red sheets

I have this job. It's not always pretty, it's not always nice. Sometimes it's like working at a gas station and sometimes it is completely horrific, it's awful and wrenching and I don't know why I do it.

Most times it's the gas station type job. You go, you do it, you go. Go, go, do not let it in. But then there are these other times, man, when I ask myself if it is better to give someone sight or to sleep at night myself. Those times are often accompanied by a red sheet. Medical examiners will sometimes cover the body with a red sheet instead of the standard white, because, see, red on red. It's easier, you know, for the bystanders, the orderlies, the unfortunate witness.

A red sheet. And you know. There is something in there, man, something coming, something you want nothing to do with. It's a warning, a signal that you can see a hundred yards out, stop where you are and turn around because you don't want to mess with what's in here. And while the sight of that sheet does amazing things to my nervous system, I am always glad to see it. I am glad to see it because it tells me in advance what to expect, what to prepare for. And I know. I know that no matter what, there is no way this is going to go well.

Dear men of the world

I am writing to respectfully request that you extend a similar courtesy to the women of the world. Those of you that are willing and able to inflict that kind of damage and pain on the woman that loves you, please mark yourself clearly in some way so that she knows what she's getting when she unzips that bag. There is nothing quite so breathtaking as the discovery that the thing you expected to be a nice pleasant home death is actually a multiple stab wound. And we are not prepared. We are not prepared for the way that honesty turns into deceit, that kindness turns to cruelty and forever turns into thinner and prettier. We are not prepared, and the realization, the weight of the knowledge, is more than we can take. It is, it is more than we can take. We take it, because to do otherwise is not an option, but it is too much. We are not the same. We are not the girls we once were, and why you do it to us is beyond comprehension. There are plenty of women who do not care for you one whit, thousands of them, and they will be more than happy to mess with you as much as you mess with them. It is not necessary for you to do these things to women that love you. Warn us. Warn us, so that we can stop where we are and ask ourselves if we really want to see what's under there, if the pull is so strong that we absolutely have to approach. Maybe the answer will be yes, because God knows there are a lot of rubberneckers, but I am not one of them and you know what? A lot of us could live our entire lives turning our heads from the carnage, and we would rather. Wouldn't it be great if we had that option? The option to take a deep breath, put our mask on, and open it up? To know in advance and flee? Why not spare us?

The person that is going to see me

Is going to be me.

I made a fascinating discovery, recently. The last few days. My friend said something, she said something so amazing, so perfect, stunning in its simplicity and I was floored that it had not occurred to me before. It was good. It was, it comes later.

A while back a girl at work asked me what was with me. I said Um please specify. She said You are always happy, what is the deal? I laughed, because I thought she was joking. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know where I come from or where I go to or what waits for me or what’s simmering, clawing its way to the top. And that’s fine, because I like it that way. But I was laughing and she goes No, really, what is it because I’ve never seen anything like it. So I told her that I have a rich fantasy life. Which amused me, but did not seem to satisfy her.

So last week I was talking to my friend, my friend who I love, who I really can’t believe has not been here forever. Where did she come from, and why didn’t I miss her before we met? I don’t know. But I was having a bad day. A rough day. A hard time. And she said Do you remember when you were a kid, when things were bad or even not so bad but just were, do you remember how you would make up stories, fantasies about your life? How you were the kidnapped princess or you were locked in a tower or you were the rejected orphan scraping by using only your wits, and that seemed to make everything better, if not better then bearable? She said I think it’s important to do that as adults.

It’s important to do that as adults. Fantasize. Why the fuck not, man? Why not? I am the kidnapped princess. I am. I have been kidnapped from the life I was destined to lead, and I am forced to masquerade as someone I am not in order to save my family from ruin. And it’s true. I am kidnapped from law school by my own decisions and forced to masquerade as a poverty stricken mother of two, working at an hourly rate. I am locked in a tower, I really, really am. I am locked in a tower in Sellwood with windows that don’t open and no shower and a crazy troll not in the dungeon but right upstairs. I am the rejected orphan scraping by using only my wits, and if you don’t know why that’s true then you do not know me at all, and that’s all right too. I think that I already do it half the time. That guy I have that huge crush on? It’s not that he isn’t interested. No, no way. What it is is that he knows that if anyone ever found out how he really feels about me they would report IMMEDIATELY to the parents of the woman he is promised to marry and her father would wage war on his father and the kingdom would be torn apart but he wants me as bad as I want him, of course he does, and if I think that I’m burning up, just imagine how much more difficult it is for him. And you see? I am no longer rejected. And really, what’s wrong with that? I know perfectly well what the score is, but I don’t have to live it and breathe it and wallow in it. Or, you know, I could just accept things as they are, but where’s the fun in that? There is none, that’s where.

And it makes it easier, the life that I lead. It makes it easier to be just me, just myself, to be the hero of my own story. When Dustin comes in to my office for no reason other than to say hello and I think to myself, why can’t I have that? I can tell myself that he would, if I would let him. And that one, maybe that one’s true. I don’t know. But I go, I don’t need anyone, and that’s good. I like me, I know what’s in here, what’s underneath, and I know that I am ripping someone off in a very serious way by keeping it to myself. Sometimes, sometimes I wish things were different. There was a huge storm today. Huge, huge storm. I had taken the kids for a bike ride and the rain and the thunder came, and I said Well maybe it will be past so let’s go see a movie and check on it after. We came out, and no. Even wetter, louder, and more lightning. But it was warm out, so we took our time going home, sopping wet, stares from the people in their cars, as happy as I’ve been in a long time. And it occurred to me, then and later, how nice it would have been to have not been the only grown up there, you know? How nice it would be to have shared experiences with someone that understands why it is an experience rather than simply a situation. How nice it would be to just, you know, have that.

Something so simple, but not at all. Someone else. It seems so easy. But it really isn’t, is it. I don’t know. Maybe it is. Maybe I am a complete ninny who does not appreciate what she has and maybe I let things become more than they are. Or maybe I recognize that the life I have is a good one, that things are not bad and that I know this and whether I can share that with anyone else is immaterial, it is enough to just be happy. Maybe I’ll see how that goes. Maybe I see how that goes because I have no choice, but maybe I see how that goes because to do anything else would be to risk an all out war with a neighboring kingdom. Whichever.

They are fools to make war

So, I’ve noticed, I can’t help but notice, the reluctance associated with dating seeing going out falling in with a single mother. I understand, you know. No, I do. It’s a lot to take on. It’s a big deal. It’s a sudden thrust into a different world, a different life, a way of doing EVERYthing and it’s a way that you didn’t expect, you didn’t anticipate and you sure as hell did not sign up for. I get it. Those are someone else’s children. They are baggage. A hindrance.

Here’s what you don’t get, man, what you will never get. Those kids, the fact of them, their presence, make me a different girl. A better girl. A whole different animal. They make me someone I would not have been without them, and someone my former self could never compete with. I’m thoughtful. I’m considerate. I’m kind and attentive and viciously protective. I’m caring and nurturing and these, I think, are not bad things. These are things I’m proud of, things that I would look for in another person, were I looking. They are the things that you said you were looking for, but without the accompanying others.

It’s funny, see, cause we could go out for a year without you ever seeing them. You may never meet them. The odds are very good that I will have done with you long before I feel comfortable having you anywhere near them. And really, at your age, at the place you’re in, I think that’s long enough. It’s my favorite conversation, you know, my favorite thing to hear. Yeah, you’re the greatest and the best, you’re amazing and I’m happy that I even met you, I just wish you didn’t have children.

You wish I didn’t have children. Yeah I wish you had an extra kidney. What? I wish you didn’t have kneecaps, that’s how stupid that is. Your cat, man, if you could just get rid of that cat, cause I love you and man, your cat is just fucking it up for me. You, that you would even let something so stupid come out of your mouth. You’re so funny and smart and no matter what you think I think you’re beautiful, I want to take you everywhere and go nowhere and do everything and nothing because you do it to me, you do it to me and I want that, I want to have that feeling forever, but those kids, you know.

I don’t know what to tell you. I guess that is not true, because I do tell you, and in no uncertain terms. Those kids are off limits, you don’t even get to make that decision. That’s not your call, your place to say that, because I did not offer them to you and I wasn’t planning to. They are more interesting than anyone I know, and I choose them over the rest of the planet every day, every day and don’t apologize for the fact that you don’t want them, because they don’t want you either. You don’t want to be a dad, that’s cool, because they don’t need one and they don’t want you to be one either. We’re fine, just how we are. Did I not seem fine? Did I appear to be in distress, in some way, when you met me? Did I appear to be lacking something fundamental which only you could provide? No? Well, there you go then. We have a good life. If you were lucky maybe you would be invited to be a part of it. If you weren’t such a raging nimrod.

these fragments I have shored against my ruin

Oh, memory.

I was discussing with my friend the idea that the way we remember it, the way it made us feel and the things we documented and recorded and understood, these things exist only in our head and not in the actual event. Because how could it? It was not that way for the witness, the mate, the co conspirator. Their story, their experience, is so different from ours. Even though all of the physical elements are the same, words, actions, locations, the experience is so different as to make it seem like we were not in the same place at all.

This occurs to me as I am reading this book, The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. In it she discusses grief and loss and the nearly unbearable effects of both. Unbearable because it is not unbearable at all, I infer. And I realize, now, suddenly, that the things that I have grieved for and mourned over were losses, yes, some of them staggering, others patently frivolous, but were only (nearly) unbearable to me because of the way I remembered them. Not the way they really were, perhaps. If I could get that into my head, if I could just get that. I have these things, these memories, and I take them out and I speak to them and I go What I would give to have this, even just once more. And that's like the death of a thousand cuts. Little pieces at a time, taken seperately they are irritants but compounded become fatal. Little things. The time we did this. The time he said that. The way we were together and apart when we knew we would be together at the end. The way things were, were, even though they actually were not. Because if they had been, if they had been really, wouldn't it have been the same for both of us? In order for it to be real, for it to have been?

And so I look at them, these little videos that run constantly despite my best efforts, and I wonder what it was like for them. For him. That thing that was so important to me and was clearly just, not, important at all. What was his experience that time? What was the reality of the situation from his perspective? Was the look that I took to be love really just the fleeting thought of how the Yankees had picked up Alex Rodriguez, and how different would that have made the rest of that experience, had I known? That time that he had gotten up from his chair and walked over and rubbed the back of my neck, was that really a shared intimacy or was he simply tired of seeing the tag on my shirt? That time that he left without kissing me only to turn back and do it, was that really the sense that he had missed something important or was it something else entirely, something unrelated to me and us and what I thought our life was?

The last time that I saw Scott, actually saw him physically, right in front of me, he did something. We had decided that this time we would go to the courthouse seperately because going at the same time, meeting each other there for the purpose of severing our ties, was making me crazy. It really was. So we made this decision, and I closed the door to my car, and he watched me for a minute and then he came over and opened the door and gave me the last hug that I would ever get from him. And I thought How great of him, to see what a mess I am right now and decide that he could not let that be the way we went, the way things went, that he would do me this last kindness and then be gone. Later, when I got home, I discovered something behind me in the seat. It was a document that I had refused to take from him on several occasions. He had walked over, opened my door, and hugged me in order to place those papers there, where I could not refuse them.

How differently would my life have gone if I had not discovered those papers? If I had been left with my version of events, the version in which he is thoughtful and compassionate at the very end? How much has the reality of the event colored my perception of our entire life together, of him as a person, of me as a person, that I did not elicit that response in my own husband, that the sight of me breaking two feet away did not actually move him in the slightest, that I had that little effect? I wish I didn't know, because I do know, and I know that the versions that I choose to live with are mine only, and that I create them, and they are not real. My memories are not real. They are fabrications, the way I interpreted and projected and chose to see things. A fantasy. Every single one.

So now, I am clinical in most every interaction that I have. What is that, what do you mean, how did this strike you and how will you remember this? It drove one person in particular to accept my resignation from position of night time companion with an exhale of relief, and he told me that he had not known how much longer he could deal with it anyway, the constant need for explanation and clarification, that he was uncomfortable even walking in to the room in case I wanted to know why he had walked in with his left foot leading.

That's difficult to hear, because I know when I'm doing it and I do it anyway, because I also know that if I don't ask, if I don't have that clarification, I will eat myself alive from the inside out imagining all the possible implications of leading with the left foot. And I see myself doing it, hear myself demanding an explanation, and I imagine myself just letting it go for once, just this time, and I don't. Even when I do, I don't, because I bring it up later. Remember when you said that? Remember? Well try, because I need to ask you something. And the sigh.

But I want to make sure I'm getting it right, see? I want to make sure that I'm not seeing something that isn't there, that later, when I go This is what was, that I am confident that it really was.

I wonder if it makes a difference, really. I think it would. I think it would be easier to accept, later, the knowledge of how it had been all along, and that maybe my loss is not as monumental as I think because really, it was never what I thought it had been.