Innocent

The page is from a pale lavender memo pad. I found it today, buried deeply in a box within a box. Today, I find it simple and naked, but unadulterated and sweet.

It was my first semester at college. I was still mixed up in some sort of complicated high school romance. (I don't believe high school sweethearts should stay together.) I wondered innocently what else the world would offer as I wrote the lines, propped up on an elbow and facing the wall. I remember the twin sized dormitory mattress, firm and uneven, covered in some sort of vinyl that would creak with every move. The mattress didn't bother me then because I had wrapped it up in the most predictable of leopard pattern sheets.

I was 19 years old.
How both everything and nothing have changed.

I like red painted toenails
     and independence
I like classic glamour
     and using words like
           fabulous
           marvelous
           scandalous!
I like feeling alive
     and music
I like learning people
     and being comfortable.

Don't lie to me
I want you to feel
my energy and
taste my passion

I like to be dramatic
     and honest

Be sincere with me
because I will love
you.
I am genuine. 

Know Your Role

The truth is that he simply didn't like the way our names looked together on the outside of an envelope. 

Mr. and Dr. S. B.

It is the reason he drank whiskey from the bottle while I was at work.

It is the reason he flipped coffee tables at 2 am and apologized in the afternoon.

It is the reason he threw Christmas gifts at me one by one and then begged me to open them. 

It is the reason he growled into my subconscious after dark. You are a dirty bitch.

But for a moment, I believed him.

Presage

Jason asked me to marry him.  

Her voice was thin and distant. The immediate swell of disquietude was respectfully hidden by a thousand miles and a cell phone. Through my teeth, I told her that I was happy. I may have even forced an invisible smile.

I said yes. 

Katie was my housemate for a year or two during grad school. Back then, we both needed each other. My courage. Her sanity. Red wine and tomato bruschetta for dinner every night. She was good for me. But even then, I knew she needed me more.

You're going to be there, right? 

Only four months ago he left her to "figure things out." But she was buried deep beyond the jurisdiction of reasonable advice by then. Now he asked for a commitment she had already made. In a precipitate both belated and breakneck, we exhaled into the space between us.

Of course. 

Would you erase me?

She liked to start random conversations about the mature, the macabre, and the unconventional. It was no holds barred, as if she had never heard of age-appropriate parenting.

When I was eight years old, my mother informed me that the holidays are the worst time of year.

"For some people," she explained, "the season stirs up old memories they'd much rather forget." She then told me that many people contemplate suicide at Christmastime.
























I sat in the truck next to her, staring out the passenger window while I pondered. It had never crossed my mind that forgetting something might be of benefit. Were there things I wished I could forget? Looking back, there are certainly events I wish had never happened at all. There were grotesque and disturbing things that no child should ever endure.

          But now the damage is done.
          So would forgetting really be a good thing?
          I don't think so.

Time heals all wounds, but memories of how the we sustained them make us stronger. The memory, the knowing, the scar... These protect us from repeated abuse.

To this day I cannot say if my mother just hoped for conversation or if she was leaking the truth. Or perhaps she was purposefully preparing me for the real world.