We ran before we could crawl. We ran a lot back then, back and forth to different houses, different days, different rules and different parents. No one talked except for the kids and we were screaming we were screaming so loud but no one listened and we swallowed feelings and learned how to hide emotions and unlearned how to use voices while the adults yelled at us and communicated to each other through court documents.
I grew up and out of that and had 100 golden weekends of swimming and laughing and exploring and learning and drawing and turning my parents into grandparents and running around finding new adventures. I couldn't afford them then and I paid for it later. I thought I slowed down in my mid-20s but I was just caught up in someone else's running. I was running interference between other adults who were only communicating through court documents. But I had 100 golden weekends. I taught the kids how to swim and kept the house when they left.
I paid for that later, too.
There's a mosquito in my room. I like her today but I don't want to share her. I'm hoping my bug bites and anxious scratches won't give me away. He jumps in the shower so he doesn't smell like her. He's wearing jeans in the summer. We are both lying. No one is comfortable. We never got comfortable.
So I'm running. I'm running again. This house has eaten me alive in ways my anxiety never could, from the inside out starting from childhood. I learned to swim in this pool. I taught two kids to swim in this pool. I inhaled too many chlorinated memories over the years and it's toxic now because I never knew chlorine could be so poisonous so I wish I never swam those extra laps at 3 AM when I was just trying to regulate my own nervous system by jumping in the icy December waters. I've stopped calling them my kids. They were never my kids.
"The difference between medicine and poison is the dose."
Who am I if not what this house made me? The people I ask that of tell me that I will still be the same granddaughter and game night hostess and writer and creator and lover and employee and friend and mother and everything I have always been even when I leave this house. And I get that we can never go home but why aren't we talking about the fact that we can never really escape it either? Fucked up foundations are hard to repair and nearly impossible to unlearn so I run and I run and I run but I usually wake up in this house like it's Groundhog Day. You'll still be you, they tell me and I reconfigure my face into a smile the way I've reconfigured the living room furniture six times because I don't have the heart to tell them I don't want to be that person anymore.
Because that's not a person. That's a collection of trauma responses.
I'm not a person, I'm a job title who builds ships in a bottle. My cup is half empty but I'm pouring full throttle. I'm feeling dangerously low and high on that feeling again, I thrive in the empty spaces and the survival races and in seeing the faces of those I love beam with delight no matter what mine looks like. Give me the chaos and the R&D and the envisioning phase. Call me back for implementation and install but lets not pretend I'll stick around after your go-live date. I'll launch you and leave you. You knew what this was. I was hired for this. I was chosen for this. I was born and consequently made for this after years of running whatever was broken around me. Give me half a chance and twice the pressure. I am begging. I am tired. I am tired of begging.
Thank god we never got to the point where we were communicating through court documents.
It's cold here now, I live in a hotel room and the nightmares are back. This isn't a hotel room it's my new house but I'd be more comfortable at a fucking Marriott. This is the last time I'll move that sewing machine table. It's too heavy and I don't know how to sew anyway I don't even know why I wanted it in the first place. I don't have emotional permanence so maybe that's why I keep so much furniture and so many blankets and so many glasses that I stole from bars just to remember just to try to remember I thought I was getting good at remembering and I was doing okay I remember I remember the 17th of November even though we never really celebrated it.
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
What a mess we made, there are boxes everywhere and hangers in trash bags and loose ends on all the blankets and here it is, here it is again this feeling that I was on my best behavior and it just wasn't enough and I was scared and all I remember now is running and I am running and jesus christ I forgot how much I love running I have so much good much music to run to now and people to call who love my marathons and I don't think for one second about those people who I can't ever call again because they knew what this was and I'm crying in the rain and I'm crying on the bench and I want grandma to know how I saved us all but I really didn't save anyone and I wasn't the one who refurbished the bench but the bench is here because no matter how far you run wherever you go there you are.
"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?"
I met a girl once and she was beautiful--she was loveable--she was funny and bright and smart in a weird way like how when the sunset has colors you don't expect and she grieved deeply because she loved so much and so hard and she danced under the moon and measured her life in coffee spoons and she wasn't concerned with how she was perceived she just kind of moved in and out of scene and in and out of focus and showed up at the best times like some manic pixie dream girl Mary Poppins and pulled magic tricks out of her bag but the bag wasn't a bag it was baggage that she used to help dig other people out of despair and she liked eyeshadow and had a favorite perfume and I really miss her, I want to be her again.
I wish she didn't look so good in your shirt. I wish I didn't have to give his back.
Fuck pretty much all of this. I have never been so lost and so confused and yet still so sure that I am on the right path. I wonder how the people I love are doing I have checked on Sister an annoying amount because I need her to be okay so I can be okay and that is not fair because we may never be okay I think we are just getting used to running and losing and unlearning.
I turned myself into an emotional IV drip for other people and I am pretty empty my loves but I'll keep going keep trying keep pouring from an empty cup I can do this I can run this I can unlearn this I can remember. Soon I will threaten to pull my own plug out of the wall they built their house on--enjoy the standoff enjoy the silence enjoy the ride enjoy it, my gift to you.
Sometimes my biggest asset is how much of a liability I can be.
"That is not it at all
That is not what I meant, at all."
I'm blending my T.S. Elliot poems again. I like when I get this way. I love this mania. I was so depressed for so long. There was a mosquito in my room. I was so anxious I was so sad I was so worried and I was projecting oh god how we projected. I am too many things in too many different directions and I can't wait to feel things again. I am allowed to feel.
This is the way the game ends
This is the way the blog ends
This is the way thirteen years of my life ends
Not with a blush but a whisper.
