9:00 a.m. - 03/19/02
there is so much more to us than nothing.
wishing words were edible b'cos I so love their taste. lately everything makes more sense when I shut up and read. mom says that's what the hawk (?or was it falcon?) that nearly landed on us as we drove -two days ago- is supposed to mean. pay attention to the signs. words like war paint reused.
I have this collection of words to check up on, other people's public-access personas, listed as favorites. and I guess their wisdom strikes me as a more grounded me taking me into their hands, saying, i-equal-you-girl i.e. i-understand, and somehow everything is better in an epidemic because you know you're not alone.
but when it comes to *that* epidemic I will remind any eds who think they have found comfort here...there is so much more to us than nothing.
I want to meet you on the day you know your most important feature isn't your ability to non-exist.
finally had the means to invest in dilate which, in conjunction with said words, has been the savior of my sanity these past few days. sanity attacked in a thousand subtle ways; it's all a bit better when you have someone screeching in vocal electrics "iiiii ammmmmmmmm....iiiiiiiiii ammmmmmmmmmm....iiiiiiiiiii ammmmmmmmmmm....truly sorry about all this..."
and that's Just It, that's just why I couldn't surrender when harriet said chelsie acted cruelly because it isn't fair to treat a vague memory of a girl eight years removed as "something that happened to you" (me)...it isn't fair to keep her caged that way, and though I do what I can to keep from falling captive to premature forgiveness, this is something so many years forgotten, and there's this voice in me that knows she was just a girl, and I was just a girl, so maybe there's no reason to...
be shaking and screaming and defensive and angry and kicking and FUCKYOU (or don't)...this way.
this way: through the inexplicable means of our memories. let me try to understand you even as I rip your skin to rain. if I were knowingly girl-meets-girl, I wouldn't like youat9. you with your red face and mussed hair teaching me my body was behind, teaching me to fear what I would find when aging, teaching me lessons I DID NOT WANT TO LEARN.
and it is not my fault that I did not scream: you were too subtle for a nightmare; you were water leaking through the windows while I slept. of course, that's only metaphor: we know how rarely my eyes closed that night. it was that 20/20 hindsight; that "now that the bad has already happened, we must watch out for it" post-traumatic paranoia. abuse. she is not allowed to use that word. even though it comes off her lips like rapprochement- simultaneously breaks and heals the seal.
in my head on the way home (harriet)- I told her it was not an ok word. I asked her why she used it (abuse) in reference to me and my experience. she said, "stewert. molested. you. chelsie. tried. to-" and I tell her both are stretches, hyperbolic references (i told her that in reality, too- and she apologized for thinking it had been a forceful "lock you in the closet" scenario). I said, "was what happened abuse?" (because there is some aching in me for it to be the truth: the girl who at twelve discovered tori amos and didn't understand why the connection was visceral. not just in the me-to-poetry but as if, me-to-memory, but no, nothing had happened, had it? it had...I didn't know then.) in her reply realized, I was stalling in semantics, what did they matter, these two-syllables? why couldn't it be enough that I was still bruised and still afraid?
in an art exhibit two weeks away I might stumble across chelsie's developed form. of course, I can't go (can I?)...she's 17 now...what would it mean to take her aside and say, "do you remember what the fuck happened?" (those would not be the right words.) "can you explain it to me?" because god what it would be to have her remember, remorse, relive those days as I have had to do. but what it would destroy to hear her shake her head, shrug, question my reaching into her for something, some *understanding*...yes this is still in need of resolution.
how do you do that to a girl no matter what her age? how do you do nothing and change everything? yes, I am a collection of little nothings, rejected, minimized, confused. hyperboles, by nature, curve both ways...
and I was thinking in the midst of all this (dad sick, chelsie ressurrecting, ana is god, bullshit) about JENNA.
->JENNA<-
fair-skinned human force with hair like ultra-violet rays. wrapping me in her 'you are my rock' catchphrase, even now, when she remains one day's drive away. I wrote her a letter that is more like a confession, always. how is it we are always disassembling our defenses only to find there is more to share?
and it wasn't that we were so intensely close, so much as that we were aware we wanted that with each other...surprise.
and I was thinking about how chelsie took away all the girls my age, how I'm constantly enamored with people old enough to be an aunt (ruuuuuuuth wrote me words like lik-a-maid) and then there was JENNA, somewhat unprecedented, so very capital. making me *want* to be hers even if I wasn't, making me *want* to give it a try, which was new enough to be engaging without action. and she's close enough that I could touch her with only a few hours driving, but I forget she felt something for me. WHY? why don't I keep the words tucked into my rib cage for the rougher days? why don't I remember the way her handwriting curls like bubbles from a child's lip?
it's just too terrifying to lose somethings when your memory is full of skipped spaces and tracks that play in other languages.
(I get defensive when I tell Harriet I don't remember the so-called abuse: it's power. this refusal. it's my memory, mine to resist. I'm sorry for it, but it's power in the powerless: my reticence.)
chord
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