Spring Before-
You’ve made a daughter who will cross the sea
Many times over
I will take it in for you
As you trembling and wet-eyed, cannot
I will walk through streets that have forgotten us
She’s made an answerless daughter and dims
While I pulsate with what she gave
Earth-locked hair, eyes reflecting sky
And the deep burning thing
Her heart gags when it speaks
She thinks this is love
What we share now is a remnant
Hollow like the roaring shell you try and drag the sea from
But we try to be proud
My father has found the house he’s going to die in
I am the shape outside shaded by enough night to have become a memory
Many times I have felt all of my lives move at once
I think you did too and just once, you didn’t come back
This is a poem I wrote last year. Several times a day I’d experience this splitting of myself. For instance, every time I came to the stop sign down the road from my apartment, I’d run through a simulated division of the things I could do in this moment. I could turn left and get home like usual, go straight and get caught at a light consequently taking longer to get back, or I could go right which would also result in delay. Sometimes, I imagined going right and not turning back. Just going until an indefinite point. This thought process happened every time I got to that crossing. One of those times, I thought of my mother. I folded inwards and tried to imagine the atmosphere she’d get trapped in when she slipped from reality or was too drunk to care about the way reality slouched. I imagined it was her that took a wrong turn and kept going, entertaining that maybe this was an explanation for everything.
Still in Spring, I went to Galveston to get to the sea. School was out for a week and I had just ended a relationship of a year and a half. Driving until I hit the land’s edge to stare into the water was a good, quick solution to evade thought and exonerate myself. My estranged aunt who lives near the coast welcomed me to stay with her and her family. This is my mother’s half-sister, L. I can count the times on hand that we’ve met in person. She’s only met my mother a few times too. Still, her voice would catch in certain spots that sounded just like her. I tried not to shudder at it. The last time she saw her was in Summer as a teenager. L came to stay with us but left after realizing my mom was only ever drunk and trying to get her drunk too.
Now, she has two kids and a husband. They have a chicken coup in their backyard that gives them more eggs than they know what to do with. She gives a lot of them out to neighbors and the kid’s bus driver. L still cries every time we talk about Jack, my grandfather. He was maybe a worse alcoholic than my mother but they worshiped him. He didn’t have to try hard since both L’s mom and my mom’s mom were shit. I don’t like to use lazy words like that to describe people but they are the kind that wear you down to the point that all you can say is “shit”.
After Jack died, a hurricane hit the coast and destroyed his house. I remember glimpses of it and of him. There were dolphins everywhere and his face was sunny. When the storm passed, L went looking for things in the area it had stood, hoping to find keepsakes. What she found makes up most of what she has left of him now. She kept all she could find in a box but admitted she wasn’t sure all of it was his. The things still have dried mud on them.
The few days I stayed, L still had to work so I committed to a lone, daily half-hour drive from her house to the beach. The weather had been bad since I arrived. The sky was perpetually grey and it rained. On the shore, the wind blew so hard I could barely keep my eyes open and sand grains kept finding their way past my lips. I had come to feel small against the sea. Hoping it’s vastness would reset the imbalances I’d carried from the all the change I was in the midst of and all the change that was to come. The feeling never came.
As I gathered my things to leave, L slipped me a $20 for gas and refused to take it back. Regardless of the way addiction has left mostly space between us all, she has always been kind to me. I left with a full carton of eggs in my passenger seat.
Spring turned to Summer and I left the country for the first time. I traveled Spain for three weeks starting on a train from San Sebastian to Madrid. The air on the coast had been light and easy. Stepping off into the city, the heat was heavier than I was ready for. It felt like Texas. That first night, I walked through the city center and felt so much power coursing through the streets. The sensation was dizzying.
A few nights later, I met a guy. We seemed to recognize something in each other that was quite instant. He walked me to a jazz bar, then to a park where he kissed me, then up an elevator and to his room.
I didn’t expect to see him again the next day since we were up until 5 a.m. and he had work. He was waiting for me outside a park gate at midnight next to his bike with an extra riding jacket and helmet. We planned to get locked inside the park and have a picnic. We hid in the corner of a staircase that led straight into a dark pond with swans gliding over the top. A glass palace stood behind us. When it was quiet enough, we moved to an open field shielded by trees with the moon hanging heavily like it was there to host and witness. We talked for a long time. I’m not sure how long. I didn’t notice the time passing and I didn’t want to think about it. I’d never been able to be so still within my own life, not being pulled in any direction. It felt good. He told me things about himself that shocked me. More shocking was that I liked it all. He rolled over to kiss me and then my skirt was up. It was like magnets coming together. I’d been with people before but never felt that.
Just as soon as I’d released this country from granting me anything, I was on a bike racing off to a lake in the neck of some Spanish village with a guy I’d just met. The days and nights all began to collide. I didn’t want to see outside of it but I was leaving for Seville soon. Before I left, one of my reservations was canceled so I had 4 days free with no plans. Just like that, we were planning a trip to Valencia.
When he came to get me from the station in Madrid, I was so distracted by him that I forgot to get my ticket for the next morning. I ended up waiting six hours for the next available train after his had left but once I got there, the reality of the whole thing had an ecstatic buzz about it. Even the simple parts. We planned dinners and bought groceries, rode bikes, and showered together. Waltzed through the amber-lit alleys of the coastal city. One of those nights, we went to the beach. The water felt room temperature and my skin stung from the salt. Coming out, we collapsed onto the shore to look up. The stars seemed very still. We talked until the wet bikini and salt sting became too much and rinsed at a beach shower that was more like a spigot. When I looked up at him, looked over at him, looked at him while I knew he wouldn’t be looking at me or when I knew he just had been, I felt like I wanted to tell him something but I had nothing to say. Our time would end again soon. I really didn’t know what to do this time.
He was going for a trip to Ireland soon. I thought he was joking when he said I should come. I was going to Barcelona next and then had no set destination until I flew back to the states. Still, everything was uncertain and with that, it weighed on me that we might not meet again.
At the station, I got a coffee while waiting for my train. Mine left first and then his would take him back to Madrid. With only a few minutes left, I came back to that hollow idea that there’d be something to say between us and that now it would actually come to me. It didn’t. And nothing seemed to come to him either. He kissed me goodbye and watched as I got through security and towards the exit for the platform. I turned back, smiled, waved and blew a kiss before disappearing through the door. As soon as the train started moving, I cried.
I arrived in Barcelona without the buzz that a new place usually brought. I was tired and alone. This hostel sucked. The whole place was decorated in a blaring shade of red and the elevators took several minutes just to reach ground floor. I tried to be gone as much as possible.
I walked, sat and ate, smoked, and had espresso in a new cafe everyday. In the Gothic Quarter, I had sangria for the first time. A pipe organ’s voice was tolling off the soft brick walls. The alleyways were dark, narrow, and enchanting. Trickling through them, I felt safe even if I was going in circles. When the bus didn’t show, I waited however long it took for the next one to come. I guessed which stop was mine when I couldn’t make out the announcements or asked a stranger. I let go of a lot. Still, I thought about my mother and how she had no idea where I was in the world and how she hadn’t asked. Before my time on the coast ended, R told me to come and it was decided. I bought my ticket for Ireland.
I was on my way back towards Germany now, my original starting point. The furthest a ticket could get me from this station was up to Lyon, France. I took it in stride as I hadn’t had any issues so far. Optimism slaps me in the face. At the station in Lyon, not a single person spoke English and every train was booked for a week out. I told them I’d take anything to get me going north. With the use of a translation app, they told me the closest thing was a bus leaving for Geneva, Switzerland in 10 minutes. The driver was shifting gears to back out when I ran up to the door with my eyes cracked wide open in panic. I found a spot and sat bewildered at what was happening.
The sights coming through the giant windshield pressed up against me in a rush. The landscape only became more fantastic as the ground merged into higher peaks covered in green with rivers snaked around the base. I was off to a country I had no plan to visit with no guarantee there’d be an available train out. I swallowed that, let my shoulders rest and started laughing at myself. A man behind me who only spoke French put his arms up into the shape of a mountain peak and pointed me towards the view again. He must’ve thought I was laughing from the sheer joy of the scenery.
By the time I got to Geneva, I was excited to be there. There was a train leaving for Germany but I decided to stay on the off chance that R’s sister, who happened to live there on the border, was willing to take in a complete stranger. I slept on her couch for two nights.
He jokingly asked if I’d planned this. We’d met, gone away together, and now I was staying with his sister in another country. It did feel a bit ridiculous. The stacking coincidences and their endearing nature made me wonder about everything and a small part of me hoped there was more to it than just really dumb luck.
The lake in Geneva was crisp as the water had all come down from the mountain range. She drove us to Annecy, a small French town, and bought me a beer. Their eyes were very alike. It was strange getting to know him through another person. When she spoke, I listened and tried to piece her stories into the ones he’d told me. As she asked me about my trip, little pieces inevitably fell out that hinted at a larger, deeper drive for my nomadic tendencies than pure curiosity. She wanted to know why. What happened in Germany? Where is your family? Oh, you’re not close with your mother? Considering she’d literally picked me up off the side of the street, I didn’t mind offering some transparency.
So, then she knew. She told me about how hard it was to lose her mom. She died when her and R were teenagers. He’d already told me about it but not much. Although our losses took on different shapes, I think this lack helped him to understand me better.
The day I left, she walked me to the train platform and hugged me goodbye.
In Leipzig, I rested. Being the sleepy city that it is, it lulled me to stop moving and I didn’t fight it. The flight to Ireland wasn’t for another week. I spent most of my time by an open window. Mid-week, in the middle of the night, I flinched awake to a message from my grandmother. “Your mother is looking for you”. It made my head ring. I remember looking around the room like she was going to appear and grab me by the hair.
She simply meant that she was trying to reach me and couldn’t because my American number was out of service. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to talk. Besides, it wasn’t that difficult to reach me if she’d really wanted to. She knew I was leaving but we didn’t talk about it much. Not about where I was going or any details about my return. She didn’t ask. Anytime we spoke, it was just her reeling over every grievance she’d suffered. Even hardly in touch, with her unable to tell anyone where I was, I fought her all the time.
And here I was. Finally having exiled myself from everything I’d ever known and happy for it. Every start and finish I’d ever been a part of seemed to have a peeling corner that I wasn’t supposed to see. No matter what room I was in, I wanted to be in a different one but didn’t know where that was. This relentless thing compounded with the after of some severely painful years and I just wanted to get out all the time. Even if new things, new places exposed themselves to not be quite new, I wished for a way to see them differently. Crossing an ocean was as close as I’d ever come to ripping at that peeling corner.
I flew from Berlin to Ireland. As I walked up to the house, I caught a glimpse of him sat on the edge of a piece of furniture with his eyes fixed on an empty space that must’ve been crowded with thought. He was waiting for my knock at the door. He let me inside and I shrank into timidness. I said I needed to shower the airport off of me. Under the running water, I felt almost embarrassed that I had come. That I had flown from another country to come stay alone in a house with him. I gathered myself and rode on the excitement rather than sticking pins into thoughts that were useless now.
The house was two-stories with a lot of glass letting in light. We made a trip for groceries like we’d done in the last two cities. There was a strip of shops and cafes nearby congested with construction but the surrounding green from sky to ground made up for it. Plus, the air was cold here. Completely unlike Spain had been or how I knew Texas was at that moment. It was like having Fall in July.
The bed got cold at night. The first night, he held me and said he couldn’t believe I had come. Despite my earlier self-flagellation, I was glad I had. The week we had together was calm. He’d wake early to work and wake me later in the morning by coming back to bed. I’d get up and walk to get coffee. We took baths in the clawfoot tub and cooked dinner from scratch. I played piano in the room paneled with three windows which were angled in a way that cradled the instrument. Green streamed in with the force of a choir. Again, the days and nights melded and I tried not to think ahead. Every one of those nights we went to sleep together now exists mostly as one memory- my neck tilted forward and the kiss he placed at the base of it before we drifted.
Even within this sweeping crimson, there were moments I slipped away from it. The unbridled joy of it all was cast over by the knowing that I was essentially posing in a temporary setting. Life had become unrecognizable. This was a relief as much as it was unnerving. To be untethered.
One of those nights, we came back from having dinner and I just turned off. He hadn’t done anything condemnable but I felt stiff as ice. An old ache struck in me. I had thoughts that I hated. Sharp, sore, spiraled shaped thoughts that reminded me of her. Moments like this, I had to look again at how she’d gotten inside me. I disappeared into the tub to ring myself out. Bobbing half way beneath the surface, I had mellowed by the time he came knocking at the door. He got undressed and into the water with me. I was glad to have him there.
We rented a little yellow car and drove the coastline for our last full day before I left. Rain flashed on and off the whole drive. The sights were some of the most beautiful I’d seen but I felt almost numb to them. I stared to really take it in. To see how the water licked down the rocks and how the edge of the land curved before vanishing under. At the absolute edge, I stared as hard as I could at the horizon. It was the northernmost point of the world I’d ever reached and even while looking directly at it, I felt like I was forgetting.
I had to fly to Berlin again to catch my flight back to the states. I told myself that I wanted to go home and I just couldn’t tell yet. He joked about us abandoning our current lives and continuing north. I joked back and stayed shielded from letting any quiet desire seep in while I prepared my flight check-in online.
The next morning he walked me to the airport security gate and I left him with my hair clip.
“A beloved being who disappoints me. I have written to him. It is impossible that he should not reply by saying what I have said to myself in his name.
Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.
I am also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”
Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil.
The plane for my last connecting flight was so delayed it almost didn’t board so I got back even later that night. I arrived and opened the door slowly. It smelt the way it did when I first came to look at the place the Summer before. The fumes of white cover-up paint pressed under trapped heat. This and the stillness made it feel all the more wrong to be returning. I was walking into a before. I thought I’d come back and feel relief. Seeing my things again, my bed, knowing I could stop moving. I felt no relief at all. Going to sleep wrapped in the arms of a man I knew for a few weeks, in the house of people I’d never met, that felt safer than anything I had now.
The next morning, I woke feeling completely restless within this place, within my life. I thought of putting all my belongings out on the street and driving as far away as I could. Or boarding a plane to wherever sounded good and figuring it out. Then I calmed down and bargained with myself. I rearranged the furniture. I put it back the way it was before. I read intensely to find an answer to an unformed question. That flaming idea about abandoning our current lives carried on between R and I for a while as a real consideration but reality oxidized that dream. A month passed. September passed. More months passed.
A few weeks ago, I cut my mother out of my life unlike I’d ever done before. In a definitive way, with intention. Although this was only a few weeks ago, I haven’t seen her in 7 years. Even with all that absence, she found ways to open up the pain all the time. Since I’d returned and she was able to reach me again, so was the common thread of endless tragedies. I told her I didn’t want to speak again unless she really changed. As expected, she launched back with attacks and began yelling. It was my fault I hadn’t gotten over my “shit”. Her mistakes became mine. I got in a well deserved “fuck you” before she hung up on me. These are the last words we will exchange for an indefinite amount of time. Maybe ever.
What I’m trying to cope with isn’t loss. It’s choice. I am still trying to cope with my mother’s choices and where that leaves us both. She has missed most of my life and will likely miss the rest. This is her choice. I think about her nearly every day yet sometimes feel that I hardly know her.
This has left me wondering what I am.
My grandmother drank herself into the hospital last October. She has no memory of me coming to the hospital. I was the only one who came as I am the only one around who can. When the withdrawal cleared and she was cognizant enough to call me, she called to tell me she didn’t want to talk to me. This was her choice.
“We are at the point where love is just possible. It is a great privilege since the love which unites is in proportion to the distance. God has created a world which is not the best possible but which contains the whole range of good and evil. We are at the point where it is as bad as possible because beyond is the stage where evil becomes innocence.” Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil.
What I shared about my time with R, those are the intoxicating parts of falling. But falling isn’t often gentle or graceful. He made choices and I made choices. Staying with him or going back for him, whether it had happened or not, that choice wouldn’t have answered for the peeling layer I couldn’t get behind, for the place I couldn’t find, or for what my mother has left open for me to close. When it did seem more possible, it was nearly irresistible. It excited me to consider surrendering to it all. To him, to my feelings for him, and to a country that had taken me over within a few strides.
It is forgivable to want to fall into another person and to hope that this union will answer for many things- soothe. But this is a choice too and it is one that comes with consequences, like anything else. The reality of how far someone can naturally extend themselves to catch you is limited and it should be. There is a right way to do this- to unite. I said it’s forgivable to want to fall into another person. What isn’t as easily forgivable is the choice to fall into another person to the point that you crush them and yourself.
I caught my mother for years. Literally and figuratively. By falling into me, she hoped she would reach absolution. That this forced union would soothe the failures of her mother and of her own that she had perpetuated with me. Instead, she crushed us both.
After the line is cut. After the plane lands. After the door shuts. After the sea has demolished and retreated. After you cannot fall any further, what remains?
Stillness.
Stillness does not clot the aftermath of disaster nor does it extend any joy that has occurred. It is an opening. And within that opening you make choices.
Drink to obliterate, lie to yourself, to others, sabotage, deny, give into the night, grow callous. Betrayal of the self. A spiral staircase.
Actively, I choose other. To instead, try refraining when I should. Enjoy, learn, and be warm. Reach out instead of cowering. Try really hard at the things I want to be good at. Listen to as much music as I can. Listen to people and what they have to say. Try to understand. Even in choosing these things, I am without answers and I will doubt myself. I will inevitably wrestle with the way stillness can be so infuriatingly calm. This is what gives choice it’s power.
Choice will be utilized to destroy and create. The stillness that follows is an opening. Not a dismissal, not a death.