Sunday, March 25, 2012

Adjusting VIII

 

VIII
I cradle my hand on the couch. I can barely type yet still I stayed up all last night writing a campaign proposal for the Mayor of Braddock. I knew I shouldn't have typed it, know I shouldn't be typing now but I can't stop, I need to get my own words out, the dry language of proposals has made my thoughts restless. I rest my hand between sentences and get up and grab one of last beers to dull the pain. I almost wonder if I'll make it to my doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon.
And then it happens, I've actually hit my limit and can't type anymore.



Memories of the long weekends since ghost hunting that have brought me here beg to be set on a laptop screen, but they will have to wait, for now.

Monday afternoon bears a neon pink cast. I make a big deal of it, it is the first cast I've ever acquired in my 21 years of recklessness and adventure. [D] picks me up in front of the hospital and we make our way to Wing Night. I want to get a head start on everyone, I'm in pain and need some alcohol. We down the first pitcher and reminisce over the past couple weeks. A mass arrest, one spontaneous trip to New York City, new tattoos and a broken hand, we agree that we've done well. Eventually our friends filter in. [DL] has pity and offers me a joint, after all he is the one that dodged my fateful drunken punch that ultimately landed into a bus shelter's frame. The rest tease me “What did we learn?”, I begrudgingly reply “Fuck St. Patty's Day.” We all have a good laugh. Life goes on.
It's the weekend now and I'm feeling low. The anger and hurt that makes up the core of my being is boiling inside me, refusing to be pacified by my routine smile. I gripe at the flesh on my bones. I want to sharpen my finger nails to tiny claws and tear it from my frame with my own bear hands, but that leaves scars, I know because I tried that once when I was seventeen and had yet to learn the value of discretion, so I beat my self against Braddock Hills instead. Sweat runs down the small of my back beneath a Spiderman book bag as I kick trash and debris behind me on the shoulder of the road. I stumble once where the incline is steep and some girls weave, discarded in the gravel, slips beneath my foot. I recover and continue on. I will not slow down. Giant Eagle is only two miles uphill and I don't have time for any other exercises today, I must make the best of my trek. My mind is a hurricane of all the memories I hate. All the chances I had to set things right, and times I was on the cusp of happiness that I destroyed, unaware, for my own selfish angst. I think back on California and Canvass For A Cause, when [R] said Well I may just have to come to CA then. When I swore that I was happy there, before I got into that mess in Mexico, and my puppy died and I lost my mind. I wonder how things would have been if I never left CFAC. I consider running away again, taking my next pay check and getting on a plane, but I know I couldn't bring my pets and I know they probably wouldn't take me back anyway. I wouldn't if I were them, God knows I fucked that chance up over a year ago now. Still it nags at me. I reason with my loneliness, Christina Perri sings in my ear “Don't count the miles, count the I love you's.” I imagine there's a boy that loves me like that, for “i love you”s are words not said in my life, though I know if they were to come from anyone but [R], I'd callously snub them out like I have done so many times now. The doctors said when I was a teenager that I was too damaged to ever be emotionally capable of feelings of closeness or romance. [R] is a scientific anomaly of my psyche. But still, I like to indulge in the fantasy of a love song. It eases the pain of my fate to be a crazy spinster animal lady for the rest of my life. It's not so bad, I whisper to my shadow on the pavement. When I am involved with someone all I seem to successfully do is worry them, and then I feel guilty, as though everything I do to hurt myself I do to hurt them on purpose. If no one is close to me, no one gets hurt, and I don't have to add guilt to the repertoire of negative emotions that I shuffle around beneath, like a dark little rain cloud above me. But that too, I know is wrong. Because I feel guilty, just for feeling this way. It's been a great week, and besides a pain in my hand and an itch under my cast, I have no real complaints. I have no excuse to be feeling this way. My thoughts continue like this until I arrive home, emotionally torn and feeling no better than when I left. My sister, [K] greets me there. I feed my guinea pig, Occupig, and the mourning dove with a broken wing I found in the freight train tracks last week. She resides in a milk crate in my room, much to the cats dismay, for they have not been allowed in since I brought her home. I know they'll get over it though, they always do. I shelter 2-3 little wild things a year, and when they're healthy and strong I return them to where they belong. Most of them live.
I take pride in that, atleast.

1 comment:

  1. :) u are loved and ur no crazy spinster lady.

    ReplyDelete

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