The day we met
Was one year from The Day he died. We met in this same space. This non-unique coffee cafe where everyone meets In the guise of intimacy; I see them, their laughter, as though it is original. But you were the one, Original That Certain One. Then, we met under That Tree One year later. Did I meet Him or You? Because we met in the same way, on the Same Day And now I feel confused. I saw you, yet I looked for him, Then I looked for him in You, And we planned A Future under That Tree. But then later, I asked him to Free Me under That Tree. And still, I ask. A foul-tasting wind blew though the street, burning her eyes. She knew she was alone; she finally accepted that fact. No pseudo-family could blackmail allegiance anymore. Those that wore the grey-dinged armbands of DNA no longer had a hold on her life. She was free. It took a decade in the trenches to realize this. The enemy that surged forth was her very own bloodline; the ones that crushed her were her kin. The one who slapped her fair skin until redness dawned was Brother. He that mocked her pain and continued the torture was Father. And the one who offered a white flag and then shot her point blank was Mother.
As the acrid sting passed, there was clearer air. She gulped it in. For the first time, it did not sting. The decaying city-state still surrounded her, but she dragged herself upright, quickened by the release from bondage. Sunlight. No more guilt, no more loyalty. For what? To be slapped again? She had remarked in the suffocating cell below that she had no family. The unfeeling reply of "Make your own" made her choke on her own vulnerability. She was done. Why waste the effort on the dead? Why waste the effort on the hateful living? She left them unburied, for they had already built their own tombs. The Drunkard, who sliced opened hearts with words. The Narcissist, who thought only of himself and used others for gain. The Closed-Heart, who was unable to extend even a hand. A family of Vampires who were only capable of drawing blood and leaving death behind. Sans remorse. Now, the lack of remorse was hers to gather and gird upon herself. The city around her would slip further into grey stillness. It was time to depart. Never look back. Would you say you are happy?
He asked, under the arch of his brow, and the arch of brooding moonlight. Like that crescent, a strap of hair hung over one eye, obscuring it, though not able to hide equally the look that pierced me with the same forthrightness of his question. Contrasting the noise of the busy cafe, I was silent. I never sleep... These days. My soft reply, deeply whispered, rustled ripples on my cappuccino foam. For then, it was late evening, or early nighttime, depending on perspective. I remained forever awake with each setting sun, slipping easily into dreamless repose a few hours before each dawn. Recently, I remained forever awake. Day after day. After day. I've forgotten that word. It holds no meaning for me anymore. I... I exist. The colloquialism "stress will kill you" is true:
I can feel it ravaging my soul and my physical body. One's heart, one's ribcage, shouldn't feel like this. How long, do you think, until it takes Its Toll and makes Its Call. I feel Anxiety sucking the breath from my lungs; What else can constrict my chest so? My heart aches both physically and soulfully-- I know what squeezes. I pound my breast, I gulp deeply to expand my lungs. No change results: tightness remains. How long am I expected--oh-- DEMANDED To live as such... Suffering. Surviving. Trial after Trial After Trial. After Trial After Trial After Trial. You demand that I exist and continue. For what? To ease your own fear and pain? At the expense of my Own Life? Yes, you do, don't do. But I'm fucking tired. I weary of fights and struggles and of Just getting By. Survival is for our ancestors, And wild deer and insects. Greedily, I want more. If that's wrong, then let me, Please, for any gods' sake, Go the way of the wild deer, the insect, the ant Crushed thoughtlessly beneath your sandal. For I am not interested in this kind of living. I am not interested in Surviving, Getting By, Making it... From one emergency to the next. What is the fucking point? I awoke with the mind-vision of my truck rolling and rolling along the concrete of I-35.
Rolling as in CRASHING SOMERSAULTING METAL SCREECHING CLANGING GLASS SHATTERING type of rolling. Not the other kind of easy rolling, rock-n-rolling, roly-poly bug rolling. A deep intake of breath brought that vision to further clarity, and from there, I breathed no longer. Here in the "real world", I held my breath as the physical sensations of being crushed by my car crushed my ability to breath. It was too real. In the dream world, I was flung, unseatbelted, up and down, side to side, slashed with the glass and crushed with the metal. I could see the world upside down as vividly as if it were so. Was I in an action movie? It felt as 3-D as one of those horror scenes. Then I realized I did not want to die like this. I do not mind dying, but as my torso was crushed, and thus my capacity to take in air ended, panic set in. I did not want to die a tortuous death of suffocation. Then I awoke fully and sat up. I pushed this grim vision from my mind as best I could, though the apparition visited me throughout the day, against my will. I don't think I'll drive that highway anytime soon. I am wondering during loss.
I am wandering during loss. When you lose someone, are you mourning the lost person or are you mourning your own loss? Do you cry that the person is gone, the relationship is over, that they no longer experience life as they once did? Or do you cry over your own selfish needs no longer met? The biggest heartbreak robs your soul of its life-spark and you are left alone. There is anger and fear and remorse and bitterness and regret and determination and denial and depression. They go about their daily life as though you never even existed for them, while your sink down toward the ultimate nadir of darkness. It seems you are mourning what you have lost, not that they are gone. It could be anyone who has left. The feelings are the same. A bittersweet childhood experience births antipathy and ambivalence. When that parent that claimed they loved you while beating you dies, why are you sad? When that parent that uses one breath to love and the next to diminish, how do you ever know what love is supposed to feel like, except confusing and bad? If you don't feel sad, do you feel guilty for not being sad--like you are supposed to be? When you finally break down in heart-clenching sobs, is it over the traumatic childhood and not having loving parents like everyone else does? Are you mourning the fact that you never had a kind family and never will? That you face the world bereft not only of parents, but of any true, close family to share, support, and love? Are you grieving for their pain or your own box of aloneness in this world? Are you wishing you had been better? Would being better have even made a difference in a dysfunctional relationship? You know that the right answer is a NO that cracks like a whip. In the end, the pity you feel is for them, who lies there: in their pain, or their disability, or for the life they missed. In the end, the sadness and grief you feel is for yourself and what you missed and will always miss in your own life. When you wonder during loss do you clam up and hold it and remain strong, refusing the tears that fight against the dam of willpower? When you wander during loss do you finally let it go and crash into the depths of your sobs, run into your room and fling yourself into your pillows that you can wail freely? Do you call your friends and tell them you need a shoulder to cry on without even being able to finish that sentence before bursting into a new set of cries and tears? As you wonder and wander through the grief and pain and self-pity and anger and sadness, do you visit the hospital and face the demon within yourself? Do you pull the strength up from within -- it's always resided within -- to do what needs to be done to take care of your very own heart, your own precious soul, your being? Own the pain and suffering, but question the story behind it, while taking extra good care of yourself in those days of wandering. 1-800-273-8255 by Logic feat. Khalid
Authentic rhapsody about feelings that lead to not wanting to live anymore. The words in this song grabbed me while I was station surfing in traffic: grabbed me, yanked me out of the reality of stopngo, churned in my chest, recalled and froze a feeling that has always been an ice splinter in my chest. I was surprised that someone was able to put words to my thoughts and feelings that repeatedly haunt me, with regularity, these past three years. It's always amazing when others express sentiment you thought was yours alone to bear--so heavy-- in this lonely world. It's only news when celebrities kill themselves. Mundane people trudging through life, suffering hardship after hardship, feel the same. When you are stumbling in the dark, you can't find any light to guide you out. "It will get better" doesn't mean shit peeps. "I've been on the low I been taking my time I feel like I'm out of my mind It feel like my life ain't mine Who can relate? I've been on the low I been taking my time I feel like I'm out of my mind It feel like my life ain't mine I don't wanna be alive I don't wanna be alive I just wanna die today I just wanna die I don't wanna be alive I don't wanna be alive I just wanna die And let me tell you why All this other shit I'm talkin' 'bout they think they know it I've been praying for somebody to save me, no one's heroic And my life don't even matter I know it I know it I know I'm hurting deep down but can't show it I never had a place to call my own I never had a home Ain't nobody callin' my phone Where you been? Where you at? What's on your mind? They say every life precious but nobody care about mine I've been on the low I been taking my time I feel like I'm out of my mind It feel like my life ain't mine Who can relate? I've been on the low I been taking my time I feel like I'm out of my mind It feel like my life ain't mine I want you to be alive I want you to be alive You don't gotta die today You don't gotta die I want you to be alive I want you to be alive You don't gotta die Now lemme tell you why [Alessia Cara:] It's the very first breath When your head's been drowning underwater And it's the lightness in the air When you're there Chest to chest with a lover It's holding on, though the road's long And seeing light in the darkest things And when you stare at your reflection Finally knowing who it is I know that you'll thank God you did [Logic:] I know where you been, where you are, where you goin' I know you're the reason I believe in life What's the day without a little night? I'm just tryna shed a little light It can be hard It can be so hard But you gotta live right now You got everything to give right now I've been on the low I been taking my time I feel like I'm out of my mind It feel like my life ain't mine Who can relate? I've been on the low I been taking my time I feel like I'm out of my mind It feel like my life ain't mine I finally wanna be alive I finally wanna be alive I don't wanna die today I don't wanna die I finally wanna be alive I finally wanna be alive I don't wanna die I don't wanna die [Khalid:] Pain don't hurt the same, I know The lane I travel feels alone But I'm moving 'til my legs give out And I see my tears melt in the snow But I don't wanna cry I don't wanna cry anymore I wanna feel alive I don't even wanna die anymore Oh I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't even wanna die anymore To open with explication: I know people who were directly involved in combat in Iraq.
I know the details of streets in another country that were once filled with smoke and tear gas. I sat on the very cobbles. Bittersweet. I relaxed in the sunshine today, enjoying company and listening to music that pulled me back to times of revolution and a fight for freedom. Yes, I was there. It was not so long ago that peoples fought for freedom from tyranny; they still fight today, in some parts of the world. In fact, perhaps, Americans too, will rejoinder and fight again for what they have lost, or rather, or given away. The Eagles sang "Hotel California" and the Scorpions crooned "Still Loving You". I sat in a circle of non-violence, listening to the strums of guitar and attempting to sing the much-coveted English lyrics of these songs. Back then I did not seek center stage, and so the requests for song in English, alone among a circle of strangers, was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Up to that point. "And I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell..." But then, only a few months later, I had to watch that very place being rolled over by tanks. Possibly those same people I sung to, along with-- crushed and smothered and fired upon. I watched the gas bombs and the students ablaze, safely. I was 1,000 miles away a month later. What was harder for my 19-year-old self: Singing ungainly in front of all these other students, or watching them die later? "And still those voices are calling from far away, Wake you up in the middle of the night Just to hear them say" Someone wondered how I remembered ("How do you remember that?") and how it could have affected me-- someone "so young". Viscerally, I feel that darkness fighting for its right among neon and floodlights-- those were nights spent on University Street in Seoul, with beer and friends and guitars. A friend of a friend vomits on the sidewalk, immediately apologizing for his drunkenness. He was wearing a white shirt and dark pants. During languid day, we all hung out on the staircase in the multistoried Lotte mall, smoking and affecting Cool. Yeah, that's when we all smoked, Inside. I sampled foods I could not understand, but loved... speaking of love, I crushed on a boy called Chan Wan; his almond eyes and brown skin bright and blinding in my memory. He crushed back. I remember him as clearly as I remember my most recent crush; but he played guitar for me and was kind. I wish I could find him in present times; if he lives I am sure he is married, working too much, with children. Later that summer, I watched the peaceful request for freedom turn to martyred blood on television, coddled in the safe distance of my Grandparent's living room. I read it in the headlines and third-page stories of newspapers. All that I had experienced in spring had bloomed into deadly explosions. And so, yes, I transition into silence and reminiscence when I hear the Scorpions, or The Eagles' "Hotel California". I become one of the "prisoners here, of our own device", when I recall that Boy that may have died amongst the many on the USS Stark, for I was one of the blessed/horrified that watched that ship bombed...then sink. Yeah, that boy who sat across (athwartship, mate) from me; he laughed when my younger sister rolled her eyes at me. I sat and flirted -- I blinked at eyes that that must've died on the Stark, they were too bright to last, they were so bright they could only have been born from a momentary solar flash -- at the MAC airbase in Yongsan. That bright-eyed boy, freshly deployed, on his way home. "Blue eyes laughing in the sun Laughing in the rain Baby's got blue eyes And I am home, and I am home again..." The flight was cancelled. We returned the next day, squashed between crowds hoping for departure, and he was no longer among them. It is of him I think, when I hear the song by Elton John, "Blue Eyes". Yes, even now, 30 years later, I recall that his name was John, and that he hoped to travel home, and that his eyes were stars that lit up one night in my life, and that he loved me for a few hours. After those hours passed, he was exploded into a thousand fragments of flesh, or drowned under tons of steel. The Stark had been hit. 40 years of struggle in Korea, from the Korean War to Democracy, and A millennium for man to continually kill man over religion Here I am, I lone girl, affected by protests and wars and destruction. If these events still bide their time in my mind, exploding when the right song plays, how violent their affect must be for those that were there on those same cobbles? How does it affect those (my) friends in Korea, Chan Wan, the boy with the bright-eyes...? but he is dead so long now How does it affect the street vendors, the brave ones who stood before girded soldiers, the students who begged me to sing an English song, and the ones who reveled over my pink cowboy boots...? "Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back to the place I was before" I write this, and I think I am going to suffocate... The pain of memory is so heavy. I don't want to. I don't want to remember. And yet, I don't ever want to not remember. Playlist: Scorpions: Still Loving You The Eagles: Hotel California Dokken: Alone Again Joy: Korean Girls, Hello Neil Young: The Needle and The Damage Done Metallica: Fade To Black, Master of Puppets Elton John: Blue Eyes |
Life.There is fiction. There is life. What is the difference? My WritingAll rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by and information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the author. Archives
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