Untitled

But last night I woke with tears in my eyes. You came into my bed, into my mind, and lay beside me.

Suddenly, I was soaked in tenderness, kindness, comfort.

I sat by a lightly crowded street near a window, sipping hot Italian coffee, and all was good.

That is not me. I only know how to burn, to turn everything into ashes. I bring chaos and thunder.

The coffee drinking lady was peace and calm.

I look down at myself. Blue surgical gown, my gloved hands dripping bright red blood. I look up. The patient is coding. My eyes water. I'm frozen.

I blink and I'm drowning. There's only water all around, cold, heavy, dark. My heartbeat is still pounding in my ears. I'm gasping for air.

With that breath, I'm running again, my feet are heavy, my arms are being pulled down. The damn pounding in my ears still there. I can't hear myself think.

I look up, the family is crying and screaming. Is there a dagger in my chest?

A cold dark corner, an empty dirty potato sack. Me.

My eyes tearing, I wipe them.

I enter the ward in a pristine white coat.

Que mi epitafio diga: murió de tristeza.

No porque se acabó la vida, no porque la enfermedad pudo más, no porque la fisiología no pudo mantenerse, sino porque la desesperanza ganó.

Seven times today.

Once, when I woke up and you weren't there. So I felt a needle in my chest.

Second, while having my morning coffee, and you weren't there for me to share it with you, to share my thoughts, to have a morning chatter. So breathing became painful.

Third, when I was in the shower, missing your hands on me. So the water became uncomfortable.

Fourth, when I was getting dressed and you weren't there to tell me I looked pretty. So I just nodded at myself in the mirror.

Fifth, when I was going out and you weren't there to wish me a good day. So I just locked up in heavy silence.

Sixth, on my way to work and I didn't get a message from you saying you love me. So I just put the phone back in my pocket.

Seventh, it's noon and I still haven't heard from you. So I just miss you.

The Halstedian Principles of Relational Surgery

An incomplete working manuscript from the Department of Emotional Trauma and Reconstructive Attachment.

Principle I:

Do not operate on unstable physiology unless absolutely necessary.

No meaningful relational reconstruction should be attempted at 4am in a McDonald’s parking lot under the influence of ethanol and existential dysregulation.

Damage control measures only.

Principle II:

Intermittent reinforcement increases morbidity.

Randomly disappearing for one week intervals produces profound sympathetic activation and should be considered psychologically pro-inflammatory.

Principle III:

Do not amputate healthy tissue to facilitate closure under tension.

Primary closure achieved through self-erasure leads to ischemia of identity, chronic resentment, and eventual fascial dehiscence.

Component separation may be considered. Self-annihilation is contraindicated.

Principle IV:

The body keeps accurate operative notes.

Even when cognition constructs elaborate philosophical frameworks, the nervous system documents:

inconsistency,

safety,

tenderness,

absence,

peace,

dysregulation.

Margins should therefore be assessed clinically, not rhetorically.

Principle V:

Not every structure that produces ecstasy is reconstructible.

Some anatomies are technically fascinating yet nonviable long term.

Admire the physiology. Do not necessarily build a life around it.

Principle VI:

Beware heroic surgery.

The desire to save emotionally unavailable people with superior patience, insight, adaptability, or love has historically poor outcomes.

Especially in surgeons.

Principle VII:

A functional reconstruction must preserve perfusion to the authentic self.

If the relationship requires chronic ischemia of personality traits, intellectual expression, emotional range, or intensity, long-term viability is poor.

Principle VIII:

Silence is also data.

Absence of communication should not be repeatedly reinterpreted by advanced philosophical imaging modalities in an attempt to identify hidden viability.

Sometimes the scan is simply negative.

Principle IX:

Pleasure is not equivalent to prognosis.

Excellent short-term symptomatic relief does not predict durable relational outcomes.

Follow-up remains essential.

Principle X:

One must imagine the emotionally unavailable surgeon happy.

The memories press in without asking permission.

I miss you, not quietly, but with a weight that sits somewhere inside my chest.

The part of me you carry feels especially heavy today.

How can something that is gone weigh so much?

How can I feel the boulder of something that is not there?

Why is absence not lighter, not easier?

The missing is a dull, persistent ache, impossible to localize.

I only know that I miss you so much that I feel incomplete,

and yet the part you hold is yours.

So I cannot be whole.

Not ever again.

And still, as much as it aches, as much as it unsettles me,

I do not want to lose this missing.

I do not want it softened, diluted, or erased.

Because this ache is a thread that keeps me tied to you.

If everything else were to vanish,

at least I would still have this absence, and through it, you.

Así que, para variar, me quedo con los escombros. Siempre toca recoger, y siempre lastima; no sé si duele más el quiebre o el entendimiento que llega después, el momento en que acepto que está roto, pero sé que duele. Así que, para variar, intento racionalizar y abstraerme, pero sigo siendo yo, y los sentimientos no me abandonan: solo duelen. Así que, para variar, soy humana.

We care for people we do not know.

We take the best care we know how,

to guard life, precious life.

We safeguard someone’s brother, someone’s sister,

a mother, a father.

We see so many people die, suffer.

And when we are in the chaos of it all,

it is not easy to assimilate.

But then it hits.

The loss.

A life expired.

A soul passed.

Someone ceases to exist.

Medicine is cruel.

We numb ourselves not to feel it.

But then it hits.

With all its strength.

And it hits hard.

And in that pain,

it makes us human,

fit to care for others.

So I do not want to numb that part of me.

I must keep the ability to feel,

to empathize,

to mourn the life

El escenario se repite, eternamente.

Siempre el joven, siempre 2pm, siempre el clima lo suficientemente cómodo para un paseo, ni muy frío ni muy caliente.

Pero la escena es eterna y se torna agobiante, no porque sea fea , sino porque no varía, se torna insípida, y el ser humano en su humanidad busca variaciones, aunque su sistema busca homeostasis, si nada alrededor cambia, se vuelve loco.

Committed to waiting for her

He had no comfort from the cold and the dark

But he did not dare move, he promised he would wait.

He sat there as he became only bone

Consumed by the hours that turned into days

Those passed and turned into months

And years after, he was still there.

Now he was just bone on the chair

A skeleton keeping the promise

That a man in love once made

She did not care he became nothing

For he had to keep the promise,

The promise he once made out of love.

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I sit here my feet soaking wet

My back hurting from this uncomfortable chair

My bones pressed against the hard surface

The air is cold and every breath feels like needles.

I search around looking for you

And for miles and miles there is nothing but

The vast emptiness, the darkness,

The silence, the solitude.

What is the point of this unbearable existence

There is no beauty, no honor, no truth in it.

There is no beginning and no end

Just massive nothingness all around.

I am reduced to bone, consumed by waiting

Waiting for the ghost of you

The idealized version that inhabits my head

И тишина с твоей стороны

Once again I'm hurting

Silence hurts

Can't get tears to come down

Am I growing numb?

Is all the heart break building up to numbness?

It's pathetic

Это не человечество

Это не душа

Это просто тишина

Тихо тихо тихо

В ночной атмосфере

Ночная атмосфера во мне

How many times can a heart break before there's no path back?

Сколько выдержит моя русская душа

Моя милая душенька

Одни шрамы, там где когда то были чувства

Ах, шрам

Шрам твердый, не кровит

Вот стерва

Знакомая сука

Но, теперь это я

Как так вышло?

Не вероятно

Да стою перед зеркалом но себя не узнаю

Где ж ты моя милая душенька?

Что с тобой сделали?

Что я сделала?

Как мы сюда приехали?

No tears left to cry carries a whole different meaning

I wanted to love you

I wanted to care for you

I wanted to see you happy

I felt so much kindness to give

So much love

All that's left is a scar

No more tears to cry

No more tears to cry

No more cigarettes to smoke

No more chaos to exhale

Today I write to you this short letter, to extend my sincerest gratitude.

Thank you,

for not loving me,

for showing me that all the love I have to give can be kept for myself,

for teaching me the hardest lessons,

for bringing me close to the edge so many times,

for not being there,

for not loving me back.

Thank you for playing me,

for the emotional theater we performed,

for teaching me the face where nothing seemed to bother me,

for making my performance applause worthy, but the audience was only you.

Thank you for stopping it before I got too involved, up to my neck was not deep enough to drown,

for shattering my crystal hopes,

for toughening my skin,

for leaving scars that do not bleed anymore.

Thank you for the conditions. Everything else was me.

I have imagined many times a little pure, beautiful being in my arms. One I just gave birth to, one I spent forty weeks nurturing and forming, one who carries a piece of me. One I can pour all that is good in me into, one I can love unconditionally, one I can raise to be extraordinary. Smarter than me, kinder, more capable, better in every sense.

And as beautiful as all of that seems, I then think of the after.

I’m one of the lucky ones, and in spite of that, I find it more often than not difficult to make sense of existence, to find meaning and reasons to stay here, to keep doing it. Society is putrid. Most people go around eating or being eaten. The animal part of us still transpires into a survival of the fittest. Kindness is a rarity. There is pollution, noise, cruelty, exhaustion, and too often too little to justify the suffering.

I remember my mother at my age. I was already ten years old. She did what she could. Me and my brother, we turned out kind of fine. But is “kind of” enough? Is it worth it?

I am still looking for an answer to that question, and as long as I do not have one myself, what is the point of bringing someone into existence? It sounds like punishment.

You see, all the beautiful parts I mentioned are for me. It is a narcissistic, egocentric, selfish reason. Perhaps motherhood, at least in part, is the ultimate expression of self-love: wanting the world to contain another version of oneself.

So, no. You exist in my imagination only.

And there, dear daughter, you live rent free, unbothered by my expectations of you, society’s expectations, the world’s. We women are held to impossibly high standards and pressures. Why be so cruel as to willingly put another one through it?

So, dear daughter, may you forgive me, and may I forgive myself, for I am not meant to be a mother.

Happy fucking Mother’s Day.

Signed,

33-year-old me