A Dying Love

            Taking his time. As usual. I think it’s about time I see what’s taking so long. We’ve been seeing each other for five years now. Talk about taking his time. We’ve been living together for three years. I’ve got to be wasting my time.

Three years ago.

“What time is it? We’re going to be late!” I was going to be late to the third wedding I’d been to this year. It felt like the universe was trying to tell me something. Trevor and I have been living together for a year now, and he made an amazing wedding date. Women would bat their eyes at him and smile and wink at me. But then the questions would come. “When are you two finally going to get hitched?”, “Isn’t it about time he pops the question?”, “How long have you two bee together? Are you ever going to tie the knot?” I think I’ve heard every cliché expression for getting married that’s ever been invented, and each one is more annoying than the last.

            “We’re not going to be late honey, just calm down. Why do you always get this way before we go to one of these things?” He said this with a smile, as he put his arm around my waist. Here we go, another half hour and we’ll be out the door.

            I started the day today the same as I start everyday, these days at least, tired. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in ages. My job keeps me out late with overtime, and Trevor is constantly going out with the boys “to unwind.” We hardly see each other anymore. And now he is being slow as usual, while he makes me wait for him to get ready.

Two year ago.

I feel so relieved that things are finally slowing down for me at work. Even Trevor has noticed the change in my mood, and it’s affecting his too. Last week he brought home flowers, for “no reason.” If this new deal at work goes through we will finally have a chance to relax, maybe even take a long over due vacation.

            “Sweetheart, you look amazing! Where are you taking us?” he gently tickles my arm and pulls me onto the couch.

            “You know I want this to be a surprise! Don’t ruin it!” I’m smiling and letting him pull my hair back from my face, I know where this is going. “Now come one Trev, we can’t be late!” But I let him when he reaches for my zipper.

            “Trevor, please! We can’t do this again, it’s the Morgan’s, we’re late to all of their events, they live all the way across town!” I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me from his chair, with a little smirk, as if the things I’m saying are absurd. He doesn’t even make a move to leave. He has never cared about being on time, being polite. I’ve started to really see through his charming demeanor and I realize just how selfish he is in his actions. I walk toward the door, he’ll have to stay home for this one after all there will be plenty more in the future.

One year ago.

            The deal fell through, the budget cut Trevor’s funding, we’re living on microwave noodles. I’ve never been as strong as Trevor in a crisis. I crumble and break down.

            “Darling, we will make it through this hard time, it’s getting hard for everyone, but we are strong together.”

            Together. That’s a laugh. We haven’t been together in a week, and I’m starting to feel like the word “us” means two different things between Trevor and me. Trevor must have known what I was thinking because he took my hand and kissed it gently. It’s hard to resist when he knows just the things to calm me and make me succumb.

           

            The party was a bore. Two year olds are not as fun when they don’t belong to you. When none of them belong to you. You can’t say “Oh, my Jimmy is playing to sweetly with your Vivian. We should set up a play date for next week, wouldn’t they be so sweet together when they grow up?” Or, “Tommy, don’t be mean to your brother or you can’t have any cake. Didn’t Mrs. Morgan make a beautiful cake for Julie’s birthday?” Instead I have to sit amongst the moms and listen to their sweet and horrid stories and pray that little Suzi doesn’t remember my purse again for being the only one with “grown up things” in it. It’s nice to be back home where it’s quite.

Six months ago.

            We had a scare. Or more accurately, Trevor had a scare, and I had a completely different kind of scare.  It turned out to be a defunked test and the doctor explained that a false positive could be pretty common. Trevor came home so relieved it was almost like old times again looking into his eyes. But my heart had been more hopeful. I had wanted to be pregnant. Surely that would be the way to get him to marry me, he wouldn’t have an excuse then, he would have to step up. But instead he made us a special pasta dinner with extra champagne.

 “See dear, we don’t have to worry, have the whole bottle there’s nothing to stop you! We’re celebrating!” And he poured us each a glass, but we’d never finish those, he took mine from my hand and placed both on the coffee table. But my heart was no longer in it.

After finishing my dinner I went in to check on Trevor. He always got so lonely when I leave him for one of my parties.  That’s why I made him a little spot so he could watch TV while I’m gone. I prop him up in his lazy chair; he always was a lazy boy, taking his time never thinking about what I want. But I take my time now. Combing his hair just the way I like it. Brushing his teeth with the toothpaste I prefer. His hair is starting to fall out; I’ll pick up a better shampoo at the store tomorrow. And his face is looking sunken now; I’ll have to remember to get a better night cream for him. But for now I just lift his cold hand and let my lips warm his fingers.

My Fiction Story "This Plane of Existence"

I am dead. I walk among the living though. I died in a plane crash when I was only eighteen years old. I guess I am still eighteen really, or I am nothing at all. I am no years old because the dead cannot be old.

August 2003

I’m on a plane to Hawaii getting ready to start my freshman year at UHH. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the University of Hawaii at Hilo.  It is just about the midway mark from LAX to Honolulu right now and we’ve started to have some pretty heavy turbulence. I am thinking that there isn’t much use in putting on your seat belt if the plane is going to crash; a plane crash is an unlikely thing to survive. I am about to find out that I am wrong.

I am in the water now and I think I know that I am already dead. I can see my mom being pulled into a rescue boat, but my lifeless arm cannot reach out to wave to her. My voiceless lips will never again call her name.

August 2007

            I can always tell the hopeful students from the grateful tourists. Today we have about five new kids wanting to stretch their wings and become independent adults. I always like to watch the ones that bring family with them; they have the most joy in their faces because they have someone to share their time with.

            I am all alone, so sometimes I like to sit with a kid traveling all alone and watch the movie as I rest my head on their shoulder. I wish I could let them know that turning the little air vent knob wont warm them up while I am there.

August 2026

            Today I am sitting with a man reading his classified section. There is never very much to do on a plane. Especially after twenty-three years. I think I could leave this plane, maybe find a new one. But I like to watch over the people that are coming and going. I like to make sure that everything has been checked, the fuel is full, the gages are all in working order. I always check the seat belt of every passenger should we hit any turbulence. I especially watch over those young girls with stars in their eyes. Eyes that are never on the horizon, but further off, into a distance of non-existence, into the land that I live in. Every once in a while someone will say hello to me.

August 2043

            It’s been forty years today. Forty years I have stayed on this plane. This plane of existence that is always resting between the living and the dead. The land and the heavens. I do not know where I go to every time it lands, but it is a beautiful place. But I always get back on when my plane is about to take off. I am not able to be on the earth, the earth cannot hold my soul now that it is no longer material. So I must stay in the air. But every time we land, I am transported to a new place. A beautiful place. Sometimes I want to stay there, and sometimes I think I should, it is so calm and peaceful, so roomy, not like the halls of my plane. But then I hear the engine starting, and I am called back to my plane.

August 2079

            None of my family has ever come to visit me on my plane. No one I know ever flies this jet. But I have often seen the same face, and I have come to consider the flight attendants and crew as my family. They are constantly changing and evolving, sometimes on member will be transferred, or another will have a baby and only return again for a vacation with the family.

            I would be ninety-four today, if I were still alive.

            But I am dead. So I guess I am still eighteen really, or I am nothing at all. I am no years old because the dead cannot be old. 

            

My True Story Assignment

A five-hour plane ride. This is my sixth one this year. I can picture that first one so clearly now. All the hope and excitement, the anticipation for something new, it feels like a whole life has gone by in that one year. And now this is my last flight. The last flight home.

August 2003.

“I got accepted to the University of Hawaii!!!” I ran out of my room, the room that had been built just for me. Me: an 18 year-old girl who, for her entire life, has shared a bedroom with a sister, or even a brother.  Now just a year into that room and I’d be flying across the ocean, to stay for…well, forever! “Mom! I got accepted!”

“Accepted where?” my mom asked, as she sifted through a month’s worth of bills, piled high like the coins Ebenezer Scrooge counts in the beginning of all “A Christmas Carol” movies.

“To Hawaii!!” I was so excited.

Now, Hawaii was the only college that would accept me outright, due to a slight oversight by my less-than-competent counselor in High school. You see, before I was pulled from my eleventh grade English class to be put in the “gifted students” class (some new thing they were trying out I guess) I managed to get a “D” in the “regular kid’s class”. Of course, upon speaking with my counselor I was told that there was no worry and I would graduate and go on to bigger and better things. She also told me that I didn’t need another science class, one I scrambled to get into last minute senior year when a more informed student told me I needed it to graduate, let alone to get into any college. I sat through a semester with a room full of ninth graders, not my idea of fun. Needless to say, when I got my first rejection letter from, of all places, CSUN I was not completely surprised to see the note that a “C” or better was required in that infamous eleventh grade “regular-kid” class. So this letter from Hawaii meant, not only do I get to move out, but I also don’t have to take an English class over the summer!

The first flight was all hope and excitement. I was glad to have my mom with me, for the support and to help me get settled in. I would be all alone soon enough, but I wasn’t thinking about that then.

December 2003.

            My first flight home after four months in Hawaii was a small relief. Though I had made a couple of friends, I had never been the best at making new contacts. I’m not shy, no one would call me shy, but I’m awkward in new situations and it takes me some time to warm up to new people.

            I was excited to be going home and seeing everyone I had left behind, but I was anxious to be going “home” to a new one. While I was away my family uprooted and moved out to Palmdale. Palmdale. I’d been there once before to pick up a friend, it seemed like it was a thousand miles away. It was cold and foreign, and no matter how many sweet accessories my mom added to my room, this little hole in the wall compared nothing to the gorgeous specially built room I had only just gotten just a year before.

            I decided to go up to Oregon to visit my new roommate Ksenia, from Hawaii. I’d be seeing her again soon, but I no longer felt at home anywhere, I was a small branch floating in a vast ocean, never drifting close enough to a shore to make a home for myself.

            The flight there was not very long, so hardly counted on my tally of flights that year. The tiny little twelve seater that took me from my stop in Seattle to Portland was the scariest flight I’d ever been on to date. But I made it there, and made it home alive, and only two hundred and fifty dollars worse for the wear.

           

January 2004

            It was a little more emotional leaving again this time, my boyfriend went with us to the airport, I was sure I’d miss him more this time because I knew what it had been like the previous few months.

            The next couple months were eventful, but looking back I hardly remember the events and adventures through my haze of depression. When people talk of “cabin fever” living on an island, they know what they are talking about. I was starting to feel so alone, away from my family I had been so eager to leave, away from my boyfriend.

           

April 2004

            I had joined Model UN, to further my political science goals, and part of that class was going to be a trip to New York to visit the United Nations and have a true mock-UN meeting. Our school would be representing Italy.

            I love New York, ever since I was a wee-one going there to visit my grandma. My mother was born and raised in New York, and when I was a little girl she said I even sounded like I had a New York accent. At that point I was still sure I would move there some day.

            My sister had spring break during the time I would be in New York, so instead of taking a trip to Hawaii to visit me, she decided to make it a trip to New York so she could also visit her long-distance boyfriend who was going to NYU at the time.

            Nine hour flight there and nine hour flight back, and at this moment I couldn’t tell you what the heck we did there.

July 2004

            Here I am on a plane once again. Five hours to go and I’ll be home again in Palmdale. As I stare out the window and catch my last glimpse of the beautiful luscious island I can’t help but feel a pain for all my lost adventures. They have been lost in their time, trapped in a place I will hardly remember in a year. I wont be going back to the University of Hawaii. I will go to Antelope Valley and Pierce College, then massage school, COC and finally CSUN. A beautiful daughter, a marriage and a divorce later, Hawaii will be nothing but a distant past. But I know nothing of that now. Right now I just stare out the window and see the ocean take over, I close the shade and start watching the movie that’s playing.

            “Pretzels and Ginger Ale please.”

Expectations

The funny thing about expectations is that they rarely are the truth of what is to come. I watched 500 days of summer the other night and LOVED the scene of the expectations versus what really happened...The funny thing is...for me, right now...when I am thinking about whether or not I will get a response from him...I don't expect him even to answer, I expect he has changed his mind...I expect the worst. But that doesn't mean I don't wish it were going to be more. It doesn't mean I don't wish that he will say all the things I want him to say...and mean them. He can and will say all the right things...it's the meaning them part he hasn't quite got down yet...

Life isn't fair

Why does this always have to happen to me? I'm a good person...I'm nice...I'm caring...

It isn't fair. It just isn't fair.


- Cory (from the phone)

Life

So often it feels like life isn't fair, but you know what? What is fair? Having the most beautiful daughter this world has ever seen? Some people might not think it's fair that I get that privilege, but I am so fortunate. And I am beautiful and smart...and talented. I have so much going for me...why is it that I tend to dwell on the negative? Why is it that people tend to dwell on the negative. I think if I were to obsess over all the good things in my life I'd be a much happier person ;-)

So my task for the next week is to see just how often I can be thankful for my blessings and talk about those and dwell on them, and really think about them and only them. Let the shit die from being ignored :-)

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.