No Nothing

Mom died in December. I spent my whole life doing all I could to hear her say, "great job, Al," and when she died, there was no one left in the world to be proud of me or lift me up.

Okay, I'm a narcissist, and all this blog has been is a bunch of melodramatic bullshit. If she had done a good job, she would have raised a daughter who didn't need pats on the back. She would have raised a daughter who didn't need someone to call after a hard day at work.

Yes, my friends don't call me. But I understand. Our lives have changed. I don't live for myself anymore. I don't choose the time I want to sleep in until. I don't get dressed, or eat until Phin has a dry diaper, and has eaten. I don't do the things that I would like to do. The only things I do are for him, to enrich his life. He cries when he's tired, when he's hungry, when he's bored, and I respond. I've found myself humming nursery rhymes when he's not listening. My life is not my own. That's not a complaint, rather a statement, and the reason my friends don't call.

But seriously, this has been the hardest 5 months of my life, and one of the loneliest. I can't reach out because I don't want to sound sorry for myself. I'm watching my friends on their commencement day with their lives spread out in front of them, while I stagnate in this tiny apartment wishing that someone had told me on my big day that it was over.

Life is really hard, and it's not getting easier. When Mom was alive, I used to believe that I had an escape. I had a home to go back to if everything fell apart. She took my options with her that December night. I'm not even 23, I still need a mother. I'm not beautiful anymore. I've lost my vibrancy. I just respond to cries, run the baby around, and put in 2 hours a day at a job where I'm not respected. I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm lost, I don't know where I belong, and no one responds to my cries, let alone hear them.

Catching up with Myself.

The summer before last, I sat on the floor of the living room. We sat on the floor because there was no furniture. I wasn't alone, my friends were there. They were telling me what was wrong with me, sort of like an intervention, but without any intention of helping me back up. I nodded and agreed, admitting to my character flaws. When it was over, nobody felt better. When it was over, I was still broken inside. I became determined never to own up to my weaknesses again, so when I found out that I was pregnant in November, I held my head high and stood by my decision. 

It was easy because I had nothing to loose. Through bouts of morning sickness, I sat in bed and finished an orchestral arrangement of "Songbird." School was easy. I had made friends, lost them, made them back, and then lost them again. I had spent the summer next to a cooling pond, drinking white wine, and not furnishing my living room. The house was cold, the windows unsealed, and with the attic door open for Reuben to get up and down, it never seemed to warm up. I had hedged my bets on superficial relationships (big surprise), and found myself abandoned there, cleaning up the mess after shows and scrubbing burned beans off the bottom of my pots and pans. There were the teenagers I took in to make myself feel important (or charitable). They slept on the spare mattress, and ate my food until I had learned my lesson and turned them away. 

The next semester started strong. I took a credit-overload, worked part-time, and had an internship at the Special Events Department of Spartanburg. There was more changing then the size of my belly. I had made myself invisible to cloak any residual doubts. I focused only on my studies, and figuring out how to give birth to a child. When I graduated, you couldn't see the size of me under my robe. I left college with one friend, a saxophonist. He was black and used to buy me lunch in the dining hall. The last time I saw him was while I was finishing out my internship, managing the stage I had booked at the street festival. He told me he wasn't going back to school the following year. 

In my last two months of pregnancy, I worked hard at Earth Fare and got ready for the baby to come.  I surrounded myself with other young moms, and put together the nursery furniture. 

He came a week and three days past my due date. I had him out of the hospital at a birthing center. Labor was long, but peaceful, and he was here after pushing for an hour. A beautiful, 9 lb boy. He slept in between Cooper and I that night. He slept the whole night through. For a while, I rode the high of having a new person in my life. I learned how to breastfeed, and carried him a sling. I through myself into being his mother, but like other things I've thrown myself into, I faltered.

Nursing is a time to do nothing, and my thoughts have begun to catch up to me. It's been a year now since I've gone to get a drink, gone to a show, or met a new person. I don't do anything I used to love, and it's wearing on me (as well as Cooper). I understand now why you should wait to have children, no matter how ready you are physically. I love Phineas, but I feel empty and lonely inside. I really have broken everything that I've touched. Phineas is my punishment, but also my chance to start anew. I'm just having trouble letting go of the past. It creeps into my dreams and sinks into the bottom of my chest. I'm replaying scenarios over and over again. Swimming in a blue sea of regret. That time in my life is over, so why can't I say goodbye? 

fat jokes

When I laugh, my eyes water. Sometimes I laugh so hard at the little things that I walk away crying. Even at 18, I was still melodramatic. I just thought I had grown up. I hope Phinn never reads any of this. The same way I hope he never meets his Uncle Reuben (or inherits any of his genes). I let some people down, burned down bridges at each crossroads, made excuses, made pathetic apologies where I owned up to the way I had behaved, and became ashamed, instead of proud and happy.

I'd rather live in a cloud of misconception; meaning, I would rather not know what anyone thought of me. The more I've gotten used to introversion (and Southern Living), the stronger my sense of self has become. I don't feel like I'm experimenting anymore. I'm going to be Phinn's mom. We're going to read with eachother, make silly faces, and discover things in our own backyard. We're going to grow heirloom tomatoes, and pet the dogs at the humane society.

I held on to Lowell for way too long. I took off at what seemed to be the end of my life: a melodramatic 19 year-old. I smile when I think of people, and experiences we had, but I'm done trying to maintain relationships, defend my decisions, or justify them to myself. Maybe I'll go back someday.

It's not a recurring nightmare

It's a dream about the same person again again, a symbol of what could have been, if I wasn't pregnant, if I was going home in May, if I was starting a new school year next fall. My subconscious is not on board with me during the day time, and it makes a point to tell me at night. No matter who I smile at and tell I'm excited, my world has turned upside down and I'm looking for new ways to find joy (ways that hide my shame).

In response to Adam.

I had to step up. I knew it when I was awoken in the night and forced to sit on the floor next to my handcuffed roomate and look around the room at the terrified faces. Where I used to see the faces of friends, now I only saw children. Children with pleading, glassy eyes, their fingers crossed behind their backs.

But the police addressed the two of us with sleepy eyes. We were the adults, we had let this occur. And after much begging and pleading, and after the tickets had all been writ, I had to make a choice. I had to say something. I had to address them, to add my opinion to their giggles of relief, escalating on top of each other. But instead, since I had nothing to say, I went back to bed. Ignoring the apologetic pleas that trailed off as I left Reuben in the kitchen.

It took me three days to come to the conclusion that there would be no smoking inside the house. And at least a week and a half to enforce it by forcing notice on the perpetrators. That was two nights prior to their court appearance. There was nothing selfish about this decision. If the house was meant to be a refuge, than it had to be truly safe. Truly safe: no one would risk their future, their goals, their ambitions, when they stepped foot inside. They would instead be surrounded by positivity: Cooper and I cooking meals in the kitchen, painting the living room, playing Uno, or singing songs. Indeed, it wasn't a hard decision to make, just a hard one to carry out.

The night they went to jail, we chided about how clean the house would now be. We drank scotch and watched a David Lynch movie underneath blankets in the living room (socks on to keep out the cold).

I woke up the next morning acutely aware of how quiet the house was. The shower head began dripping out of nowhere. I ached to hear footsteps, someone going out for a cigarette, or pouring a bowl of cereal. I got out a pen and paper and began to write. I tried to explain to Reuben why I couldn't help him. Maybe it was the months of leaching off of me. Maybe it was the blatant disregard for my things, and for our house. Maybe it was the fact that he had it coming. But I promised him I wouldn't abandon him. Even though I'm sure he wishes I would. I just know something deep in my heart. His world has stopped turning while outside, we are zooming around. He neither knows what time it is nor the weather outside. He lives for the next television program, or to grow weary and fall asleep. There is no day or night inside. Regardless of whether or not he hears from his friends while he's in, he put in me in a position to administer tough love. It's not that in my opinion, what happened to him is fair. It's that this experience is a positive one. He'll appreciate everything after a months time. He'll appreciate the air he breaths. Today, he is entitled. He expects people to "help," him: to feed, clothe, and shelter him. Tomorrow? No more.

But I helped James, it's true. I helped James because he has a life to claim. Because he helps me, and, when I approached our friends about what to do, because we agreed on one thing: Help James. He works hard, he overcomes obstacles with a positive attitude. He's not perfect, but he's young. And he smiled so big when I opened the door and ran up to him from behind the glass. Dressed in orange, it was the first time he had looked through a window in a day and a night. And we talked, and he told me his was worried about keeping his job, devastated about not being able to join the Marine Corp, and desperate to come home. I rallied to his cause and we had him out later that afternoon.

When you treat someone like a friend, they do the same to you in return.

So I've learned a lot about copping in this sort of climate in the past few months, and I am so greatful that you were never my roomate. AJ didn't follow through, and much for the better. Our electricity bill this month was a fraction of what it was living with him. The house is always clean, and even the messes that Reuben leaves are manageable. There is no one here to abuse peoples things, or break windows, or anything that a 6'1 insolent child leaves in his wake. I should have understood better what the expectations of me were: you provide the house, the pots and pans. We'll provide the ruckus, and you just clean up afterwards, kapeche? This has been straightened out. There is a clear divide, which is just the way I want it. I don't harbor hate in my heart, despite your obvious jibes at me. They demostrate your crystal clear lack of understanding, of which, I really don't have time or energy to mend.

urban haikus/not safe to walk on yet

I don't care if we ever loved each other
We never walk alone
and I can now see.

David mourned and fasted for 7 days when the Lord killed his first born son as a punishment from taking Bathsheba away from Uriah. On the 7th day, when his son dies, he breaks his fast and returns to normal life. It is at this point in which Bathsheba becomes David's wife in the eyes of the Lord and David succeeds against Ammon. This gives me great hope.

Standing, in the middle of a floor of shattered glass, a spatula in one hand frozen in mid-movement. Seconds before, it had been moving to flip a potato latke. Cooking food, for bands on the road. Seconds before, there had been screaming, they were begging me to take a side. I couldn't. I can't. I think alone. My thoughts are alone, and yet I crave togetherness? Tell me I don't walk alone, and I will not require a presence.

Everything stopped. Ryan picked me up like a bag of gold, a child half asleep in her father's arms, and wiped the glass off my feet. I heard a noise escape my mouth. Then I got the broom and swept up the consequences of someone else's actions. It still falls back on me, the outsider.

Last night I sat on Hank and Emily's porch with their teenage son and asked him why he believes in God. He handed me a piece of quartz crystal and said, "The heaven declare the glory of God" (Psalm 19). I ran my fingers over it. He meant it as a reflection, as the greatness that is our earth, the mysteries, and the wonders.
"Do you know what kind of rock you'll find quartz on?" I asked.
"No."
"Granite."
He didn't respond for a long time.

Listening to James and Reuben on the front steps, I thought of what Ryan had said to me in my living room when I asked him the same question I asked Justus last night: "My logic wasn't cutting it. I could see the love and the light at the bottom of every Christian's heart." This light comes from the guidance that is with you through every decision. Maybe these are still folk beliefs, as my father told me they were, but I am trying to understand.

Jude the Obscure

The less of a New England girl I become, the less I feel as if I belong to anything at all. Perhaps you feel judged, or feel as though others are judging you. You have judged, as I have also. Judged ignorance: Those who claim knowledge of the bible, yet don't recognize the word "synagogue." Judged pride, judged words over actions.