undone: part two - distance to the water

10 a.m. New Years Day.

Panic. I wake in panic. Daylight. Eyes open, mind frantic, surveying everything, everything, everything – laundry, bills, work – essay and news analysis due tomorrow at work, write, eat, the car – return Laura and Neil’s car. Waking into a new year, no gradual fade into light, acute awareness of everything. Breathe in the resolution, “I can” slow my brain, “I can,” stay still “I can,” until I’m able to put my feet down without running.

Dirty clothes cascade over the wicker hamper, flowing into a lumpy pool on my closet floor so I have to stand at the edge and lean over it to pull a clean shirt from the hanger. I didn’t spend NYE with Scott. Took six weeks and four holidays, but I finally said “No.” Okay. That’s something, right? That’s progress, right? I can. I can. I can.

The car doesn’t have a chance to warm-up during the quick drive, but in the house it’s cozy – fire crackling, pancakes frying, kids on pillows watching Cars while dad cooks and mom sleeps late. MMMM. I want this scene, and it digs into my ribs. It digs and this essay/application, the one I’ve had weeks to do and haven’t started, kicks. Walk home smoking a camel light, fingers numb, down to the butt. I do this, smoke, and I’m not a smoker. Off and on, and off and on, and off and on, again. Smoke the stress in and out. Am I just so ADD that I can’t even follow through with addiction?

A New Year begins.

Climb into pillow nest, swaddled in blankets on the floor and stare at the computer. Read pages of white on black and pages that didn’t make it. Everything but this one day I need to dissect, rebuild and turn-in to the head of the online team tomorrow. I don’t.

Everyday I don’t. I can’t. Start tired and sleep less, lay awake worrying but not doing until “I can” is not a meditation nor a resolution, simple desperation. Unconvincing encouragement spoken quickly, unevenly. Begged.

I can I can I can I can I can I can I can I … Can I?

Exhuastion becomes a bizarre kind of forced mindfulness where I feel each foot fall, every bend in my legs to pick that foot up, because if I stop paying attention to my legs, they will stop going. Light and heavy, both. Step. Step. Step. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Step. Step. Step. Stepping in every step. If I stop being in every step, I will be laying on the cement. This is how it is in my body. This is me as the subject of my own sleep deprivation experiment

David Bowie climbs into my brain while I sleep so I wake to a tune I haven’t heard in months. There it is – David Bowie and Queen - sounding off as my internal alarm clock: “This is our last dance. This is ourselves .. Under pressure ... Under pressure ... pressure ... pressure ... ”

2007
~ ~~~~~~

It's next week. There is distance and there is the relief and there is the bud, not even the first bud but the puffy spots pushing out of the end of each branch quietly trying to become buds, tenatively preparing, of understanding. Of course it was the holidays. Of course last week was the ugly re-entrance into reality. Of course, last week was the end of excusing myself. Of course. Last week was me remembering, without any words, something I said to Karin a week before Christmas on the day I was meeting Scott and the kids at Saturday market.

We're standing in her doorway. I'm there for hannukah wrap and she's putting a kettle on. Saturday morning comfortable in slippers and a sweater.

"Are you staying for tea."

"I can't," I say, and I don't want to say the rest. "I have to stop by the post office and I told Scott I'd meet him and the girls I'd meet them for Pad Thai at the market." I say the last part soft and fast, hoping to sneak past it without calling attention to the reality of what I'm doing.

She doesn't need words to question this plan.

"I know," I say. "I know, but it's just the holidays. And this is it. Then it changes back, no more dinners together." What am I doing?

"Okay. The holidays, but after the first of the year, if you're still having diners with him, we're talking about this."

It's the end of the second week of the year and in the steam rising from my tea cup is everything I already know, it's from the voices across the table and it's rising in the steam and it's already huge inside of me. Now. Now it changes, again. The diners have to stop. The baby sitting has to stop. The nights of me coming home to him on my couch after two full workdays - first with the girls, then at the paper - and fighting about the same shit. Has to stop.

There are the ideas coming from across the table, swirled in with the honey, dissapating in green tea and they go down pretty easy this way. No Scott. I can go a month without seeing him, even for the transitions. Extreme maybe, but bounrdies are blury to me and, on this one, I'm not so different from my kids. The lines have to be fat and solid, inflexible, or I will just keep crossing further into confusion. Tell myself I'm still confused while hearing in everything I say, reading in everything I write, that I'm not. I'm not confused. No Scott. I'm done.

It's one more tiny, fucking ginormous, terrifying step into, into me. Why do I keep using these words "terrifying, horrifying, scary" and "Me?" Really, I'm not so bad.


~~~~~~


Five days into the new year everything crashes into me, within me. A Friday. Can't find my efffing phone again, can't find child care for this afternoon appointment I haven't prepared for, can't find a speck of anything within me to keep doing. And we are running late for school again.

I'm in the girls' room, floor peeking out in patches from beneath strewn toys, picking through the mismatched sock bag for something to put on Amelia's feet. If not a pair, something in the same shade.

The girls' voices singing from the living room.

"Lights dim, voices low, it's time for a puppet show ..." Amelia, tucked between the chair and the wall, fingers tucked into a frog, a cow and a pig, playing her happy play.

"I'm climbing onto the chair to see," Josie, half into the blue glidder.

I hear all of this. See it without looking.

"NO! Stay down. You are too close. You can't climb up. Josie get down"

A thump, tiny body hitting the floor. Screams.

I'm still in the bedroom. "Amelia Rose GO TO YOUR ROOM. RIGHT NOW!" The yell rakes my throat, broken glass pulled hard over vocal cords. Puppets laying like little soilders, down, on the floor.

I am a wretched mom. Short and angry and ruining her child's play. Damn it, what are you doing? now I'm scolding me. They didn't choose this. They have no say in this. This exhaustion is yours, your choosing to have life this way, not them. Don't take it out on them. You are the only mother these kids have and they have no say in these changes, so fucking pull yourself together and stop punishing them for the strain of YOUR life. You are ruining these girls. My head tells me.

Then it pounds. My head pounds in the car, throat still aching from the yelling, chia pet alarm clock harmonizing with winnie the pooh talking phone, tormenting me. The pounding sinks down through my skull, throbbing teeth. Breathe.

~~~~~~

Same Friday. Five days into the year. The phone rings at work, I answer and stand to look for the slot, the caller is looking for the slot, and I stand to look. Reach down for the desk, smooth beneath my hand, and stabalizing as I start to feel myself fade, hold on and surf through the rush. Dizzy. Sit down, regroup and type in the request: "If we have enough staff to cover the workload tomorrow, can I take a vacation/mental health day?"

~~~~

That we are 70 percent water has never made sense. How can it be?

I get it now. The tears come and come and come untill I'm not sure there is even one percent solid. Ninety-nine precent liquid rushing out while I walk through the warm of January down toward the park. Follow a street that dead ends into the high school, past the house Amelia likes. A yellow house with a for-sale sign on the lawn and prayer flags across the porch. We play this game on our walks, picking out houses it would be fun to live in. She picked the yellow one. I pointed out a dark green, Old Portland, craftsman.

"I don't want to live in a swampy green house. I want a color that's more delightful." I laugh, still hearing her, as I pass the yellow house. Tears and rain on my face. I know what I know.

There is the darkness, yes,and my eyes have adjusted. The quality of it has shifted, lightened, my night vision is keen. It might be hard and I may be unraveling, and still, I know what I know.

There was a time when I gaged the distance to the water from every bridge in Portland. But I know (without ever having tested it) just how to drop, and I’m a strong swimmer, and I don’t want to jump from bridges anymore, just safe passage across. Just get me to the other side and let me feel solid, steady earth beneath my feet. I want this life. Tears and terror and exhuastion and all. I want it. Hard maybe, but still better than it was when the work was divided between two of us. When I wanted to jump. No retreat.

Round the corner of the school into the park and duck under my favorite tree. Branches spreading above, perfect nesting spot out of reach. Maybe ten years ago?
Sit on the roots, looking through the canopoy. Eyes burning.

God. Oh please, God, let the fibers be strong enough. Let the fabric hold.

Out of the park to the library, to the Tibeten place on Sandy for diner alone with my book. Potatoes and spinich and "Little Miss Strange." I like my company. Everything will be alright. I will be. Alright?