn't you know, I was scared. I wanted to pull the IV out, take off the EKG monitor and run like every inch under my feet was further from myself. Half of me wanted it. But the other half...the other half knew I deserved it. I've done a drug before-- why now does the idea of a warm rush scare me? Its the unknowing. The senses. The intuition that I can no longer control what goes into my body. And isn't that what this all started from?
Freshman year, in health, Ellsworth told us that in college we would have the choice about what goes into our body-- be it pertaining to alcohol, drugs, or other people. I should have listened closer. Body is a different word than head and in a completely different catagory than heart. Sometimes, I'd be brave enough to hypothesize, you cannot control what goes into your head and your heart and what happens once it manifests there long enough.
Lay real still. There's a microphone if I need them. Close my eyes. Tighter than tight. And then it beeps and the red light goes on and I'm alone in a room in a long tunnel and it's taking pictures of my insides. I'm sitting still and I feel naked because you're looking at parts of me that I haven't even seen. I've been here before-- I've felt this naked vulnerability and I think that's what brings the tears. I think I'm crying because of more than five needles in one arm and veins too small and legs not small enoguh and a broken body. I'm crying this time-- it's not just leaking like I always tell you when I go to sleep. This time there's a reason and I know what it is and I can't let it out. I can't talk about this and I can't think about this and I can't let this be triggered here and now where there's no hiding place.
Leaking is what I always do...just letting out old expired feelings and emotions and ideas and beliefs. Sometimes there's no way for the body to get rid of the old and make room for the new without innocent leaking. But this time, its not leaking. They've taken enough out of me that there's nothing more to leak.
Mumsie knows this. She says I look so small in the hospital gown and the hospital bed and she pulls the blankets up when I start to shake. "Its all over now, you did great and you were brave and I love you."
I'm brave. She's been in this bed with cancer, dying, having her dignity and her left breast removed and I'm brave. "I'm not a victem", I tell her, "I chose this. I chose to be sick and now its choosing me." She smiles a sad smile that shows worlds breaking in her eyes...I think thats how new flecks of pigment happen. If you loo kat someone whos led a tragic life, their eyes are a little bit more intense. A bit more shattered...more beautiful. "And neither were you, you were not a victem. Life happened to you, but you put up a fight. Victems lay down and die. You're not laying down..."
And I'll always love her more than anybody. For these reasons. She's not a victem and she's taught me that even during the times when the whole world would understand if you did give up and let yourself be surrounded by people who feel sorry for you....it's still not okay. Even when everybody understands...it's not okay. Because you should want more for yourself than that. You should want to take back what's been stolen and you should want to give more than just your pain to the rest of the world.
And when I did break down and throw myself on the ground like a two year old and sob, she pulled me onto her lap and told me to scream until I couldn't anymore. She said it was different from the time sophomore year she told me not to cry-- not to give him the satisfaction of hurting me and not to give him even one single tear. She said this time it had to happen. ANd she wanted to know when would it finally be my turn.
Now mom, now is my turn. I just have to take it.