She was a Dam

I didnt edit this! yikes.

----------

The way she unraveled was magical. The whole process worth watching. Truly a work of scything furry and fists clenched ready to punch whole troves of air. She, tooth and nail style, fought every bit of herself. –Why are you so strong? Why do you want this so badly? Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. She was strong. She could never see herself in this position. Ever. She knew better. Well, knew she could be better (was better) than slinking to the floor like a loose dress, wrinkles stacked on each other, offering the full give up. Her chest was bear-hugging itself. She couldn’t move her lungs past her ribs. All was heaving with spectacular confusion. The walls of her tiny bedroom pulsated, shuttering her eyeballs and causing her whole face to scrunch. Was this an actual physical pain? No. She had trained herself to fend for herself and push past sadness. For years she had accepted it all. She dealt with all. She was a grownup trouncing around with openness and patience and a stellar heart. No, no. This couldn’t be heartache. No way. Something else. Maybe heartburn! Hahahaha…The thought of her heart scorched and toasted by a spicy salsa or lightly burnt on the edges by a heavy meal was much more appealing. Not to mention the imagery lent itself to a few brief moments of distraction. Her legs now felt the pull of gravity. She fell to her lavender sheeted bed, the temperature matching the cool color tones of her comforter. What the hell? This was laughable, being this week. Okay, it wasn’t being this weak, but really feeling so deeply like this. And especially about something as silly and as small as this. How is it possible? The bed swallowed her now. Or she wanted it to. Take me away. Just for a bit. This is so…ridiculous.--

Trevor Maylor. 6th grade. That little prick. He tried kissing her once before and she avoided it. The toss of her head made a perfect hair slap in the face. But she could not avoid it this time. They were by the vending machines after school. She just wanted a Sprite. She didn't want to kiss him. So she told him. Loudly. With wild gestures and verbal ridicule that only a 12 year old girl with mountain sized self-dignity could produce. And what did he do? He grabbed her and kissed her anyway. His big wet lips, much bigger than hers, right on her face. Right smack dab in the middle of her mouth with force and gusto! It was warm and she felt the smash of faces. His little prick nose smooshing her adorable little one. Yes Yes. –

“no!”

And in an instant her first kiss was stolen by a little boy with more freckles than hair in his armpits. That was not the way she wanted it to be. No this way. Not so…gooey. Why? Why did he do that? Why would he think it was okay to steal what was not his? What a little prick! So little!

She actually ran away. One of the only times in her life she ran away and not into the trouble. But this was different. This was truly personal. This was deep. This was her first damn kiss and it was stripped away. She was so exposed and violated and destroyed. She heaved. She scraped the air around her, desperately trying to gather oxygen for her lungs. Her ribs, like fingers or tree roots, began to wrap themselves around her heart---

Was the blackness getting lighter? Is that possible? Her room was now more visible. Everything had a slight tint of blue. or Gray. Grayish blue and splatters of black. The only warm color was coming from the light post 20 feet outside her window. With the blinds open her face was lit in slats, giving her a mysterious and movie-like quality. She liked that. Maybe she could go sit out at the lamp post. Sit under it. Just to the left of it. And someone could see her from her window or from about 20 feet away and take a picture and say ‘that looks like a movie. Man, that girl must be troubled. She must be going through it’ She could be noticed like in a movie and all this heaviness would make sense. These dramatics would be justified by the scenery around her and the simple mood the misty light set. Her real loneliness exposed under a lamp post at night. How cool. Stop. Stop it.

This is a problem that can be felt and solved. She was certainly not a robot. She felt. Oh, did she feel. She had trained herself to feel. Feel all that passed in front of her. Strangely enough, she always felt, but never lost control. Never wanted to scream. She had nothing to scream about. She made sure she had nothing to scream about. There is nothing to scream about. She wasn’t losing it. No. She was feeling it. She was feeling the loss. She was feeling her loneliness. That is all. He didn’t mean that much. Really? He meant a lot. Don’t say otherwise, please. Okay, he did mean something, but not enough to cause a whole earthquake. She sat up and pressed her back against the wall her bed was positioned against. It cooled her whole body. She leaned harder, letting her skin stick---

What would he look like without hair? He’d still be cute. She told herself that he would still look really really cute. Oh no, maybe he would have a peanut shaped head. Or worse, it’d be pale with a giant divot. Could she still be attracted to a man without hair? He was supposed to have hair! that’s why God gave him so much of it. He obsessed over it. Hair everywhere! He’ll look good… Hopefully. Oh no, She’s going to call him peanut head or insult him or something. She'll be dating a peanut head. It's not bad! The first time he walked out of the bathroom without hair, he stood in the doorway, tremoring between laughter and tears and anger. He still looked good! a little off. But very good. But God, that was a huge peanut head---

She hung her head between her legs and slouched the slumpiest slouch. All her memories were falling right here, between her pajamas and on her bed. Oh my God! Her laugh filled the whole room. It cut through the darkness with a warm bright smoke. It echoed and danced off her open closet door and drummed back to her. That felt good. That laugh came from a good place in her body.

The boy she loved was slipping away. And no one had control. Not even him. A sickness. A disease. A growing wedge between him and the rest of the world. All was lonely. Just the mass in his lungs and his mind and the smallness of his body. Oh boy! What fun, he often thought. What a picture, she often thought. She was trying to comfort the inconsolable. For the next few months she would push, with full strength, towards the unobtainable. There was only loss at the end of this race, but she ran into it anyway--

Stop it. Just stop it. I can’t do this.

Can’t do what?

All this. The story telling. I feel like we are missing the point or something.

But this is what is going on. This room. This moment.

Exactly. One moment, all revolving around me. I don’t want that.

That’s kind of what you need.

No. No more crying in a room. No more beds eating me or London-in-the-fog-lamp-post scenes.

But that’s what’s happening.

But what about the story? How should I remember him?

As he was, of course.

Which way is that?

Broken. Small. Weak. A champion of all giving up.

What about before the inevitable?

Broad, sturdy, surprising, witty.

I can’t do both.

You have to. You absolutely have to.

I’ll never heal will I?

That’s too loaded of a question for me.

How? You’re my conscious. My overseer.

Yeah, but not your fortuneteller. I can only narrate.

Fine.

Fine.

Fine.

Fine.

Narrate away.

She gripped the sheets with white knuckles

Which actually looked gray because it was dark and all that other descriptive bullshit, right?

Excuse me?

Yeah. Why try to hide the obvious? I’m a broken dam. I’ve been letting you out in slow increments and now you are threatening to burst me open. Tear me beyond rebuilding. You won’t even leave me two bricks. Ill become a giant basin, holding all the troubles I’ve been stopping. So why describe it with so much dribble and staunchness?

Because I am more articulate than you and you can’t tell a proper story.

Bullshit I can’t.

You can’t.

Yes I can.

Now, right now, how do you feel?

Pissed off.

Wrong. You’re not angry.

Shit yes I am. You can’t tell me how I feel. I’m irate! You have no control over that one, narrator lady!

Can I say something?

Yes.

You’re right. You’re pissed. You’re furious. No God, no living person, no food, no friend, no parent, no one can ever tell you how you feel. Nor could ever, ever make you feel better. You are miserable. An absolute and positive disaster. You know how I know? Because I see you. I see past what everyone else sees. And I am not saying you are a mask or a cover up. No, you are genuine. Really genuine. But everything you have stockpiled behind those ribs is threatening to split out and splinter your body. Sweetie, you’re done for. Absolutely done for. Maybe you did it to yourself. I am not quite sure. But I do know that you are missing something. In all your togetherness and all your ambition and all your quest you are dying. And for the first time ever we are seeing this monster, this lack of something, come spewing out. You’re falling, honey. I can’t shake you and wake you up to it. I can only say that you are finally there. And I could tell you how to change it; lend you exactly what you needed to fix it. But this time, I don’t think it is about adding on. It’s not about putting the icing on top of the cake. Or whatever the hell that would be. I think it is about peeling away what’s on top. He’s gone. Well, going. And if you remove whatever business or personal wellness you have on top of your heart you might be able to deal with this. Take what’s inside and blindly give it up….

….

….

….

….

She sat there in silence. Puzzled.

Huh?

What?

I’m not sure if I got a single thing you said.

Hm. You may not get it.

Then help me.

No, no. I don’t think that is a good idea. I’d rather let you go on your own.

My own?

Yes.

Like how?

Like this--------------------------------->

The annoying second conscious left the room. Walked right out the door like it were a real person. It didn’t slam the door or anything. It just kind of softly closed it. That was a more lasting impact. To slam the door would have showed impatience or anger and would have lost the point. But instead, it was a gentle walk out, leaving a lot of room for correctness---damn.

She folded her legs. Indian style. Or criss-cross-apple-sauce or whatever was politically correct now. She didn’t really care either way. It was a way to sit. And from here she thought about him. Thought of all the fairytale moments. All the kisses on the forehead. All the bald head/penis jokes. She melted away into all the warm thoughts she had of his controlled and purposeful hands. Or his incessant need to open every door for her. The road trip to visit her family that consisted of lots of car radio musical ballads. She thought on all these things and her feelings of loneliness ran away. Far far away. Nowhere to be seen. So far that the small, flea like specks that were their figures had disappeared. Almost as if they never existed. All her troubles. All her pains of seeing him skinny and frail. All images she ever had of holding his hand. All plans she had secretly made. Or at least thought in her head. All the times she thought of him when he wasn’t around. All the times she was sad that he was leaving and there was no way in hell to stop it. All the times she watched him shave his head in the mirror or she shaved it for him. All moments spent in the grocery finding the right flowers that wouldn’t make him feel like a sensitive little girl, but he would still really enjoy. All the times they went out to dinner after he was diagnosed and every time they ordered the same drink because for some stupid reason they liked the same beer. Every chance they got to kiss when he was in the hospital. All the times he won her that stuffed animal, the one at the state fair, the one he got from tossing a softball in the titled basket and he said he was made for carnival games and she laughed and was so stupidly proud of her stuffed rhino and the man who had won it for her. All those times. All the attempts to play the right song at the right time because he loved music and the mood it set and she wanted to set it for him. All the finger playing across the table. All the jokes about her giant apple cheeks and how she had an apple orchard for a smile. All the compliments he ever gave her after he was sick, because, quite frankly, he had no reason to lie at that point. He became a truth teller. So all the beautiful and hurtful things that amazing man, that incredible and passionate and loving man every said to her. Every last painful memory that she could conjure in those few moments, all tiny, puny thoughts of his pain and her pain and all the pain that had swirled, linked, chained and bonded them together, all of their shared heartache, all of it slipped down the drain of her mind…all of it. All of it. Every drop of it…...

…..

…..

….

….

Do you want my help again?

Yes. Please, yes.

She cried. Right there. In her bed. She cried.

Just finish it. Finish it the way it should be and not the way I want.

I don’t know what that should be.

Yes, you do.

I don’t. I mean it.

End with me collapsing into the pile of rubble you always saw me as.

Yeah. I should. But you’re more than that, aren’t you?