My First Burrowing Work

I don’t know what this is, this feeling. My heart is pounding so hard against my chest, the beat in my ears like the music of a club. The music so loud you can’t hear your friend tell you they’re ready to leave. So loud you can’t hear why you’re being pulled to the door, fast, and faster…like this feeling. It travels down to my stomach, up to my throat; it’s in my head. My lungs are so tight I can’t even breathe. My arms are weak and my hands are shaking, I don’t even feel my legs. That is this feeling. It’s a whole body feeling. I don’t want to feel it. Why do I have to? Why can’t the tears just come and a rage and the whole world will stop as I drown in lack of feeling? Now it burns. It burns; it wants to be fed. But fed by what? By men, and love and liquor? Oh, love. Why did I say love? It sounded right I guess: love and liquor. There is so much liquor in love, but no true love comes out of liquor. Let me explain what I mean by liquor in love. Its this feeling. It burns down my insides, it tears me apart, it makes me feel free and fun, the world is around me, everything a play toy, everything is new. So I take more and more, I want it. I need it. And every time it burns going down, but I crave that feeling, it lets me know I’m alive. But then there is no more? How could I have drunk so much in, in such a short amount of time? Where is the rest? Has someone been sneaking sips behind my back? I am suspicious, I want more, someone is taking it from me. I’ll get more, no matter what it takes, I’ll drive to the store, I’ll find it there. And then this feeling comes. This feeling is not like the old. This is new, I feel the pain, it’s hurting me, it’s choking me I just want it gone, but I am still alive, I know this because I feel it.

Now the pain is exploding like vomit--out of my mouth, so why is it ringing in my ears? I feel the beat, my eyes are swollen.

Now I’m empty. I have nothing. The world, the fun, they are gone now. So why does the feeling remain. But now it’s different still, it’s not this feeling; it’s the next feeling. The feeling only flesh wounds can compare in pain to. It all comes back to love. Love and loss. Can you ever feel love and never feel an inevitable loss? No. The person leaves, you leave, they cheat, you cheat, they die, you die. There is nothing but loss in love. The Mormons must have it right. Eternal families and all that jazz. But then the loss is greater when you wake up, dead, no eternal husband, no god. And you’re still all alone. Love and loss, there’s always loss with love. Lost hopes, lost dreams. Sacrifices have to be made, and every little sacrifice is a new piece lost. A piece of me. I can’t tell you how much I’ve lost over the years. Not all from one, but at least one from all.

I’d tell you it’s the worst kind of pain, this feeling. But I’ve given birth to a child, I don’t dare suggest there is a thing more painful than that, but there is no love epidural. Except maybe, again, the liquor. And even then there is the postpartum amnesia. Why else would women go through it all again? I need a post-break-up amnesia. Post-divorce amnesia. Post-“first-time” amnesia. That first time, is it ever any good? Is it ever all about love and excitement, feeling the urges exploding in passion and bliss? Not for any 16-year old girl I’ve ever met. For me it was on a hill somewhere up the South side of Reseda. I’m not talking a romantic woodland adventure. No blanket, no soft mossy earth. Just dirt, hard and cold. The dirt was like the sex, he was hard, and I was cold. I went to another place then, so there is no feeling in remembering. Remembering is like snow, forgetting is like a hot bath. But the problem is that the snow keeps falling, and you have to walk out in the cold and shovel it away. When you come inside you draw up a bath, that first toe dipped in feels like a thousand needles stabbing you, you don’t want to forget, but slowly the feeling dulls, the cold is dispersing, you have feeling in your extremities again, and you want to stay in that bath forever. I guess that’s not a good example for all of us living in California. In either case, remembering is the disease and forgetting is the cure. But no matter how many times I get rid of the flu, there’s always a new one to come attack me again. These days it’s been the swine flu, and H1N1. Men are definitely swine, so that is a perfect example.

Don’t take me for a pessimist or a man-hater; I wouldn’t be so disagreeable if it weren’t for this burning, beating, berating feeling in my chest. Bum, bum, bum. If there were a way to survive without a heart, I would surely cut it out myself. But it’s trapped there, in my chest, burning it’s way though, I suppose it just might burn its way right out. Then I’ll be rid of it.