TW: Death, abuse, mention of drugs, & injuries.
Currently Listening to: For Sure by Ethel Cain
Each night, for dinner, Eli and I light candles. We sit and talk until a few centimeters are burned away and then, we blow them out. Make a wish. Two weeks ago, my friend had finally woken up from his medically induced coma. A heart pacer installation had gotten him there around his birthday. It was great news that he’d been released, incomprehensible. It was a hairpin trigger.
The original version of this piece included a back-and-forth between the present and a memory of an owl barn my friends and I used to frequent as teens. It was picturesque and perfect, a real juicy narrative, one dripping with casualties; all that changed me, killed the me I’m slowly excavating from the cracked and cursed burial site of my never agains.
What good does a story of embellishments do for you and I, though? Especially now, in this light — in this world, where politics have been caricatured to an irreversible state of entertainment. Androids in homes. News channels with agendas. The war machine and stolen heartbeats.
The truth resides in a list I keep, a morbid catalog of people in my life who’ve endured a near-death experience1.
I want, so badly, to love in a good way.
But that list continues to grow, rearranging the letters of their names into unfinished events. That’s the trade-off between the artist and their muse, you see. They have a tryst with death, I get to apply some sort of metaphor to the exchange. Sorry, triviality is a default of mine with things like this.
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The last time I puked was about 6 months ago. My stomach was full of tequila, my mind drowned in government acronyms. I was something Eli had dreamt about, just a body in a fridge eating cotton wool, something so close to what he knew and yet, didn’t. Two weeks ago, though. Two weeks ago I puked.
Vomited up a confession to him that weakened my knees, stripped me of my beliefs, and ratified my subconscious: I love my husband. I love my husband something terrible.
This is where I lose you. This is where your eyes slip white. Where you hate me.
For eight years, I’ve kept a wall up between Eli and I all because of this list.
I used to think getting over Bruise Boy would cure me of any and all ailments. I used to think the facets that made me, he was the worst. The end all be all. Get over the abuse and intimacy would surely follow. What an absolute lie. All it took was another escape from limbo, another loved one’s miraculous recovery, for that fallacy to solidify its shape in my chest.
God, there is so much to tell you.
I’ve always loved him. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that experiencing this phenomenom, before two weeks ago, only came to me when I allowed it. When my guard was down. When vulnerability had loosened every card out from my tailored sleeve.
I’m so sorry.
Remember what I said about my inability to feel? To really feel. Here it is.
That damn, fucking, stupid list.
What I feel is easily summed up in the monologue spoken by Ellio’s father in Call Me By Your Name: “But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste…”
I think what’s often missed here is the prelude to this forced binary. I can either feel everything or nothing, and with Eli, that everything is unfathomable. That everything is why I refuse to have children. I wouldn’t dare allow a possibility of a life where I love anything more than him.
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I want to love him in a normal way. Driving home, it’s all I think about. Badum. Badum. Badum — my car bobs along the bandaged road beneath amber street lamps. I’m thinking about how it felt to fall asleep in the backseat of my parents car, the security of each part of me existing in one place.
I sift through the mundane for clues, confident the universe will speak to me the way it once did, through serendipitously timed songs. numbers and callbacks to when I was young.
And then, at home, that sweet trepidation returns. I tap the metallic teeth of that same, fucking trap with my big toe for the sake of his eyes. How do you breathe consciousness into a second pulse? Do you tell it you can’t sleep at night because you’re picturing fatal car crashes and incurable diseases? Go on, pour that black ink over the oil painting. Kill the colors of a meadow with an abyss of fear and static.
Go on, ruin it. Lay down in the field of short bones and ribs.
This is it, you and a cemetery. You carrying the casket. Always. Love is either dead or alive, and so far, the love that breathes, screams and pushes and holds your wrists above your head while you sob.
In my confession to Eli, I’d said that I was scared. That, my brain keeps telling me you’re going to die because I love you and I’m so scared to feel it and I hate to be that person, but I can’t be here without you 2.
He didn’t ask me why I thought that. He’s known me since I was fifteen3, witnessed the horror of my life from the sanctity of the wings. He kissed my forehead and blew out the candles beside us. I’d asked him what he’d wished for.
“I just love you,” He said. “I want you to feel better.”
Eli: In the ER on my 21st. Appendicitis that lead to a botched surgery.
T: Tonsil removal. Only his blood platelets were too low. He bled out. Flat lined. On another account, he flipped his car. At one point, I thought he’d OD’ed.
Spryer: A detox that shocked his body. He also flat lined.
My brother: Nasty car accident.
My mother: A struggle for a diagnosis, one that lead to her being bed ridden and us planning a funeral.
When I say scared, I mean that I was having panic attacks while in the shower. My pulse was erratic at the thought of him. I couldn’t sleep. I was chronically nauseous. I had a dream that a Shaman touched my stomach and told me I was “unpretty” but “closer to the sky” with this fear — which then sent me into a spiral I couldn’t tame.
Fun little fact: Eli was my older brother’s best friend in high school. We’d gone on family vacations together. He’d met T when T and I were dating. He even came to my 16th birthday party.
I feel everything in this post so viscerally. Such huge amounts of loss and pain, but also (sometimes equally horrific, or worse) that constant, underlying fear that the next blow is coming for you. Thank you for putting this into such a beautiful, meandering container. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Clear writing about profound difficulties usually indicates at least the start of a reconciliation with them. So all I can say is way to go. That kind of process is never easy, but your writing about those experiences is very well-done and an achievement.