Or Was It?
I tore my hair in clumps leaving raw skin and drops of blood which began
to course down my worry-creased forehead in a stream of wetness. I was tortured by visions of Patsy Cline’s song “Crazy” in which she laments being left for someone new and being crazy for crying. I had been wailing for so long and so many hours that my face looked like a balloon twisted in a caricature of what I vaguely remembered. I was amazed that I was still in one piece because I felt utterly unglued but at the same time, I felt as if I were in a straightjacket crushing my innards. Why oh why did he leave me? I had always been there for him – soothing his brow, listening to his problems, romping in bed with him for hours, lending him money – the list goes on.
His new girlfriend was plump and simpering and had a brain of mush. She must have given him something that I could not, I reasoned when I was being coherent, which was not often the last few days. I felt like a psycho, consumed by my feelings of lost passion and bereft at his lack of honesty. I knew that I had to get hold of myself before I went down the path of dementia into an abyss I couldn’t escape. Deranged, crazed, bonkers, unzipped - was this who I was becoming?
When I stopped my sobbing for a breath of air, I realized that this was not who I was. It would be more positive to channel my unbalanced persona in a different direction. It was payback time! He was picking up the rest of his clothes and his mattress next week. I forced a smile when I remembered how narcissistic he was about his expensive collection of designer shoes. I began to skip in rising glee toward the closet, gathering his shoes and carrying them into the kitchen. I just had the craziest idea!
I laughed wickedly, as I opened the cans of tuna fish, draining the juice into a large bowl. (I’d save the tuna to eat later) Opening the cupboard, I saw the pastry brush which was an enormous part of my plan. I dipped the brush into the tuna juice and basted the insoles of his shoes copiously with generous amounts of the liquid. I was on a roll! Why stop here? I went into the bedroom that we once had shared and split the seams slightly on the underside of the mattress. I drizzled the remainder of the tuna fish juice into the cottony insides and sewed the opening shut. My endeavors had plenty of time to ripen before he arrived.
Next week came and I could see that he was shocked to see how happy I looked. He had so thoroughly torn me apart that he couldn’t believe that I would ever heal. But I was feeling wonderful, knowing what was in store for him. He didn’t notice the smell which was beginning to intensify. He gathered his clothes and dragged his mattress to his car to take back to his new apartment and his new lover.
A month later, I received a distressed call from my ex. The new flavor of the month had left him and he wanted me back. He lamented, “She said she couldn’t stand the smell of my feet and the stench of me on the mattress. She kept buying me soap, deodorants and detergents but she claimed it didn’t work. You don’t think I have a foul odor, do you?
“I think you stink in many ways,” I answered with a smug smile on my face, “and I will never allow your foulness in my life again.”
Revenge was sweet as I savored the outcome of my crazy idea. Or was it?
The Craziest Idea
I'm not used to being old enough to say that I've had 20 years of experience in anything.
I still live within blocks from my high school, like I'm neighbors with myself from a different life, and I visit myself there in dreams regularly. The dreams always exaggerate the hard parts, like struggling to carry a bag that's filled with infinite pounds of books or scurrying up and down flights of stairs to find an illusively placed locker before the time between classes runs out.
Yet my dream-self always knows I'm in a dream and wishes my waking-self could really be back there. You know, when I was young and fresh with nothing but fun on my mind, opportunities ahead of me, and excitment about becoming whomever I wanted to become.
And, you know, then I discovered it wasn't all up to me.
My anxiety disorder emerged 20 years ago now. We've all got our complexes from those first boyfriends, those infuriating ways our parents treated us, those crushing times of self-consciousness about our bodies and social skills - but the anxiety is what sent me to the E.R., that put me in therapy, that erased me.
It's been 20 years of fear and panic controlled by meds and the illusion of control that my many, many obsessive behaviors lend. I started out free and living in sweet ignorance of what prison is like, but it's been 20 years of vascillating incarceration and parole, so I've learned.
It was definitely the hand attached to me that signed the papers to leave college and move home, even though it wasn't mine anymore. It had been left inside with my all my other parts that used to function for me instead of to me. I don't actually know who that apparition was crying on the couch, floating through new classes in new buildings, getting the job done. I'm not sure it was me leading the way as I ambled into a relationship and then a marriage. I watched myself buy a car and a house and I saw someone create cover letter after cover letter, but they never really got me and I never became any of the things I was going to become.
Through the last 20 years of inside time and outside time, while someone's been living my life, I've been practicing control so that I can stay outside and slowly join with them. I've been washing and watching and, before I understood that I was confusing faith with superstition, praying. For 20 years, professionals have presented me with ideas to bring me back. Good, rational ideas, crazy in their simplicity. The idea that although I sometimes feel defeated, I have done hard things and I am strong. The idea that fearing a terrible future does nothing but ruin the present. The crazy idea that if hard times emerge, they will also recede.
And still, still. I still have the craziest idea that I'll never be free again because this is the only me who's been around this whole time.
Challenge of the Week CLXXX
#thecraziestidea
The Road to 100: A Thank-You
When I had been on Prose for a month, I wrote a thank-you note. Having now written 100 posts (which, admittedly, included a one-liner about Pinky and the Brain), I find I have more to be thankful for. (Be forewarned; there is much navel-gazing ahead).
My seven months and counting on Prose represent my most sustained effort to write. I wrote requisite bad poetry as an adolescent, and I tried my hand at some short stories as a college freshman. But I concluded that they were bad and stopped; I filled my schedule with as many lit classes as I could cram, but I never took a creative writing course after that freshman year. A few years after I finished my masters, I took it into my head to write a novel, which I worked on off-and-on for two years, based upon the dates displayed in Windows Explorer. I pulled up that file now and am surprised to see that I wrote nearly 38,000 words of it before I decided it, too, was bad. One day I reread a chapter I had felt good about; I saw only flaws, and I stopped.
Somewhere in there, I also wrote an essay that was my love letter to community theatre and Shakespeare. That one I spent a lot of time polishing, and I actually tried submitting it to a few publications, but it didn’t go anywhere. I didn’t really expect it to, but I had worked hard on it and had hoped it would get read somewhere by the wider world. There was something symbolic about making “Rude Mechanicals” my hundredth post on Prose, though I couldn’t quite tell you what it was.
And I went through a period where I wrote short plays and sent them to various contests, though they also went nowhere. And again, one day I reread something I created and thought, “Why did you ever like this? What quality did you see?”
And that’s pretty much where I was before Prose.
But I learned something on those steps of the road. The aborted novel taught me how to plot out a narrative and develop a character indirectly. The essay taught me what it looks like to work on a piece for real, and with the aid of a trusted friend and skilled editor. The plays taught me how to write dialogue and adapt voice. And since I’ve been writing for Prose – and real people! – I’ve gotten better at giving scenes a sense of place, and at least a little better at finding the sweet spot between obscure hints and beating my reader over the head. And I have learned the value of a community of writers, whose work can inspire me when my efforts feel lifeless and who can help me to feel my words are worthwhile.
For the first time in a long time, I feel a level of confidence in my writing. In times past, and when I first started on Prose, I’d read the work of a writer who had been chosen for publication or a contest victory, and I’d feel hopelessly outclassed. I’d think, “I could never approach that.” Commenters on Prose are kind, though – sometimes (often?) more kind than my work merits – and supportive in a way that prevented me from throwing in the towel and walking away for months or years, like I had always done before.
By the time I finished editing and posted “Rideshare,” I felt pretty good about the story, but the response genuinely overwhelmed me. I did not expect to win the challenge, but more importantly, I did not expect the sort of comments that some of you left. And the unexpected result of this unexpected response is that I feel… competent. I can read some of those works that before left me feeling hopeless and small, and I can think, “maybe.” Those past pieces of mine no longer seem “bad”; they seem immature.
I don’t know that my writing is “mature” yet, but I know I’m going to try again for publication. I’ll submit some short fiction to some publications; there will likely be a self-published short story collection on Amazon some distant day in the future. I’ve got at least one yet-unstarted story idea that I’m excited about like I was “Rideshare.” I don’t expect anything grand to come of it. I don’t know that I belong in the big leagues; I’m definitely not all-star caliber. But thanks to my time and friends on Prose, I feel like I could be a slap-hitting glove-first bench player who might collect a base hit or two with a little luck and a lot more work. It’s a new feeling. And I wanted to thank you all for that.
When I wrote that one-month thank-you I tagged literally everyone who had ever Liked a post I wrote. Not gonna try that now, but I want to tag those who commented on “Rideshare” and a couple others. No omission intentional
Nada
I'd do nothing.
I'd do all my usual hobbies all day long, maybe workout and cook more often, visit friends and family more often, and meditate like I know I should but never do.
I'd take up star gazing maybe - after moving away from the employer-driven cities with their congestion and noise and industry and live in a nice quiet cabin.
I might try gardening. I dunno. Maybe I'd just make friends with a gardener and figure out some other way to barter for a share of their vegetables, like hunt down killer bugs or tend bees.
I'd read every bloody day - not just little bits here and there, but like a whole work of fiction every afternoon and evening.
I'd volunteer my time to whatever community group fit my groove, and I'd do that at least three times a week - including those precious weekends because everyday would be a weekend for me.
I'd sing and learn to dance, maybe invest in an actual karaoke machine and host sing-a-long's at my cabin where nobody can hear you but the birds (who are horribly offended at your feeble attempts).
I'd just live, not defined by my productivity or my efficiency or my ability to produce some kind of good or service for others. Just by my changing interests and random flights of fancy. By my creative urges and inner curiosity. By my carefully tended network of friends and acquaintances.
And gosh does that sound awesome.
Maybe I'll just do it now - I've got a few hours to kill after work today.
Why not.
Pen Name
I was the kind of kid my parents lovingly refered to as "shy" though a more apt description may have been "terrified". Of my dad's sixth grade students.
Of that one dog that always barked at me...
of failure.
I switched schools at the beginning of second grade.
I remember sitting alone on the bus that first morning when it turned onto a dirt road, slamming my forehead against the cold glass. I clutched my backpack to my chest, tracing the outlines of its pink zippers with a trembling fingertip, looking towards the sky as I tried to desperately blink back tears.
A second day passed. Nothing changed... though I learned how to bury my face in a pillow to stifle my sobs at night.
My parents saw me as their happy little girl. What kind of monster would mess that up with something as fleeting as tears?
So I continued my days of silence. A week passed.
I don't know why she sat next to me. The girl with dandelion-fuzz hair that never seemed to lay quite flat on her head. The girl with eyes that were always wide, taking in every piece of the ordinary. But it was never ordinary. Not to her, at least.
The ravens flitting through the bushes outside of the bus were bad omens.
The shadows of trees were beasts, ready to strike if we made the wrong move.
She scared me at first, you know.
But as she kept perching on the bus seat next to me fear faded to curiosity, and we begain to play.
Little games at first, with horses and meadows and happy endings.
Then they got darker. We would play the same game for a weeks worth of bus rides, only beginning anew when a villain cowered in terror at our feet.
And there, crammed between faux leather seat covers and the smell of grade school crayons, I forgot to wear my mask. The mask of manufactured smiles and pretty thoughts.
We used to build a wall out of backpacks and coats, isolating ourselves from the outside world as we became the heroes we had been told we could never be... if only for the twenty minutes between the school and her mom's open arms.
She always insisted that I have an allias. All the superheroes in the movies did, didn't they?
I thought 'Dove' was nice. A pretty bird. A gentle bird. One that could fly from its prision.
But as the years passed she began to teach me that one must not always flee. And suddenly, I no longer wanted to be the fragile creature at the periphery of our afternoon playtime. She was always so bold. Quick to strike.
Why couldn't I be like that?
Because I was the good kid. The quiet kid. But the mask I had began taking off in front of her was falling now, sliding from my face until it hit the ground below, shattering to slivers of glass that hurt more to press back upon my cheeks than to leave on the ground.
So I left them.
Perhaps being authentic was more important than being than quiet.
And our games evolved. Two warriors, striking in unison. I changed the name of my charachter, then, to 'Raptor.' It seemed fierce. The name of someone who would slay dragons and strike down schoolyard bullies in the same breath. Someone I could be, one day, if I could only look beond the fear gnawing at the soft parts of my stomach.
My pen name is Dove/Raptor. An ode to what I have been... and what I can be.
To the girl who used to ride my bus,
I hope you read this.
I know they whisper to stop daydreaming.
Don't.
Don't let them take that from you.