That’s not what’s really wrong now is it?

Knuckles white on the steering wheel she drove aimlessly through the city. She had just pulled out of yet another restaurant parking lot where she’d done the exact same thing……. She’d walked in, looked over their menu, tried to imagine the tastes of the different food and decipher if it was what she wanted, but it just wasn’t.

What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she chose? It’s just dinner.

Tears began to stream slowly down her face. She took in a deep breath and her body shuddered as she fought back the sobs that were trying to come out. It wasn’t really about not being able to chose a restaurant now was it? No, no of course it wasn’t.

She pulled into the parking lot of a popular sushi restaurant. Sushi wasn’t really what she wanted either, but she was growing weary from driving to and from different places as she had been doing for over an hour. It was growing late so she checked to make sure the sushi restaurant would still be open long enough for her not to feel rushed.

Sitting at her table she pulled the baseball cap lower to shield her bloodshot eyes. She attempted to play off her silent crying as the sniffles of allergies. This restaurant was obnoxiously dark and the type that played house music and served over priced rolls.

Her sushi didn’t seem to fill the empty spot that was demanding attention. Maybe she should try a glass of wine? That didn’t seem to do it either. She should have known that from her whiskey induced attempt to quiet the incessant roar the night before. “It doesn’t really matter anyway,” she told herself. It was smart to order the whole bottle being half price wine night as it were.

So there she sat there in the farthest corner of trendy eatery with a ball cap pulled low crying into her half price wine. “How will this pain ever stop?” she wondered. It seemed that anything could trigger her.

Showering earlier to prepare for dinner, welding had crossed her mind. She had driven him to a welding school. He had said he needed help, needed direction. She’d found the best welding school in the city and taken him. The program was perfect for him. He’d been so excited. The first certification was only $1500.

She’d promised to pay for his education were he to be denied grant money from the state. Why had they taken so long to see if he was eligible? She’d wanted him to step up and take charge, to make the appointment with the counselor. Then came his accident…. he had a long recovery. After that….. she’d just lost focus. Why had she done that?

If he’d been able to attend the school, would that have changed everything? Would it have given him the hope he needed to go on? There was so many things she could have done differently. So. Many. Things.

Dessert was served. Chocolate wantons with decadent cinnamon ice cream. She just sat and stared at it. As she chewed she felt no pleasure. How can one feel excitement through their taste buds when the heart that pumps blood to them barely beats?

Never, ever, ever had one person wanted a redo so badly in their entire life as this sad girl sitting in a restaurant crying into her half priced wine and listlessly chewing her acclaimed desert.

I’m someone’s sister, I’m someone’s daughter

“You have reached the voicemail of……,” the machine droned on.

She listened for the beep, took a deep breath and tried to steady her shaky hands.

“You know what? It’s not fair. It’s not fair to me. You’re the one who relentlessly pursued so hard, texting 300K times a day, saying things like, you’re so great, I just can’t imagine why you’re single, I’m ready for a relationship. You know what, if somewhere along the way you decided that wasn’t with me, that’s fine, but good lord, I would think you could at the very least say so instead of taking the world’s easiest and most immature way out by avoiding me entirely, by not answering, by not texting back.

That just leaves me feeling like shit. Did you ever bother to consider how confusing that is for the other person? You want to know why I’m single? This is why I’m single, because over the years men have done exactly what you’ve done….. pursued like they were on fire and then just gone completely cold and silent. And you know what? It’s the easy way out for you, but in the end it should leave you feeling just as shitty as me, because you’re the one who has to duck calls and texts instead of just saying to someone….. I’m not interested anymore.

You know, I’m someone’s daughter, I’m someone’s sister. I’m a person with feelings. You’d think you would at least respect another human being enough to remember those things. I got the off-landish idea that you were different. but instead you’re just the same…. treating me without any respect, like a frat boy player would treat the girl of the hour, good for you and all it cost you was your maturity and human decency.”

As she ended the call she breathed out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding in. She set her phone on the table and looked at it. It was then she noticed her hands were once again steady and she smiled.

“Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone?
You’re whole life waiting on the ring to prove you’re not alone.” – Pink, Glitter in the Air.

Ziggy the Cartoon Doll

His name was Aaron, spelling unknown, last name unknown.

These things are unimportant to little girls. Little girls don’t stop to wonder what someone’s full legal name is. They don’t stop to question where someone is from, their education, their social background; not their next door neighbor for sure. He’s the nice man who mommy waves to every day. He’s the nice man who daddy stops to chat with about the weather.

Aaron had many things in his home, it seemed to her that it was what adults would call cluttered and it smelled of “old man”. Everyone knows the smell, but what is it really? One might say “old man” smells of moth balls, but in truth she had no idea what moth balls smell like. To her, the “old man” smell was the overwhelming smell that she became very familiar with, but always held a strong distaste for.

Often the smell of “old man” was covered up by the smell of cookies or candy. She really loved cookies, especially sugar cookies. When she bit into them and the crystals crunched between her teeth she couldn’t help but smile. Candy, a favorite of almost all red blooded children, was in abundance at Aaron’s house. When she would visit she would squeal with delight as she skipped around looking in dishes and bowls strewn about. He sat on his couch and watched her intensely as she pranced and danced through the rooms looking for treats and goodies.

He laid out plenty of toys for her to play with as well. One of her favorites was a Ziggy doll just like the cartoon in the newspaper that she looked forward to every week. The Ziggy cartoon was always a delight because they were short and easy for her to understand. Even if she didn’t get it, she would chuckle along with her daddy because it was something they shared, something that made her feel special.

She was the ideal little girl, at any time she could have been photographed for the cover of a children’s book. Her mother loved to sew and loved her little girl even more. She sewed and sewed beautiful doll-like dresses for her beloved daughter. So each day, the little girl donned frilly dresses and pastel bows, folded over socks and Mary Jane shoes.

She had the biggest personality and an affinity for being in the spotlight. She loved to tell stories and make people laugh. Her parent’s friends would often say to them, “You’ve got an actress there, you do.”

Aaron watched her on this particular day as she skipped about his house bubbling over with stories about her pet cat and favorite dolls. She was regaling, with particular flourish, a fight that her dolls were having over who would have Ken as a date to the prom that year. Such a beauty she was, and he had been so lonely lately.

The little girl, filled with charisma, shined so bright that she often had no idea when she wandered into dark and gloomy areas. It was her glow that kept her from seeing the sadness and grief she was bustling around in. As she danced and danced, he watched and watched.

“Little girl,” he said. “Come here while I tell you a story.”

She flitted over to him and crawled up on to his lap where he beckoned for her. Eyes big and bright she looked up into his face and waited to hear what tales he would tell her today. Only today, something was different. What was that? What was she feeling?

Through the cotton/rayon blend of her silky panties lined with elastic lace she felt….. pressure. Then, almost instantaneously she felt something else….. shame. Followed by, most shockingly of all….. pleasure.

She looked down at the Ziggy doll in her hands and blinked a few times trying to get things into focus. What was happening to her? What were all of these feelings? So many of the feelings that were rushing over her, cascading through her, they were unidentified feelings. She had never felt these things before. Confused. She was confused.

He moved his hand methodically over the satiny silky cloth feeling her heat. He prattled on about something they both weren’t paying attention to. She was so busy trying to make sense of the moment, processing that a trusted adult was evoking these feelings. And he, who can say what the mind of a monster feels and thinks…..

Her innocence flowed out of her. The bright and blinding light dimmed. Her smile and storytelling faded away. The days passed, the encounters became increasingly frequent and more intense. She became good friends with the Ziggy doll, because only the Ziggy doll knew….. only the Ziggy doll, her and the “old man” smell. She replaced her joy with the cookies and candies which she ate listlessly, her rewards for being a “good girl”.

When the Sunday papers came, she no longer chuckled along with her daddy. She looked on with a blank stare at the comic papers and felt….. nothing. She was slipping away, deep inside, far and into the back of her mind. She was building her first box, her first place to stuff full and compartmentalize and she couldn’t even spell compartmentalize, much less define or pronounce it.

List It to Forget It

She sat clutching her coffee cup with her perfectly manicured hands. Her nails were always done. Always. You’d never see her with a broken nail, but you’d also never see her natural nails. For as far back as she could remember, she’d always worn acrylic nails in the style of a French manicure.

She’d often pondered having them coated with a delicate powder pink, something that would tell the world that she was soft and fragile like the petals of a tea rose. But no, that wouldn’t work when she headed out to be a powerful business woman. So no…. no, no, she couldn’t opt for a soft pink.

Perhaps, a brilliant and deep blood red? It was another color she admired, full of sex appeal and power. She certainly COULD opt to have her nails painted any color she chose. She had no partner, husband, boyfriend with which to consult or please in passive ways. But no…. no, no, best not to wear the polish of a harlot.

Instead, she regularly went to have her nails buffed and filed in to a perfect clean French manicure, not too long, not too short. Many of her friends would never know that she agonized over something as simple as a nail color. They did not know how much time she spent internalizing her choices and reworking them over and over. In a controlled chaos she systematically picked apart most of her daily choices, words spoken and words heard in conversation and all interactions, new and comfortable.

If you were to ask a friend they might describe her as reckless and yet sweet. Misguided, but thoughtful. Perhaps some would even call her a little lost, but what none of them would disagree upon was that this girl contained more strength than your average pretty face.

It was this strength that she had built over years of making her way through this shit show we call life. Headstrong and determined, she sought to always make her own decisions from a place of experience rather than to listen to the wisdom of her elders. This led her down some paths that could have been prevented, but strength she gathered by the baker’s dozen due to these choices. She had powered through some things that would debilitate some of her peers and she had weathered them like plagues. One after another, after another.

The strength she gathered from this was not something she was proud of. In fact, when people were to say to her, “You are such a strong woman.” She felt anger boil over in her heart. She wished she had some of her delicacy left, some of her innocence. It was this thought that left her in the corner of the popular neighborhood coffee shop clutching her coffee cup and staring at her laptop screen.

“Just make a list of all the THINGS,” MJ said. “Just list out everything that you’ve stored away, everything you’ve compartmentalized through the years.”

MJ was a kind of life counselor, a guidance coach for her. If you were to ask their formal affiliation it would be defined similar, although, neither were sure how that was going to play out. She respected MJ in many ways and enjoyed their time together. It was for this reason she was considering making this preposterous list.

In truth, making the list would offer many different benefits. Or so she hoped/was told.

“So just make a list,” she thought. “Just make a list of all the things you hated, all the things you wish you could change, all the things you wish had never happened, all the things you regret, all the things you pity yourself for.”

It felt so self indulgent to consider such a thing. She was not one to ever have lost blame for being self indulgent in the past, but partaking in more than one’s fair share of alcohol was not quite the same as basking in all of the things that you felt sorry for yourself over.

“Do other people do this?” she wondered. “Do other people open these kinds of doors? Do other people get some feeling of release from confronting the things that they’d like to forget the most?”

She blew the steam from her second skinny vanilla latte and then scraped up the crumbs from the very non-skinny cupcake she had devoured. Unfortunately, her favorite cup of coffee and a sugar rush cupcake couldn’t cure the uneasy pit in her stomach. Could she do this? Standing on the edge, toes hanging over slightly, looking into the abyss of her sadness…..  could she write her list?

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.“ - Friedrich Nietzsche