I get in that way again like something terrible is happening to me and I cannot concentrate on anything else until I fix it. ‘And here’s the pinch’ says the nurse taking my blood so kind in my not looking to keep my mind occupied, talking about my dogs barking in the other room. I had a cavoodle she tells me, but he died, Oh, made it to 15 which is fairly good and I say I had a dog that died too. I don’t know how to express it to her as big as it felt though like maybe it all happened inside me and I never even had a Max in the real world, which makes more sense sometimes than him having existed and now being gone. Tape okay? She asks pressing the cotton ball to my arm such a small question but still it knocks me sideways. Something about the gentleness of it all no bruise no blood not even a dot. She doesn’t ask why she’s in my home and I’m not at a clinic me who answered the door and let her in on my own. She doesn’t ask because I think she already knows but that’s another kindness, isn’t it? That it didn’t bear repeating. I let the dogs out to say hello before she goes and they’re giddy as they always are so in love with anyone who seems like they could stand them. Precious precious precious she keeps repeating, thank you for that pointing to them as she’s leaving, and I’m almost sorry because I can tell she means it, almost apologising for the ghost she must’ve felt join her at the door.
The bloodwork comes back normal though I’m more tired than ever. So I have to ask, is something terrible happening to me?
I do laps of my backyard in the sun the music on my phone on shuffle and sometimes it goes back too far. Grips my ankles almost and puts me back in my boyfriend’s old car, on the freeway him driving me in the passenger seat the window cracked open the city behind us and that song, my favourite and the words unknown to him, but he’s there as I go quiet to listen and put a hand out to feel the wind go with it.
He’s still there but now it’s me driving. No city no sunset no song, just a few streets down from home like I’m really doing something big and when he looks up from his phone to notice how far I’ve driven us I say look, you love a normal girl.
Then I’m alone and it all goes away. I hear my heart thrumming and it sounds like my own footsteps behind me and so I am always running.
I start writing a short story about aliens invading. I imagine them growing bored of us or sick over our cannibalism and it takes everything in me to not have it all be about our cruelty. I try and think of the nurse and the piece of tape but then a man lights himself on fire. And how bad is that? A man on fire means beyond bad. Beyond terrible.
So I guess everything is a story, I tell my therapist. I practiced saying it to her so I wouldn’t say it wrong yet still it doesn’t come out right. So I guess everything is a story, and I don’t know what story I believe in. Is there justice? Is there fairness? Is there fate? If we believe good things happen to good people doesn’t that mean the opposite must also be true, that if something bad happens it’s because the person was bad? How can a child be bad? How can a baby be bad? How can the womb, the flesh, the one made in the image of God like they say, be bad? A man was on fire and there’s flour soaked in blood. Tell the story to me then. Tell me the meaning in the way it’s supposed to end.
Something terrible is happening. Maybe not to me but to everywhere.
After my showers I lean in as close as possible to the mirror to survey the surface of my skin. I do it unthinkingly the urge right there to see I’m no person at all, just parts of one reflected back an eye a pore the tip of a nose. I adopt a vigorous teeth cleaning routine. I obsessively check my emails, my bank account. I write and write and write till it exhausts me, actually, I do everything to exhaustion. The limit is me and I know how far I can push it because I’ve been cheek down on the bathroom floor before and the limit is there, cold tiles, deep breaths to not throw up the Valium, someone telling me a story because really, everyone needs something to believe in.
But still the things I thought were true are not. Do you know of the chaos? was not a question I was asked as a child. Do you know death? Do you know endings? Do you know things over which you will have no control? Maybe we do what we can. Maybe we accept that no one knows anything. That we have all been duped by the stories we tell ourselves, in which we assign life meaning. Does the sun care for us? Do the reeds sing? Does a living thing, closing its eyes for the last time, hold love as its last thought?
Yes, something terrible is happening. I’m waking in the misery and I’m thinking of goodness and I’m turning out the light, willing myself to have sweeter dreams because I’m alive as I’ve always been, and this is what I am choosing to believe in.
This piece references Aaron Bushnell and the recent ‘flour massacre’ in South Gaza. Please consider donating to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund in support.
My favorite part: I’m waking in the misery and I’m thinking of goodness
Thank you for writing this