alien

my problems, they follow me. no matter how much i run. no matter how hard i try to lose them. they are always with me, always right behind me. sneaking up on me when i think i'm safe. when i've ignored them too long.
i ran to the west coast. i ran to the gulf. i ran back home, my tail between my legs. and still, they followed me. they were with me in each place.
i know the problem is something so simple, yet, so intrinsic it leaves me hopeless.
the only freedom i feel, the only clean air i breathe, is when i am in the middle of running. not when i am in one place or another, but when i am placeless. when i am completely unclaimed.
i don't know how to fix this. i fear it will go on forever. my greatest fear is that i am irreversibly broken.
and in these hopeless moments i yearn for invisibility. make me invisible. make me invisible. let me sink into the background, everyone forgetting.

in the words of franz wright:

a strangerness
that will always be with him
sometimes cruel and often funny
scared to death every so often
for days on end

this doesn't make up for anything

She stands like a warrior home from battle. Broken. Battered. On-guard. So hard. The war is over. But inside, a fight still rages. A civil war. Break or be broken. So savage.
She wants to be rescued.

in hiding

It was another early morning, getting ready for school. And another car window broken. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. It had become a normal thing, really. My step-dad would go out to the car, 5:30 am on a weekday, ready to begin his commute to Indy and find the smashed-in front windshield of our 1980 Pontiac Sunbird.
The usual method of destruction would be a cinderblock. Sometimes a two-by-four. And sometimes it would look like a baseball bat. Like the one my step-dad kept in the bedroom of our trailer. Just in case he felt like coming inside. Just in case smashing the car windows wasn’t enough.
We always knew who had done it. And we were always hiding. Always trying to get more protection, another restraining order. Moving further into the recesses of the trailer park. Trying to become more and more invisible.
My step-dad’s last name is Smith. Now my name as well, it seems perfectly fitting. Like a name for the witness protection program, it has no meaning at all. A default name. It could just as well be “Blank.” That’s what we were always striving for. To become more and more bland. Blank. Everyman. Trying to blend into the background of normal American society. Trying to vanish.
Maybe that’s my problem. I spent so many years playing pretend, trying to hide, trying to calm the waves. I got good at being the eye of the storm. I spent so many years holding my breath, now it feels strange to gulp. To yell. To demand what I’m owed. To take up space.
I’m still learning how.

rebuilding

It always takes at least a day or two to really feel all the places I’ve been hit. In the span of 48 hours I grow to be an elderly woman, if only temporarily. For the time it takes my body to repair itself. To put her back together.
As I lay in bed and reach for the alarm clock, pull a shirt over my head, tug my backpack over my shoulder, walk up the stairs from my apartment- I feel everything. My left shoulder, my right, my right hip, my left hip and thigh, my forehead, my back. Oh, how I had forgotten about my back. My body screams to me. It has awoken.
By Wednesdays practice I’m usually fine. But those Sunday scrimmages, they beat me. They age me. They tear me down.
The fact that I keep going, it rebuilds me. Week by week, I am being replaced with better and better parts. The fact that I keep going, it's making me a new woman.

woensdag

your tin robot heart,
softly thumping in your chest,
I want to eat it

playing the panty pass game

I should have been happy. I should have been ecstatic. This is what I had been hoping for all along. The chance to lose it all. The chance to be saved. Bright, gleaming salvation. What I had been looking for is the opportunity to prostrate myself to forty women at once on a polished hardwood floor. And prostrate, I did.
As I lay howling, pulling myself into the fetal position, staring at my face in the wood floor- trying to give my lungs the best chance they could to reflate, the whole world disappeared. I was vaguely aware of other people around me, the medic coming to my side, but clearly in my head I heard my own distorted howling. The kind of noise you can only make without air. Close off your diaphragm and try to scream as loud as you can. That might be close to it. I rocked back and forth, grabbed and held onto anything I could, other people, thighs, clothing. Trying to find stability. Trying to find a solid place from which to push. I felt familiar hands on my back and pushed harder. Mid-howl, something suddenly popped and I caught the end of a breath. Like coming up for air from a long dive, I was so grateful to see the surface. In that moment breathing was all that mattered. Life reduced to One. Simple. Clear. Thing. In that moment I was forgiven. Reborn. And as I got up off the floor and everyone cheered, I was a bright, gleaming success.

venting, venting, venting

How do you deal with unreasonable people? How do you make peace with someone who refuses you? And what do you do when your membership in a large group mandates contact with this person?
I currently have someone who is adamant about being a thorn in my side. She feels that I have greatly wronged her. I feel that I have done nothing wrong. She refuses to listen and has now taken (what I feel to be) a small thing and blown it up to be a huge ongoing deal.
I am not asking to be great friends with her, and I never was very good friends with her from the start. But I refuse to carry a grudge against her. I simply want her to grow up and be civil toward me- if nothing else, than for the sake of the well-being of the group.
It’s getting to the point where people are noticing. And the fact that others are becoming aware of our tiny little drama- well, that’s just bad form. I feel like she is trying to sway people to her side, to convince them that I am a bad person. This is what really kills me. The feeling that I am being misunderstood by people who don’t know the whole story. And what is so frustrating is that the most productive thing I can do is ignore everything and just let it die. Accept the fact that people may get the wrong idea of me from her. Accept the fact that I have to lead with my words and actions toward others from here on out. That I can only convince people over time.
I really am trying to be the better person. I feel like I’ve been doing an admiral job so far. But all it takes is one tiny slip-up and I assume that everyone is against me. I actually care that people respect me. I care that people don’t think I am trying to stir up trouble. But that’s me. That’s my burden.