I am not going to talk directly about the unnamed thing [*****], instead I am going to dance around it. I am going to explain it abstractly. I am going to define the things outside of it.
There have been many years of my life that I do not remember. There are probably more, unremembered years. I remember walking in the first court, I do not remember the inside of the house. Only barely: only rec-ently. I do not remember holding my mom’s hand. I do not remember us being together, though there is one picture.
I do not remember the days, but sometimes I can recall the feeling. And, I do not, want to.
Lately I am trying to forget:
so that I might remember again.
I remember dancing in the third room. I remember the third room most vividly, I could make a little diorama. There was: my mirror above the fireplace, there was the desk and the computer, there was the bed, there was the dresser. There were no doors. There was one window and outside it people would clap their hands. I remember dancing in the third room, dancing, jumping up and down, pumping my arms up into the air, spinning around. They do not warn you what a “thing” it is, to forget yourself.
I could chop my life up into these little sections, of unknowing. There in-between-the unknowing, is me. I exist there in the third room, I exist upstairs in the next house, I exist, for a moment, in the one after that. In shattered moments I exist. I exist in the screaming and yelling down the highway. I exist in the water, I exist falling through the open air. I exist when I hit the ground real hard, when I’m scraped up, when my muscles ache, when my hands wont squeeze, when I trip.
On the carpeted floor of the third room, I exist. My hands are hitting the keys, they’re trying to. There, on the carpeted floor of the third room, I was not yet ready to start. But the keys were tapping, and there was music in my ears. My chin was numb from all the resting. I remember crying.
It is a simple-“thing”: the unknowing of yourself. It hits you hard, all at once, and every”thing” is gone. Often, there is no recognizing, not until it is “too late”. Hands are suddenly hitting keys and there is no real sensation behind them. Hands are hitting keys and telling lies, or at least un-truths of some kind. There is: all-at-once, a barrier between the heart and the chest. You cannot feel that pulsing pit within yourself, you cannot feel the tingling warmth in your palms.
The chapped lips, the bloody hands, they come next.
Fortunately, one fine day when you are walking down the same sunny sidewalk with the same cracks and clinging plants, you feel it in your feet at first: on the bridge. It rises up to your knees and you hold it there, in the caps of them. Up the insides of your thighs until, keep climbing, it crosses at the center and pierces your chest. It bursts out into your hands, up your neck, to your face: your cheeks, behind your eyes. You are there.
At first, it is a funny thing, when you haven’t yet felt-the-weight of it. All of the false-ness. When you’re still writhing around in the sudden and welcome feeling of existence again. That’s when the grief comes, and you are once again: given the chance to face it. Gone are the days, you think, of running and hiding. No more bodies of water, no more cliffs and dirt and sand and mud and rock. Gone are the days of crushing and folding and turning in. You think, yes, here I am. I am here to stay: I have found myself again. And then a sound swirls into your ear and before you can even make out the words: you wake up on a different street and your phone is sticky stuck to your hot cheek with tears.
I exist there, in that so unwanted feeling of fear. Of terror. In years and years of it. I am chipping away at these layers of rock. From both sides. And sometimes, my arms give out and I fall down on the floor and I just have to lie there for a second and weep so much so theres a puddle that grows and kisses the backs of my arms.
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