tanks

Twelve hours and forty minutes from right this very second (seven minutes past eight p.m. on the twenty-eighth day of March in the twenty-first year of the twenty-first century) I will be forty-eight. I’m always a little amazed by my birthday.. and the amazement increases exponentially every year.

I am tired. That is not new. I hurt. Also not new. I’ve significantly more gray hairs… which will be masked with lowlights on the second of April…

The second of April… best date of my life, that day… nineteen years ago. I remember things. Most of the time I wish I could forget. No. Not most. ALL of the time. Best date. Italian food. I love Italian food. Especially when it’s produced in a family-owned, quasi-hole-in-the-wall-but-remarkably-reputable-establishment. Nineteen years ago. A good third of my life. On a Sunday night, right about this same time, on the twenty-eighth of April this man crushed my soul, and I have strived ever since to forgive myself for allowing that to happen. I let him do it. I let him do it because I was too afraid, too confident that it was inevitable, and I couldn’t bear to have it happen after I’d fully invested…. and now here we are. Sipping on a cheap red blend, banging on these keys… I’ve been drinking too much these days. I know better. I’ve had a glass already and chased it with two cans of Bud Light’s Mango seltzer… and I’m back to the cheap Woodbridge red blend… I am not well. I very much wish I could be… but in the same breath, I’m like, why bother? I’m forty-eight. Essentially. It’s all downhill from here. There’s no more climbing. There’s no more striving.

With the exception of a book club meeting that occurred on the same day as my birthday, I’ve never had a group of gals celebrate me in my adulthood. Not once. It’s always been my parents and my brother(s) and the younger’s wife.

I spent six hours at church today… stayed for all three services because I’d hope to wrangle some singles for the singles ministry a small group of us hope to establish. Small church… LOTS of married with childrens in attendance. Not as many singles in attendance today as I’d hoped to find. Anyway… I saw a number of women I love and respect, and my day was brightened because of them… but the moment I walked out of that church… It was overcast today… and the gloom that has constantly plagued me reclaimed its presence. So I went to Zanti’s for a late lunch… and while there I debated for a solid half hour at least whether to ask my friend the question that had been on my heart for quite some time….

Yall. I am SO messed up. And I am SO STINKING tired of feeling SO MESSED UP. Can you imagine for one second how AWFUL it is that I have to beg a woman to wrangle a group of gals together because I want my birthday to feel a little more special?

The only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself is marriage and family, but I can’t have that… so then it’s a solid group of a girlfriends, a squad if you will… and I can’t have that. So then it’s gainful employment… and I can’t have that. So… why the HELL should I bother with ANYTHING? Those are the hopes… and they all seem FOOLISH. Which leaves me with Woodbridge red blend, Relaxing Rain Sounds on Amazon music, Facebook, Match (because I can’t help myself), Seekers Notes: Hidden Mystery, and this room… this box I’ve made more aesthetically pleasing. And in twelve hours and ten minutes now… I will be another year older.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thought, “I don’t want to be alive anymore.” There were days it was a mantra, especially in my older adolescence and young adulthood. Like I spoke it with every breath.

Just moments ago, I muttered it aloud and was struck by how much of an insult it is to God, my father of fathers. He brought me out of the dark, into His wondrous light, and I’ve spent my life begging him to let me die so I can go to Heaven. BEGGING Him. LOATHING the gifts He’s given me because it hurts to be here, because living hurts. I sound like such a child. I feel like such a child.

A week ago Friday I spent two hours in an orthopedist’s office… and only spent maybe five minutes of that time actually visiting with the orthopedist, who told me he didn’t think I’d had the sort of surgeries I’d had. The moment he said that, I tuned out the bastard, gathered my things and stormed out in as much a huff as my crippled legs could muster.

It hurts to live.

Where the hell did I get the idea that it shouldn’t? WHERE. THE. FUCK. DID. I. GET. THAT. SUPREMELY. RIDICULOUS. IDEA?? Because I look at the people in my circles and think it’s EASY for them? GOOD GOD, I’m an idiot. A petulant child throwing a temper tantrum. I had it in my head that at some point, things would be easier.

There’s a Hillsong Worship song, King of Kings, with the line: He did not despise the cross. I have LOATHED mine. I have loathed God for making me carry it. I have loathed life. LOATHED it.

The following is from texts sent yesterday to one of my oldest friends:

I feel broken in many respects at many times… That brokenness is evident in my physical presence–literally and figuratively… not just because of the maladies that have plagued me and persisted despite efforts to correct them but because of how I’ve handled adversity. I feel, often, that adversity has worn away all that is good in me, leaving the uglier aspects of my character raw and exposed. So when people talk about physical appearance being what’s shown of your heart, what of your character is reflected on the surface, when I say that I am not pretty… I’m not just talking about the surface, though that’s certainly one aspect.

There is such rage and impotence within me. I struggle, daily, to mask it. I think perhaps I inherited it from my mother’s father–he so hated that he could not be what he wanted to be. And, more, in me, there is such frustration that I have never felt a strong calling in my life, not one in which I had/have confidence.

I pray, daily, that the Lord would alleviate these feelings in me.

Perhaps this is why I am alone.

Ambition, purpose and a love for life are SUCH attractive qualities. I lack them all. I have no energy to cultivate these things because every attempt has always brought me up so miserably short.

All this is evident in me. I walk cloaked in despair with no confidence that I could walk any other way… because the cloak isn’t a cloak but a strait jacket. I am imprisoned in this body–doctors assumed at my birth I would be better off in an institution for people like me, and the older I get the more convinced I am that they were right.

All that said, I am FAR TOO focused on myself… like my grandfather was far too focused on himself.

Going to school felt like a death march. Coming home felt like a furlough. Every insult, every attack, whether orchestrated by a teacher or student, was mortar, the shrapnel chipping away at my sense of self so that by the time I was in junior high, I was a broken shell of a girl. First I let them destroy my self-image, then I let them destroy my self-worth.

I haven’t survived. I can’t even call this an existence. I wake up, and I waste time until the day is done. I take things to help me sleep… wash, rinse, repeat.

And before you say I should see a therapist, I’ve seen plenty of them. I know all the things. I know all the ways to combat this mentality. Depression is a lack of will. Anxiety is a fear of it. I am plagued by both.

My grandfather was groomed by his parents from a young age to become a surgeon. At some point I’m certain he was convinced he wanted this for himself. But his hands shook. He took medicine to still the tremors but became addicted to it. He drank. Once he had children, he hated not being the focus of the family. He could not change his circumstances so he drowned his sorrows in liquor and lashed out as his wife and children. He was verbally and emotionally abusive.

I have the propensity for this. Perhaps my singleness and childlessness is God’s way of ending the cycle… perhaps my parents’ efforts to steer me away from education was His way as well.

I have a heart for family and learning but the not the mind for it. And my body… often I feel as thought my blood is boiling and my muscles are cords of stone. Pair the physical sensations with the mental ones… it’s an ugly combination. It makes me feel ugly, literally and figuratively. And then I look in the mirror… and I see the ugliness.

I want to feel soft. And the only time I can feel that way is when I’m in bed. Or, better, when I’m being held.

When I say fear of will, I mean fear of choice, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of responsibility, fear of lackadaisicalness… it’s essentially fear of everything, but all things involve choice of some kind. I fear the choices I will make will be wrong… so fear of will.

I’ve screwed up. I’ve blown the funds in my bank account. Pray, FERVENTLY, that I can be more respectful of and responsible with money. Pray I can grow up and stop spending it like a stupid child.

All but the last of the italicized paragraphs were sent yesterday… I’ve omitted her responses from the conversation. The last paragraph was sent about three hours ago. I had that glorious epiphany about insulting God about an hour ago.

No wonder I’ve hated life so… I can’t be trusted with His blessings. Can’t be trusted to appreciate them. Can’t be bothered to care for them. I see them as toys to be tossed aside when I’ve lost interest in them. Why SHOULD He bless me with ANYTHING? WHY should I get to see the glory of Heaven?

A long, long time ago I made a list of fifty reasons to stick around. And I wrote a list of fifty reasons not to do so. And BOTH helped me, yall. Both have been good tools for combating the crazy. But they’re old. And I wrote them in haste, without putting much thought into either of them. I did the different reasons list AFTER I’d written the live list, and almost every item on the different reasons list was the antithesis of its counterpart on the live list. Those lists… they need a little tweaking. So I am rehashing them for the current moods and madness with which I struggle. This is a hard one for me to write. I took more time with this one. I have to be in the right mindset, which at first wasn’t easy to do and I wasn’t sure I could find that place again, but that was the other day. I found it.

In reading this the mindset I have at the beginning, one of agreement, morphs into one of denial by the end. The Bloggess, aka Jenny Lawson, has said OFTEN depression lies. Here are the lies I tell myself:

One. You are broken. You were born that way. Everything about your body, your face, your brain is fucked.

Two. Your brothers got most of the goods: the looks, the personality, the mad skills. You got the scraps: the leftovers, the rejected bits, all the less admirable traits from your ancestors. The mad and the madness. You’re a spawn, a spore. There’s one in every generation.

Three. Six surgeries. Thirty some-odd-scars. And you’re still an ugly hag.

Four. And now you’re a FAT, bitter, ugly hag. FAT. Remember what that one boy said to you? How at the reunion, people’s reaction upon seeing you would be, Who’s that rolling in? Yeah. You don’t get to prove him wrong about that.

Five. No one will ever want to marry you because you’re too ugly and no one wants to wake up next to something that ugly every morning. You don’t get to prove him wrong about that, either.

Six. You should go kill yourself; you’re taking up valuable air and space, and there are more important people who need it. You should’ve done it. Those people could manage to make friends and live good lives. You don’t get to prove them, any of them, wrong about that, either. You keep trying, though. You keep thinking you have gifts. Oh dear heavens, girl. SCRAPS. You’re made of scraps!!! Gifts ain’t found in the junkyard.

Seven. You signed up for that socials site to meet new people, to PAY people to spend time with you. TO PAY PEOPLE TO SPEND TIME WITH YOU. Your friends don’t want to spend time with you. They don’t want it SO much that one of them suggested that socials site so you could stop badgering her to spend time with you. They WANT you to leave them alone. You’re one of those unimportant people, remember? They’re too nice, too GOOD to tell you to fuck off. And you should. YOU SHOULD.

Eight. Your own brother doesn’t even want to spend time with you. Seriously. You’ve seen him like four times since Christmas. And it’s NOT because of Covid, though he sure does like to use that excuse with you… it was like this BEFORE the virus… and THEN it was work. Ask yourself why he makes the excuses. He sure can find the time for quite a few others.

Nine. Mama says you’ve got that go to hell look patented, and you know she’s right because you can feel the fury on your face when you unleash that look. You boil over, Jennifer. ALL the time. You boil over because the pan’s filled with rage and hate. There’s no love in the pot to temper the heat.

Ten. Good men want nothing to do with you. The moment they figure out you’re off your rocker, they RUN for the hills. Can’t get away fast enough. The words… you’re a WRITER, and the words that come out of your mouth are RIDICULOUS. They say you’re intimidating? That’s polite code for YOU FUCKING SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME, BITCH. PSYCHO FEMALE.

Eleven. You don’t know how to love. That BSF Bible study group leader talked about what happens when the virtues are perverted. You’ve perverted ALL of them. A L L of them. There’s a place for people like you.

Twelve. How desperate can you possibly be? You love Aggieland so much, were so incapable of conveying that love to your parents so they could respect your choice of institution for higher learning and have regretted that inadequacy with every breath since, that you’d brainwash your brother’s children in their infancy to love that university so they’d decided by their tenth year that THAT’S where they want to go so YOU can live vicariously through them. WHAT BULLSHIT IS THIS?? WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BE LIKE YOUR MOTHER??? You HATE that she took choice from you! You’d want to take it from them? Those babies you say you love as though they were your own? IDIOT!! Why would you perpetuate that hell?

Thirteen. Must every other word that rolls off your tongue be foul? Really? Because girl… your mouth is essentially an ashtray. Your words reek like the trashiest of alleys.

Fourteen. When your parents pass, you will lose all contact with people. You will hole up in an apartment and play on Facebook… the modern day arena where Ms. Brill would watch her shows… Handy that she wouldn’t have to leave her house. You are JUST like that pathetic woman. JUST LIKE HER.

Fifteen. You spent thirty minutes writing about the lack of love, and half the words you put on the page were film quotes. You’d spend the rest of your pathetic life in bed watching movies because you’re too afraid to live.

Sixteen. You’ll NEVER write a story so good people would want to show it on a screen. And all you wanted when you were a kid was to win a damned Oscar. You’d make up speeches. WHAT A FOOL.

Seventeen. Everything you write is crap. No one’s every going to want to read it.

Eighteen. The staff at Pappadeux’s? They’re only nice to you because they have to be.

Nineteen. You quit smoking?? That was STUPID. You want a short life, right? Doesn’t quitting mean it’d last longer??

Twenty. Your teachers… how many of them hated teaching you? I bet it was a lot.

Twenty-One. Like school did you any good anyway. All that money your grandmother and great aunt left you so you could have a fine education, and you squandered it.

Twenty-Two. Every night, just so you can sleep, you gotta pop some pills. There’s so much ugliness inside you, the only way you can silence it is to drug it.

Twenty-Three. You like giving things to people, don’t you? Makes you feel better about yourself? They’re just things. And you’re trying to buy affection, just like when you were a kid. Remember the year you gave everyone in your class Valentines and got NONE in return. Yeah. YEAH. You sat at your desk staring at your pitiful, poorly decorated, EMPTY brown paper sack, waiting for someone to drop in a card, and NO ONE DID.

Twenty-Four. You BELIEVED Adam when he said you were gorgeous. YOU BELIEVED HIM. Of COURSE he’s going to say that. Boys will say ANYTHING to sucker a gal.

Twenty-Five. You’re too much like a boy, anyway. How could you POSSIBLY be GORGEOUS. GORY. GROSS. N O T gorgeous.

Twenty-Six. Haven’t got the faintest idea of how to be a girl, do you?

Twenty-Seven. Boys don’t want to get their hands on you anymore. Not the gentlemen. They never did. EVER. NOT ONCE. You were just there. Weak, convenient, lonely and easy… or so they thought.

Twenty-Eight. But you can’t even do that right, can you? So eager to play… but then you balk and walk almost EVERY TIME.

Twenty-Nine. When you finally said fuck it? You let a narcissistic, manipulative, emotionally and verbally abusive JACKASS have that card. You gave it to him in a fucking VALUE PLACE INN on the southwest side of San Antonio, in the damned desert, practically. Good GOD, girl. Talk about TRAGIC. SHIT. What a loser you are.

Thirty. God knows your parents would be better off if you weren’t here. They could’ve actually ENJOYED retirement instead of having to support their stupid, lazy daughter. They could’ve set aside money for their grandchildren’s education, but you’d rather rob them of that.

Thirty-One. Your brother couldn’t because he was weak. You’re JUST like him, in ALL the WRONG ways. All those bad scraps…

Thirty-Two. You signed a piece of paper twenty years ago. That doctor who made you sign it? He’s probably forgotten all about you. So many will…

Thirty-Three. And the debt. The goddamned DEBT you’ve amassed. STUPID GIRL.

Thirty-Four. You think you can sing? Bullshit. Your voice ain’t that awesome — ’bout as good as Marge Simpon’s. Look at all those times you tried to get up on stage. Your friends were in bands and never once asked you to sing with them.

Thirty-Five. It won’t be alright in the end. It’ll just be more of the same bullshit.

Thirty-Six. Those doctors in your infancy… they told your parents you would be better off in an institution for people like you. Those doctors were right.

Thirty-Seven. Your boss gave you a job because he needed a body–someone to occupy a desk and free the boys up from the incessant phone calls so they could actually WORK. He doesn’t actually like you. The hand!!! That face he made with it! I’m not talking to you. Shut the FUCK up. Answer the phones. Take the payments. Be QUIET.

Thirty-Eight. What good is a woman without a husband and children?

Thirty-Nine. Those prayer boards you’re fashioning… so you can have something positive and lovely and good to think on when you wake and when you sleep… You put little knickknacks and mementos on those so you can delude yourself into thinking people love you. IF they loved you, they’d not let you hide out in your room so often. If they were truly friends, they’d be FRIENDLY.

Forty. Jamie. Remember that time you felt bad that no one was at the other end of the pool cheering him on, so you went down there to be his cheerleader? You were the only one. Why would he WANT to swim toward that end if you were standing there screaming at him? Your interest in him was LAUGHABLE.

Forty-One. David. Three years you obsessed over that dude. THREE. YEARS. And I don’t know what he said about you to others, but it must’ve been ugly. And your fascination with him made everyone in that circle uncomfortable. Regina told you so. You should never have tried to be friends with them. You should never have thought enough of yourself that you could be appreciated by them, by him.

Forty-Two. Ben. He signed your junior high yearbook, “To the Love Doctor.” He humiliated you then, and yet, when yall were in college, when he roomed with your brother, you thought maybe he’d become a better person. He seemed to have done so. But you had to go and fuck that friendship up, and by doing so, fuck up his friendship with your brother. You drove two hours to go see about a guy, because, again, you thought enough of yourself… Cried the whole way home, and when you got closer to home, you realized you didn’t want to be alone, so you drove another hour out of the way to impose on your brother’s hospitality… You ruin EVERYTHING.

Forty-Three. Adam. Everything about that was a lie. EVERYTHING. Maybe if, just once, JUST ONCE, you’d been honest from the get-go, maybe things would’ve been different. But… you ruin everything, so… probably not.

Forty-Four. Tony. Everything about that was a lie, too. He was probably really good. He was probably worthy of your consideration. But… he bored you, and you can’t have that. Who the fuck do you think you are???

Forty-Five. Casey. You thought so well of him. A modern day Puck. He thought SO LITTLE of you. SO LITTLE.

Forty-Six. Gary. You thought so little of him. He thought so little of you. SO LITTLE. Yall deserved each other.

Forty-Seven. You should stop taking your meds and start smoking again and drink all the liquor and eat all the bad food… just get it over with already.

Forty-Eight. They said you couldn’t live, and you can’t.

Forty-Nine. They said you shouldn’t live, and you don’t. This isn’t a life, girl. This isn’t anything remotely resembling a life.

Fifty. They said you wouldn’t live, and you won’t. You’ll just keep writing the same damned chapters day after day after day… Who the fuck wants to read that? No one.

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.