Accidental Hiatus: Lines in the Sand

The ancient Greeks believed that there were four main elements that everything was made up of: Earth, water, air and fire. I thought maybe if I understood what I am made up of – what everything is made up of – I would stand a chance.

Isis’ answer was that of living things, some are friends made of earth, some with water, and some with air and some with fire. Some with two or three, some with all. Likewise with enemies. This is my chronology of water.

However, I’m guessing the stark disparity between reading Aristotle’s early oeuvres and being forced to listen to a-nameless-young-man-with-all-the-likability-of-a-Hitler-Youth grumble about the diminishment of his “core strength” to his peroxide biddy is some kind of incongruous analogy for my very existence currently. The less poetic the more poetic.

I’m deaf in my left ear but he’s sitting to my right. Just my luck. Just what my writer’s block needed, it feels personal but I remind myself that it’s not.

He really did have defined abs in the summer of 2016, and if she’d just accept his Facebook friend request she would know that. Ok?

My weak, resounding, silent protest involves nothing more than silently tap-tap-tapping away behind them. Writing them into a different, tiny existence chosen by me. They’re mere characters now; but so am I, and so are you.

The gym cretin is talking about Tina now, they both are.

She did what? NO she didn’t. But she’s not even that kind of girl! OH MY GOD, does Elliott know yet?

What kind of girl? The wrong kind of girl? A me kind of girl?

I want to tell them Elliot doesn’t know and Elliot doesn’t care because Elliot is dead. I don’t know Elliot, so I don’t know if he cares. Also, we can assume he’s not dead. But only takes a second to die. He could be dead. Anyway.

On the second day of February I wrote my last something-of-meaning. I didn’t realize it was Ground Hog Day. Everyone saw his shadow but me.

So, this state of flux is in a state of flux; the indelible static and white noise has become fucking deafening. And it’s not because I’m fearful, or because I’m despondent or puzzled or angry, (or any other apt human emotion for that matter).

It’s because I’m seemingly absent: disassociated, in hiding. Like an autopilot lever that is jammed in place, a streaked and aged mirror, or some other cliché equivalence that makes apathy appear less painfully dull.

On the fourteenth day of August I celebrated one year in Canada. I attempted to add meaning to this. I also attempted to take meaning away. I am

reminding myself that time is both fixed and mutable

reminding myself that while some lines in the sand must be drawn by me

some are antecedent

drawn by strangers

drawn by the ragged strokes of my heart monitor

Be wary of the tide

Be wary of the tide.

Crashing then receding, 2016 came in and went out. As did my last bartending job, my impulse to paint my eyes, nails and words black, and the habit of forgetting my keys but not my flask of whiskey.

Be wary of the tide I said; break often. Break like waves, not porcelain I said.

Crashing and crashing and crashing, 2017. I am reminded to give myself credit instead of blame for the things I have done and held and gained and lost.

And then, imagine: it is late May, the realizations are gentle and then overawing. Large wooden trays of meat, large plastic trays of drinks, large greasy tables of men. Men with wives and children and wandering eyes and wandering hands.

I know, I know. I know, sir. My girl-body sprouted breasts and hips and legs and fear. My girl-body begins and ends here for you. I know I look like your reverie, but you look like the man that raped me. The snidest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us that he didn’t exist.

I took the biggest branch I could find and drew the longest line I could in the deepest sand I could because I could. I could because I couldn’t before, I said. Because it is not fair that he turned suddenly from water to fire. Because I am not responsible for the caprices of men. Because we talk about fight and flight but we don’t talk about freeze, I said. Talk about freeze, I said. Lets all talk about freeze.

I told my mama. 

So I began to thaw; I leaked and seeped and trickled and I spread myself. I painted my nails red. I visited the abandoned home inside my head; I got a job selling leaves and flowers.

Summertime and leaves and flowers. Happiness and silence live at the same address, but I took a trip. Summertime and leaves and flowers. I was silently getting sicker.

In New York the doctor told me I was tougher than I imagined, God does not lay adversity upon those who aren’t strong enough she said.

Your god did this to me?

You don’t even know me.

What is in this syringe?

Shush now, she said.

By the time my parents arrived, I was liquid and it was good. I wondered where they ended and I began. We bubbled and simmered. I was silently getting sicker.

In Montreal I lay on the floor of a diner covered in sweat and vomit, my heart and lungs competing. Exhausted by the seizures, the nausea like a tide. The paramedic commented on my beauty. A girl-body, again? A malfunctioning girl-body, a broken girl-body.

What. It is the valves in your heart. Oui, yes. Atrial fibrillation. Non, non, we will explain later. Wait.

Merci?  

Ten hours in a hospital in French Canada taught me two things: The first, that I can read French almost without effort, the second that I’m terrified of being alone.

I remember this t-shirt my friend used to wear, on the back it said, “no one cares unless you’re pretty or dying.” And, oh man, I so badly want to tell him through some kind of sardonic quip that neither characteristic is actually conducive of care. But he died in 2009. I guess he innately proves my point. I feel him smiling at me, that hilariously pithy bastard. The future has already happened. He was always older than me, and now I am older than him.

Nothing is personal. Nothing is personal, at all, ever. Even the things you want so badly to be personal aren’t personal. In fact, the insignificance of our significant happenings adds to their beauty and pain, not the other way around. And we don’t get to know whether we could have changed it.

I say this because I am tired of thinking myself into infection. I am tired of others thinking me into infection. I am tired of being told wheatgrass and yoga will fix me. I am tired of telling others. Believe it or not, it is easier to heal a figuratively broken heart.

Yesterday I sat with a friend who had exhausted his eighth suicide attempt, I reminded him that we will dead for so much longer than we will be alive. We must draw our own lines in the sand. And hearts and pentagrams and doodles. And the tides will come in and go out and come in and go out and the waves will crash against your chest. You will be water or you will be earth. Likewise your enemies. You will break like waves and not like porcelain. Because, we must and ought to. Because my heart is still beating. Because of summertime and leaves and flowers.