Relapse

The worst is not the pain or the bloodstains on my favorite sweater. The worst is not the breach of promise, the success undermined by weakness in the face of the usual suspects. It's--god help me--the sense of homecoming. Yes. This is what I do.

I am going to be okay. I am stronger than this. I am better. I believe that now. But with that comes the knowledge the things I need in order to continue to heal cannot be found here.

Humans are not made to be bridges. I need to get out of this house. It does things to me.

How to Tell Stories to Children

After the question, linger a little too long.

You know that if this was a blank page, you would sit here for an hour. Write one sentence. Delete it. Bury your face in your hands. Check fucking Facebook. But there’s nothing blank about the expectant face in front of you, eyes bright in the glow of the nightlight.

Ask, “Anything in particular you’d like it to be about?”
“Make it up!”

Breathe. You will need the oxygen. Breathe again. “Once upon a time…”

There’s no going back now. Whatever the next words are, you have to see this through to the bitter end.

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived deep in the forest with her mother and father.”

“What about their cat and their dog?”
“…and her cat and her dog.”

And you’re off—the two of you. Away from the burned wreckage of the cottage down the road to the fairy ring, with the bells on the grumpy gnome’s tall hat going chink chink chink, or up the mountain to the dragon’s lair with nothing in your hands but a wooden sword, or to the old house on the hill where nobody goes but sometimes, when the moon is full, people hear music.

“…and the door was so small, Elsa had to get down on her hands and knees and poke just her head in to see inside, but the gnome—whose name I don’t know, because he never told Elsa—marched right in (he had to take his hat off first) and said…”

There’s no knowing where it’s going to end up now. All you can do is try not to create too many threads that you’ll then have to tie off.

“But Old Grandmother Gnome turned right around and said, ’You shut your mouth, young man! I remember when you were in diapers!’ And he was so embarrassed that he—”

“Diapers? Diapers?”

“Yup. Diapers. Anyway, he—“

“She said diapers!”

“You better believe she did.”

You can keep any number of balls in the air once you get the rhythm to it. Of course it helps to have a travelling companion, but yours is too busy laughing hysterically. Wasn’t she supposed to be going to sleep? Take her hand. Lead her home.

“…and they all lived quite happily in the tree house—well, the cat and dog took a little while to adjust to it, but eventually they did just fine. And the gnome—he ended up not being such a bad neighbor after all, though he was never exactly the kind of person you want to invite over for dinner.”

You’ll find your way eventually, both of you. Maybe a little footsore, but hopefully smiling, you’ll find your way to The End. If you’ve done it right, it will look a great deal like the beginning. If you haven’t, you will be forgiven. Say “thank you.” She won’t know why, and you won’t be able to tell her.

Say, “For being such a good listener.” What you mean is, “For making me remember what I am.”

The blank page and the bright eyes are so different. One will wait, one will not. One certainly doesn’t care whether you succeed or fail or begin at all. That makes it harder, but it doesn’t change the world. You know this. What do you do, being what you are? In the dark under expectant eyes, with empty hands and no idea where this will go or how it ends, what can you do?

You tell stories.

This is what I'm learning: being alive is not always the brief exhilaration than comes with the right kind of remembrance or the real kind of letting go. Something other than that is not a substitute.

Sometimes it's sitting here with cold hands and an empty stomach because there is no food in this drafty house. Still, you can live and know that that is not your fault.

Sometimes it's finding a journal of yours from when you were seven years old and thinking, "this child was in agony" and wondering how it was that no one saw it, and wishing you could hold her and tell her it's okay, it's okay, it's not her fault, she won't always be this alone, don't listen to the people who keep telling you you're not brave, honey, because you are, I swear you are. Still, you can live and be proud that you made it.

Sometimes it's breaking down after reading a letter to the suicidal because you may forget about it sometimes, but there's still been a part of you that wants to die for as long as you can remember and when something touches that, it breaks you. It breaks you every time. Still, you can live and believe that whether or not you kill yourself is your decision, that you can always choose not to.

Sometimes it's everything you do coming out wrong and nothing being the way you expected it to be, and knowing that you're weak, and knowing that you can be cruel even when you want to be kind. Still, you can live and you can do things anyway.

I'm alive, and it hurts. That's okay. Pain is only a precursor, just like joy is only a precursor and there will always be other things I'm not ready for. I'm never ready for how wonderful things can be, but still it comes. For years, I've been counting days since one--
"If I had done it then, I would have missed this."
"If I had done it then, I would have..."
I know that I will say that every day for the rest of my life. I know that I am never alone anymore. I don't ask for anything else.

What do you put your hand on in all this? I’ve called it writing, but I’m beginning to realize that the only constant I have had is fear. This, and so when someone tells me I am logical my response is to explain that I must be logical because I am not rational and I wish, I wish again for the thousandth time that I do not have such deep-seated habits of seeming. No one believes you’re drowning if you laugh when you say it.

But I am afraid, afraid I will always be afraid, afraid of other people, afraid of myself. There is nothing in myself that I love tonight. There is nothing in myself that I want. If your house was burning down, what one thing would you save? Not me. Not me.

I know that I will not feel that way after a while. I might not feel that way tomorrow. I know that I am not alone and not unwanted, though maybe I should be and maybe my father is right when he says it is my fault I am the way I am. No one did this to me. No one ever told me I was a failure, no one ever—

But I will lose my ability to say the right things. Like when she says she does not want to be beautiful, she wants to be alive—and I wince because I have told her she is beautiful so many times and maybe I have hurt her by doing that and maybe—But god, to me the living are beautiful. And when I say someone is beautiful, when I say, “you’re beautiful,” I mean, “you are so amazingly alive that I can see you through your skin.” But maybe she knows that, maybe—

I don’t need anything to be a certain way when I see it in order to call it beautiful. I just need to see it.

It is so hard to see people. They hide so much. But when you do…

Oh, but then.

If I could just—

If I could just—

If I could just—

Sometimes I think “if” is as bad as “should” and “never.” If I could just say what I mean instead of what you hear.

Missing the Trampoline

While you were all mingling laughter with sunlight, I was on my knees in the dark. But don’t ask for me and don’t worry, because trampolines you have always with you but I cannot wait to show you what I saw—and I was on my knees because that was as close as I could get to the light. It slipped in through cracks, chinks; it was only itself; it had every right to be there. I might have missed it if not for the dark. It was beautiful. Everything it touched was beautiful. I can’t wait to show you. I can’t wait.

I’m done waiting. Maybe I was alone with the dust when you were all out there being human in another way, but I’m fine. Really fine, not hiding behind a word that means nothing—I have not slept through the night for months. I am terrified. I don’t know what’s coming next, I don’t know— But I had not felt like myself for what seems like a century and now I do, I do, I am alive and by god, I am willing. Ask me. I’m going to say yes. And if you don’t ask, I won’t wait; yes, yes, and yes again. Yes to everything. It’s time.

We don’t know everything or anything and I broke the thermometer, I said the wrong thing, I did, I did, and I’ll do it again and so will you, but there’s one thing I’ll never apologize for:
I know that the world is a beautiful place, and I will never stop looking for ways to show you that.

Let's Play the Anxiety Game!

First scenario:
You have put off preparing for French class because reviewing tenses and verb conjugations reminds you that you will be required to talk. It is now two hours before class and you need to get this done. Unfortunately, your racing heart prevents you from concentrating. (Your heart is racing because you went to another class this morning and the class, of course, contained people. You left to "get a drink of water" after fifteen minutes because you couldn't handle it, and when you came back you discovered that you had just missed an entire page of notes. This did not help matters.)

Do you:
a) stare at the email telling you what you need to review and will yourself to open your textbook?
b) curl up on your bed, eat a handful of Reese's Pieces, and hope this clears up in the next three minutes?
c) write a blog post to distract yourself and/or inject some humor into the situation?

* * *

If you chose A:
The words blur in front of your eyes and even though you're still looking right at the screen, you're pretty sure you have no idea what you just read. You do not open your textbook. What is wrong with you? [Panic increases]

If you chose B:
This isn't working. This isn't working. And oh look, now you're eating your feelings, apparently. You can't afford to do this right now. You're running out of time. Oh god, how long is it going to be like this? Are you seriously going to freak out every time you have to leave your dorm room? How are you going to do anything? How are you going to be any good to anyone? [Panic increases]

If you chose C:
You format the post like a choose-your-own adventure sort of thing, and it works as a distraction for a little while. [Panic decreases] Until, that is, you realize that you've spent fifteen minutes writing the post instead of studying and that you have to go order some pizzas for the choir picnic in a few minutes, which means that now you're going to be woefully under-prepared for class. And also the choir picnic will involve interacting with people and probably participating in ice-breakers, which seem to be tailor-made to trigger social anxiety. At this point your hands are shaking so badly you can barely type. [Panic increases] [PANIC INCREASES]


Second scenario:
You are--

You know what? I don't want to play this game anymore. Stop it just stop it I am so tired of this.

It’s easy to be unaware of the depth of terror when you are not faced with the thing you fear. It’s hard to articulate when your heart is pounding. Hard to write when your hands shake. Writing about this is hard. Four sentences in, I’m not sure it’s something I can do.

Over the summer, I saw no one. There was nothing to stop me from leaving the house only to work or to take walks alone. Nothing to stop me from retreating from my family—a thing I wasn’t even aware of doing until a friend who lives miles away and saw my summer only through my writing pointed it out. There were a few exceptions. Meetings, interactions I consented to out of guilt or obligation. Both, really. The extreme, irrational reluctance with which I faced those should have told me. It didn’t.

I don’t know why this has happened. What I know is that I barely made it through the first day of classes yesterday. That acting normal in the face of an overwhelming urge to bolt from a room that contains more than one or two people is a supreme act of will. Speaking above half-volume is not to be mentioned. Speaking at all is not to be mentioned. The cafeteria is torture. I left a meeting room full of interesting, lively, creative people last night, went back to my dorm, and dropped the class because an hour of fighting back tears was enough to let me know working on the lit magazine staff is no longer something I can do. What I know is that just writing down the facts like this has me on the verge of a fucking panic attack. And that I will have to do it again tomorrow. All of it.

I don’t know how.

I cannot understand, cannot come to terms with the fact that going to class is apparently too much for me, that I fear people but I cannot be left alone. I have always lived with fear like this, but I haven’t been so helpless in the face of it for years.

I have to do it again tomorrow. I have to do my fucking homework. I can’t speak, I can’t answer emails, I can’t I can’t I can’t.

What I will do, I don’t know, but this can’t continue. I cannot afford for it to continue. Explaining it like this is a victory, I guess, but it doesn’t feel like one and I don’t know how I can even say I want to speak when everything I have is conspiring to keep me silent.

Reasons to Give Up

My mother tells me to my face that she generally does not believe I am a “full person.” I do not react. I switched myself off when I walked into her apartment.

The list of people I have let down appears to be growing longer. I am remaining in people’s good graces purely through a reputation based on characteristics I am apparently no longer able to even feign.

The silence is unbreakable, but I am not.

I hurt myself even though no one wants me to do anything besides stop.

I finish nothing, attempt nothing, trust nothing.

Everything that comes into my head twists into the worst possible thing,

just like I have a gallery in my head of shots I missed because I wasn’t quick enough, or brave enough, or prepared enough. Just like the larger it gets, the less desire I have to even pick up my camera.

Just like everything that goes wrong somehow ends up being a reason to not try to do it right.

I think I would rather make a list of reasons to keep going, but it would take all night. It would be so long.

Be Careful Who You Tell Your Dreams To

I said I was “pretty definite” about not wanting to die, but I lied. I do not think that is something I can be definite about—not usually and certainly not these days. I cannot picture any part of the future. I cannot picture myself. This “future,” this life, supposedly “mine,” is a blank; I have run out of ink with which to write on it. I am not definite about walking forward into the void. 

But I am definite about time. There are things that I know. I know that time passes whether I think I can live or not, and that these currents take me places I never thought I would go. I know that the Earth, the sun, the dance of our days—all these things are roughly circular, and we are always and never coming home. I know that the day I decided I would not kill myself lies glinting on the top of the handful of other days around which I cup my hands and close my fingers tight, despite the agony and the silence that I keep. When I arrive at work still searching for a single good thing in myself and unable to find even one, the children still run to meet me, calling out my name. I have not lost everything—only the things I thought I couldn’t afford to lose. I can’t go back, I’m afraid to move forward, but listen. My heart’s still beating.

I guess you can say I’m not definite about wanting to live. I’m only definite about living.

Defiance

When standing up straight is already a daily battle, there are days when things come down on you one after another after another and you find yourself crushed flat, unable to move further and breathing dust if you’re breathing at all. No one sings under these stones.

When Giles Corey stood accused of witchcraft, they sentenced him to death by crushing, or life if he would lie for it. He would not. “More weight,” was all he said. “More weight,” until he said nothing at all.

Under any stones, there are choices. Other endings.

Read. Read other people’s thoughts about thoughts. Turn your music up. Write. Pull words out of your cracking heart. Write them in blood but tell what is happening to you. Weep. Make flowers out of paper. Make anything. Draw. Draw Icarus in flames. Draw flowers on your arms. They may hurt you—refuse to do their work for them. Refuse. Fight back. Speak. Demand more weight. “Is this the best you can do?” 

You are no better than your flaws, no stronger than your weakness, but you were still standing before this night fell. You do not have to be patient. Wait it out? No. No and no and no again; they will not take you silent.

For Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Woolf

Oh, but the words that drive claws into your chest and rake downward. That hit you like a thunderclap and physically drive you away from the page— On the train, you let it all fall, the book into your lap and your head against the seat. At your dining room table, you stand up, shaking your head, refusing. The words that catch your arm and pull you back. You find yourself seeing through the page the way you see through faces. I know you. I know you. Hurts, doesn’t it?

Don’t do this to me. I’ll do it to you. I might, but I don’t know how.

Breathing Space

Restaurant booths are a problem because I want an escape route but there is always the possibility that I will end up trapped against a wall. My father is an unapologetic person, never concerned about how much space he takes up. That’s his hand, stretched across my section of the table. Hand: fist, relaxed. Knees spread, feet planted. That’s his backpack. This is the wall. I can’t move further.

My sister’s voice takes up more space than my father’s body. Even he has to retreat. Questions, concessions.

“What are you writing lately?”
He’s talking to her. She’s writing a book proposal. She’s happy. She says so. This summer is awesome, she says. She’s so happy. Things are going so well. I’m happy for her. There’s no room for me here. I surrender the craft. At this table, I am not even a writer.

He would deny that. If pressed, he would say he doesn’t ask me because he knows I don’t want him to, which is true. I have nothing to complain about. I am not writing. I am not here.

This is family.

No. No, this is me. My jealousy and uncharitable thoughts deserve no breathing space. Fittingly, I can’t breathe. Not that it shows.

This is my father. Before my sister arrived, we went to the grocery store. He said I am a grudging conversationalist. That I don’t give back. That I lack the skill of letting people know I care. I spoke of my inability to connect, of how I am inaccessible because I cannot access. “I don’t understand.” He said it’s the same for everyone. I said it’s not.

My father loves me and he is right. There are basic things that I don’t know how to do. There are other things I do know how to do. I know it’s true when he says that everyone feels alone, but if my isolation is the same as everyone else’s, why does it show? He himself said it shows. He knows he can’t touch me. Everyone knows they can’t touch me. Everyone is alone, but we are all alone in different ways. This way is mine.

My sister is happy. My father is not. I live where I live and no one can come here, not even you.

Except like this. Look, I can put my words directly into your head. I’m doing it now. Maybe I have no right, but I have done it. Welcome. Stay as long as you want. There’s room for all of us here.

Dilemma

Maybe I should start a blog.

No. You’d think I’d mean this, wouldn’t you, but I don’t. Four of my friends have grabbed themselves a Wordpress or something equivalent in the past month because they want to be writers. They start Facebook pages, too, to go with the Wordpresses or the Bloggers or the I don’t know what young people are calling them these days. Encourage “likes.” Because that’s what you do if you want to be a writer. You start a blog.

Already being a writer is out of the question. You are not one, it seems—no matter how much writing you do—if you don’t have an audience. More specifically, an audience made of people who do not necessarily know you. Who do not start out knowing you. They know you through your work. Or they will. Or they would, if it was me and this was a blog.

It’s not, you know. The point—See, the point is to share it. “Hey, look over here.” That was what this was going to be, at the beginning. They’re very clever, my friends. Good with words. Sincere. I could be clever, maybe. That was the plan. It failed, but still— Social media. Word of mouth. The link up there still works; I can post it places even if I’m not actually being clever anymore and just…

I can’t do it, though. This isn’t a fucking blog. I had—Oh, I had the wrong idea and I can’t twist my thoughts into the right shapes, I guess, because every single one of these posts is a letter to someone no matter how they start out, and what if a Someone should find me out? Find themselves? Catch me saying what I mean?

Sometimes I can’t say things when I want to. Make that all the time.

This is not a letter, but also it is.

I am not not-a-writer because I don’t have a fucking audience. I am not a writer for other reasons. Does writing for yourself make you a writer? I don’t know. I don’t write for myself; I write letters. It’s all I’ve ever done. What we have here is a failure to communicate. You see, I can’t speak.

Maybe I should start a blog, but what would I write there if I can’t abide the thought of an opened envelope? Of truth? Of someone else’s eyes? Maybe I should forget the whole thing. Of course, I’ve said that before.

.

It’s down to this: I can’t find myself under all this doubt anymore—as happens frequently, I’m afraid—and I don’t see a way forward. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to say of myself that I have integrity and believe it. All I see now is an idiot child-thing who will one day be someone that used to want to be a writer. 

But you believe in me. You always have. I cannot see anything about myself worth keeping, but you want me here. And I cannot build bridges or open doors, but I trust you as much as I can trust anyone. It’s down to this: I would rather keep promises than break them. I would rather create one fragile, worthless thing than nothing at all. I do not share or understand your faith, but I would rather prove you right than prove you wrong.

For Austin

A week ago, a young man from my neighborhood went missing. I didn't know him, but I recognized his face. Someone I had seen around. Two friends of mine went to school with his sister. I had walked in the places where he had walked. I followed every update on his case. I looked for him, though I still don't know why I wanted so badly for him to be all right, why this case felt so damn personal even though the man was nothing to me. Those who knew him believe that he went out to the lake that night to watch the storm blow in, and something happened. A stupid accident, the kind that makes no sense. He was found this morning.

* * *

Six days in the water. Six days from the night they say you didn’t jump. Your parents have no son. Your sister has no brother.

Think slow thoughts, and dark. Soft as the water. You are six days beyond thought, but when I think of you, I put you in your body. The body this morning’s fisherman took for a dummy. Where are you now?

I like to believe that in the end, you felt the storm—the one you’d gone out looking for. I like to believe that in that last second when you breathed it in, there was a knowledge and a coming home. That it was worth it. As worth it as such a thing can be if it must happen. 

You probably hated the storm then, if you thought of it at all. You probably cursed yourself for your carelessness, or some uncaring god who turned his back for a minute. Just for a minute, and then—

You were probably terrified, and there was no homecoming. Caught, tossed, dashed, broken—with my thoughts I give you power in your death, make you a child of the storm that took you. Thunder, lightning, wind, Austin and the rising waves.

It is a little gift, and meaningless.

Go, Austin. Still forward. Rest beyond thought. Six days is too long; one minute in the water was too long. Too late. Sleep.

Letter

And I will love you until there is nothing left of me to see you.

If you think this is written for you, you are right. If you have ever closed your eyes for no reason or held your breath too long.

If we’ve never met. If, under our feet, this old Earth still turns.

The Advantages of Being a Babysitter

"I have freckles, too. On my arms. See?” I pull up my sleeve to show you—the right sleeve—thinking it’s enough, but no, you are six years old, all fragile limbs and sunlight, and you want to see them all. What can I do? Grab your hand, stop you—no, not that one— How can I? I bite back a gasp as light, your light, falls on what’s had me wearing long-sleeved shirts on eighty-degree June days: the faint lines of old mistakes crossed with the harsh reality of the recent, scabs still not healed, the scar tissue I wear around my wrist like a bracelet. It isn’t bad. I’ve seen worse on other people’s arms, but this one’s mine. I hold my breath.

You don’t even blink.

Of course you don’t. You’re six years old, all questions and tangled hair. You don’t know. You don’t know. In the dark, with shaking hands, I have told myself over and over that it’s nothing, but to you, it really is. To you goodbye is as simple as “You’re dead! You’re dead now!” and “Now I brought you back." Where I see mistakes, you only see my arms.

And now you bring me back. I see them, too.

Realization

[Disclaimer: I am much more okay now than I was when I wrote this.]

* * *   

The awareness slips in on shadow feet and questions.

What is the cause of the sleepless nights?
Is the ceiling really so fascinating that you’ve had to stare at it for three hours after waking?

For several days running?

The small things that aren’t getting done—who isn’t doing them?

How can the results of hours of your own work and exploration seem repellent to you?

What did you do to your arm?

Are you truly not troubled by your failures?

What did you do to your arm?

“No,” you protest, “but I’m all right. It’s not what it looks like.” Do you know of anything else that looks like this?

What kills is how insidious it is. How you don’t even notice that something is wrong until there’s blood everywhere and, just like that, you’ve broken a five-month streak of no new scars—No, not even then. Even then you make a conscious decision not to acknowledge it. “It’s nothing. I refuse to reinforce this behavior with attention.” It’s nothing. You’re nothing.

And you try to fight back with all the evidence at your disposal: “No, I’ve been leaving the house; I’ve been talking, taking pictures…” Mediocre pictures that no one wants to see. No one wants to hear what you have to say. No one cares, you self-involved child. You try, but— What have you not been doing? The self-professed writer who hasn’t written anything serious of her own free will for six years. Gave up on it even then. The “inspiration” who has not finished a single thing in almost twenty-one years of existence, who responds to her few undeserved triumphs with panic attacks.

The siege commences and the portcullis slams down, just as you’ve been thinking it’s past time to learn the art of unlocking doors. Remembering, anyway, the past results of unlocking. They say, they say, “I’m here for you, you can tell me, I want you to tell me,” but they never know what to do when you take them at their word; “I feel this way,” you say, and even the ones that know you best, all they have to offer you is, “Well, don’t.” And unspoken—and if you can’t help it, don’t tell me. It hurts to hear it. When all you want is, “I know. I understand. I love you anyway. I love you even though you are a broken excuse for an imitation of a human being. I love you.” Even though you hate yourself for wanting it. Even though you know exactly how they feel and why they say it, even though you’ve said the same damn thing in their situation and cursed yourself for it afterward. You don’t want to hurt anyone.

“But I decided to be happy!” you protest, and the shadows laugh and fold themselves around you. Welcome back.

The Pursuit of Happiness

A man’s car won’t start one morning, so he takes the train to work. The outcome: he’s late, and his boss tells him to notify her in advance about “these things.” Not really important, is it? Except that his irritation at his boss’s unreasonable demand plagues him through the whole day, causing him to make numerous mistakes, including a misplaced decimal point that will end up costing him his job. All right—one man loses his job. In terms of larger things, inconsequential. Except this man has a wife and teenage daughter, and the loss of his job puts his already rocky marriage on more dangerous ground. His daughter’s grades suffer, her parents blame each other for her unhappiness, and she, overhearing their arguments, starts to believe everything that’s going wrong truly is her fault. All right, maybe that doesn’t matter either. What if she kills herself? Does it matter then? I suppose it doesn’t, if you look at the big picture.

So what if the man’s car had been working perfectly well? Say it was. Say that on his way to work, he was killed in a car accident. Say that his wife had refused to let the matter drop until she found out what exactly had happened; say the accident turned out to be the result of an engine malfunction that could have been avoided if factory inspections were more frequent; say his daughter grew up and went on to get a piece of legislation passed that would all but prevent accidents like the one that killed her father from ever happening again—Does it mean anything? In the grand scheme of things, do the little movements of people on this little planet in the middle of a mind-bogglingly large universe matter at all?

My point is that eventually, you have to accept that either nothing matters or everything does. No picking and choosing—“this, but not that.” Zoom out far enough and all you see is an expanding universe where things rise and fall, come into being and are destroyed, and “time” means nothing else but “change.” Get in close enough and you find that even the movements of atoms are heavy with meaning—that contained in the seemingly chaotic actions of these tiny, tiny things are the building blocks for life. Time. Change. Everything touching everything else and sending it in new directions, making new shapes. Nothing matters or everything does. Choose either. Both mean that you’re free.

Either there is no reason for you to be concerned with purpose, or with meaning, or with doing anything “right”—there is only your little, inconsequential life, and if it doesn’t matter what you or whether or not you’re happy, then there is no reason not to do what you want and be happy—or even your worst, most crushing defeat is its own point of light in the heavens. And if you think that doesn’t matter, then let me show you the Milky Way stretching across the sky on a clear night and, with a word, block out all the stars. Then tell me, specifically, which ones you don’t miss.

And if asking them means that I am paralyzed by lack of answers, I am done with questions. I am done asking whether I and what I do are worth anything. All I have are the minute-by-minute choices that everyone has. Paper or plastic. Do or do not. All I have is this one life that I call mine, and it is going to end. I want to make things of power and beauty, but I cannot define either of those words without being aware that you likely have a different definition and the longer I live, the more I realize that I have never seen anything or anyone that is not beautiful and powerful and I doubt I ever will. I am done with the notion of deserving. I am done with judging what does and does not deserve to exist. I am done with questions of meaning and mattering. You can keep chasing those shadows if you want to, but me? I’m going to be happy. And I sincerely hope you join me, because life is too short to be spent pursuing anything but joy.

For Example

I would like to be an expert in something besides psyching myself out. I would like not to be sitting here worrying needlessly about things I can neither predict nor control, too, but anxiety is a bitch. For instance, say your mother’s surviving parent and both your father’s parents are having serious health problems of both the physical and mental varieties. You can think that sucks pretty hard and try to be there for your parents, or you can spend a lot of time thinking about how old your grandparents are, and how this is the point where people tend to, well, die. You can think about the fact that you’re not close your grandparents and never were, and how that makes you utterly terrible at taking care of your parents now and how it will be much worse when your grandparents actually do die. And when they die, which they will, you will have to go to their funerals—because what kind of shit child would you be if you didn’t, and also you promised—but what if they die while you’re at school? They probably will, considering that you are home for three months and gone for nine. Of course, it is also true that all three grandparents are deteriorating at about the same rate at about the same time, so worst case scenario: there will be overlap and you will have to choose—Actually, come to think of it, that’s likely, considering your family’s track record—no, that’s stupid—but what if it did happen? What on earth would you do? Not to mention the fact that you can’t really just up and leave school—I mean you can, to go to a funeral, but how can you just go to the funeral and then leave when your parent’s parents just died and your father lives all by himself in that godawful messy house and really doesn’t have anyone else but you even though you don’t take good enough care of him, by the way, and you really should keep that irritation of yours in check when all he wants is some attention what is wrong with you—So if you leave for the funeral you will have to stay home for a while to take care of everyone otherwise you are a horrible person, but leaving means you neglect things back there and god knows—forget schoolwork—god knows there are people you cannot fucking leave alone, especially if they think you’re not okay because for some reason you not being okay for any reason even if you are handling it sets off this whole nightmare domino chain that you then have to deal with no matter how not-okay you are and let’s face it—can you really persuade anyone you are okay, no matter how convincing you are, when they know all the shit that’s going down? Oh god, look, here you are doing that thing where you’re stupid again. You know that if you do this it will just make everything worse because you won’t be able to deal with it when it happens on account of being a nervous wreck. This tendency of yours will be the end of you. If it’s not the end of someone else, first. I mean, how much longer can it go on before…etcetera, etcetera. Do you get it? That’s what it’s like.

No, that’s not what it’s like.

It’s like being tied to the railroad tracks. You can’t hear anything yet; the train isn’t coming—but it is coming. That’s the point. It’s a beautiful day—sunshine, birdsong, a nice breeze, little puffy clouds sailing by overhead—but the fact is that some time in the indefinite future, you are going to get hit by a goddamn train. You don’t want to wait for that, really, or think about it at all, but you’re human and you’re alive, you’re alive and you can’t move, and every part of you that can seek it out is looking for a sign of that train. The distant rattle. The slight shaking of the ground. The whistle. You don’t know what the first warning sign will be. You don’t even know that. All you know is the waiting, your blood, your heartbeat as a measure of time. Your whole body a clock, counting down. All you know is the inevitability of impact.

Against Romance

I have no patience for romantics. A shame I know so many. After my friend’s messy breakup with a pretentious pseudointellectual, she wrote his name in curly letters on a bookmark she made herself. She wrote, she wrote—long letters to him that she posted on Facebook for all her friends to see, more words on the bookmark, titled her new notebook “Return to the Imperishable Realm.” Whatever that means. I’m fond of her, but the girl’s in love with pain. How romantic.

Pain is pain is pain. There’s nothing attractive about it. And I don’t understand how music is more about the feeling than the notes when what I want to do is master the instrument. I don’t understand how the print on the wall over there makes that woman feel as if she’s floating in a calm pool of water. Abstract art, like sex, does nothing for me.

No, I don’t want candles or rose petals or any doors opened for me. “I’m just trying to make your life a little easier,” he said, as he sweetly tried to take away all my little chances to prove I could do something. Not much, but something—Let me carry things that are heavy and leave me to my own pain. He wanted everything I have. How romantic.

Pain is the infinite space within the nutshell, a private matter. If the weight is too much for you, put it in my hands. Don’t explain. I understand. I don’t understand other people’s insistence on spilling theirs on the floor or coming after me with nutcrackers. I’m not interested in sharing. I am the queen of this castle, when I must inhabit it. Such crowns are not comfortable. I will abdicate and leave this place when I can. You, stay on your own throne, but be wary of jewels and cushions.