This is what happens when I climbed through a window. Friday, I left work two hours early to take a friend to rehab. With no key to get into the trailer, and my friend fast asleep, I called to ask his mother if I could get in any other way. After fumbling with a screen, I was still half a foot below the window. With a foot standing on the backing of a lawn chair, the other pressed against a nearby tree, I struggled to shimmy up and into the window with my lack of upper body strength. Entering at a slanted angle to avoid the water filled sink, I made it safely onto the counter. But after waking my friend, arguing for several hours, eating poor Chinese buffet, he wanted to wait another day. To sleep in a bed for one more day that is not a cot. To enjoy food that isn't pasta based like the meals in rehab. I was beyond irate.
All the women I know have our shit together. I don't know a kinder way to say it. We have jobs. Pay our bills, and do what it takes not to ask help from anyone even if that means getting another job or going without. I love my friends, but sometimes it is just too much. Too much money of mine going out, too much of my heart hurting to see the choices they make, too much of me spread so thin amongst the several who keep needing. And then I find myself feeling guilty for wanting to be selfish, for wanting to say "Piss off and do what it takes to live and be responsible!" I am tired of knowing men who are utterly selfish, distant, uncompromising, and inconsiderate. I have dated them and have befriend them, and it disgusts me. My three greatest loves have all had these things in common and it stirs a vile feeling within. There is no want in my soul for a man anymore. They come to impede my dreams and growth. Perhaps when they decide to grow up, know what it is to be adult, I will find one worth choosing. But for now, I just want to be left to be. Let my lovers become writing, travel and photography. They know my soul so much better than a man could ever hope to.
Disenchanted much? Yes, very much so.
That's what every move feels like lately. Unsound. Illogical, haphazard. My anxiety and unsettled mind permit my bouts of insomnia to awake again. Since Thursday, I've slept restlessly, staying up until at least 2AM, watching the tele. Mind feeling numb, yet secretly at work, because if it was dormant than I could rest. I fear for my friend, my Samson. But friends are odd ornaments in life. I tolerate so much more from all of them than I ever would a lover. How quickly I open my wallet when their pockets are empty, how fast I am there when they call, how little I question to help when all I know is the existence of their hurts and needs. If I mother nothing else in my life, I have mothered them. And I love them all, and each know me differently, never the same Priscilla.
At work I feel almost two dimensional, as if no one knows any facet of me. A thin manifestation of being, easily ignored or forgotten. My description on a call log is "tag lady," which one has become fond of gently mocking when he calls for help. And what is left of this minion creation is woven in rumors, suspicions unsound, nonfactual, and downright malicious. I am not so naive to be unaware of things people say, but I don't put attention to untruths. If my day was ruled by what ill tongues say, I would be unproductive. I find that those with ample time to improperly analyze the lives of others and perpetuate their poor hermeneutical assumptions must be fortunate enough to have a simplistic life, free of strife, absent of importance. Because surely, if my business is of interest to them on the regular, they must be in need of some life compensation. Can I not be where I am because of my hard work and merit? Can I not do all that I truly do and do it well? Never assume that no cost is entailed with being favored. The costs are much higher for one who can perform well and is expected to do so than for those whose mediocrity is accepted and anticipated. Sometimes, it shames me to be associated with a number of people I work with because it seems their thoughts and actions rarely extend beyond their person.
I really didn't intend such a subdued post. I've decided against attending the art institute for photography. What use would another undergraduate degree hold for me? I'll find my way through the methodologies that have gotten me where I am...self discovery, exploration, and instinct. Trust but in myself for my future, never be dependent upon others especially a lover, and find a path that may not be paved smoothly, but even in the journey's unpleasantness, feels nothing short of well suited for my being. To be in the crux of a paradox is life.
*****
Completely random, but at last weekend's Flowertown Festival, I was in the ocean of people when I heard a man in the crowd say, "Yeah, I stopped street fighting once we had kids..." Hahahahahaha...I couldn't stop laughing at that for some reason.
The words of a songstress, bittersweet, "You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first."
My Samson, my beloved, now as sweet as lime, souring my spirit and the love I've held for you for so long. Blood, fresh on your brow, new stains on your only shirt, but you say it's but a small gash. But you bleed on, wiping it away, so nonchalantly, almost caustic. It is your life you so flippantly soak up in your tee. Life you kill better than the reaper at night. The hand of death is idle on your person. The hand that grabs the pipe, the hand that lights the joint, the hand that brings cheap liquor to your lips. And all that you love fall away. Our words are nothing more than air to you. You breathe them in just as quick as you exhale them. I fight you, and there you sit to bleed.
Look at it, you yell at me, demanding I see you in all your horror. How you try to make me flee, to ostracize you like the rest have. I stare into those eyes, flying high with Lucy in the sky, how I know you won't remember this conversation in the morning if you live to see it come. What do you want from me? I've been to India and there is much worse to see in the streets of Amristar, the frail woman with a sling, thinned cloth holding an infant I surely thought dead of dehydration in the summer heat. No, your gash appalls me none. But the drop of blood, slow dripping, bending like a river down your forehead, so red and rich of hue, it bleeds, and you stare at me, and I have nothing to say. In my mind I'm begging, pleading, crying out 'I love you, you sick fuck, I love you." But my lips are numb. What have you become?
You got no shoes. Barefoot in Charleston. A shirt dyed in blood and sweat. You're losing it, and yet you do nothing to fight for it. Disease of the soul has gotten hold. Has fooled you well to think that a hit or a swig will free the soul, relieve the pain life brings on so strong. But there isn't anything but empty at the bottom of a glass. Nothing but smoke from a pipe, evaporating into the air. Left with nothing but a craving. And I fight you, all the while you bleed. Cig swaying in your mouth, this fight has gone on too long, you refuse to let me take you to where you need to be and I can't go where you say you must go. Baby girl, you say in your addict persona, don't get in my business too deep. I'm only Baby Girl when your blood is laced, don't weaken me with such a name.
I call for you, but you walk away on a dark North Charleston street. No shoes on your feet. A shirt bloodied and saturated with fear, angst, and sweat. A phone gone dead and a gash yet to mend. All you got is a pack of Newports, a few dollars and some change, and you walk into the dark, into a place I can't follow. My radio plays, and I cry into the steering wheel. And I play her song for you, my Samson, for you are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first. Even in the horror of you, I do not shy away. I am here. Always here. But you keep walking away. So dark a place to be. Hallow and dead. And I fear the worst. I fear that one day I will be too late. Death will arrive sooner than I to save you, and then all the chances to turn around squandered. Death is a greedy lover, stealing you away forever.
I watch you bleed, how it refuses to cease. The blood on your head that I said fazed me none. Secret is baby girl lies too. That blood image in my mind. Your face sunken in, skin hued like melancholy. To look hurts because what I see is no longer my Samson, but death come home. I have lost you, I have, and I cry, not knowing where you now lie. But you have crossed over, gone beyond the reach of my hand, I wish you could see it, but you are too caught up. And all I can think of is the color of your blood...
