Tourniquet

There is a place between pain and fear where we live. We lie there in the dark imaging the depth of our shallow graves. We lie there in the depths of the sea wondering how long till our bodies disintegrate. There is secret we all cary about our demise: we know its imminent.

There is a spot on all of our hands that echos all the blood we've seen, all the stones we've cast. It stains our minds and preps our coffins yet we take that soil and we build a life around our secrets.

I have so many.

I was born singing a song. Young as i can remember i knew the melody and lyrics to a haunting song of death and loss. I cant imagine a time when i didnt hear it play in my head. I have watched people die. I have seen faces in a low sepia tone come through in the dark. Walking through the black hallway at my parent's house, my house, i would leave the light off in the hall way for fear that they would know my fear yet i would run to escape the hallow faces i would see in the ether. the children searching my mind for help that would die; i could see them. as long as i have been alive i could watch them and i could hear them calling me, begging me, as if i had some choice.

in virginia the single most haunting event of my life occured. i lie in bed looking at the window, the window that called to me every night and outside the window would be anything from the devil to the Lord and i would never know which it would be. i could hear footsteps, see shadows cross, but they all waited.

i made a deal with the Lord. i would kill myself for Him. i would be His martyr. i suppose we all did. we all read catcher in the rye, we all thought we were special. we all thought life to be a tool instead of the ledge to which we cling, the net. it is easier to die when you're young. tis easier to believe and that's all there is to death.

when eduardo left town and i was in stay of his place i lied to him; i took over someone. i took over my animals and set them up to see the entirety of his place. i wanted them to see the view and i valued them over him. anyday.

i pray, we all do whether we admit it or not, i pray to God for help. i used to. i became and angry and now just request and yet he doesn't answer. i thought that was par for the course till last night. i went out and became quite ill and i silently, instantly, asked God to fix me. He did. within moments i was fine until i got home. Thought nothing of it. till the same thing happened tonight. i was so ill i couldn't see straight and then i asked for help almost out of reflex, yet it came, instantly.

on the bus this morning there was a man two seats away from me that clearly seemed out to get a rise out of me. he was on his cell phone and yet making silly faces at me as though i were a child he could convince to smile. i ignored him as any sane woman would have done. he spoke on his cell phone in monotone spanish with his pressed white shirt and simple tie. his slicked back black hair and his aged face with wrinkles staring in front of him and yet, and yet when he knew i would look... then it all came together.

i have always known that certain things i could feel. more so with fred but it is true none the less. when i give up trying to control and let the world happen i usually know what will happen. drunk at a bar i knew my father died. half asleep in the car i could feel my puppy leave me. and alone in the snow, high in the mountains i felt the world shift away and the towers collapse. i've always known. the first and only time my mother took me out in the car with my permit we were going to pass by two cyclers and my mother and i both knew the girl would fall. and she did. i swerved and she was fine but nothing will take away what we knew would happen. i always know. i knew topher would get engaged. i knew. but it is easier to turn away. it is easier to turn on the light and not see the faces of the starving, of the diseased.

the man on the bus with his bronzed face and his cracked lips was waiting. at the last stop he turned to me and i tried to turn away but it was too late, i already knew. with the rest of the passengers gone, he turned to me, moved his phone, stared in my eyes and told me. and i was back. 14 years ago in my bed, in my room in arizona, staring at the end of the bed, covers above my head, a man i didn't know stared me down, looked me in the eyes and said he knew. how was i to know it was just prophecy? i couldnt speak. it was the same man. the same face. the same gesture. waiting.

there is a point in a crisis center called triage where you deal with the most serious issue first. so no matter if the person will go blind if you leave the glass in his eyes, you stop the leg from bleeding to save his blood. no matter if he is hysterical, you stop the bleeding.

so make it stop. make me stop these things. make the voices, my the screams, make the faces, and the darkness, and the horror stop.

God can hear me.

All of you can hear me. All of you had lied awake imagining the coffin, imagining the darkness and the dirt and the emptiness and the phobia and the death. And all of you have thought about the secrets you'll carry with you. i have waited and i have prayed. i have hurt and i have saved. but, in the end, the blood will be my own. and it will never wash from my hands. i have waited all this time. i have waited. in the blizzard, in the dark, the only stain that you can see is your guilt.

the rings are placed on your fingers, the promises are whispered in church and yet i know. you know. there is a smell in the emptiness. there is a vastness that can't be seen. so you stop by any means necessary. you apply a tourniquet and you hope. you hope the voices, the faces, the bleeding all stop so that you can hear, live and move on. you hope that death does matter, that you are old enough to understand that death does matter. suicide is easy. believing is hard. so you make it stop. there is a place between acceptance and hope that all of us fears. there is a place where we are useless but still want to exist, for ourselves.

i hear nicks voice ordering me not to cut. i see eduardo on the street stopping me, telling me how angry he will be. i see daniel kissing me because he thinks he will never see me again. i see jake forcing me away for fear i wont live another day. you treat the immediate. treat the bleeding. dont ever look back.

there are too many secrets.

i was born singing a song of loss. can you imagine what else we were born knowing?

it is easier to die in belief than to live in fear. knowing only ever hurts the cause.

Muscle Memory

It takes 18 months to let go of a repeated muscle memory. It's why people still reach for a limb they don't have. It's why patients under going cancer therapy still reach to twirl their hair.

I wear jewelry every single day. I feel strange venturing out to work without my watch and my ring and yet the instant I am home or away from work I pull them both off-they are my uniform more than anything else. When I wear them I know that I am going to work and when they come off-I know that world isn't mine any longer.

I am 28 years old and there are so many beautiful pieces of jewelry. I used to receive a wondrous new piece each year for both my birthday and Christmas. Typically, my father would give me a necklace or eventually earrings and as I grew older they would become more age appropriate. With my father's death, the jewelry stopped as well. It's funny, the first Christmas without him my mother handed me a card with cash in it, she said it would continue-the tradition of getting cash on Christmas, just like it had with my father. I didn't remember he had ever done that. I only remember that he would send someone out to get me a present of jewelry. I knew he didnt do it himself but I also knew that wherever it was he went kept records of what he had purchased.

I'm 28 and with all of the jewelry I've worn: bracelets, anklets (lets skip over that), earrings, necklaces, broaches, everything, i have never once worn a ring on my left hand. i like to think i will have the next 60 years to wear that ring. that makes me smile. i think about it often. it makes me happy.

i should have learned something odd about myself years ago. people come back. ive never really lost someone for ever. not yet. i spent six years looking fred. summers searching for jules. letters upon letters to aaron. heyden said goodbye. daniel. scott. brandon. mike. yet somehow. i should have faith. i should believe he will come back. some how he will find me.

i talked to jake the other day. he said i had waited so long to have sex i should at least make it mean something now.

how long should i be true to someone i havent met? i dont wear a collar or anything similar out of respect for a man i can only imagine. never a ring because that is a symbol that i am his and he hasnt taken me yet.

i should have more faith. the world is smaller than it at first appears. they come. and i wait. each holiday i wait for him to give me that honor. for him to not have to ask someone else. i keep myself for someone im waiting to return, to meet.

Types of Deciduous Trees

I keep secrets. I have to, to protect myself. We all do. No one really knows what is inside of someone's mind, what they are capable of doing. I keep secrets too.

When I was younger I feel in love with a tree: the elephant tree. I loved this tree so much because it looked like an elephant. Elephants already had a very special place in my heart and i loved this tree. When I came home from school sometime in early elementary school the gardeners had cut it down. It was right after I had read the giving tree. I hate those men. I hated myself for not protecting the tree. I hated.

When a former friend of mine went away in October I stayed at his house. I would never tell him but once, when I slept at his place, i brought over my animals; I wanted them to see the place, i had told them so much.

I lied about when Evan asked me to marry him. We were on the floor in my forsaken apartment, doing more than kissing, when he asked me. I remember thinking about the hole i had just made in the door. I remember thinking about the carpet.

There are days when I believe somehow that the secrets will fall away. That somehow I will be able to keep moving, keep walking. I think that I can watch the thoughts float away as leaves down a river and I will find peace, I will find quiet.

When I was in middle school I had a special spot on top of this small mountain that I would climb. It wasn't far from my house and it was a treasured place. We even made Cappy walk up the steep slopes and rocky path, we carried a bowl so we could give him water at the top. It was the first time I saw my birthflower-asters. Years later my former best friend would tell her family and they would dig up the site to build a mansion.

The deciduous tree is a tree that lies to everyone. It plays dead. It makes all the leaves fall to the ground, abandon, alone, frail. It rids itself of everything from the last year, the markers, the habitats, and it rebuilds in the spring.

In the past four months I have had four friends get engaged. None of them are planning on being faithful to their future wives. All intend upon having open marriages. I have watched them all. I knew the last one was coming, i saw it days ago. I could lie and say it was a surprise and a coincidence but I knew, as I always somehow am blessed to. The first one joked that the wedding gifts would help pay off the debt him and his fiance have amassed. The second one has no idea why he is getting married other than that he needs to find a way to hold onto someone as someone else is slipping away. The third is a complete mystery to me based on the limited knowledge I have. The last is the first person I ever met in this new life. A man who told me he hated marriage, thought the idea was misogynistic and antiquated. He said it was something he would never want.

Being honest is too much to ask. I once asked a friend to keep a journal of his thoughts because i wanted so to understand how someone else thought. The mere act of writing the journal altered his thought process however. I want for someone to tell me the truth about what they are feeling, wanting but i know i dont get that.

When I joined this community i was inundated by things I had never experienced and yet, for the most part, i took them as acceptable. I wish I had known then what I know now. I wish that I could find people here who wanted to be here and didn't just run here from the rain. People lie about why they are here. So many are here because it is a group of outsiders and outsiders welcome other outsiders. It's why there are so many loners, so many with low self esteem. It is also why the community has trouble establishing boundaries and saying no. It is easier, more comfortable to simply accept others when that is what you so desperately need. But here, in this faux community, it is just the practice, the policy, to accept. So people flock. Not because this is what they have an interest in but because this is a group that will accept them. Which then means in turn that the new folks will be inundated with the accepted practices of the group and therefor the bad and the good that have become established are passed on to someone new.

When you see the trees in the dead of winter I imagine each of the limbs waiting to break off and snap under the heavy feet of those of walk over the fallen limbs. I see the leaves in the fall and imagine them blown far away, helpless and afraid. Yet, yet they seem so vulnerable, so bare.

I have been getting closer to colin lately and it dawned on me the high price that i have had to pay for that closeness. I started to realize that i was in no way a part of his life. He is taking his partners on at rip, he is leaving every weekend with them to do something. When he sees me we talk, or go to dinner, or do things. All of which are great but  i know nothing about him. i was seeing other people at one point but as soon as i get close to one person it all fades away. I have no desire to go out and be intimate, close with half dozen people. I trust myself, my secrets with one person and i expect the same. to see colin so hopelessly falling around two people that aim to stay at best friendly with him, it confuses me. but then, i know that him and i are not meant to be anything so what's the trouble? i tried that logic for a month. it didn't work for me. i dont want to have a relationship with colin, i dont need to be the pretty girl he stares at in the morning and cuddles with every night. i didnt need to be the girl for whom he set aside time each night to talk on the phone. i didnt need that. a part of me still doesnt. but more of me does. the closer i get to him, the more i allow him to see me, the more i try to trust him, the more i need to feel safe and the fact that he wants me to house sit while he takes a vacation with the girls he loves? i think it's what triggered all this. normally i would just at such a chance but after everything with eduardo...

there's nothing for me in this city anymore. it took me till yesterday to say it out loud. i dont truly have friends here anymore. i dont have a ton of stability. there isnt a job i adore that is holding me. its not like thers a school i plan to go to here. i certainly dont have roots. and. frankly. i am tired of the bs of this city. the amount of bs that comes out of the people with whom i associate? terrifying. theres nothing i want here any longer. theres no one to hold me. theres nothing left here for me. i seek things that this city cant offer. least not to me.

i want to know someone. fully. i want to understand who they are.

the tree died. expertly planted and cared for by professionals and it died. my grandmother found seeds somehow for a palm tree and dropped them in the ground. they were planted less than half a foot from each other. ten years later and they grow strong.

i used to tell secrets to the wind and beg for them to be delivered. we would spend each summer in California and i would sneak out of the house at night and climb down to the ocean and beg for it to take me away. to be claimed. to be swept back to something that mattered.

i told colin to leave me alone. i didnt want to be that other person any longer. tonight i was loosing it, i was a wreck and i asked if i could see him, if i could go to his place and stay the night. i needed someone to stay with me and i had already lied once tonight. colin said he was busy, had work to finish. i hadnt ever asked him for help before.

my scars never went away from last time. i cut the hell out of myself. my arms, stomach, back, legs, i just kept cutting. even my neck. i didnt want to ever stop. i wanted to suffer. to atone. to stop thinking. to find quiet. i thought they would be gone by now. i guess somehow we all give away clues about who we are. clues about our secrets. even our friend the deciduous trees still forms rings to show her years, still grows taller.

if i cut tonight. if i opt to lose control. to give in. does anything change? i go to sleep drunk and alone and locked on a floating block of ice watching the world carried away in a slow current. but im still here. and im still the same.

when the last one told me he was getting married he waited for my congratulations. i never gave it. i wanted to. a part of me anyway. i want to celebrate marriage but instead. instead when i said goodbye and he asked why i was leaving him, why i was turning my back on the one thing he did that i would approve of, instead of congratulations i said:

"tell me it means something to you. tell me th most important thing on earth to me isnt a joke to you. tell me you didnt lie to me about marriage all those times. tell me it will effect your life. till me it will mean something to you. tell me that the only thing on earth that matters to me isnt being wasted on you. tell me."

that was six drinks ago. but i will always mean it.

i remember when i came here and everyone was so accepting of my waiting till marriage to have sex. no one minded at all. and yet all of them passed judgement on my not being poly. i finally had someone tell me why. it was because everyone thought i was saying i disapproved of their lives and their view of relationships. well now we're even. marriage is the most sacred thing on earth to me and i am furious that this is the only thing left that i want on earth and instead it is being handed out to people who couldnt care less.

i thought i was better yet here i am. wine in one hand knife in the other.

i wont let colin near me. eduardo has chosen his path and it doesnt include any friends.

but me and the tree. we want the same thing. we want a ring. we want to survive another winter. we want to come back in the sprring. we want it to be ok.

but that tree. with its beautiful green leaves and wonderful flowers, with every passing day, with every shortened hour of sunlight it knows, it knows its leaves grow weak and frail, it knows they lose their life line, their color, their chance. with every cold wind, and every long night the tree and i know that fall will come again and that sometimes, sometimes it isn't a lie, sometimes we do die, sometimes we don't come back. and sometimes, sometimes, its ok.

irretrievable salvation

When you go to sleep at night your mind replays the events of your day. its how you dream. or so they say. Lingering thoughts. Lingering neurons and weird passages of electrons. its replaying emotions and thoughts; connecting half form thoughts that are stuck partially formed in some remote area of the brain.

Last night i couldn't sleep. it was around 3 am when i admitted what was going on. when i stopped drinking and stopped telling myself foolish fantasies and stopped pretending i was stressed about a job i hate. it was 3 am, four hours after i had turned of the lights, said goodnight to everyone i love, and pulled the blankets up over my head when i let the memory play. i tried all the tricks i've learned, i tried imagine swimming in a clear lake, floating in the pure water-i knew something was in the depths that would harm me. i tried flying, i imagined feathers and feeling the wind rush beneath me and the contact of the rain pushing on my hollow bones-something grabbed me from the shadows. i tried to sunbathe on the beach in the warm glow of the sun-someone was there every time i closed my eyes.  but i watched as the castle i built was swept away in the wave i ran from. i watched as the wind kicked up the only home i ever knew. and i watched as the water covered everything i ever held dear and took away the only light i ever could see. all of the fantasies and stories and stresses, they all faded into that single memory.

i was replaying the same awful night. i was watching again and again and again and again. over and over and over. that day. the day i drove to Canada. the day i drove to see evan. i showed up at his place and he invited me in, hesitantly. and the day he looked at me and told me he had met someone. and i knew last night that no matter how long i would live i would still have that day. it would still be a part of who i am. i could never erase it. i get to keep that. i get to hold on to that. to watch it when everyone else is asleep in someone's arms... i get to remember falling on my knees on his cold floor and having him sit there and watch me. no matter how long i live i will always carry that sadness, that awful memory, that horrible moment. it doesn't get erased, it is fixed in my life. and i'm not so sure how that is supposed to be ok.

and for the first time, in a long time, i feel out of people i can talk to.

what good is it to be someone better than you are if no one sees you anyway. build these temples and these shrines to the person you want to be, to the person you are inspired to be and you watch all around as the idols of everyone else false and you turn, and you see, you never got around to believing. and after that, its hard to know what's left.

i told nick the other night that i could never imagine doing again what i tried. it seemed so far. i seemed so dimensional. but in the end, i am defined, better or worse, by that point. i carry that with me. who was it who said you can never reach your destination because with every step you are only ever less than half way?

at the renaissance fair they would carve your name on a grain of rice, remember? and the girls would wear them, along with the long pleated braids, forever. that conversations is around my neck at nights. his voice swallows my soul. the cold of the morning steals my hope. but if i can stay away, if i can fend off the shadows and the depths and the wind, then i can walk that thin wire between honesty and salvation.

Judge and Jury

The beginning of Lent is marked by Ash Wednesday where the faithful go to mass and have a cross of ash stained on their forehead. The purpose of it is to signify mourning or repentance for one's sins. It helps prepare us to receive God. Same reason we give up something for Lent, to ready ourselves to hear the word of God.

This year, I gave up judging others. It has long been my interpretation that Lent should instead be focused on how to have a closer relationship with God and removing those things that serve as obstical. It doesn't sound like a big difference but I believe it is key.

Giving up juding others is not easy but even worse is trying to give up judging myself. I think awful things about myself, judge myself too harshly and am critical of every decision and action I make. It is exhausting. i am trying qquite hard to not do that though. I am trying to be accepting and understanding of others and myself. I am trying to be more open. Luckily, this community has provided me with a wonderful practice ground as it is a mix of a lot of things with which I have a hard time.

I asked someone I admire greatly how he does it. How he always accepts anything I share about myself no matter how awful it is. He just does. I asked how I can accept some of his flaws: like stealing. He said I shouldn't. I tried to reason it out and decided that something like stealing isn't a flaw it is a decision to hurt someone else and I don't have to be ok with that. So it is simply actions, decisions that hurt others that I have to worry about in terms of maintaining who I want to be morally. So, if someone were to want to get married at 18 and have both partners work laying asphalt for the rest of their lives while smoking weed all day, it shouldn't be something I judge. If they went out and were dangerous while high then that would be different. I have tried to keep that in mind as this has progressed.

I watched this episode the other day of a show that had been off the air for roughly a decade. In the episode there is a man named Johnny who takes out a gun and tries to shoot a man that is highly respected in the community. The victims name is Greg. Watching all of this play out is a huge supporter of Greg named Bruce. Well, it is inside an auditorium and when the first shots ring out the crowd panics and screams and runs and it is chaos. Another shot is fired and people are falling while others run them over. Greg is shot but it is not clear how bad. Someone near Greg takes out a gun and fires back on Johnny, fatally wounding him. The spectators are still running out as more shots are being fired and the sense of panic and doom is overwhelming and yet, and yet, Bruce kneels down, in the middle of the stampede and gives Johnny his last rights.

To me that is the epitome of good. I have thought so much about accepting others that I had forgotten the point of it. The point of all of it is to accept others, to let go of judging and anger so that I could be closer to God and as a Christian that means being closer to the Good that is God. Loving even someone who has done something evil. Something vile. I think about Bruce bending down in the midst of chaos to ensure that Johnny had a shot at Heaven. Even if it isn't the Heaven Johnny believes in, even if it is not something we know Johnny wants, Bruce is risking his life to grant this peace to someone else because he believes it is the right thing.

I tried to do the right thing myself. I have a friend named Nathan for the sake of this. I went out with him two, three times as most. The last date he stayed the night even though nothing happened. We parted amicably and mutually. Neither was what the other wanted. That was two years ago. Every great once in a while he contacts me and hits on me a bit; every time his girlfriend goes out of town. I've never thought much about it because, well we don't talk and I haven't seen him in two years. They are always just random messages. A week or so ago it became a bit more pushy. His girlfriend, of two years now, was on another continent and he took that as an opportunity to hit on me a bit more agressively. I told him I was going to tell her. I thought about it for a long time. I wanted to do the right thing. I kept thinking about this: was I judging him, was I being judge and jury, was this my business? And I kept coming back to what my friend said about not having to accept something that would hurt someone. I thought about everyhing: if he was joking, if I misread this, if I led him on, if I did nothing, if he was hitting on someone else, if they had an open relationship, but in the end I knew I had to do something. I had to step in just in case I was right and she would be hurt by not knowing. I told her.

To make sure I wasn't reading into it I sent her every message Nathan had sent me and told her straight up front that I might be wrong, that I could be crazy but that if I wasn't, she might want to know how he acts every time she travels. She got back to me rather quickly. She was upset but at him. I spoke with her exceptionally briefly and she asked me to not speak to him so she could confront him herself. I surely agreed-I had no desire to talk to him at all. I had no idea what happened for a few days. I was worried. For her, for them, but I knew nothing. Then, a few days later, it started. I got facebook messages, text messages, even my friends got messages. He was threatening me, yelling at me, calling me a slut saying I was only doing this to hurt him, that I personally ruined his life, he even mentioned my work. I told him he had to stop, that I would go to the police. He laughed. This went on for a few days (still is). I try to ignore him now but obviously if it does get worse I will have to finish filling out the police report.

I called a few friends because I was upset. I didn't tell them the whole story because I didn't want to embarrass him, luckily we have almost no similar friends. I was upset too. All I had wanted to do was the right thing. She ended up breaking up with him. I can only imagine how she felt. They had been together for two years. She thought they were going to get married. I kept replaying it in my mind wondering if I had done the right thing. Over and over and over. Should have I gotten involved, should have I ignored the entire thing? Everyone said he simply was angry and needed to vent which I understood. I started to think about how quickly I had tried him for his reactions. I was furious for his threats, for the things he said but it does suck, he lost the girl he loves. I kept trying to tell myself that he didn't love her if he would hit on anything that moved as soon as she left his sight but that's not mine to judge either. He kept asking why I was angry with him, why I hated him so much that i would ruin his life on purpose. The more I thought about it i realized i did this with zero malice, zero anger. I just wanted to do the right thing. The calls and texts didn't ever stop though and even with me trying to be more understanding, Nathan was becoming more persistent in his threats. I offered to help him but he laughed and in truth I have no idea how I could have helped him but I felt I should try. So, what was left?

One of my friends ran through the entire thing with me again. He said I had done the right thing but I could tell he wasn't answering fully. He said Nathan needed to vent. Then it hit me. Doing the right thing, being good, being closer to God isn't about accepting people and letting live. It was about committing to doing that in the face of adversity. It was about committing to do that as rocks are being slung at you. It is easy to do the right thing and then walk away feeling good but i don't know how much that let's you feel God. Maybe though, maybe, doing what's right and then sticking around and allowing all of the crap that comes with that hit you instead of someone else, someone who for a moment needs help, needs strength, maybe that is being good. Nathan does need to vent, needs to throw stones and needs to yell at me. I did cause him a lot of pain. I took something from him that he loved. I know that wasn't what my intent was, I know that I didn't put it in motion, but I'm starting to see that what I need to do, is kneel next to him, help him breath, and give him any strength that i have left, even as the stampede around me turns to chaos, i need to hold his hand even as he hates me, because I can at least do that, I can at least let him hate me so that for a moment, he doesn't have to hate himself.