Memories

Why is it that when summer finally gets here, I find myself dreaming of the fall, of changing leaves and cool evenings that smell of burning wood and snap weather? Fall is a favorite of mine. It reminds me of new school supplies and my decade-long love affair with Harry Potter.

Harry has gotten me through some hard times. Harry was there through thick and thin. Harry knows what it's about. When his story ended, I mourned.

Truly, I moped and cried for days, feeling that an era of my life had ended.

Anyway, the point is that I am yearning for fall. I don't know why that should matter to you except for the fact that I am actually looking forward to something. It's strange, I know. I'm sure you're used to sad, whiny, annoying Deidra. But she is no more!

At least for now.

I've been feeling nostalgic lately. Nostalgic for a lot of things, but here are some of the memories that keep popping into my head:

1) Riding in Trish's new car to QuikTrip, listening to Maroon 5's Songs About Jane, to buy lemon lime slushies to make margaritas. Classy, I know.

2) Trying to practice piano, but my dad cannot resist coming in to play his own songs so that I am forced to wait while he plays himself.

3) The smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of cicadas, especially with skin smelling of chlorine and barbecue chicken baking in the oven.

4) The first time I ever felt my heart breaking. The sounds of Free Bird and the lyrics that still hurt to listen to, for so many more reasons now than just heartache.

5) Friday night. Mario Kart 64. Mazzio's pepperoni pizza. Disney original movies.

6) That particular smell of fried food and dirt that accompanies the State Fair, how my mom and dad could not resist playing that game where the coins fall of a ledge until all their small bills were gone.

7) The look of frosted Zima and the feel of plush carpet beneath my feet at the Beller's. Always watching the same movie, Babe's in Toyland, because they had no others to watch.

8) That magical feeling that I can't describe other than to say, "It reminds me of the mountains," or, "It's like that scene in Zelda where Link learns to play the ocarina."

There are more; many, many more. But you're probably bored.

Not Broken

There's a quote that always sticks in my head in times like these:

It is amazing how fast stark terror can turn to stark boredom.*

I believe the same can be said for sadness. There is no rhyme or reason it it. It comes as swiftly as it goes. I am an ever-revolving sphere of emotion.

Today I am happy.

I don't have much to say today, but I thought it pertinent to prove that I am not a total train wreck. I sit in my chair at this dusty keyboard listening to Talk Radio as they discuss culture-shifting ideas like Keep the Change for Bank of America or the shifting stroller (I don't even know what that is). I'm flat broke, work is overwhelming, Lady Gaga is stuck in my head, and my friends are spread to all corners of the country.

But I am happy.

I will relish this moment because I don't know how much longer it will last. Happiness has become elusive and precious to me. I will not squander it.

In the meantime:

She's not broken,
She's just a baby,
But her boyfriend's like a dad,
Just like a dad...




*I could not find the exact quote, but as it was probably plagiarized in the first place, I don't find that I care much. At any rate, it got the point across.

Grief

Grief does funny things to you.

If you're not careful, it feeds.

I used to be a walking, talking Barbie doll - perfect smile plastered to my face because nothing had ever happened to wipe it away. My makeup was always perfect. My clothes showed all curves. I wore heels.

That girl is gone.

Grief has sucked her dry. She doesn't have the need or energy even to take showers.

Makeup is something that I do rarely, and then only because my mama instilled in me at a very young age that all good women wear makeup. Clothes are comfortable now, not aesthetic. Heels are a thing of the past.

I've lost chunks of my life to grief - periods I can't remember.The amnesia is most likely a survival mechanism employed by my much smarter brain. Remembering would serve only darkness, and my brain needs the light to survive.

When someone I love takes too long to come home, I begin to fear. What if they're dying? What if I never see them again? The fear leads to tears I can neither understand nor control.

And now I wonder ... is it truly better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Who said that? I'm not sure, and don't feel like looking it up, but I'm relatively certain that person never lost someone permanently. I would rather have not loved them, never met them, than to feel this permanent black hole in my heart, pulling into it all happiness, all hope, leaving only fear, lust, anger - all the baser emotions, the ones that ensure I will live. I may do it unhappily, but I will live, and that's all my body wants - to continue being.

They say that time heals, that eventually you begin to mend, to forget. It isn't true. Time is not a bandaid or a salve. Time does not stitch together the jagged pieces inside you. Time doesn't even let you remember in peace. The memories still feel like a knife in my throat, an arrow through my heart. Time doesn't dry your tears, it only ensures you run out, dry up like you're lost in the Sahara.

Grief is worse than depression. Grief cannot be dampened by pills or lanced with happiness. Grief is an ever-present demon, gnawing at your insides, making you ill. Depression only numbs. Grief weakens. It makes you want to scream, makes you feel like you are screaming but no one can hear, makes you scared of the future.

I don't think about my future anymore. I don't dream of medical school or residency. I don't look forward to my career with excitement. I don't think about the classes I will be taking in a few months, or the movies I want to see. I don't think about children or grandchildren. It is hard enough to be in the present, to live through the pain of right now. All that future pain seems like a punishment, and in true Deidra-brain fashion, my mind has blocked it out.

Grief has taken away the Barbie in me. Barbie-Deidra was never equipped to handle it. Even Grieving-Deidra isn't equipped to handle it. I've made primitive weapons to fight it away, but grief is a monster that cannot be defeated with the puny slings and arrows my mind doles up.

I'm tired of fighting. Can't I just give in?

The Body Man

Paint, lacquer thinner, and cigarette smoke.

Oh, the smells of childhood.

Since before I was born, my dad owned a bodyshop. That shop has been a staple in my family for so long that my earliest memories are concentrated around it. I remember playing under my mom's desk there when I was too young to go to school. Every Friday my sister and I were babysat as she paid the bills and tallied the payroll. She would come home smelling of dirt and cold night air with a hint of Elizabeth Arden's Red Door, her leather jacket tucked about her and Raybans covering her eyes.

Muted blue button-up shirts with white stripes became common to me. My dad dressed in them everyday. On one side a patch read, "Chris," the other, "The Bodyman." My dad was the Body Man. The uniform was so much a part of him that when I dream about him, he's always wearing it.

For nearly 25 years I have come and gone through that place, and still I know very little of cars. I was never interested; never bothered to learn.

Now I work there.

When my dad was alive, I was too scared to consider working there. My dad was not what one would call diplomatic or tactful. He said what he wanted to say, when he wanted to say it, and most of what he wanted to say was insulting, offensive, or chauvinism disguised as a joke.

But he ran The Bodyman well. His personality allowed him to succeed there. He made friends. Too many of them. People respected him.

Now that he's gone, my mom is struggling to replace the gaping hole he left in the shop. Without the Body Man, what is The Bodyman? My dad had enough energy for three, maybe four, people. With shoes that big, it is taking too many of us to fill them. We don't have his knowledge or his charisma. We don't even like cars.

But we are trying. The Body Man left us a legacy, and it wouldn't do to disappoint - even if that displeasure would come from beyond the grave.

Chained to Blue

I am tired of being a slave to my emotions.

I suppose that's the price I am paying for being a victim of depression.

This year has been the worst of my life, and despite medication, my body responds to that sadness with a low immune system and the aches of chronic stress. My head hasn't stopped hurting since Christmas, my body shakes and my heart pounds.

I hide behind wry smiles and sarcasm, but I've been in pain for so long that no one seems to notice the difference. Sometimes I wish they would notice. Sometimes I just want to be hugged.

If there was a way to remove my emotions, I truly think I would do it. Emotionless logic can be cruel, but at least it makes sense. My sickness doesn't make sense. My sadness is debilitating. It's hardly a question why some people resort to suicide. If I weren't such a coward, I would probably have succumbed to that fate as well.

I am tired of being an emotional wreck. I am tired of working so hard toward happiness. The brighter half of the emotional spectrum should be mine as well. Isn't that my right as a human, to be able to feel sadness and happiness? Anger and passion?

I just want to be able to feel happy, and I don't think that is too much to ask.

100's Day

When I was in 3rd grade, I sat in the far left corner of my English class. The boy I liked sat in front of me, all blond hair and blue eyes. He was a typical boy, drawing crude pictures and playing mean jokes.

On the 100th day of school the kindergartners threw a little party. They colored banners and paraded them around the whole school. Our school was unique in that very few of the classrooms had any walls. They were mostly blocked off by cheap wood decorated with the colors and characters only seen in elementary schools - Positive Action smiles and Just Say No posters. The kindergartners had no trouble getting into the classrooms.

When they reached our room, I was the first they drew near, and one dropped their banner right beside my desk. I picked it up, thinking to give it back, but my crush turned around, all malicious smiles, and told me to rip it.

So I did.

I ripped it right in half.

When the circle drew back around and the girl came to claim her dropped banner, I remember feeling some hint of negative intuition. The banner was my sister's. She looked at me with sad eyes and a heartbroken face, and I can still remember the question in her 5-year old face. Why?

"Thanks," she said with a sad smirk, and took the two pieces of her colored banner, finishing her parade in silence. 

I think about that day a lot, and the guilt that never went away. How horrible of my 8-year old self to fall victim to such peer pressure. I've never seen Ali as sad as she was that day, having learned to school her features into something more appropriate - even when our dad died and the tears fell unrelenting.

Nothing compares to the unadulterated heartbreak in those young eyes, the sadness over the loss of something so innocent, something she had worked on for hours. Hours that were precious to one so young.

Maybe that's where I learned to safeguard the hard work of others. I encourage and praise where some would scorn merely because I have seen the sorrow my derision can cause, even if the more mature can hide their feelings with careless shrugs and the ever-present phrase, "I don't care."

They always care.

I love you, Ali.

Begging for Reality

I've mentioned before that I have extraordinarily vivid dreams. Dreams that, once remembered, cannot be forgotten.

I don't like my dream world.

It isn't that I'm complaining, really, but for all the jokes I make about the idiosyncrasies of my subconscious mind, it often leaves me with this feeling of being permanently unsettled. In my dreams, my fears come true. I relive my dad's funeral. I am forced by circumstance into prostitution. I am raped. My mother dies. My best friend murders my sister. My husband cheats.

Even the banalities make it into my dreams, the petty worry that my sister will take up smoking or that my boss will be ashamed of me.

I suppose I shouldn't call them dreams. They are nightmares.

And they haunt me every night.

Something intriguing about my dreams, something I've not heard from anyone else, is that they all seem to take place on the same plane. They don't start and stop in different places, at different times. They chronicle themselves. While I am dreaming one thing, I am also aware of what I dreamed last night, and how that particular place is just across the plane. The plane, usually, is a barren forest, where darkness rules and I can never run as fast as I would like.

Because of this, my dreams often morph into one another. I have recurring dreams, and in the middle of one dream, I will often remember a detail from another dream and proceed to redream it, no matter my desire (or lack thereof) to experience it again. I often wake up feeling empty and wrong, and usually fatigued. Real life is so much better than my dreams, where nothing makes sense and everything is frightening.

Many people seem to think my memory of the dreams is quite funny. It's something different about me. Something they remember. But to tell the truth, I would rather not dream at all.

My Dark Side

I'm a war of head versus heart
It's always this way
My head is weak
My heart always speaks
Before I know what it will say

-Death Cab for Cutie, Crooked Teeth

This verse describes me perfectly. I am blunt. My friends lovingly accuse me of being tactless, to which I always reply that tact is just lying for grown ups. But my mouth isn't something I can control. The truth comes out whether I want it to or not, and to be honest, I only say about 20% of what I'm actually thinking, so my rudeness is actually tempered by a rather heavy filter.

I've hurt friends with my words, my inability to say things in a way that might not be quite as painful. I've also vindicated some friends with a thorough reaming to people who had hurt them. My truths go both ways --- they can be something you don't want hear, or something you desperately need to. After all, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words are there forever.

If I like you, you know it.

If I don't, you know that too.

This, however, can become a problem in civilized working environments. I have no power where I work. I am the bottom of the totem pole. And people treat me accordingly. I won't pretend it doesn't vex me. In fact, I've rather vividly fantasized about punching some people right in that tenderest part of their eyes.

I find it very difficult to plaster a smile on my face and respect those people who find no shred of decency in themselves to treat me as if I have a brain, or, at the very least, as if I'm human. I've mouthed off a few times, but luckily not to anyone with any power to do anything about it.

It's only a matter of time. Someone has but to cross me too many times, and I will snap. They think I'm small and meek, too young and petite to fight back against them. They don't know how impulsive I can be, or how mean.

In other words, I know what I should do. I should let it roll off my shoulders, ignore it. But emotion runs deep in me, and it is a force that will not be ignored. I speak and sometimes act before I know what will happen.

One of these days, my weakness is going to get me in trouble.

Romance

It's been a long time.

I've been sick. Very sick.

But that's not very interesting. I fear I'm always sick.

I've been reading a lot lately. I'm averaging a book a day, which can admittedly be a tad expensive, despite my recent preference for mass market historical romance novels.

I love nineteenth century London.

I think I should have been a great debutante were I an earl's daughter with a large dowry in 1812. The Earl of Southwick or some such thing. I think I could easily live in a time when chivalry still existed and evening gowns were prerequisite. I would gladly give up my right to vote for such things considering I never exercise it anyway. And I don't really care that I just set my sex back nearly a century. I am a dependent person. If I could be a housewife and get away with it, I probably would.

I do fantasize, however, about transporting back there with my modern clothes and my modern slang and watching the scandalized faces of the matrons in the ballroom while I flip my unadorned hair and wear clothes that *gasp* show my knees. I feel I would wear belly shirts just to taunt them.

They would probably just think it's because I'm American.

I would give in. In my fantasy I am not exiled, but merely reformed. I find a modiste and dress properly, but I do not give up my electric flatiron (despite the lack of electricity, it works anyway) or modern eyeliner (of which I have an endless supply). I will catch a viscount at least. He loves me dearly.

Now if only I had a time machine...