holiday weeps

It's been forever since I've written a blog and it comes down to one thing... thinking that it's not worthwhile to blog. The thing though that is bringing me back is that I go through my journals every once in a while a realize how grateful I am to have memories stored on the paper that I just can't seem to store in my head. The fact is I am sure that my memory is faulty and nothing really seems to store so I rely on other information to give it back its missing pieces. It seems like everything inside there has missing pieces, but the fact is that I want a complete bowl instead of something with cracks in it for my soup to leak through. Well in knowing that maybe something is just wrong with my memory I have decided that yeah, I don't care how ridiculous it seems to do these blogs because I'm going to need them in the coming years or even months, perhaps even tomorrow.
It is three days before Thanksgiving, which for me is a marker now and I'm sure always will be. The holidays have in the past never left an indelible imprint on me, but this time for the first year I will be left with loss. I heard a story today on NPR about traffic accidents, that 400 people last year lost their lives on Thanksgiving. I felt momentarily grieved for these people, for the broken notion that even though they may feel compelled by bloodlines to sit through awkward conversation there is a certain contentment in knowing they'll be there. okay, I can't assume all of these people had families that wanted them there, but if they did, those people were perhaps worried and scared by the missing presence of their loved one until they were then devastated. The simple fact is that now when I see something or hear something about loss it affects me in a totally different way than it used to.
Last Thanksgiving was the last time I saw my mom. She didn't actually die during Thanksgiving, but she physically died for me because I remember the last long, hard hug she gave me, the moment I last saw her smile while she wrapped her black and white scarf around her neck and said, "honey, don't stay away too long" and " I will miss you."
At the time as in most times I didn't know it would be the last but I remember thinking that it was important to remember that moment, every last detail of her departure because somehow I felt like it would be the last.
As the holiday approaches I find myself seizing up emotionally one minute and then breaking down the next. Crying during movies like The Bucket List not because I know Morgan Freeman's character is going to die but because I know the loss that his wife is going to feel once he is gone. A lot of other people have felt loss before, but up until her passing last March I was lucky to say that I hadn't felt that kind of loss, something I had actually related to a friend the day before I found out she had gone, not knowing when I said it that she had already passed.
It is hard as this holiday comes as I'm sure it will be hard the next, and the next, then the next come. As I fill in days without her, days that she should be here to tell me I'm doing something wrong or just to simply say, "I love you."
I heard her voice last night in a dream and even though it was hard when I awoke and realized she still wasn't there I was grateful for the dream. I called her on the phone to find out where she was because I was so afraid she had died already, and she said, "thanks for calling, I love you." That's all she said, there was nothing more, but in my sleep I was the happiest I had been since a point I can't actually remember - verifying my need for blogs/journaling/podcasting or something of that nature.
This Thanksgiving when I give thanks like I should but never do, I am going to give thanks for every moment I had with her. Though I may not be making her a feast this year, she will still be sitting at my table.

Wasn't that bag already unpacked?

My mom bought me a kid sized pink suitcase when I was younger. No… not one that a kid can fit into, but one that was just the right size for my Barbie Dolls, my baby blanket, and my miniature pink rotary phone that I talked to my imaginary friend on every night.
I was going on a trip, a long and far away trip from San Jose to St. Louis and I wanted my own suitcase. The thing is that I don’t remember this, because I was four and I don’t remember anything before the age of five. The thing is that I know now that I wasn’t just packing dolls and blankets, but this is when I began to pack fears and anger into my little suitcase, one that has grown over the years into one of those cases that the airline charges an extra $50.00 for because of its weight.
My mom put me on a plane and left me for a year in the care of my family: an uncle I believe is the consensus among family members. In my little pink suitcase I began stuffing my fights with my imaginary friend, the way Kermit treated Ms. Piggy, and the anger I had at my mom for letting me go for so long, but I remind you that my memory is faulty and I don’t remember any of this, just stories of stories, thrice told and fairly old.
I thought this bag would have been organized, repacked, moved, unpacked, and stored a long time ago. Therapy started at six when my hands became raw and looked bloody, which is when I began to tell my mom that I felt dirty and had to get it off by washing my hands fifty times a day or more. I only remember blocks and kids play things at these sessions, but I’m not sure if this is because I remember them or because this is what all doctors offices have for kids. I don’t remember how it stopped, what the doctor said to make it stop or if he told my mom what to do, but I know that one day it did and I began pulling my hair.
I never wanted answers for these things until recently. I never wanted my memories back from before I was five. I never wanted… anything until I was made aware that the things I did back then and still do aren’t necessarily normal or okay. I’m not saying that anyone’s normal because I don’t necessarily even believe in that term, but… I think I want answers now.
I sometimes want to find the kids that called me ugly and fat and show them that the person then isn’t the person now, but what I’ve realized since going to my new and amazing counselor is that that person… is still there. The little girl that was ugly and cried every night and didn’t think she was good enough for anyone is the same older girl that thinks the same way. The little girl that suffered from an overeating disorder because she was sure that food was the only thing that could like her is now the older girl that is in a constant battle with food and still dreams of being like all the other girls, some kind of beautiful.
My counselor, though she is amazing, gave me a look of confusion and a sentence of disbelief when I admitted that I think I’m ugly and have always thought this. I thought she might laugh for a moment because she thought it ridiculous that I could have this conception of myself. I laughed it off, because that’s what I always do, but she said we had to figure this out and that we were going to have to go waaaaaaay back the next couple of weeks to figure out where this is all coming from. Essentially she said that I am going to have to unpack the load that I’ve been carrying this whole life, while I’ve been denying for a long time that it’s there. Perhaps I’m ready to let go of the little girl now so that I can be a woman, but I don’t think I’m going to ever give up my blanket.

July

In undergrad I wrote a series of poems for each month of the year and here is July.

There’s a chill as 3:00 slips into 5:00
and we wait for Radiohead to upstage themselves at 7:12
because they’re new every time.
Yorke pulls back,
he warms in the light of himself.
The crowd participates,
resonating toes with heated crescendo’s
movement
movement
movement
The mama’s and the papa’s,
relive (cause they can’t stop confronting)
seventies culturalismo
at midlife under frosty moonlight.
The moon is never so clear as when it burns on skin
and if we let it burn
we can see through it.
I track glances 90° westward for the loved one they seem to have (misplaced?)
Crinkled
canvassed
in thick love at 8:20,
the time they realize lonely might be the same as alone.
Wrapped in smiles
percussive undertones pushing us up.
It’s not hot like it should be.
For the middle of July.
Not arid.
but we are dry.
Breath upon breath could warm
but
The Gorge
can’t encapsulate with what it doesn’t have.
We swim under stars,
over the glow that echoes onto the stage and
off the Columbia.
It runs and turns behind the basalt rock sculptures
that form the basin.
Seamless arches of granite fall in below the watery magic mirror.
Images move more than their possessors in the mercury flow,
forth
and
back
it rocks us.
Tangled and torn
we stick
flesh on fresh cotton
freshly soiled
from elephant ears and
earthy tones.
mutable
we continue diving into the dust we create.
10:00 and they might have stopped pushing sound
but
they had to
go
go
go go on
because we all want to be under midnight
in their music.

A playground.
We dance and chant in whispers,
come upon midnight in our cars,
We listen and wait for the next chorus,
but instead we are hit with the thump-thump-thump
in his trunk-trunk-trunk
1:00am
the camp doesn’t sleep
controlled by pop pushers and trance choreographers.
spin spin
mr. mr. volubilité.
Energy rushes up against him and her
They rebound in xtasy
because it’s been building up since 4:43 when
in line
they first met.
Ticketmaster just became the next best personals.
4:00am,
died down
zipped away
shutting off the volume.
collapsed into amnesiacs
7:22
up
walking with smoky breath
find our skins warmer
darker
the chill
gone.

I wonder what Izzie is doing today?

I’ve been watching unnecessary amounts of online T.V. programming for the past two weeks. At first it was an excuse to just “catch” up, because of course I have been behind on a few of my old regular programs, though my T.V. programming was never as regular as say, my colon’s schedule. Of course, ABC.com was my first stop because it has my first choice shows. Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, and for a while there, Pushing Daisies.
I caught myself up on the Meredith and Derek’s commitment turmoil (per usual), Callie’s forage into the lesbian sisterhood, little Grey earning her big girl points with Mc. Steamy (whom of course I will always find much better looking than Mc. Dreamy), and last of all Izzie’s well… likely demise on the show. I started watching all of these on a Friday night in the end of February. It was my first Friday at home in the span of about five months. I wanted to relax and be alone, as long as we all still agree that one can be alone while entering into a covert friendship with the characters one is viewing.
Four hours, five episodes, and a half a carton of chocolate Soy Dream frozen desert later, I was balling like a baby because my life, or should I say the character’s lives were in utter chaos. When I found out that Izzie’s hallucinations weren’t her usual charming quirkiness and really the cause of an underlying illness, I felt as if one of my best friends was going to die. But wait… did I say it had been almost ten months since I had seen this show? I mean really, what was going on? Could one really just leave all of her friends behind without a word and ten months later come back with arms open saying, “give me all you’ve got?”
Apparently so, because that’s exactly what I did. I hadn’t realized that I missed Meredith, Derek, Callie, George, Izzie, Dr. Bailey, and Christina – okay maybe not Christina – so much. I longed for their laughter, their disputes, the obligatory montage’s at the beginning and end of the show that sum up the “moral” purpose and pursuit of the episode, though most of all, I longed to cry. Grey’s is the one show that can turn me into a five year old with badly skinned knee, sobbing and needy.
There is a term for this, just like there is a term for almost anything one does, like the acts of sleeping and eating: Para-social Relationship. Yes, my need to know the day to day happenings of all of my favorite doctors and interns is really my innate need for relationships. Having lots of friendships outside of this alternate reality cannot keep one safe from developing these kinds of relationships. Just the act of coming back the next week to see what is/has “happened” to a character (this includes reality stars) means that a relationship is forming or formed. According to Donald Horton and R. Richard Rohl’s 1956 paper, Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction:
One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. The conditions of response to the performer are analogous to those in a primary group. The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship. (215)

The grim reality of the situation is that once I had caught up on Grey’s, I felt not only exhausted from the emotional barrage that had been lain upon me in only a matter of hours, but sad because I could not hang out with my “friends” for another week. I realized that I did not have their cell numbers and couldn’t ask how Mc. Steamy was doing after his dick had almost been snapped like a dry piece of spaghetti, or how Meredith was feeling after she watched someone executed. Logically I knew that these pseudo relationships were not real, but they had all the baggage of a four year friendship that’s seen its share of ups and downs.
That’s when it all began. I began blowing off real friends for my T.V. ones. I would say I was feeling too tired to do something after work just to have another few hours with my new T.V. friends because the next friend I had to catch-up with was Betty.

inhaled

you are the warm silent space
that has been breathed
into the nook of my blanket
and two nights ago
i inhaled
and you coated my lungs

and you coated my lungs
and i wheezeled you out
with deep sighs
and shallow coughs
i inhaled
and lost your scent

and lost your scent
in the smell of fall
by the burn of twigs
and the waves of smoke
i inhaled
and i didn't choke

and i didn't choke
on the memory
of you in my bed
when you touched my hair
i inhaled
and then i awoke

and then i awoke
to an empty bed
and i closed my eyes
and wished you here
i inhaled & i inhaled & inhaled
but you did not appear

The boy in this picture

Everyone's breath is icy. The kids are all smoking their invisible cigarettes and waiting for the bell to signal the end of lunch.
I am in the quad finishing the free lunch my school provides, pizza and chocolate milk.
Brrrrrrng. Brrrrrrrng.
"I don't really want to go," I tell Elaine.
"Oh, it'll be fine, don't worry." I grab my purple Jansport and unwrap a Snickers bar on the way to fifth period. Elaine goes her way and I go mine, to English. This is the class I often escape by finding my way to the school's health office.
"My stomach hurts, Mrs. Walsh. I think I have a fever," I would say, making me known by the staff as the schools hypochondriac.
On this day I try to think up a story, or perhaps think I can find a way to choke on my Snickers bar at an opportune moment, but avoid it lest another fat joke be started about me.
On this day, as on every other day, I walk to class slowly to stay as far away from Jeff and Matt as long as possible because I know there will be trouble.
Three minutes to go: I find my way to a water fountain to rinse any peanuts and carmel that might be stuck in my teeth.
Two minutes to go: I circle another row of portables and wave at Mr. Mitchell in the chemistry room.
One minute to go: I walk to the door and riffle through my bag for an imaginary lost object.
I do not want to walk in, but realize that the bell will brrrrrrng me into the class at any moment anyway, and so I walk straight to my desk, on the farthest side of the room. I am convinced that if I continue to look forward and if my eyes do not meet theirs then they cannot see me.
I make it to my desk without a word from anyone and I know that looking away has done its job. I now know that it will be safe to slip my black binder from my bag and if I can just get it open to a blank lined page, then I will be safe. I will be safe if I can begin to write on this blank paper. If I can just get my pen out.
“So… tell me more about this boyfriend of yours? Did you bring a picture?” Matt is grinning sheepishly, waiting for me to stumble.
“Yeah, I said I would bring one didn’t I?” my voice is defensive and I grow more tense, but don’t immediately go for the picture, hoping that the last bell signaling the beginning of class will ring.
Brrrrrrrrrng. It does ring, it seems miraculous. I am not going to have to show him the picture and I am safe for another day. Then I realize that Mrs. Walsh is not in the classroom and so does he. Jeff who had been talking to Jessica, the most beautiful girl in school notices that Matt is over at my desk once the bell rings and comes to join the conversation.
“What’s up here?” he looks to Matt.
“Oh… Nicole says that she brought the picture of her boyfriend.
“Oooooh… where is it?”
“I don’t know. Where is it Nicole? I bet you didn’t even bring it, because you don’t haaaave one.”
I look at the door hoping that Mrs. Walsh will walk in, but see that since she’s not there I don’t have a choice. I open to the back of my binder where Keith is smiling and lit up in the blue button down shirt Dorothy had bought him especially for the school photo.
“That’s him! Yeah right!” Matt wrestles the photo from hands to get a better look.
Keith is a good looking kid. He has dark brown hair, blue eyes, and in this particular picture he’s got a set of braces.
“Do your braces get stuck together when you kiss?” I don’t have a real response, just a nod no, because I know if I talk I will either scream or cry or both.
Mrs. Walsh finally walks in minutes late for her own class and I want to know where she’s been. We all run to our seats as if nothing has happened and I am furious at them and at her for not being there to stop it.
"Mrs. Walsh? Mrs. Walsh?"
"Yes, Matt?"
"My mom said that it's not okay to lie, why does Nicole think it's okay to lie?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well...," he says as he slips a photo from beneath his binder, "this is a photo of a boy she says she's dating."
"And?" Mrs. Walsh doesn't seem to understand his joke.
"And this isn't her boyfriend. Just look at her!"
Laughter. The entire sixth grade class fills the small portable with booming laughter and Mrs. Walsh takes the picture from Jeff and hands it back to me. I take it and place it in the clear plastic sheeting on the front of my binder.
"It’s true! I swear it’s true! I’ll bring him with me one day.” My throat bubbles with mucus and tears and I want to cry, but don’t because I can’t let them see me crying.
I ask Mrs. Walsh for a bathroom pass and don’t come back until class is over.