Jenn

So then I tried to distract myself by watching recorded shows. Ones that had been camping out for months, waiting for me to remember that I actually liked them. I watched Three Rivers. Why I liked that one, I do not know. I watched NCIS: Los Angeles. That one I love. I watched the last two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. These made me cry. Both of them. So much for distraction.

By this time it’s eleven or so. My head’s started to hurt. I figured maybe if I eat that might help so I all but hobbled downstairs to the kitchen (on days like this, mental anguish begins to take on a physical form, and all my joints hurt, especially my knees and ankles) to pour a giant bowl of Cheerios.

I camped out on the sofa and flipped through a dozen channels. First I settled on football. While last night, I might have succeeded, momentarily, in shrugging off despair with the glee of anticipating a fast-approaching football season, this morning football could not pacify me. So then I switched to What Not to Wear because I think Stacy and Clinton are cool. This morning, however, they annoyed me. So then I switched to Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader. No luck there either.

By this time I was crying again. I figured sitting at home’s not helping, and I have errands to run — money to deposit, bills to pay, vehicular registrations and inspections to make current, a vehicle to wash. responsibility. So I went back upstairs to change. I managed to quell the tears while doing this. but then, as I got my hair wet — because fine, curly hair never does well the day after — the tears came again. the more I stop and start this crying, the more despairing the tears are. I remembered I’d left my comb in my father’s car the night before. So it’s back downstairs to my parent’s bathroom, still crying. Somewhere between the landing and the doorway to their bedroom, the crying morphed into full-on wailing and misery.

Which morphed into wrath seconds after I’ve entered their room.

And by this time, by this time I might as well have been hunched in a ball in a corner.

Wrath terrifies me. Whatever strength I think I might have dissipates rapidly in her presence.

Tears that were once huge rivers became quiet streams that are more reluctant to flow, and I was chanting no, much like my then nineteen-month-old niece and nephew do when they’re crying and miserable. No. No. No. Scared. Because I never think I’m going to get through it when I’m in the throes of wrath.

But somehow I do.

And I’m grateful for this.

I rounded the corner, passed their closet, padded into their bathroom, still chanting. I rummaged through my mother’s cosmetics drawer for a comb and sat on the commode to slowly, slowly, run the comb through the tangles. Five minutes or so of this, and I was better.

Drained but better.

The trouble is, I didn’t indulge wrath.

Usually it’s better if I let her play for a bit. harder to handle. harder to live through. But better in the long run. Usually, afterward, I’m tired but nice. I won’t smile at you, but I won’t tear your head off, either.

I’ve got those errands to run, and on this day I wasn’t so sure of my strength so I shoved her back.

Somewhere between the time I left the house and the time I came home, I got ugly with cranky and snarly. So much so that by the time I got to the last errand, I was at the I’m-gonna-tear-your-head-off-just-for-looking-at-me stage.

When I was twenty-five my family went to Austin for the Fighting Irish versus the longhorns football game. A handful of my older brother’s friends met up with us. I’d been having a conversation with one of them — I’m a pretty sarcastic girl, and those who know me are amused by this as they should be because I mean it in good fun, but those who don’t aren’t so much. This one didn’t know me. All of the sudden he comes out with God, you’re bitter. I don’t even remember what I’d said that prompted him to say this, except that whatever I’d said, I hadn’t meant for it to be so sarcastic that it offended.

Flash forward. I thought of this conversation today. Of this friend of my brother’s.

Today, I was a prime example of bitter hag. Ugly with it.

This is what happens when I don’t give into wrath.

I bitched at an employee — an elderly woman who works in the floral department (What a lovely job that must be. Really. Happy and thoughtful) — for not washing her hands after using the restroom before returning to work. I snarled at the library staff because printing a single sheet of paper is more of an inconvenience and challenge than I think it ought to be. God forbid I should consider that they don’t have to offer such a service. I don’t have a printer hooked up to my mac. My mother’s printer, at the time, was not communicating with her computer, and my father’s computer was off limits so I had to borrow someone else’s. That it doesn’t work like I want it to do so was, apparently, a criminal offense.

The best example? I stopped by a courthouse, after having finally succeeded in enlisting the help of a reference librarian to get the damned proof of insurance card I needed so that I could get my registration updated, and had been walking, rather intently (in other words, in a don’t-fucking-talk-to-me fashion), when a woman had the audacity to smile at me and ask if I worked there.

What? (Said in the same fashion as I had used when walking.)

Do you work here? (She was walking toward me, still smiling, still being friendly. Curious. In need of help.)

I was wearing a T-shirt promoting a Grand Junction, Colorado brewery, capris and flip-flops. I looked like death. No. (Said in a what-the-hell-would-make-you-ask-such-a-stupid-question tone of voice.)

Now she’s not so friendly. Now she’s taken aback, and a hell of a lot smarter than she’d been a second before. she proceeded to tell me that the building was locked, that I couldn’t get in, that I was rude…etc., etc., etc.

The moment I heard that I can’t get in, I turned and headed back to my car. So while’s she’s telling me that I’m rude…

I could hear this boy’s voice in my head, just as I could while at the library. See his face just as clearly today as I’d seen it a dozen years before. God, you’re bitter.

Earlier that day I’d found a picture of me as a first-grade student. In it I’m sitting there with my hands in my lap, my arms pressed to my sides, my shoulders slightly drawn up. I’m grinning. beautifully.

I wish I could be that girl again. I wish I could channel her and infuse my present personality with a bit of the cute and funny my mother said I was back then.

I don’t understand why I have to hurt so much. I don’t understand how I could hurt others knowing how much the hurting sucks ass.

Originally published September first, ‘ten.

My favorite sweatshirt is one I purchased twelve years ago at Aggie Outfitters at the mall in College Station. At the time I’d originally written this post, it was too big for me, which was one of the reasons I love it. It falls to the middle of my thigh, and the sleeves are long enough that my hands are hidden by the fabric. And it’s hooded. I can get lost in this sweatshirt.

I ain’t that scarred when I’m covered up (Beth Hart — Leave the Light on).

It’s thick, good, strong, warm cotton. Wearing it is like being wrapped up in a thick, flannel blanket.

But the best thing is the giant 12 imprinted on the front in worn white numbers, trimmed in gold. Big, bold blocks of Twelfth Man.

I wear it when my soul is at its weakest.

I was walking the streets of Cardiff at three in the morning, back to the hotel after a quest to find a debit machine so I could get the cash I needed to pay the cab fare for transit from the hotel to the airport. The hotel had an ATM in the lobby, and I’d expected to get money there, but there was some festival going on while I was in Cardiff… something comparable to Mardi Gras… and the tenants had emptied the hotel’s ATM in the night. So I set out… alone.

Like any other city, the streets of Cardiff at three a.m. look nothing like the streets at three p.m. I marveled at the city’s ability to clean up the excessive debris from a drunken night of debauchery in such a short time. If one were to be on those streets at ten a.m., all evidence of the previous night’s party would have been swept up and tossed in the garbage. But on this night, as I was walking, I think there easily might have been two hundred plastic cups broken and crushed on the concrete in front of one bar. I passed a lot of bars.

At three a.m., just like at three p.m., a lot of people are milling about, but the early morning’s crowd is dressed dramatically different than the afternoon’s, and instead of anticipating the fine time to come as the afternoon’s crowd does the early morning’s bunch are coming down from the high of having that fine time.

And there’s me, who’s been up for maybe ninety minutes, who’s exhausted from a mediocre vacation and a mild depressive episode. I was shoving my way back to the surface. At least, I was trying to do so. I’d had a good day’s rest and was bound for the airport, for family, for home, so I was a little better.

But better is a fragile thing.

There’s me in my comfort clothes, making my way through the crowds as quickly, as unobtrusively as possible. I was a little scared, so I didn’t look at anyone directly. I tried not to call too much attention to myself.

But there’s that giant, white twelve, and quite a few noticed it.

No one said anything. Not until I was a couple of blocks away from the hotel, just around the corner. And I thought Almost there, almost there. I was reveling in the knowledge that I’d made it unharmed.

Three men walk by me. After they’d passed, one of them called out, Hey, twelve! You’re not a number! You’re a female!

I’d considered saying something when I heard another say, And ugly!

Mentally everything stopped. In my head, I just stood there, frozen, shocked, humiliated, hurt and horrified that my day had begun this way. In my head, I cried. I could almost feel the breath freeze in my lungs and my heart stop, just for a second.

But outside, I appeared as though I was unfazed. There wasn’t a hitch in my step that betrayed me. Not a shift in my posture so that my shoulders seemed slumped. I kept walking.

It’s not normally a shocking sentiment. I’ve heard this more times, so many more times than I care to recall. It’s not new. It’s not something I’ve not told myself more times than I’ve heard it, in hopes that hearing it would hurt less.

It’s that I’d not heard it in a while. That I liked my face well enough when I got dressed that morning. That it’d been said by someone on the other side of the world.

It’s that the sentiment is now universal.

And the sweatshirt, the thing that once provided some small bit of solace, is now tainted by the taunts of three men I met on the streets of Cardiff at three in the morning, and every time I look at it, I’ll think of them, of that day, of that ugliness.

Originally published August thirty-first, ‘nine.

So the day before originally writing this, I went on a miserable date at the Houston Zoo, and it started sprinkling. I yelled at the heavens to do more than that — we hadn’t seen rain in what felt like ages. I bargained with God, and yeah I know that I shouldn’t do that, but I did it anyway. I said that if He would let it rain, really rain, I’d go to church for the next four Sundays.

It really rained. Not as long as I would’ve liked, but a deal’s a deal.

I’m not so fond of my church so I went to a different one. On this particular day, it was a better one. I’m kind of the mind that all church is the same… boring.

But that day’s Mass seemed to be tailored for me. It was about the sheep who stray from the Shepherd.

When I was a little girl and my family would take vacations to the other parts of the country the moment we’d checked in and unloaded our baggage into our hotel rooms I’d take off. I’m not sure I’d tell my folks where I was going, just that I was. It would never be too far, but I was young enough that it must’ve worried them a little bit. I’ve a habit of wandering off. Still do.

They left me in a gallery in Santa Fe once. I’d found a print I liked. It wasn’t a great print, but something about it appealed to me. It was of a girl standing in a field holding a candle with one hand cupped around the flame to keep the wind from extinguishing it. The colors were sort of muted — not pastel, just softer, like everything had been cast in shadow. There were mountains and a house and a sunset in the distance. Not an exemplary print by any means. But for some reason my interest had been so captured that I’d knelt on the floor in front of it and gawked. My parents and my brothers called to me a number of times that they were leaving. I’d call back, like I was getting ready to get going, but I wouldn’t move. Could only sit there. And sit I did, for a very long time.

Finally I got up, and they were gone.

So used to wandering on my own was I, though, that I thought nothing of it. I was quite confident that they’d realize they’d left me and would come back for me.

I’m not sure how long it took them to come to that realization. I vaguely remember chatting with the gallery owner while scoping out the rest of the pictures she’d had on display.

My mom came in and got me. She thanked the owner for the trouble. We went on about our vacation.

A week or so later my parents got a package in the mail. I stood with my mother at the kitchen table in the breakfast room, looking over her shoulder as she unfurled the roll of prints that they’d purchased at that gallery. And there, amidst the pictures my parents had chosen, was the print I’d admired. The woman had included it at no charge because she’d enjoyed watching me study it. I’d been eleven or so at the time. I remember being in awe of the woman’s generosity. People didn’t normally do nice things for me then.

I’m still in awe of that generosity, actually. I still have the print.

The point of that diatribe is this: if a sheep’s got a habit of wandering, isn’t the Shepherd somewhat responsible for keeping an eye on the sheep and making sure she doesn’t get lost?

I feel so lost right now. I’ve felt that way for decades, and the older I get the more lost I become.

One of my friends had a song, Come on Get Higher, by Matt Nathanson on her blog. It’s kind of country. I’m not so much a fan of country music, but every now and then some song will strike a chord. This one’s got something in it about Make you believe; make you forget.

Oh, how I wish I could.

I almost cried during Mass twice the day I wrote this. I couldn’t sing because the lyrics kept choking me up. And the singing’s my favorite part of Mass.

I make it a point not to cry in public. I used to do it all the time as a child when I was in school. And then I learned to hide.

We sang The Prayer of St. Francis:
Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope
where there is darkness only light
and where there's sadness ever joy

And, later, The Gift of Finest Wheat:
You satisfy the hungry heart

And as I wrote this... The Fray's Vienna:
There's really no way to reach me

Depeche Mode's Blasphemous Rumors:
But I think that God's got a sick sense of humor
and when I die, I expect to find Him laughing

Train's When I Look to the Sky:
When I feel like there's no one
that will ever know me
there you are to show me

Keane's Somewhere Only We Know:
Simple thing, where have you gone
I'm getting old, and I need something to rely on
so tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin

Indigo Girls' Closer to Fine:
Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
and lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrapped my fear around me like a blanket

And Rachel Yamagata's Elephants:
All I want is to just forget you

I am destined to remember, and the memories make me wary. How’m I supposed to find my way back when I’ve wandered off so far? How could He have let me wander off that much? Why does it feel like no one’s there?

Originally published July twentieth, ‘nine.