Origin Stories

somebody said

Last night, I took a sip of something warm, and it knocked me off my feet. I looked up, smiling at the brother who was worried about me, and I cursed over the burning in my esophagus. It wasn't what I'd expected, but it was just about right, at the same time.

I brushed my teeth for the first time in a month. I pulled out my face wash and then put it back without ever turning the faucet on. I looked at my face in the mirror and pressed the tips of my fingers to the glass. Nobody ever bothers with Windex here, so there are the remnants of my twelve year old face sticking to the glass of the mirror. I swear I can see her there, with her tear-streaked face, her wobbling chin, the shower warm and empty behind her.

***

Somebody said that if you remember your life in the third person, it may be because you spent your childhood dissociating. I determined quickly that I was one of the normals who was just quirky enough to remember things that way.

***

I remember my thoughts, and I remember my body, but I do not remember them together.

Little feet mashing grass beneath themselves.

Hands brushing against mosquitos suspended in humid air.

Chubby cheeks smudged yellow with dandelion petals.

Brown eyes watering, asking questions for which there would be no answers.

Knees curling over the metal bars of a red and silver swingset.

Tiny fingers pressing newspaper into big hands.

I made him mad,

                         I'm sorry.

I made her cry,

                         I'm sorry.

I wish I never did that.

I wish I could tell the truth.

Why is he so mad,

                        I'm sorry... ?

Why is she crying,

                        I'm so sorry...

***

He was looking at me with this sort of sadness in his eyes. I didn't understand it, but I wondered, for just a second, if it meant that somebody had seen my brain despite the ambiguity produced when I tried to hide and display it at the same time. But now I think I know. He looked at me like that in class sometimes. Another teacher did, too, when I fought with Mom before school. He was sad, because he saw why I wanted to hide my brain. He saw why I wanted to display it. He saw what I didn't see– that I was being abused.

***

I cried in the shower, the balls of my feet pressed to the floor, my hair covering my face.

I imagined an angel in a trenchcoat sitting beside me, pressing his fingers to my head, and putting me back together. I imagined green eyes looking gently at me and then turning fiercely on all the predators around us. I sobbed over imaginary corpses that resembled my family members no matter how hard I tried to turn out strangers' faces. I washed my snot down the drain, spit out water and pretended it was blood.

I tried very hard not to think about my body or my feelings or my life, because it was all fine, and I didn't want it to be. It wasn't fine, and I really really wanted it to be.

***

She said I should remember that everybody can only do their best. So I stopped telling her what his best looked like.

***

I sat in the passenger seat, my legs uncooperative and my chest tight. I couldn't stop tic-ing. From my eyes and throat to my fingertips, my body refused to stay still, and from my knees down, it refused to move.

***

She said she shouldn't have to do that, and I agreed. She said he did too.

She said it was fucked up. I agreed. She said he did too.

***

I was texting the friend who is good at making me smile. I was telling her about Bonanza and Rawhide, asking for reviews on my childhood crushes.

I heard the jingle of ice in a wine glass, heard the unsteady thump of bare feet in the hallway. I was angry before I'd even stopped smiling.

I stayed in the kitchen until she left the bathroom, afraid she would drown herself. I stayed in my room until she'd finished crying, afraid she would kill herself. I stayed awake until she came home, afraid she wouldn't.