I fear that I have turned into a ghost. My hands have stopped working the way they’re supposed to. Now, they’re always shaking and fidgeting as if looking for something that cannot be found or cannot be held. I don’t notice it but sometimes my nails dig into the palms of my hand. Now there are tiny scars that form to showcase my anxiety. My words escape my mouth, tumbling over each other in an attempt to make sense of things. I feel like I am only half submerged in the tides of this life. I am almost certain that I am slipping into oblivion.
I think I am jealous. By jealous I actually mean there is this giant green-eyed monster that is twisting and turning in its uncomfortable cradle inside of me. (also, by cradle I mean prison) Maybe, I’m taking things a little too far by calling it a monster but what difference does it make, really?
We’ve all got monsters inside of us anyway.
But I am getting ahead of myself with that one.
What I really mean to say is, I am jealous.
Perhaps jealous is not the right term for it. It just doesn’t seem to cut it. I think maybe, I am full of resentment. There, that’s the word. Resentment. It is malevolent, vindictive, and unforgiving enough to encapsulate what I feel. But what’s new? I always have been the epitome of those words after all.
But this entry isn’t about me. It is about her. Wow, and here I thought no word could sound worse than “shit” or “moist” even “phlegm” (man, those are some really gross words) and then comes the word Her. Look at how the word drips with spiteful undercurrents and promises of tequila shots on Friday nights.
I won’t say her name because my tongue fills up with gunpowder waiting to explode.
She says she never wants to grow up.
I guess we have that in common.
I’m sure I don’t want to grow up. But only because I’m still waiting for my bubblegum pink walls and a mother to sing me lullabies to calm the monsters in the closet.
I wonder if her father calls her his little princess, tucks her in at night in her canopy bed as he promises her he would catch all the stars for her if she wanted and put them in a mason jar right beside her bed.
I wonder if my father thinks twice about which hand he uses to strike me.
I wonder if he looks at the marks on my face and the red rings that circle my arms and regrets every bit of it.
There is a boy a few hundred miles away that helps with the shaking.
He says he doesn’t love her anymore and swears that he’s moved on.
I don’t believe a single word of it.
You can blow out a match but you can’t tame a forest fire.
It’s funny because whenever he describes his ideal girl he doesn’t use adjectives. Instead he whispers a name.
They say that the most broken people are also the most beautiful.
If that is true then why is it that I feel like a thousand natural disasters
every time I compare myself to her?
I think my palms have formed tiny nail shaped constellations.
The marks are still pinkish and in the threshold of bleeding.
I can count the number of times my mother has uttered the words “I love you” to me in one hand. Because of this, I don’t think I ever really learned what the phrase should sound like. But what I do know is, the way she said it to me and to my father was not it. I don’t know whether it was her intonation or her pronunciation or maybe it is the way her voice sounded weary and unsure as if she was making a promise she already knew she could not keep.
I bet she knows just the way an “I love you” should sound like.
I bet they were hand picked and delivered right at her doorstep by the most careful of hands.
I bet she probably has a string of those words tapered across her bedroom wall for all the world to see.
I bet she’ll never have to live a day worrying about the sincerity of those words because she is foreign to the possibility of an unsafe “I love you”
I bet all the times my mother said I love you to me that she will always have an “I love you” waiting for her at the end of the day. But that’s a wager that isn’t worth much.
Nope, not even gonna bother with this one.
Today someone called me beautiful.
A little boy the age of about 4-5 asked me if I was a fairy straight from a Disney classic because he swore he saw me leave a trail of fairy dust in my wake and that he’s never seen someone who looked like they always belonged somewhere else. Somewhere better.
Today someone called me beautiful.
Yea, I’m just as confused as you are
My hands are slowly learning the art of steadiness.
I am sitting in P’s front seat watching the pitter-patter of raindrops on his window. The scars on the insides of my hands have begun disappearing; little by little the indentations have lightened.
I turn to P and crumble at the sight of him, smiling eyes and crooked teeth.
I burst out crying, floodgates of all my uncertainties gushing out. I tell him all about the girl, my father and mother. He takes my hand and asks me to describe the color gold without saying the color itself.
I tried and laughed at the futility of it all.
He tells me that’s what its like to have me in his life, a constant battle to describe his favorite color without words.
Apparently, I am his golden girl.
He tells me I am like those crazy Friday nights and cozy Sunday mornings all rolled into one.
He tells me I am Tokyo when cherry blossoms bloom and Santorini in the summer when the sun kisses the clear blue water and docks welcome back fishermen to their wistful wives.
He told me the first time he heard me cry was the first time he understood what heartbreak felt like.
I turn away because of the utter stupidity of all his stupid analogies (and yes, i’m aware i’ve used stupid one too many times today) so I gaze out through the windowpane. He laughs, I melt into the folds of his familiarity.
He drives away, across the freeway and into the fog. I fall asleep.
Heart on my sleeves bleeding gold and blue.
I guess its okay that I’m a little shattered.
I guess I have come to terms that there are people like her and then there are people like me. Relish in the dichotomy of it all.
I guess its fine that he loved her first. After all, If P can see me this way I’m sure he can too.
I guess the world will just have to make space for a thousand separate graves because I fully intend to leave this life this fragmented.
I guess I’ll just have to face my wonderful God, resplendent in all His glory and say to him “I am nothing now. I have given every part of me away to those who needed it. This is me, stripped and bare. To dust I have returned.”
