The Bear

I decided to stop sleeping for a while because I realized that my emotional state ran like clockwork. Everyday. And it all started with waking up— actually, it all started with going to sleep— (chicken? egg?)

Sleep works as some sort of reset button. It’s like powering off your phone or computer and then turning it back on. My dad and WikiHow always say it’ll fix most of your problems. Just power off, wait, power back on. If that doesn’t work, your battery is as good as shot.

On my last night in Worcester, Judy took me onto her back porch alone. Just the two of us and the trees. She had me sit on a chair across from her, with a tiny table between us covered in what looked like a Witch’s Charcuterie Board– the most peculiar of these materials, perhaps, being a singular egg, Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Places You’ll Go, and the only tarot card that held any significance to me prior to this meeting: The High Priestess. She said Spirit asked her to pull it for me that morning.

She picked the egg up from its tiny bowl, held it up to the light, examined it, and then, with much gusto, smashed it flat on the table, sending us into a senseless fit of laughter. Judy held her hand out in front of her face, shrieking hysterically, as if she hadn’t been the one to crack the thing in two. Orange yolk dripped down her fingers, the gelatinous stuff sticking to the table's wooden surface and leaking down its side. The energy moving between our faces was electric. I could sense it, almost wanted to reach out and poke it with my finger.

“He’s here, can you feel it? He told me to smash it, he’s really funny…

When you get the shivers like that, it's your Higher Self saying YES! Okay? Trust me. Remember that. Hahaha, jeez, man…”

Something Judy said unlocked a file. After meeting her, I might have dumped every drawer and cabinet on the ground. It eventually became eerily close to that Spongebob episode where all the little Spongebobs in his brain are running around screaming and knocking over drawers and burning paper and spilling coffee and hyperventilating. But at first, it was just the ever-so-slight tip of a manila folder off a desk’s edge. Just a teensy bit of a tingle down my spine. Just the bedroom door left cracked open, sneaking in a skinny sliver of light.

I mean, think about it. How often do you have no idea who you are, where you are, or what is real? That’s easy. The first millisecond after waking up.

Every day after Dawson died, I would wake up completely free. For a second–not a second, a millisecond– there was nothing. Nothing but peace. Nothing but a squint of bedroom blinds, the shifting of light, a distant bird’s song, dust on the windowsill. In this millisecond, I could’ve been anyone, at any time. I could’ve been myself at eight years old on Christmas morning. I could’ve been myself at three, staring at the screw peeking out of the wood planks in my crib, wondering what it meant to perceive— and not knowing how to express it. I could’ve been sixteen, waking up next to a lover for the first time, right before realizing that his Mom could barge in the door and bust us any minute. I could’ve been someone else entirely. Maybe whoever I was before this (if you know what I mean…)

This millisecond was everything– the absolute best part of every single day—

The only thing worth reaching towards—

And then, like the city bus meeting a sedan at top speed with a drastic SCREECH,

I remember.

I remember being drunk in Audrey’s garage for her eighteenth birthday party. I remember gossiping, in a circle, squawking that Dawson’s Instagram posts about mental illness were controversial and ignorant. I remember Jadyn getting sick, and my new boyfriend possessively arriving to drive us home.

I remember pulling into her driveway.

I remember leaves hugging the edges of my vision.

I remember being inebriated enough for her room to spin.

I remember dressing and tucking Jadyn in.

I remember storming out of her house and into the garage,

filled with intoxicating rage, ready to rip his head off when I turned around to find him tailing me

I remember his pale, dull expression in the dark space, interrupting my spite, sighing,

Ana, I need to tell you something

I remember thinking, what? What could you possibly say?

Dawson was in a car accident

It looks pretty bad

—

——

I remember walking out of the garage, towards something, towards the trees. But I was no longer in her driveway. I was no longer in that neighborhood. I was no longer in my town. I was no longer in a body—

Later, when all of this began to itch and itch and itch and itch at me, I had no choice but to scratch it raw. So I theorized: maybe if I stay up for one whole night, watch the sunrise, make breakfast, and sit down with a book, maybe then I can stop it from happening all over again.

I couldn’t. I could only stay awake long enough to watch time go backward, and forward, and backward again, and then collapse and fold in on itself violently until I was vomiting melting memories all over the patient paramedic, and the Christian nurse named Katie– both of whom see this sort of thing every day, all the time, by the way.

During my stay at the Ward, I decided I would leave Philly and never step foot on its asphalt again. And there was no question as to where I was going: Home. Only I didn’t know exactly where, or what, or who Home was.

Senior year, Mom sold the Oldbury house. Uncle Pete died, and along with his Prius, his life insurance, his unfathomable collection of Seahawks paraphernalia, and his spirit of cynicism, he left her his house. She used the insurance money to redecorate the place to her liking.

Dad moved out of the Old Buckingham apartments, away from Midlothian, and back to Colonial Beach, where his story began. Colonial Beach is about an hour and a half drive from Midlothian, making Oldbury Road, the pond, the lake, the familiar streets, and my old friends and acquaintances so close, yet so, so far. I sold my Honda when I moved to Philly, which allowed me no choice but to hunker down in the boonies while I planned yet another escape.

Although it’s not like I very well could have cared for myself in those first couple of months, without Dad’s help. I needed someone to make me eggs for breakfast, someone to watch sitcoms with, someone to remind me to take my antipsychotics and L-theanine and valerian root and vitamin D and probiotics and antidepressants and trazodone and hydroxyzine and, well, I needed someone to hold me while I wept.

From December until March, I did just that. I didn’t work, I didn’t take classes, I didn’t drink any alcohol or smoke any weed or eat any psychedelic mushrooms. Instead, I wrote, I painted, I walked, I sang, I danced, I bathed, I wept, I slept– I slept– I slept – I slept –

Dad is the bad guy in my family, so until I was about seventeen, I hated him based on this premise alone. We all did (and, of course, we didn’t hate him, we feared him). Eventually, Mom’s antics drove me so close to insanity that I decided anywhere else was better. I decided it was too late for Chris to be my Dad, at least in the way that Jen was my Mom. I wasn’t concerned with disappointing him, I didn’t care if he knew I was stoned, I didn’t care if he knew I had sex. I didn’t have to lie to him. The last version of me he spent time with was thirteen years old. This gap erased expectations. I could be whatever daughter– or person– I wanted. And, I’ll admit, he was someone who resented my mother just as much as I did, if not more.

At some point in the last five years, Dad evolved. I can’t quite pinpoint how. As kids, we used to jokingly call him Mr.Happy because he had this bright yellow T-shirt with a corny smiley face plastered on it, beneath which was written Mr.Happy. It was ironic because every time Dad wore his Mr.Happy shirt, he would erupt in rage, occasionally scooping one of us up by our collars, growling inches from our face, or flipping the monopoly board because a twelve-year-old bought Park Place. But in reality, it wasn’t that ironic, because he also erupted wearing any one of his other four T-shirts, including the one with a photo of Mark Twain that read “That’s what she said”, the one with a rainbow-colored tree overlapping a DNA sequence, the one with the graphic print of a Tuxedo, and the one with the nerdy punchline about Schrodinger’s Cat.

Dad doesn’t erupt much anymore. When I arrived at his house in December, he gifted me a couple of books, including a Buddhist’s take on anger, a therapist’s take on alchemizing dark emotions, and a poet’s take on existence. Reading must’ve helped him. Hooping, too, Dad used to Hula-Hoop and spin fire and take vacations to communes and trip on hallucinogens in drum circles and all sorts of other psychedelic things during his self-exploration journey.

Mom didn’t have any time for self-exploration. She got pregnant with Tori during her senior year of high school, making her an outcast in both the cafeteria and her ultra Catholic-Conservative family. From there, she was a full-time Mom, full-time waitress, full-time wife, full-time student, full-time alcoholic, and then a full-time ex-wife, full-time Sponsee, full-time Sponsor, full-time professor, and full-time designer. These days, I no longer have any desire to make resentful comments about her with Dad. I respect her too much, even if I can’t stand to be in the same room as her.

Often, it feels like my mother and I are playing a ruthless game of chess with our internalized misogyny. She must imagine my dad and me passing a packed bong back and forth, pints of IPA leaving wet rings on the coffee table as we snicker over pretentious insults. I won’t lie and say this exact scene hasn't played itself out once or twice, but there is another side to this sexist coin: my mother’s blind, reckless love for her sons, and her strict, accusational love for her daughters.

When Mom looks at me, it is as if she sees her shadow. She furrows her eyebrows, her thin lips yanked downward into a frown, though it is her eyes that convey distaste, and beneath her distaste, fear. This is also how my roommates looked at me the night I thought I was dying.

I am reminded, for a moment, of Philly–

The Fated Crash (… we could even Whisper back) like vines suffocating the mailbox

until I can see the Light again I’ve already been to Hell realized what I’m made of

and now he is crying, now tears are rolling down his face like fat gumdrops,

“Pssssst”

blamed myself more

quivering tone echoed

make a run for it

“Psssst–”

I know my mother so well because I know myself

in the white room

By the time the song ended

I could hardly tell them apart

but you’re so lonely

so afraid of life

The Crowd murmurs, then cheers.

I shake my head

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale

Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale,

Fear pumps from my heart, down my forearm, and into my shaking fingertips. I pace up and down the Colonial Beach pier, gazing out at the murky Potomac water, begging my thoughts to slow down. Sometimes, when I can’t get over one dreadful thing, I remind myself of another. Like if you stub your toe, just pinch your arm. I swear, it helps.

Instead of Philly, I think of Lou, my most recent ex I dumped in October, only a few weeks before I snapped. He’s written me half a dozen gut-wrenching songs in which he softly strums the guitar and, even more timidly, sings. I can hear the grief in his voice. Since I’ve been living at Dad’s, Lou has mailed me love letters complete with pressed flowers, cassette tapes, drawings, collages, and lyrics. And I want to be with him, I do, but I’m pretty sure he thinks that I’m insane. Besides, even if he doesn’t think I’m insane, if he only saw my bedroom walls and heard my wails that night, I’m sure he’d change his mind. There is a monster inside of me the size of the moon, and Lou is a sorry-looking swan wading in the midnight pond, preoccupied and unimpressed.

I cannot think of Lou for long because when I think of him, I am reminded of the delusional text messages I sent him in the emergency room at the peak of my psychosis, and subsequently deleted. It must’ve been some skewed attempt at Goodbye. And if I think of the delusional texts I sent to Lou, I am then reminded of the other psychotic texts I sent and subsequently deleted, including messages to my therapist, my brother’s childhood friend, a girl Dawson hooked up with, Dawson’s little sister, random Instagram mutuals, acquaintances, and God knows who else.

I don’t always avoid my emotions. I don’t always pinch myself when I stub my toe. Sometimes I sit on the living room floor with my fear. I imagine it is a bright red, pinkish color. Magenta, maybe. It moves from my heart, across my chest, courses through my veins and arteries, and even spreads out to my toes and fingers, the bottom of my spine, the tips of my ears. I know it’s working when I get warm and electric.

Sometimes I go for a run with my fear. I’m not saying I go for a run in that Almond Mom, eating disorder, exercise fad, Clean Girl Aesthetic, $200 sports-wear, athlete kind of way. I am talking about the animalistic reflex to be terrified. To run from the Tiger, or the Lion, or the Bear

(even if you, occasionally, poked the Bear…

even if you, secretly, are the Bear)

And if, in your case, you are the Bear, running can really help; especially sprinting. If you can’t muster the courage to run, walking helps, too– but not on the treadmill– because nature helps the most. Looking in the mirror usually makes it better or worse. Dancing in the living room can really, really, really help, but typically only if you’re alone. TV could distract you, but it won’t for long. Singing helps. Ruminating doesn’t. Alcohol helps tonight, but tomorrow you will find the Bear in your camera roll, Bear-dribble spilled all over your coffee table, staining your sheets, stuck like mud beneath your fingernails, and lingering like onion in the back of your mouth. Weed could either knock you out or send you into the Fifth Dimension. Swimming would help if only it weren’t winter.

Typically the best options are running, walking, or meditating, and then taking a shower and having something to eat. Brittany said Sameera’s mom said something about having a shower, and then something to eat, whenever you feel like dying. I don’t usually want to die when I’m sad. When I’m sad I usually want to eat shitty food and watch Gilmore Girls or Trailer Park Boys and get high and do nothing on the couch, or drive to the closest body of water and weep limply in the grass. Sadness, I think, I can manage.

I want to die when I’m afraid

When I was little, I wrote about the Bear. I wrote in journals that I hid in funny secret places inside my closet. First, I wrote stories. Depressing shit, about a young girl’s parents dying on a cruise ship or a man with dementia forgetting his daughter and running away. Then I wrote outraged, argumentative essays about genocide and war, and bigotry. Then I wrote romanticized poetry about suicidal ideation, about my glitchy memories and the layers and layers of shame stacked on top of them.

For most of my life, my mind has been a symphony of my own phrases, my own rhymes, my own stories. Repeating, over and over and over again, as I gaze out the window while the train conductor asks, for the third time, to please see my ticket. Over and over again until the boiling water slides across the stove top with a hissssss. Over and over, again and again,

until each of my experiences was nothing more than material

until my perception was nothing more than curved lines and symbolic scra

tchings

until my existence was nothing more than

a sorted sound

What you need to understand is that no one could ever hurt me when I was writing

because no matter if they tore my guts out and played with them on the floor, no matter if they ripped my heart from my chest and pinned it to the wall, no matter if they shoved my head in the oven, no matter if they poured my soul down the drain and flipped on the garbage disposal, no matter if they stripped me naked and gawked at my form

I was not one of Them

I was not one of You

I was no one

just a fly on the wall– or rather, an observer— or rather,

a narrator

collecting data

watching, waiting, listening

performing explaining rearranging

when necessary

until my curious experience with a flustered psychic

which occurred a mere three weeks before my bedroom nearly swallowed me whole

Judy gave me a choice. She cracked open the door, letting in

a skinny sliver of light

Judy reminded me of something I had known all along:

I was in a house

in a town

in a country

in a family

in a time frame in a lot of pain

in a Body

I know that most babies are strange, in that soft cone-head, wide-eyed, too-smooth, fresh dozen eggs kind of way, like if you just look at ‘em wrong they could burst into flames.

A lot of times when I see babies in grocery stores or at the DMV I try to give ‘em that friendly, I swear I wouldn’t eat you kind of smile, and too often they start screaming and snapping at me like I’m a redneck with a gun, or a thunderstorm rumbling, or a raging grizzly tumbling down the hill. Mothers find me obnoxious; a strange, towering, androgynous shadow, slouching and smiling at their precious mini-me in aisle four.

I’ve got no fucking clue how to properly introduce myself to a baby. They’re fragile, and God only knows what they remember. And What if it’s Me, in aisle four, and what if I didn’t smile? What would that insinuate about humanity?

When I was a tiny kid, maybe four or five, I used to get these indescribable waves of familiarity. The room around me would suddenly feel all too vague yet all too eternal. It felt as if I were looking at life from miles away, but in the body of myself perceiving it, at the same time. This prompted me to ask an AA meeting babysitter if she remembered where we were before this?

“Before?”

She stammered, giving me a sickening look— she wasn’t angry, or condescending, or sweet. I remember thinking she must’ve been scared. She was itching and crawling in her skin

and I remember not being able to fathom why someone would be so afraid of Before

(I didn’t know about After yet

But I kept wondering about it

What came Before this? It’s on the tip of my tongue? Is After where I just Was?)

We shouldn’t underestimate babies’ intelligence. I think a couple of babies might have cast spells on me under the luminescence of the Food Lion LEDs.

But Vivian was stranger than the average strange baby. She didn’t grow any hair on her head for almost three years, and when she finally did it rose from her scalp like a field of Venus fly traps, puckering up quickly, hungrily– or snakes bobbing their heads up from holes in the desert sand like slithering whack-a-moles. She refused to speak to anyone for a while, anyone but Mom and me. In preschool, she wouldn’t look directly at the teachers, and she stared mutely, blankly at the students, or kept her head down and colored for hours on end. She spoke mostly in confined cornered whispers, her breath flickering like a match centimeters from my cheek—

I have to pee

Everything makes more sense when the Past is all coiled up inside of you

and even more sense, if you dare untangle the knots—

My parents insisted on retelling the story of how my little sister and I met. They told it over and over and over again, laughing over cheap Food Lion wine, gathering around the Christmas tree with coffee cake on paper plates. And years later, my mother would anecdotally yap about the same story to a crowd of middle-aged sober ladies who came over every Sunday to eat brunch, gossip, and quote the Big Book.

Vivian was born on June 4th, 2003, a mere twenty months after me. The family was ecstatic for another girl. They could buy us matching outfits, refer to us as “The Girls,” and sign us both up for elementary cheerleading. Sometimes I’m afraid Vivian and I are one entity stretched into two chorded bodies.

Mom had home births with Gabe, me, and Vivian because her experiences in the hospital with my two oldest siblings were surgically traumatic and unreasonably expensive. After hours of excruciating, intoxicating labor, Jennifer sat on the couch with her fifth and final baby, her tiniest baby, her most fragile baby.

My father asked if I’d like to meet my baby sister. I instantly obliged. He walked me over to the sofa where I knelt to kiss baby Vivian, but at the last possible second, I bit her hard on the side of her cheek. My mother heightened her voice to a scolding pitch, and Dad rushed me to Time Out, where I sat at the bottom of the stairs and reflected on what I had done.

After a few minutes of serious contemplation, my father returned, and I asked him dejectedly if I could say sorry to the baby. He sighed with relief. I strutted back into the living room, and knelt in front of my mother once again, who cradled the injured baby in her arms. I faked a quick pucker, leaned in, and bit her on the same soft cheek once again, twice as hard as before.

Post the second assault, the story gets kind of hazy because Jennifer has already delivered the punchline, and the Ladies might need more coffee or blueberry muffins, or they might exchange a quick laugh before seamlessly changing the topic of conversation to Janice’s divorce.

Following me and Vivian’s first meeting, I became addicted to biting people. I vaguely remember enjoying the sensation of skin in my mouth, grating against my teeth like strawberries splitting open staining the cutting board with scarlet intestines. I loosely remember that it felt exhilarating to chase my brothers and sisters around with my teeth bared, ready to come down hard on whoever crossed me. I vividly remember my father, fed up one afternoon, biting me back on my cheek meaner than I ever could have imagined possible.

The story of Vivian and Analise’s Introduction became such an iconic tale in the family, I’m halfway convinced it never happened. I don’t remember being there and I honestly couldn’t care less what impression I made before I could articulate my needs or wipe my own ass. After years of hearing this story retold, however, I started to trick myself into thinking I remembered it. It was an anecdote that became my reality, and one day I stopped living my experience and began performing it. I let retold stories transform me into the jealous sibling who bit the innocent infant. I became the bossy big sister.

Anyone with half a heart knows as well as I do that it isn’t just what happened that molds the past into the present, into the future, back into the past: it’s what we say happened, over and over and over again, to crowd after crowd after crowd, in the Dining room, at the Cookout, in the driveway, in the AA meetings, scribbled in that notebook, written in margins of that novel, Professor Plum in the Ballroom with the Candlestick, Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Rope, Miss Scarlet in the Kitchen with the Revolver, over and over, again and again

The Explanation, The Excuse,

The Cautionary Tale,

The Story,

The Narrative.

A headstone with a date, and a name, and another date, and maybe a couple of sorry words, if you’re lucky. A box of rattling bones, or a bottle of ash on the mantle,

or a man shot dead in his foyer

his mouth perpetually sewn shut

But I refuse to remember things the way my mother remembers them, or the way my father remembers them, or the way Vivian and Gabe remember them, or the way Dawson remembers them, or the way my friends remember them, or the way anyone else recalls them, at least not anymore. I don’t tell myself that I don’t know what I fucking know

(And I prefer to remember the Gun, chucked from the arch bridge above, floating angrily to the bottom of the River. I imagine the Gun tangoing with the current, perhaps landing lightly between the crook of two ancient rocks

And I prefer to think of the rocks hugging the Gun, consoling him, asking him where he has been, imploring how he came to wander so far from Home. And I imagine the Gun sobbing, spitting, spewing black powder, and rumbling bubbles as he gasps about the dead man in the foyer bleeding out onto the cheap brown carpet [or maybe it was beige, or gray…]

And I think of the hippie scuba diver, who dares stare into the pits of the river’s sticky guts. And I think of the green and blue checkered one-piece swimsuit, that perhaps the hippie scuba diver is wearing, a swimsuit from a fancy brand that cost her $80 but has a lifetime warranty. I imagine she reaches her hand out like an offering and pinches the murder weapon between her manicured fingernails, saving it from the guts and the gunk of the river, as she, at last, rids the rocks of their new moody roommate.

I prefer to think of her as an elegant, daring woman, very Amelia Earhart. I think of this woman holding the slick black metal carefully, consciously, between her index finger and thumb, approaching his body as if He is still loaded

as if He is traumatized from what He has done

and she is dangling the Gun above the river, which is really just the Ocean, which is really just the Fire in another form

and the truth is once again suspended in the wind, glimmering against the light of the blistering Sun…

But I am getting ahead of myself)

Did I ever tell you the story of the Two Dead Mice?

When my brothers were young they were fascinated with animals and bugs. They practically lived at the tiny creek tucked at the end of our cul-de-sac. Almost every day in the summer they gathered up small snakes and ribbeting toads and baby tortoises. Culain and Gabe brought their captives Home to the bright green turtle-shaped man-made pond in our backyard.

Mom tried to feed everyone’s interests, no matter how disgusted she was by slimy amphibians or stinky ferrets (that was a low point), or how exhausted she was with pet expenses, french horn lesson expenses, and swimming team expenses, and gymnastics lessons, and piano lessons, and Spanish and French and Latin and German Club fees, and the massive clanging drum kit skipping heartbeats in Culain’s bedroom.

She encouraged us to get Mohawks if we wanted to, dye our hair green if we wanted, to collect toads and slithering snakes if we so desired. Jennifer was especially cautious with my two big brothers’ hearts– she needed them to feel like boys who were becoming strong and kind men, even if they rarely saw their father. Even if their dad had threatened to beat the shit out of them, leaned in inches away from their faces spewing bullshit, and punched a hole in our living room drywall. She needed to make resilient and soft men out of these quietly traumatized boys.

I’m sure my mother would’ve stolen the Moon and Mars and sautéed them for dinner, slathering the rocks in A1 sauce, if my brothers’ asked nicely enough.

When Vivian and I were in preschool, Culain and Gabe were obsessed with mice. They adored any animal they could observe through a tank, and feed and watch grow old, and die.

One day tiny Vivian wanted to hold the boys’ new mouse. She asked politely and waited patiently for them to debate this request, and then to place the creature softly in her palms. My mom warned Vivian not to hold the mouse too loosely, or else he could escape into our home. Poor Vivian didn’t know her own strength. She suffocated the mouse to death in her sweaty toddler palms. Today I was thinking about what the mouse smelled before he croaked. It must’ve been awful, the odor of a toddler’s sweaty palms, so aggressively wafting and crippling a mouse’s lungs, maybe with hints of apple sauce and salt from hot dogs.

Upon opening her palm the boys could see the limp mouse lying there dramatically dead and unmoving. They could tell, without much observation, when a living thing had quit breathing. All of us can. It’s easy to feel your body run cold, your blood rushing from your face to your chest to the pit of your stomach back to your heart. It felt like the mouse must’ve lodged himself into all of our throats, and we were choking on fur and skinny tail and gouging eyeballs attempting to find any words to deny this crime. My mother had the painstaking task of telling a child that she had become a killer.

A Mouse Killer

A few weeks later, Mom bought Culain and Gabe a new mouse to ease their sorrows. Vivian was not allowed to hold this mouse. It was strictly Culain and Gabe’s to cradle because they knew how to maintain a proper grip.

One day before the boys left for school, Vivian hid in their closet and waited for their exit. Once she was alone with the mouse, she extracted him from his cage– to hold the guy, loosely, of course. I suppose the kid wanted to make up for the accidental violence she had committed, or at the very least, she wanted to feel close and familiar with an animal.

The irony is that this time, Vivian held the mouse too loosely, and he lept from her tiny palms. For weeks or months, the mouse scurried in and out of our house’s walls like a ghost haunting the halls. Sometimes we’d see him shoot out from behind the couch cushion, or hear him scurrying behind the living room plaster at midnight. We didn’t hold him again until he died and began rotting. I’m genuinely not even sure if or when his corpse was extracted. It might've just decomposed there, wilted away slowly, and we went nose blind after some time.

I like to think of these two mice as star-crossed lovers. Maybe they were held captive at the Petco together and fell wildly in love. Maybe they saw the entire world in each other’s eyes, and when the first mouse died at Vivian’s hands, his lover could feel it like a cold blade against his chest. Maybe he bided his time, praying and wishing for my mother to return to the store, and played cutesy when she stared at him through the plexiglass. Maybe as soon as he entered our home he felt the spirit of his long-lost love, and couldn’t wait to escape from his cage and find her ghost hollering in the hallways.

I like to think that they found each other, there, in those breathing walls. I like to think that they’re still there, snickering and eating cheese from strangers’ cupboards. I like to think that they have loved each other in each and every lifetime, once as a scuba diver and a gun, and again as the Moon and Mars, and again as a girl-turned-woman and boy-turned-man fleeing the scene of their crime.

I like to think that I am one of those mice, finding my soulmate only in death, or scurrying around my bedroom in search of the meaning of life. Scribbling insane scratchings into a rental wall with magic marker and manic passion. Shaking vulnerably in the palm of my owner. Dying. Dying, on any old night.

A Letter To Miss Plath

December 15th, 2023

Twenty-two years, two months

I’ve known suicide for as long as I can remember. She was an old, comforting friend who I’d never fully indulged– only rang up, on a weekly basis, when I needed someone to tell me that it was alright to leave the party. A friend I talked shit about, regularly, in therapy, and with near strangers in alleyways next to bars. A friend I made jokes about, foolishly, too frequently, to people perhaps closer to her than myself.

My therapist keeps trying to tell me that I harm people when I lose my mind. She said if I don’t feed myself or sleep or take a shower and brush my teeth, it hurts the people who love me. I told her it feels like a redundant, undesired commitment, to have to shit and piss and drink gallons of water and eat the same carbs and have the same nightmares for decades on end. She chuckles, but in that, you have no idea, kid, kind of way.

This week I rang up my old friend. Need to chat, I said. On my way to her place, I try to light a cigarette but the whipping wind argues with me. Click click click. Fuckin’ ayy. My numb fingers shake. Click click click.

I get the thing lit and suck it dry in six and a half blocks. Once it’s burned to a bud I drop it on the pavement and drag my left foot over its corpse. Finally, I arrive at her door, with its dyed red oak, brass knob, ornate doorbell— and for the first time, I am angry with her.

(I can write something down once and that doesn’t mean it’s True, and True doesn’t mean it’s Right, and Right doesn’t mean it’s A, B, ORRR C, it means—

I’ve got beef with Sylvia Plath)

I am angry with Sylvia Plath because she wrote poetry and prose for the masses of seethingly limp women and queer people, like myself, who wanted nothing more than to go to War with the masses of raging men, or to kill themselves, or both (in a very particular order).

I am envious of Sylvia Plath, despite the glaring fact that she garnered only a minuscule fraction of fame pre-death as she has since accrued post-suicide. I am outraged that she knew, if only in part, if only on some deeply unconscious level, that no one could forget about the woman who viscerally wrote about wanting to die and then killed herself with a goddamn kitchen oven.

She wrote about the neverending abyss in the center of our chests, she wrote about the intimate longing of a woman gone touched but unloved, she wrote about the infinite options that suffocate young human minds, like withering figs clogging your pores and spewing sweetness from your eyes. She wrote like a Villain turned Hero, she wrote like her life and death depended on it, she wrote like she had already Made It Big, and then she wrote like an old man drunk in the attic with a telescope–

And then she got married, and she had a baby. And then she had another baby, and she didn’t feel quite right postpartum, and people told her not in so many words but in so, so many sower glances and heavy sighs, that she was not good enough for motherhood, or sisterhood, or womanhood,

and then her husband fucked another woman, or many women, actually, and the pickpocketing publishers weren’t raving over her agony, and they certainly weren’t bowing to kiss anyone’s feet, and it was miserable, it was so unfair and it was so miserably

FINE

If you had every reason, I have every reason, Miss Plath.

And I apologize, I shouldn’t make assumptions about something as dreadfully nauseating as suicide. But I think Sylvia Plath would write about it if it were her college roommate, her husband’s cousin, or some other famous writer who Made It Bigger. I have to think she’d find something witty and violently depressing yet hopeful in a detached way, to say and write about it, otherwise I don’t think she is the person I thought she was.

But mostly, I just miss Sylvia Plath. I wish she was here, now, in 2023. She was born in 1932, which means she totally could’ve made it to Bush, the first and second, Clinton and Obama, and maybe even Trump (WE NEEDED YOU SYLVIA) if only Ted hadn’t slept around, or if only you had 200mg of Seroquel or Wellbutrin, or if more people were hollering Lady Lazarus from eternal towering rooftops–

“And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty

And like the cat I have nine times to die.”

Then where have you been, Sylvia? Why have you not yet risen from those London Ashes? Why hasn’t the town found your grave empty? Why haven’t the prophets rushed to the streets, why hasn’t the New York Times printed your name across headlines

SYLVIA PLATH FOUND ALIVE, WITH EIGHT DEATHS LEFT TO SPARE

And sometimes, for no reason at all other than manic depression and rampant CPTSD, I wish I could talk to her ghost and ask how she would end it if she were here now. If you were forty-seven in Alaska, thirty-five in Singapore, twenty-six in Marseilles, fifty-four in Haiti, eighteen in Philadelphia, or twenty-two in Virginia, in 2023, how would you end it then, Sylvia? Fentanyl laced in the cocaine, unconscious in the rave bathroom? Step in front of the 30th Street station train? Honda Civic left running in the garage? Bullet to the mouth, or the Golden Gate, Sylvia? Truly, Miss Plath, I am asking, would you stab yourself like Elliot, drown yourself in the Air B&B hot tub in Miami, or poison yourself in the bathroom of the Cathedral where the tour guide later finds you limp and weighted? Where, exactly, and when, do I have to die, for my diaries to be read as a genius legacy? How should I suffer, to be immortalized, Miss Plath? Which trauma wins the game?

Tell me, Miss Plath, tell me calmly, what happened to your baby? Nicholas, was that his name? Tell me, was he not found dead, dangling from the ceiling of his home? Was he not found hanging? Was he not found hanging?

Was your Baby not found hanging?

Are these the figs you plucked, Miss Plath? Were these the seeds you sewed, Mrs.Hughes, I am asking, genuinely— I do not judge you, Sylvia, my brother has stolen a dozen innocences, Sylvia, my sister has beaten me into submission, my sister has done things, Miss Plath, red things, Miss Plath, my mother crushed reality between her perfect set of teeth, Miss Plath, she cannot help but grind in her sleep—

but did she not leave me hanging?

And I have done things, Miss Plath, I have said things, I have written things down that I’d love nothing more than to kill like a set of asphyxiating lungs left by the oven unchecked—

but who would be left lonely,

Miss Plath?

Who would be left hanging?

when the dust settles

when the coffin is bought and the dirt is dug up

Who might we fatally inspire?

My mother is living. My mother is gone, but she is breathing but she is not here, but my mother is living. My brother is breathing, my brother is breathing but I do not think he is alive, my sister is breathing, Miss Plath, my sister is breathing but she has taken a life, and I am asking,

Which Room, Sylvia? Which Room? Should it be the poet, in the kitchen, with the stove? Should it be the musician in the living room with the knife in his chest? Is it the girl in the bedroom with the Two Dead Mice? Is it the man in the foyer with the gun, and the woman in the ruby car with the lollipop?

Is it the Bear sleeping in the woods while the neon hunter hunts? Will they remember me, if I go peacefully, Miss Plath? If I go naturally? Will they read these pages, if I go sleepily, Miss Plath?

Could it be the dog, at the Vet, with the family? Would that be so wrong? To go slowly, softly, ancient and tired and full of meat and chocolate and bones that barely broke, with a comforter warming my feet? Could that be so forgettable? Is that such nothingness, Miss Plath?

Do you miss it?

\

The Earth under your feet? The Sky above your head?

/

Do you miss it?

\

Do you dream about it, Miss Plath?

Come Back

I promise the food will be better this time–well, it won’t be better, but you should try Taco Bell and a Blue Raspberry Vape, and I’ll take you to the center of Times Square on a Sunday

and we’ll eat a quarter of mushrooms, and dance wild in the street,

and then we’ll slow dance in the crosswalk while the Sunset peaks

and you won’t know if You are the eyes in Your head, or if you are the eyes in my head, or if You are the eyes of a thousand hummingbirds eavesdropping as we kiss in the rain

Or hug, if you only want to hug,

All you will know is that you love me, and you love breathing, you love feeling a beating heart that inevitably stutters, and sputters

AND STOPS

and you will tell yourself again and again that you don’t deserve it, and maybe we don’t, but we

ARE HERE, Miss Plath.

We are here, NOW

and we don’t have to prove exactly why

to cry out for LOVE

TO CHOOSE LOVE,

in every lifetime.

I won’t go willingly into that Dark Night, Miss Plath

I will go like a Warrior

kicking and screaming for my babies, I will go like a fighter,

with the Pen as my sword as my duty as my Gun

I will go with not a bone left to pick, Miss Plath

not a word left to utter,

Sylvia,

I will go the way you should have gone,

the way Courtney should’ve gone,

the way my great uncle should’ve gone,

the way Elliot should’ve gone,

the way Dawson went,

the way Jenny went,

the way Jesus and Muhammad went

the way the Mice went,

Sylvia,

Bravely kissing

Wild with desire

clawing at the plexiglass cage, or better yet,

dancing

unhinging the Lock

narrowly evading the palm

I started months prior, organizing electronic cords from stuffed animals to lipsticks to boxes full of umbrellas and an old Kindle Fire and colored stockings, pencil pouches, loose tampons, and the like. I had been counting down the days until my eighteenth birthday for approximately 900 nights, dedicated multiple journals to contain only but one number on each page so that I could tear one out each evening, crumble it in my palms, and imagine the rooms upon rooms and fields and strange places and people I would encounter once I had ripped through enough of the lined paper. My entire seventeenth year was spent willing the clocks to tick faster with laser eyes and praying to a half-baked God to let me rip through this year as my hands ripped through the journal paper. 

Initially, my master plan was to move in with my best friend Jadyn, and her parents. I’d spent enough nights at their place crying to her mother over mine. In the spring of junior year I prepared a slide deck with pie charts about income, suggested rent prices, and estimated grocery costs. I dressed nicely when I presented my proposal to the couple, and they nodded, smiled, asked earnest questions, and soon agreed to accommodate me. They even insisted I wouldn’t need to pay rent. Their only concerns were for my little sister. Would she be alright at home without me? I didn’t know how to say: I’m not sure, but I have to get out. Or even: It could be my fault, I could be the one hurting her, and Mom, and everyone else. I think maybe I said it with my eyes. 

 But that was before the summer. Come July, I would be meeting with my semi-estranged dad, the therapist he found for me, and the attorney ad litem he hired to check in with me and my sister regularly. Come October, my items would be carefully folded and packed, and my father would be standing in the driveway holding the keys to our new apartment, a proud smile stamped across his face. Jadyn’s parents figured it was better this way. 

Midlothian High School

February, 2017

Fifteen years, four months

“Pssssst. Psst. Ana.” 

I tear my face away from the lined paper. I am fervently writing about what happened this morning in Ms. Bowes's office. She clicked her black heels into my second-period gym class with a dozen keys jangling at her hip. Her tight smile pulled me into the hallway to ask hushed questions about my relationship with Mr.Gallagher. She informed me that my mother was waiting in the front office. As she escorted me through the sticky distant hallways, I felt The End lodge into the back of my throat.

I was a lobster hissing in the grocery store tank, and these middle-aged Christian women were preparing to boil me alive. The incident report paper is that kind of layered, pre-ordered, institutional paper. The top page is green, and the bottom page is yellow. When you write on the green sheet, your handwriting transfers to the yellow sheet below. My swirly scribbles filled the entire page. 

Mrs.Bowes repeatedly taps the tip of her pen on the oak table top. She speaks softly about next steps but her words sound scripted. My eyes dart to the camera in the corner of the room, and then to her straight face, and then the pen. Tapping. 

My mom showed up to the school this morning with Marcie attached at her hip. Obviously. Whenever Mom has to fight for something or someone, she brings Marcie. We used to call her “Dad” when we were kids. She was our tough republican neighbor with a bearded husband and no kids. Marcie is incredibly blonde and busty and annoyingly beautiful, stupidly nosy, and surprisingly crass. She wanted to be a cop but failed the training. I like to make fun of her for that in my head. 

I sat there counting cinderblocks and ceiling tiles in Ms. Bowes's office with these four women as they sifted through three months worth of midnight text messages and good morning text messages and flirtatious I missed you today text messages between the fifteen-year-old Straight-A class president and a grown fucking man from Minnesota. I have never seen my mother so professionally infuriated. She kept pressing further,

What if this was your daughter? What if a male teacher texted that to your daughter? 

I knew that Gallagher and I never had a sexual encounter. I was still a virgin and couldn’t begin to understand what made a kiss French in the first place. But by God, I felt like a whore that day. And so, I was writing about all of this in my journal. In Mr.Cheatham’s fourth-period English class. I sat with three degenerative teenage boys in the left-hand corner of the room. One of these boys I would later come to have sex with on the VMFA lawn at midnight. One of these boys would later come to punch my friend in the face, and later someone very brave would come to deflate his tires in the dead of night. One of these boys had been best friends with Dawson his whole life. He would later be the first person at the party to spot the house fire next door.

But for today, I don’t know about any of that. For today, these are just three degenerative boys in my fourth-period English class. 

“Psssst–”

We just finished taking a vocabulary quiz. It was easy. I finished early. And I am hunched over in the corner of the room trying to write discretely about my love affair with the theater teacher. I am trying to write about being a fifteen-year-old 

          WHORE

I am trying to write about the beginning and the middle, but mostly the silent violence of 

                                    The End 

“Pssssssst”

I abruptly lift my gaze to meet Mr.Cheatham’s. His beer belly looms centimeters from my cheek. He slides a hall pass down on my desk like a dirty 100-dollar bill and nods his head towards the door.

“We’re not doing anything else today. You can go now.” He grins. He thinks he’s doing me a favor. 

I look at him in confusion and then back down at the hall pass. On the front where the time in and time out should be written and signed, all the lines were clean and empty. Under the “location” section, next to the box labeled “theater” there was a single red check mark. 

I look back up at Mr.Cheatham who has sat down at his desk. He cracks open a Dr.Pepper. The classroom is alarmingly quiet, other than the sound of my life coming to a crashing halt, and Mr.Cheatham slurping fizzy bubbles. 

I flip the hall pass over. Written in loopy red ink across the back reads:

        Send Ana to my room when you can

     RG

And in Mr.Cheatham’s chicken scratch ball point black response:

      No problem (:

I rise from the chair slowly as my heart rate picks up. Paul, the degenerate sitting in front of me, whips his head around and stares at me in question. Where are you going? His eyes ask. I widen mine in alarm response and head for the door. 

My palms start sweating. I felt like my brain might seep out of my mouth. That must’ve been the bitter taste of The End gagging me.

I close the classroom door as quietly as I can and float toward Gallagher’s room. I can hear his students distantly yapping.

I wondered, briefly, as my hand rested on the silver door knob, if I had a choice in any of this. I wondered, briefly, if I should choose to turn around. 

I wondered if he was aware of the incident report, my mother’s vendetta, and of his impending doom. I could only consider it for a moment. 

When I realized that I could easily turn around, if I wanted to— when I realized that I could even make a run for it, if I wanted to— I could run out of this building, run towards home, or towards the woods, or Death, if I wanted to— and when I was struck with the most unfortunate truth, 

that I was in love with this grown, sad, drunk man from Minnesota—

I twisted the silver knob to the right and stepped inside of The End. 

In a sea of thirty red contorted faces, his and mine find one another immediately. The classroom is in uproar. His expression breaks into a smile. He wrangles everyone’s attention and shouts that Will is in charge of the rest of the class. He and I have something to take care of, he explains. 

We step out into the empty hallway together. The hallway outside of the library. I gaze at the bench, and I swear I can almost see my past self, from only two months ago, sitting there with her head on his shoulder. I want to scream at her that she is making a mistake.

I follow him obediently and quietly through the sticky hallways, past the cafeteria, and through the auditorium's backstage door. He makes small talk and urges me to take the bait, but I can only manage a passive, awkward smile. Once we’re backstage I spot the antique green desk, which had previously been a basic round table. 

“Sit down.” He commands. I sit in the wooden chair in front of the desk. I aimlessly open the drawers and close them, supposedly to ensure they are operable, though I knew I’d never sit at this desk ever again.

“I found it and thought of you, of course. I know green is your favorite color. Rebecca and I spent some time fixing it up for you. Do you like it?” 

I nod. I can only nod. I imagine I swallowed The End like a watermelon seed, and the seed was the look in his eyes, the sprout was my head on his shoulder, the vines were his lips on my forehead, and now the melon has grown into a massive lump inside of my throat, and I can’t seem to swallow it or spit it out. 

“You didn’t answer my texts last night. Why is that?” 

I shrug

“Did I say something to upset you?”

I shake my head.

“Is it your mom? Look at me, is it your mom?”

I look at him. I nod. Tears are collecting in the back of my eyes but I nod. 

“You know you can trust me. What happened? I promise you can talk to me.”

Finally, I manage to croak out a broken sound,

“Can I go?”

He sighs. 

“You know I would never make you stay.” 

Somehow my legs remember how to run and tear me away from the auditorium, past the cafeteria, and into the bathroom. Two girls stand chirping by the sinks. 

I rush into the first open stall and fall to the ground sobbing. Zoe takes a step in my direction to ask,

“Ana, are you okay?” 

“Yes.” I cry. 

“Are you sure? Do you want us to get a counselor?” 

“No. I’m fine. I want to be alone.” They shuffle out. 

I sit with the toilets and the tiles and The bitter, bitter End. I can’t imagine those girls will keep this encounter to themselves. Pretty soon everyone will be talking about my relationship with the theater teacher, and I’ll seem so guilty, even if we never slept together. It’ll be written all over my face that I loved him. I loved playing chess in his office, just the two of us, I loved that he bought me journals and taught me new words to write inside of them, I loved that we wrote each other letters, I loved that he defended me when other kids were mean to me, and I loved that he didn’t care for rules or professionalism. I loved talking to him more than any kid my age, and I never imagined anything would come from it. Never. I just thought I could love him, like that, until I left high school and moved far, far away. 

But now my love for him would be broadcasted, it would be enhanced, it would be dramatized. And it would be so, so over. 

The caveat of the whole affair was that I told my mother about the looming memories of my grandfather mere days before she discovered my text messages with Gallagher. Since she had seized and searched my phone, every conversation revolved around the teacher, the teacher and the Principal, the teacher and the lawyer, and the committee, Title IX, threats of lawsuit, and incessant interrogations.

“Did you say Grandpa Mike touched you in place of Mr.Gallgher? I won’t be mad, sweetie, but I need you to tell me the truth.” Mom theorizes later that week. And that night, on the phone with her friend in the kitchen.

She had a gut feeling about it, she said. 

I sat at the top of the stairs, despondent, knowing that even though no one had the heart to say it to my face, except that one girl Casie at lunch one day, I was now The Whore. Broken, used, and tarnished in some way that was pitiful and irreversible. Once people have imagined you naked with a strange man, they can’t let the thought go. Their imagination is more memorable than the truth. 

A few months later Gabe graduated from high school, and Grandpa Mike’s name was written in Mom’s loopy handwriting on the invitation list. I anxiously asked her if we could talk alone. Why is he coming? I can’t be here. I can’t see him. 

“He probably won’t make it,” she said, 

and a chord of strings in my heart snapped in half. 

1207 Oldbury Road

October 23rd, 2019

Seventeen years, 11 months

On the eve of my eighteenth birthday, Mom ordered my favorite pasta from my favorite restaurant. Sausage and Orecchiette. She bought me a necklace, another necklace, like last year. She pleaded with me, a bit, not to go. She told me how much she loved me, and that she would miss me. She told me that college would be much more expensive this way, with Dad’s income on financial aid instead of hers. I told her I was going to leave at midnight regardless of her pleading threats. I tried my best to remain distant, calm, and sure. I ate the pasta. I put the necklace back in its gift bag. I hugged my sister and hugged my sister. I told her how much I loved her, and that we would still see each other all the time. 

Mom was in bed when I was about to leave. I entered her bedroom, the same bedroom where I had asked her about the difference between Heaven and Hell. I perched on the bed once again, sitting up a little straighter this time. I told her I didn’t want to leave, not really, but I had to go if she could not apologize. If she could not admit to it, in the least. She insisted, again, that it was a miscommunication. That I misunderstood. That she would never say something like that.

I collected myself, walked downstairs, and grabbed my backpack from the foyer floor. Dad’s car was idling out front. All I had to do was turn the knob, open the door, and walk out. Do you want me to say I hesitated? That I pondered it, even for a moment, gripped by nostalgia and indecision? No. I ripped open the door and tore like paper into the night.

          So that’s what he said instead. Wherever you go, there you are. 

I wonder if Dad said that to Gabe when he moved to D.C., so Gabe said it to me when I moved to Philly, and now I’m saying it to all of you 

(whoever you are)

Six Words Eight Syllables

That’s how easy it is

to talk. To boil down treacherous life experiences and thousands of dollars shoved down the drain into nothing more than a sorted sound. Six words. Eight syllables. That’s how easy it is to talk, although it wasn’t always so easy. We used to be big Apes grunting monosyllables to convey hurt feelings, or good feelings, great feelings. Maybe we’ve forgotten, on our journey with words, how important sounds are to us. There’s a reason singing and laughing and moaning and Om-ing feel so damn good. We’re still animals, aren't we? 

Aren’t we?

I haven’t forgotten. Dawson never forgot it, either. He gave me a lot of advice that was dead on (no pun intended). Dad did, too, and Mom sometimes, like what she said about Hell and Heaven, and I could make myself feel bad for “not listening,” but what does that even mean, exactly? Because I remember all of it, don’t I? And if I remember it, then I must’ve been listening. But I was also just living. I was just being a kid. Being an Animal. And I’m done being mad at myself for that.

It’s still true, though; wherever you are, there you go; wherever you go, there you are. I think Dad means we all have to find some solace within ourselves. Or how my therapist says, That’s their process, it doesn’t have to be your process. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my process. Processing. One word, three syllables. The definition says it means to perform, to operate, which makes it sound like there is something to be done about it. My therapist says that there isn’t, really, at least nothing other than to take care of my body. That’s what Matt Kahn says, too. 

My Body

Ever since the Dark Night, I can feel my body tingling. Do you ever get numb feet, numb hands, numb feelings? I used to, all the time. Everything was numb. The weed helped with that. Ever since I was lifted from the mat, though, all numbness has dissipated. I cannot feel numb. Sure, when I take the antipsychotics from the Ward or the anti-depressants from the Doctor, I get numb for a little while; but when it wears off, I can feel everything. My entire being tingles. If my foot gets cold, I can tell it to get warm, and then it does. If my heart beats fast, I can tell it to slow down. 

It’s that easy

Something happened to me on the mat that night. Something ineffable. You don’t have to believe me. You can call me crazy. You can call me whatever you want, but I know what I know. Dawson knew, too. 

Remember how, we don’t really know anything at all? We only truly know what we feel, what we see, what we hear, and we use words to try to convey those experiences, but some signals get mixed up when the message is sent– you know that. You know how you’ve cackled at miscommunications. You know that science can only tell us about the physical, the observable. You know there’s no conceivable way to control all of the variables. So that’s all we really, genuinely know at the end of the day. 

                  What we saw, heard,

How we feel

Everything else is hearsay, based on a certain hypothesis or a specific assumption. Assume there is no purpose on this planet, you will find no purpose. Assume we are doomed, you will find that we are doomed. Assume the Dead are speaking with you, and you will hear their cries.

That’s what the therapists call 

         confirmation bias

And then we run in circles confusing each other, and ourselves. Ella knows this, too. We tell ourselves we shouldn’t feel what we feel, we didn’t see what we saw, we don’t know what we know. Then, so curiously, we call each other ill. We call each other diseased. We find nice tidy boxes to organize these beautiful and awful human traits and experiences, and we sort each other into categories. Brittany knows this, too. And it’s so easy to point the finger and tape the box shut. 

Purgatory

Everything in that room was so painful. The bright lights, the IV in my arm, the look on Judy’s daughter’s face as she watched my consciousness and subconsciousness wage War. It was just hard to see you in that state, she sighed, three days later over the Ward’s chunky crackling telephone. At some point, though, I made her laugh. I remember that. 

“Analise, what drugs have you taken?” The nurse asked. But she wasn’t specific enough! I thought she meant, what drugs have you taken, ever? She meant what drugs have you taken, tonight? 

For a day and a half in the hospital, I believed I was in Purgatory. In my room, under the insane walls, I had seen my crumpled body; and although the man in the sedan saw me, vividly saw me, I had forgotten about the entire encounter at this point. I’d been awake for three, maybe four days, I don’t exactly know. I don’t know if you’ve ever stayed awake that long, but once you pass the 48-hour mark shit starts to get weird. Very weird. 

And besides, Judy told me about Purgatory. A clean, but dark place. There was light, of course, but the energy would be dark. That’s why the light would be sticky. And she said Angels worked there, Angels who usually aren’t too keen on taking the Purgatory shift (I wouldn't be)

And she said some Souls never make it out of there

What about me? I thought, 

Will I get out of here? 

I decided the best route was honesty. The Angels must’ve already known everything.

“Shrooms, Adderall, marijuana, some alcohol here and there… hmm what else… Oh, and I tried ketamine! And cocaine, and ecstasy, which I think could have been laced, but umm… yeah mostly just the shrooms and the weed.” The nurse ogled at me, astonished and annoyed.

“We’re gonna need you to pee in this cup, sweetheart…”

“But I don’t have to pee! Oh, can I have water? I need water. I haven’t had water and I don’t want to die. Please, please, please don’t let me die. I’m sorry…

I’ll do better

next time”

Dawson and I were supposed to go to Junior Year Homecoming together, though we ended up making out in his bedroom instead– all dolled up with nowhere to go– nowhere, except cradled in each other’s arms. That afternoon, before we decided to ditch the dance, we had gotten into a Big Fight of our own. It was the first and most serious disagreement we ever had, and only a month into seeing each other. 

We were meant to meet up with another couple at the local pond to take photos before dinner, and after dinner, we were meant to attend the dance. The other couple was running late, though, so the two of us walked hand in hand around the pond to waste time. 

Dawson loved to talk politics. That month, Brett Kavanaugh had been appointed Supreme Court Justice, and Dawson rambled about this as we strolled in the beating sun. 

What do you think? She waited years to come out about this, I just don’t know what to think. Why wait decades to say something? 

I snatched my hand away. I had always been quick to anger, and he just plucked the wrong chord. I snapped back quickly,

“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.” 

I’m just saying, I mean, it’s a serious issue, how long would you wait to come out about something like that?

Too soon the words were spitting fire from my lips, without reservations about Homecoming, or if we would end up lovers in the end.

“Well, it happened to me when I was five years old, and I didn’t tell anyone until I was fifteen, so I guess I waited ten years.” 

Dawson rarely got quiet. He rarely was left speechless. And while he was the absolute Sun of emotions, he didn’t often cry in public. He did that day. 

We walked to the closest bench, which had a perfect view of the geese squawking at one another in the pond. I stared out at the water, brimming with angst. I was so angry at his thoughtless words, so disappointed that Homecoming was now ruined. But more so, I was angry with my life. I was angry that my grandfather had stolen my innocence. I was angry that the other couple was late, angry that Brett Kavanaugh was forcing us to have this stupid fucking conversation, angry that my mother would be here soon and she’d surely know I was upset, and then she’d hate Dawson. Angry that in that small moment, I kind of hated him. Angry that he’d made me so angry because the truth was he was the most brilliant and passionate and radiant person I had ever met, and all day all I wanted was to kiss him. But now I was thinking of slapping him. 

“Ana,” he choked, “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I had no idea, and I know that was your point, that you never really know who you’re talking to. I’m so sorry, and I don’t know how I can make it up to you–” 

and now he is crying, now tears are rolling down his face like fat gumdrops, and a stranger is walking over to feed the geese

“but I do know that doesn’t define you. That happened to you, but it’s not who you are. Not to me, not to anyone. To everyone else, you’re just this intelligent, hilarious, beautiful person. And I don't want you to think I think of you any differently, because that's still who you are.” 

and now I am crying, and now we are hugging, and now the couple has arrived and it is time to take photos,

 and now we are holding hands, walking around the pond,

and now he is buying me sushi, and suggesting to the other couple that we ditch the dance and go to the lake by his house instead

just to talk

and now we are making out in his bed

  and that Sunday we would walk there, to see the geese again, 

      and that summer we would meet there to escape our Mothers’ wraths, 

and that fall I would break up with him in the apartment complex parking lot because our combined abuse was tipping the boat, 

                      and I didn’t know how to swim just yet,

and that spring he would drive around an exit ramp too steep, 

and the next summer I would drink myself to sleep 

and this winter I would meet up with him again, I was sure of it, I would meet him by the pond in my dreams to feed geese 

and he would take me to this higher plane, where we could laugh and dance and kiss and talk in treacherous loops 

and just 

be

Robert was a sick old man– a good one, but a sick one. He didn’t deserve it, the first day in the Ward, how I treated him. He forgave me for it later, though.

After a quick nap in the Emergency Room, the nurse escorted me downstairs to the Loony Bin, where morning group therapy was taking place. I did not arrive at the hospital until 5 a.m., and now it was 9 a.m. and the loons were gathering to share loon stories. 

I sat at the square table with seven or so adults, ranging from Robert, a man perhaps in his seventies, to Hannah, an eighteen-year-old girl. They took my goddamn scarf away from me, so I had no choice but to look into everyone’s eyes. I assumed the other patients in the unit had also landed themselves in Purgatory. If I weren’t so sleepy I might’ve asked how they died. I hunched over my knees, rocking back and forth in a gray-blue armchair, wondering which of us would make it to Heaven

     which would be doomed to Hell 

Robert sat to my right. I felt his gaze on me, a hot lamp of attention, and darted my eyes over to meet his. The old man’s skin was pale blue and wrinkled, with carved lines decorating his forehead and lower mouth; but his eyes shone like foggy constellations. His gaze felt so familiar. He stared back at me kindly and interrupted the group to announce proudly, 

“You are Beautiful”

His quivering tone echoed 

         in the white room

Beautiful 

Beautiful

My grandfather used to call me that

My grandfather had lines carved around his mouth, just like that

My grandfather had that tuft of hair atop his head, too, 

and as I made these realizations a guttural sound began to escape from my throat

I rose from the chair and pointed my finger at him like a loaded gun

“No, No, No, NO! YOU– You—You– you– you– you–” 

I hobbled from the table towards my cell of a bedroom, where the nurse had escorted me earlier. I crawled into the dingy bed, shaking and sobbing, rocking like a baby.

No, No, No, No, No I muttered

My grandfather is alive, he can’t be with me in Purgatory 

unless… unless… he died last night too? 

The nurse entered the room behind me, and perched timidly on the thin mattress, resting her cold hand on my arm like you would rest your palm atop a grave.

“Analise, are you alright?” 

I stared into her blue eyes, marveling at her slick blonde hair. She was such a beautiful Angel. I attempted to speak but instead unhinged my jaw and sobbed. I shook and shook and sobbed and sobbed, and after many moments responded,

“Did I have sex with that man?

                            Did he hurt me?”

“No, honey,” she reassured me, “No, that’s Robert, he’s very nice, he wouldn’t do that.”

My muscles relaxed. I inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled,

“Okay. Okay. Thank you, thank you for saying that,” 

“Honey,” she whispered, “can I get you anything, a cigarette?” She darted her eyes to the cracked door, and then back to my frail body curled atop the white linen.

“Yes, oh my god, yes, a cigarette!” 

But before she returned I had already drifted off to sleep.

While I slept the day away in the loony bin, my roommates contacted the landlord. They told him about the writing on the walls, there may have even been photos, I heard later. They texted my father imploring that he figure out what the future held for my living situation. They were afraid of me, disturbed by me, and I didn’t exactly blame them. My body still burns with humiliation.

I was released from the Loony Bin five days after my admittance. The doctor told me I experienced psychosis from marijuana use. Ha. Yeah, the weed, that was the cherry on top of my psychotic sundae. I knew it was so much more than I could ever explain to anyone, including you. 

I fucking lost my mind. But it wasn’t one thing– or ten things. It wasn’t just Judy, or her daughter, or the weed, or Dawson, or Gabe, or my little sister, or my grandfather, or my roommates,

    or even my mother 

It was a million moments

hundreds of faces

contorted 

flashing before my eyes

 strung together 

like popcorn and cranberries and Juul pods and ballpoint pens and rotting clementines and printer cartridges and loose change and prescription bottles and black nail polish and the catnip baggie and bloodstained underwear and my pocket knife and lucky charms and a rabbit’s foot and dead flowers and poisonous ivy, all of it, tied to a long, thin string. And the string, well I hung it across my bedroom ceiling. And the thread, well the thread just wasn’t thick enough to hold everything. 

You would have done the same thing if you had seen what I’d seen

if you had been in that bedroom

in that house

that park

that pond

that ocean

with me.

      That’s what the therapists call behaviorism.

Dad lives in a po-dunk town that sits along the Potomac River. It’s called Colonial Beach. The house is sectioned off into three apartments, and his has two bedrooms. One for him, and one with a queen bed and magenta walls, painted for my sister and me. Dad also has a dog. His name is Mishto, but I always liked to call him Winchester. 

Winchester!

Dawson shouted as he entered the old apartment, in Midlothian, where we grew up writhing.

       I giggle in response 

Winchester!

  Window! 

I shout 

Windex! 

Windshield Wiper!

He shouts back 

        We hoot and holler

Or we did.

Winchester is still kicking it. Who would’ve thought this little mutt would outlive Dawson? Not me. Not anyone, actually. Winchester smells awful because Dad refuses to bathe him. He has human eyes, though, Dawson and I always said that. His eyes have real soul in ‘em. 

So did Dawson’s

Soul that toppled and spilled over his eyes, pouring out like water that shines with the Sun’s warm glow. That’s what his eyes looked like. Glimmering blue water. 

The first night I got back to Dad’s, after the long drive from Philly, I greeted the dog like we used to. 

“Hiiiii Winchester! Hi my little Window, my Windshield Wiperrr!!”

I could almost hear Dawson and his little sister, Adyn, cackling in response. 

I sat on the couch with Winchester that night and wrapped my arms around his stinky fur coat. As I lay there hugging the dog, I felt this new warmth spread throughout my body, spread from my heart to my shoulders to my thighs, all the way down to my toes. And in that moment I had that feeling, again, this persisting presence, though this time it was entirely welcoming— no fear, no delusion, just warmth— I was not alone.

I swear Dawson could see me and that stinkin’ dog. I swear he felt as we cuddled up on the living room sofa. I swear he sighed with relief. I know I did. 

I tossed my head back, gazing at the ceiling fan, but I was looking beyond it. Looking through the ceiling, up at the sky, and beyond the sky, looking up at the Heavens. Looking up at my angel. Looking up at Dawson. 

“I made it, Baby,”

I told him

I didn’t need to write it down this time. I said it out loud,      

         bright and clear

“I’m Home” 

My older brother Gabriel easily could've been The Man Who Ruined Your Life In High School. Charming and dark. He’d pin Albert Camus quotes in the bathroom, or next to the kitchen table where mom had taped Bible entries. He wore suits and suede loafers, regularly chain-smoked cigarettes on the front porch (and while driving), pretended to be a punk though more than once I caught him belting Ke$ha or Gaga in the shower. He dated woman after woman after woman (or girl after girl after girl) 

 locked the doors to the brown GMC. Of course, we all knew, deep deep down, but not really. Not in the Big Way.

Before we parted ways at the Worcester bus stop, the psychic told me something immense was coming. Something energetic, immeasurable, powerful. Dawson would leave this dimension and enter a higher plane, she said, and when that happened, she said, I would feel it, 

Intensely

Gabe was the Momma’s boy / the Golden Boy / The Bad Boy / The Boy. The only one of Jen’s five children who looked exactly like her— sharply pointed nose and sharper eyes— Popop reincarnated. She loved to call him Hambone, the class clown, charismatic, a little mouse (he’s like six foot three). She loved to call him, on the phone, and order him new loafers to University. She loved to call him in the summer of 2016 at the rehab facility and tell him just how proud she was that he would soon join her at weekly AA meetings.

I am not writing this to convince you of anything. I am not even writing this– it is pouring out of me. It is the water from the faucet, and I am the handle pushed to the right, left running. I do not know if this happened because Judy told me it would happen, or if this happened because it was Always Going to Happen, and I also don’t really understand the difference between these two things. 

Imagine this: Midlothian Middle School’s 2016 Eighth Grade Play, the Wizard of Oz. I am Glinda the Good Witch. I’ve got a frilly pink gown and a dozen lines, which is a pretty big deal because Mrs.Bernard typically casts me as the reliable narrator. This time I got to be part of the Story; only a week before the play I sprained my ankle, so the frilly pink gown was accompanied by a gray orthopedic walker boot.

Glinda enters, stage right, scans the crowd for her brothers and sisters. Mom was in Saudi Arabia that month working but she forced the siblings to pinky promise they’d show up. Glinda scans the crowd, but no familiar face. Glinda scans the crowd again, lump in throat chokes her. Glinda furrows eyebrows; looks to scene partner, stutters, stutters again. Glinda attempts to scurry off stage left, but hobbles, trips, and falls flat on her face. 

The Crowd murmurs, then cheers. 

My almost-not-quite friends and I exploded into a Big Fight the night after Judy sat with me on the Thanksgiving steps. Judy, her daughter, and I spent the following day Black Friday shopping and eating KFC. I snuck out of Barbie’s house in the morning as quickly as I could, telling her that I would be back later (as vaguely as I could). I didn’t want to leave the psychic’s side. I wanted more from her. I needed more. I was insatiable. 

Judy said she would tell me more about Dawson, but only when the time was right. I nagged her for more intel, but she pushed it back, pushed it back, pushed it, and the other two friends waited impatiently at their mansion. They texted, where are you? Judy’s daughter suggested we ignore it. They texted, when are you coming back? I decided to ignore it. I’m not quite sure why other than to say Judy and her daughter were the main reasons I had come to Worcester. To be blunt, they were the Good Witches, Glinda the Good Witches, and I was fascinated by them– connected by some invisible string. 

The night before the play Gabe had taken a benzodiazepine, waited fifteen minutes, took two more, or something. He showed up to school the next day daydreaming, but by second-period bugs were eating his skin, which he told the school’s stupid nurse as I rehearsed Bippity Boppity Boo! in the middle school’s bathroom mirror. My oldest brother, Culain, raced to the school in that dirty GMC and drove Gabriel, soon resurrected, to the hospital, where he hallucinated that I was hiding beneath the bed whispering his name softly. 

Before we came to Massachusetts, Judy’s daughter had a fated dream. Barbie, my roommate with the rich parents, had known Judy’s daughter for decades. They were lifelong family friends. The dream: the four of us, cruising in Barbie’s new lipstick-red Kia Soul, interstate and the windows down. There was a curve, she said, ninety degrees, but Barbie wouldn’t hit the breaks. The car lost its ambition and toppled sideways. The Fated Crash. Judy’s Daughter said one of us died– she didn’t name which– though I had some funny feeling it was me. 

The Big Fight was stupid. Most fights are that way. Dumb and preventable. This one was no different. Barbie was outraged that Judy’s daughter wanted to spend the whole day with her mother and me. Judy’s daughter had spent the past month in Philly complaining about Barbie to me almost daily. We became closer and closer with each story shared– we were shit-talking, to be clear– and we both enjoyed it. Over this month, my infatuation with Judy’s daughter only multiplied. Their mother was a magical psychic, they were charming and observant, and a tiny bit obsessed with me, too. We quickly became inseparable. (And 

when we were together, we could hear the Universe whispering… 

… when we were together, we could even Whisper back) 

The issue, with Barbie, was a power struggle. The obvious difference in socioeconomic status quickly presented tension. Barbie told her close friends and roommates that we could use the Kia, and other resources, like free Crown Russe, but those offers were contingent upon our unwavering loyalty. 

One autumn afternoon as we cruised in the Kia alone, Judy’s daughter told me a story about Barbie that shoved my growing distaste into resentment and disgust. Barbie had become violent towards Judy’s daughter after too much liquor at a rave-gone-wrong. I had heard the same story, spoken from the lips of Barbie herself, only she said she flicked Judy’s Daughter. Not that she elbowed her in the head, tripped her, and called her pathetic while she wept on the floor. 

Our loyalty was tested in Massachusetts– on Black Friday– though I had no idea a day of petty Walmart theft and ignored text messages would drive our friendship over the edge. Thus, the Big Fight: Barbie, me, and our close friend shouting at one another while I choked back tears. Judy’s daughter, sitting silently in the corner while I fought for our honor. 

The day after the Big Fight we were supposed to drive back to Philly together in that red Kia Soul, but Judy admitted she had a real, real bad feeling. It’s dangerous, she said, to be in the car with angry people. I exchanged a glance with her daughter, fearful, who must’ve remembered the fated dream. We bought seventy-dollar, six-hour bus ride tickets home to save ourselves, and the car, from tipping. 

The seventy-dollar bus tickets were the last straws for Barbie. I was kicked to the curb rather quickly. She called me Ana Banana in her furious text messages, like my mother used to.

In the weeks following Thanksgiving, I was exiled. My roommates and their posse would laugh and drink cheap liquor in the living room while I stayed holed upstairs, uninvited, frantically writing poems and journal entries. At first, it was innocent. I just couldn’t sleep much. Judy gifted me a pendulum which I’d become fascinated with; I would wait until midnight and light a candle, dangle it above my palm, and ask the Spirits to guide me. It swung like an angry baseball bat. 

Time passed but moved in an unfamiliar way. I started scurrying around my bedroom, a little lightning bug, while whispers and cackles echoed downstairs. I started talking like wind that doesn’t know which direction it’s blowing in. I stayed up all night writing, sleep for two hours, wake up, drink a smoothie. It was around this time that solid food became disgusting. 

I smoked weed just about every thirty minutes. It stopped affecting me, or it felt like it did, or maybe I just became the Weed. On December 11th I started writing something (or, something started flooding out of me), and when I finally finished nearly twenty-four hours had passed unknowingly. I sat back, manic, and was surprised to read a seven-page conversation between Dawson and me. 

You can call it pure insanity, you can call it communication with the Dead, you can call it Bipolar Disorder, Borderline, Cyclothymia, Panic Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, hysteria, or CPTSD. 

             Maybe it was all of these, or some strange combination

I say it was Fated

I always loved my brother– but more than I loved him, I wanted to be him. In my daydreams, I was him: quick-witted, cutthroat, and all the girls loved me. Being Gabe was my childhood queer fantasy. 

In college when I reconnected with one of his many ex-girlfriends, I was confronted with The Truth of the Matter. The Truth: he was the biggest danger in our family. Phony-feminist, phony nice guy, phony charisma, phoned home and cried to Mommy when I demanded answers. 

The next thing I knew it was December 13th, then 14th– Time did not exist. I spent days talking with Dawson. I would write something, Ana’s voice, and then his response would flood from my fingertips. Maybe it’s because I knew him so well, maybe it’s because Judy said I could speak with the Dead, and I trusted her, maybe it’s because I am traumatized and deranged, maybe it’s because I am a Witch. But those of you who knew him, truly knew him as I did, you know. You know what you feel, in the car when you suddenly aren’t alone anymore. You know when a thought pops into your head that isn’t really yours. You know that time doesn’t work in a straight line (it loops, you know it loops, you’ve seen it loop)

So why question it? Don’t gaslight yourself, Sarah says in the Diner.

What you don’t know, though, is how Dawson and I talked. We fuckin’ talked for hours, talked in treacherous loops: Death, his mother, my mother, politics, education, abuse, sex, Death, the cycle repeats. In the Food Lion parking lot, he asked if I would write his eulogy

And what, you might be wondering, does Gabe have to do with this? I don’t really know, but on the Dark Night of My Soul, something called out his name. Something (or someone) demanded that I write it down. I am the only person in my family to quit joining Thanksgiving and Christmas— to quit pretending—

… think of what I can feel… 

 when I drive, when I swim, when I see his friends, when I shower-cry, when I have a glass of wine: Every conversation Dawson and I ever had is tucked away somewhere, stored inside my body.

Every conversation any of us has ever had is tucked away somewhere 

stored inside our bodies

Before I was taken to the hospital, something ineffable happened to me. I had become convinced, after days of speaking with the Dead, that I too was going to die. Not going to die, like eventually. Going to die like tonight. Going to die like if I did not write all of my thoughts on the walls fast enough then the Gods would come down and arrest my quaking heart—

My roommates and old friends were in the living room, drinking or something, I don’t know. I was too exhausted and crazy to remember they hated me (well, I remembered it, but I did not think it mattered much. I was going to die, remember, and if I was going to die, why not tell them? Why not cry out for help? Why not share any last words?) 

At first, they stared at me in exasperation. They appeared sick with my presence, and with each word I uttered aloud, their facial expressions took me deeper into Hell. They did not understand that this delusion of my illness and impending death was cemented concretely. My heart was racing so fast, at some points I felt it skip a couple of beats. This, surely, must be what happens when someone is dying. 

Barbie confiscated my cell phone during this night-long debacle so I no longer had means of contacting anyone. After they called the police on me and then, to no avail, sent the police away, my roommates went into their bedrooms and locked the doors. I believed they did not want to witness my death. I thought they knew it would be too traumatizing. Better to wait it out. Take care of the corpse in the morning. 

        When I re-entered my bedroom, I was in horror and admiration at the writing on my walls. Every color, every word, was draped insanely. The hung mirror read We are all tools; when I gazed into the mirror, Tool was written in chunky orange ink on the left side of my cheeky. Much of the wall writing was illegible or silly; in one corner, however, there was the most perfectly written phrase:

“Meditate or Die”

While I was losing my mind, my roommates encouraged me to meditate. They implored me, over and over and over again: Just lay down. Just go to sleep. They did not understand that it was the only thing I could not do. They did not understand that I was convinced when I slept I would dream, and in my dream, Dawson would find me to take me with Him to this higher plane (and a pretty big part of me was curious to know where he was going)

Meditate, they repeated, playing healing sounds on the downstairs television. Meditate, meditate, meditate. The reverberating melody is still ringing in my ears. In my periods alone throughout the night, I must have written it a thousand times in a dozen journals, on the walls, on the walls, on the walls

 Meditate, meditate, meditate

When I attempted to re-enter their bedrooms and felt each knob locked in place, I decided it must be Time. Meditate, meditate, meditate

Meditate,

Or Die

My yoga mat was already laid across the floor like a coffin. Paper was strewn, littering the room, dead flower petals decorated the dresser. The walls were screaming and moaning and Om-ing.

Meditate, meditate, meditate

I have never been so terrified. I sat on the mat, shoulders as straight as a rod, head held high. Criss-cross-applesauce, placed my palms on my knees, facing the Sky. I meditated to eat a cheeseburger again, I meditated to see all of your beautiful faces again, to love harder, to be Someone.

I shouted, howled, made some animalistic sound

                                                   I Om-ed

OMMMM

OMMMMMMM

OOOMMMMMMMM

The truth is, I have no idea how long it lasted. Five minutes, twenty minutes, two hours. I cannot tell you. 

OMMMMMM

OMMMMMMMMM

OOOMMMMMMM

            My body convulsed. My hands furled into disfigured shapes. Jaw locked open. Toes and arms and calves tingling, head tilted sideways. Sensations of electrification pulsed through every bloody vein. Some sort of Rigamortus took over me. Frozen in time.

I Omm-ed Harder

OOOMMMM OOOMMMM

OOOOMMMMMM

   OOOMMMMMM

OOOMMMMMMMM

    OOOMMMMMMMMMMMM

           My soul began to levitate from the mat. Call me a liar, I dare you. I was floating away from the floor, Rising from the Ashes. I floated upward— I was flying— and this was it, I knew it, this was the moment Judy had seen.

OOOOMMMMM 

                         OOOOMMMMMM

                                     OOOOOMMMMMM

         I could feel the bedroom below me. I could see it, there, my lank bodied crumpled– collapsed on the floor beneath scripture scribbled on the walls. That was it. That was The End. 

         Ana Lumpkin had died. 

I blacked out, for God knows how long, but when I came to life I was in the shower. I was in the shower… I was in the shower? Scalding water trickled down my body like rain.

I was quaking. I’ve never been so frail in my life. 

I was freezing, then I was warm. I was shaking, then I was still. I was here, and then I was there. 

I was alive, and then I was dead. I was inside, and then I was running down the block, which block, where am I? 

A driver slowly pulled up the street— the first Soul I had seen since I lifted from the mat. I needed to know if he could see me. I needed to know if I was alone. I shouted, waving my arms frantically, 

                       “HELLOOO? 

                                   Hellooo? 

                                          Hello, 

                                                Can you see me?”

He rolled down his tinted window, staring in utter confusion– but fuckin’ ayy, he was looking right at me! Bewildered, and a tad concerned, but he was looking right at me! Crimson scarf wrapped around my forehead, mismatched socks on my feet, no shoes no jacket shivering, but I was There, I was Here, no matter Life or Death, Earth or Elsewhere… maybe someplace in between… 

It was the first time in my life anybody had truly seen me 

“Hello!” I declared 

                  “My name is Analise!”

tremor 

in our hands (the tremor, which is begging us to draw the dimensions more accurately)

The Dilemma with my story is no different. I am very aware of the shaking complexity of my squiggles— I know that I was never very good at drawing within the lines (or the boundaries, how I’ve pushed boundaries) 

and God knows I need to keep your attention, and if your attention span is anything like mine, well 

we could say we’re fucked 

Or–

we could tell the stories differently

I could try

I think all stories are just people. People telling you about their people, and people telling you about their non-people (or the people who are, but are not on Our Side) and if any story is really just people talking about people (and if talking is really just people trying to feel something) then I don’t think time should really have much to do with it. 

So excuse me if this is everything but chronological, excuse me if this is beautiful and stupid, excuse me 

if you cry

My Memoir, like most, starts with my mother. I could tell so many stories about Jennifer. If I was Schrodinger’s Cat, but the box was really my bedroom and the Cat was really me, and if I were asked to tell stories about my mother in the box (room) 

by the time anyone cracked the lid (door) ajar, I could not say if I’d be dead or alive but I confidently know that my Tongue would have fallen on the ground like a murdered bird present for my owners. I know so much about my mom, but then again, I understand so little. 

Mom has “gut feelings” which are not subject to question. The red-haired neighbor she predicted was an opioid addict (she was), the middle school friend’s dad, who she assumed was a pedophile (he wasn’t), the theater teacher who groomed me she suspected I slept with (I didn’t), the nightmare she had where I died, and when she awoke at 4:30 am to my phone call (I needed her then) she knew it. There is something curious about a person who can’t read intuition from paranoia– I know this because I am one of these people. I know my mother so well because I know myself. 

On the day of my psychotic break, I was not thinking much of my mother. I was thinking about loops (cycles), and dimensions, and patterns, and concepts, and the ways they all connected. I suspected that I had figured out how to Time Travel, and also suspected that I was going to die. Not going to die, like eventually, but going to die like tonight. Going to die like if I did not write all of my thoughts on the walls fast enough then the Gods would come down and decide to stop my Heart, because I must have been so close to figuring out the whole silly game that maybe the refs would play dirty and knock me down a level.

Do I know these are deluded thoughts? Yes of course. But I need to defend myself. We talk about mania and psychosis and consciousness, and people drink a couple of coffees or take an Adderall or binge TikToks, and they throw words around. Throwing words, I’ve learned, is dangerous. The God Complex and the fantastical insane delusional paranoid ideas that sprout from your brain and shoot out of your mouth during a manic or psychotic episode are not signs of a selfish or arrogant person (though I can be selfish and arrogant, that is not the point)-- The God Complex is the Big Red Button in your Brain that you push when everything is about to go wrong.

Psychosis ensued, for me, after three days of no sleep, drinking protein shakes from the bottle occasionally, and sipping water only when my most recent thought-idea almost blew out the window. My psychotic mania ensued after a lifetime of grief. After the death of my loved one and a psychic reading gone wrong, after dwelling on my suffering for long enough to pinpoint its cause (me), and after my most recent set of friends kicked dust in my face on their way out.

I did not do this to prove a point. I did not even “do this”-- it happened

My mother didn’t even cross my mind when I was lying in the Emergency Room gurney with an almost-friend clutching my hand and reassuring me that I would not die if I fell asleep. At this point, I was sure that I had died already. I was nearly positive that in my bedroom, below the writing on the walls, laid my lank body crumpled on the floor, and that every single moment after that moment was the Afterlife. 

In this delusional loop, I believed falling asleep would truly send me to the Other Side. I was clinging to my consciousness, unknowingly playing tug of war with my body, and begging the nurses (Angels, I thought) to see the good in me and save my soul. It didn’t take them too long to transfer me to the psychiatric unit, where I lay alone in the confinements of a terrifying room, staring at the blank walls and the blinking clock in the corner, hearing faint echoes of screams and sighs, charged with fear. This, I shuddered, must be Purgatory.

(Judy said so)

By Amelia Magee

I didn’t believe in Purgatory, or consciousness after death, until my curious experience with a flustered psychic, which occurred a mere three weeks prior to my hospitalization. I had been a sarcastic, deadpan atheist since my freshmen year of high school when I inevitably spit up the religious bullshit that was shoved down my throat. I became fascinated with space and the Universe and the vastness of it all– because it allowed me to seem so tiny, so so so so tiny that my unhappiness might not mean anything. Like many children, I believed that tininess equated to nothingness– but I digress.

Sometimes, when something tragic happens, the Ego believes it cannot survive the pain all at once. 

        You may have forgotten (I know I did), but we are meant to feel emotions in our bodies. Emotional pain is just as much a physical experience as any other type of injury. The Ego may believe these waves of pain could kill us— which is ironic because the only way out of grief is through. In any case, it’s not uncommon, when a loved one dies, to turn off feeling and start hunting. Instead of listening to my body– which needed me, day after day after day, to grieve this death, to connect with this pain in my chest and allow it to extend and expand– I ignored the hungry pleas and skid donuts in my brain. I needed to find out why this happened. More than that: I needed to punish whoever did this. 

The psychic was a last resort. I had blamed myself, blamed his friends, blamed his mother, blamed the exit ramp and the bus driver, and the birthday party,

                    blamed myself more

but each of these options held one single, undeniable truth: human beings are so lovingly fallible

I found myself cackling at miscommunications, hugging ex-enemies, grieving each of our childhoods: I found myself forgiving the Blamed. But I can be so stubborn. It had to be someone or something’s fault– it just had to (otherwise, could life be so insane? Could any child die at any moment? Could existence be entirely unjust?) 

So I turned to the Gods, the Spirits, the Universe, whatever you want to call them

I call them the Fated

Judy, the psychic, was not in a rush to give me the reading on the first day of my arrival. She was a new friend’s mother, and I had traveled all the way to Worcester, Massachusetts with my gaggle of dust-kicking friends to hear her interpretation of Dawson’s death and the Fated. I had become curious– though skeptical– of spirituality. I sort of believed in astrology (of course the stars and planets and moon must affect our lives) but I couldn’t decide if anyone existed post-death. We can’t remember shit from before we were Here, so the safest assumption was that Earth is nothing but a cosmic blip, and each of us,

nothing more than ants on a log

(but what about this heavy pain? and more so, what about my powerful love for Dawson, and his for me, which bore this pain?

it was the only thing, I suspected, more all-consuming than death)

Until Judy, everything I believed, I believed halfway

Kind of / almost / not quite / maybe / believed

The psychic trip was a Thanksgiving trip. My roommate and friends invited me to meet their families, eat turkey, and fuck around in Worcester. I told them about the psychic reading with Judy, though each time it was mentioned a sort of brittle tension filled the air, which at first I failed to understand.

The psychic’s daughter was long-time family friends with my roommate Barbie (I’ll call her Barbie here). We stayed at Barbie’s house (or, mansion), and her mother– a woman with a thick Boston accent, perfectly manicured nails, and skin that looked too clean for a mother of adults– spoke up about the witch. She went to high school with her and they had been in close circles for decades. It seemed that the locals saw Judy as a Quack, one who, as Barbie’s mother put it, used death and grief as a means for money. She supposedly had a reputation for reaching out to grieving people, insisting that their passed loved ones were communicating with her from the Other Side. I was told all of this the day before my reading with Judy, and my racing mind filled with doubt.

Was Judy using me? Using Dawson’s death unfairly? Well, that was hard to say considering she offered me the reading for free. And she was my close friend’s mother, a friend I loved, a friend who loved her mother dearly. I wasn’t so intent on writing Judy’s intentions off as ill-intended, though I was incredibly nervous after picking up on this thick air of judgment. 

On the day of Thanksgiving, I met Judy’s side of the family. The judgment was there, too. We met at her sister’s ostentatious house. There were dozens of white Americans wearing their red, white, and blue church-like attire, exchanging rehearsed niceties and sipping white wine. Judy’s sister, especially, was the picture-perfect American wife who later scorned me for laughing and shouting too loudly during the backyard relay race.

Everyone there felt so fake, so projected, so poised, so repressed– everyone, that is, but Judy. She didn’t sip her wine, she gulped it. She bluntly stared at the other guests but smiled at me with her kind and tired eyes. Her eyes were alive. They told stories. She chiefed cigarettes on the front porch and paced around her sister’s perfectly groomed yard. At one point, before dessert, she beckoned me out front to join her. 

She handed me a crumpled pamphlet titled Overcoming Loneliness. Her voice was raspy, quick-paced, she spoke like wind that can’t decide which direction it’s blowing in. She told me that Dawson informed her of my loneliness. She said his Spirit sits with me, sometimes in the car, in my bed late at night when I finally let myself cry (when I think no one else is watching), on my pointless walks, or during my drunk bathroom floor sits. She assured me that he was There.

She then spoke of his life path and his regret. His regret, she sputtered, was the grief he left behind– and she asserted I was one of his loneliest grieving souls. She begged me, or He begged me (I still don’t know which) to let go. Release it. Forgive myself. Breathe. 

The most painful thing she spoke of was his time spent in Purgatory. She told me that he had spent every moment following his death, up until now, watching his life on repeat. She told me that Purgatory was a clean but dark place. Somewhere with sticky distant light. She said 

the screams

echoed 

ringing 

in his ears

as he was consumed with every moment of his life 

over and over 

over again

replaying like a movie, only backward, from the moment of Death

to the moment of

Birth.

She said the point of Purgatory is acceptance. Acceptance of death, acceptance of life, acceptance of What Is. She said some souls never make it out of there. But she smiled real big, cigarette ash kissing her knees and caressing the brick stairs we sat on when she said

By Amelia Magee

Not him

He got out of there fast as Hell, faster than most

Soon her snobby sister, exasperated, beckoned us back into the home. It was time for some stupid cutting of some pie or something, I don’t know,

and at this point, she began rambling quickly

Dawson loves his life, and he loves you. He needs you to stop being so lonely. He needs you to accept his Death in the same way he has. He needs you to get out of that room, Ana, you’ve been stuck in that room with him, Ana, you’ve been there with him, Ana,

you’ve felt his pain    

This is the part where I cry

What about your pain? The pain that isn’t his? What about your room?
What about your life?

You’re powerful Ana, and he told me you’re smart. He said your mom didn’t do right by you.

He said you aren’t afraid to die

but you’re so lonely 

so afraid of life…

We have to go inside now, my sister is such a fucking bitch

just remember:

He got out of there, he’s going somewhere else soon

A Higher Plane

but he doesn’t want to leave you lonely like this

That night I lay in Barbie’s guest room and turned over a memory of my mother like an old coin in my hand. The afternoon, fourteen years old, I decided to ask her about our religion, which I had begun to question deeply. I entered her bedroom, sat on the bed, crossed my legs, and asked pointedly,

“Mom, why do some people go to Hell? The pastor says that all sins are created equal, and love thy neighbor as thyself, so why do some people go to Hell and other people get to Heaven? None of it makes sense to me,”

She paused, tilting her head, and like never before she thought long and intently about her response.

“Hell isn’t one place, Ana. It’s how you feel when you don’t believe in anything at all.” 

Fuck

        I thought to myself 

tossing and turning in a foreign bed 

I’ve already been to Hell

The narrator is not reliable

The narrator is reliable in sharing his

1. feelings

2. experiences

3. perceptions

4. assumptions

5. rationalizations

6. ruminations

7. sicknesses, 

8. and his health

The narrator does not claim

1. to know more about life than you

2. or more about death than you,

3. to know you better than you know yourself, or

4. to be better or worse or more moral or more whole or healthier than anyone else

The narrator does not claim to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

so help him, God

The protagonist isn’t the Hero—

the protagonist saves himself or dies trying

The protagonist is on a journey, and

The Narrator

can be a bit deranged,

depending on who you ask

The narrator is not omniscient, the narrator is not sane, the narrator is not crazy 

The narrator is not standing atop a pedestal or looking down at you from his High Horse 

The narrator is not your sister, daughter, brother, or son

The narrator is not your friend, your confidant, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your best friend, or your partner in crime

The narrator is not some girl, or that girl, or that kid you knew, or know, or kind of know

The narrator is not the ghost drinking cheap liquor in North Philadelphia’s back alley, or the pothead black sheep you haven’t heard from in years 

You do not even know the Narrator 

You and the Narrator have never met 

Do not read this story if or when you hear the word “memoir” you think of a person talking shit about everyone in their life. 

Do not read this story if you think I am Dan Humphry, and this is Gossip Girl

Do not read this story if you think I am Rue, or Jules, or Maddy, or Cassie, or Lexi, or Nate, or Fez, and this is Euphoria. 

Do not read this story if you are looking for Jesus, Moses, Judas, John Lennon, Harry Potter, or Charlie from Perks of Being A Wallflower

Do not read this story if you are looking for Rory Gilmore, Regina George, Fiona Gallagher, Lip Gallagher, or Ian Gallagher from Shameless, Dee or Mac or Frank from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or Karen McCluskey from Desperate Housewives.

Do not read this story if you are looking for Donnie Darko, Frank, Roberta Sparrow, Leonardo Decaprio in Shutter Island, Winona, Angelina, or Daisy from Girl, Interrupted, or Natalie Portman in The Black Swan.

Do not read this story if you are looking for the Hero or the Villain, the Victim or the Jester or the Knight or the Prince or the Princess or the Squire or the Priest

Do not read this story if you are looking for the Rook or the Horsey or the Queen or the King or the Bishop or the Pawn 

Do not read this story if you are looking for the Addict or the Liar or the Thief or the Virgin or the Murderer or the Accomplice or the Snitch or the Whore

That is not what a Memoir is, and this is

• not even a “Memoir”

The narrator believes this is a Memoir

The narrator believes that everything he writes down is the ultimate truth— that is, 

until he changes his mind

If you are reading this— for any reason— I have to thank you for that honor.

If we are acquaintances, or if we had made out once, or if we kind of sort of knew each other once upon a lie, or if we are friends, ex-friends, lovers, ex-lovers, frenemies, soulmates, or family,

then this is your only warning:

Do not read this story if you do not want to Cry

because what you are about to read is incredibly dark, strangely poetic, and delusionally honest. It is obscenely hilarious, deathly romantic, deeply flawed, and fucking absurd.

DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU

Sincerely,

The Narrator

We met in every lifetime

We gasped in every lifetime

We laughed in every lifetime

We dug in every lifetime

We fell in every lifetime

We begged in every lifetime

We shrieked in every lifetime

We sprinted in every lifetime 

We cried in every lifetime

We hugged in every lifetime

We sighed in every lifetime

We survived in every lifetime

We died in every lifetime

We left our forks and knives on the plates 

and picked at the tablecloth’s appendages 

until the moon felt heavy and full

in every lifetime

my soul grows roots 

              that sneak beneath 

the linen flesh 

and the wood 

    planks

and the bloody 

concrete

and the mound of ants 

and the ocean’s tide

in every lifetime

your soul grows roots

like vines suffocating the mailbox

like the molecular structure 

   of anything

like the wet hair stuck to the 

                     bathroom wall

and the worm wiggling its way 

                                 through the mud

in every lifetime

like the synapses

and the interstates 

and the deranged doodles 

like the mycelium 

and the rug 

like the Light 

dangling above our heads 

in every lifetime

We have always known

Eulogy for Dawson Teta

Written May 24th, 2020

Eighteen Years, Six Months

This is a letter for my sweet Dawson.

You asked me once if I would write your eulogy for you. “No, Dawson,” I insisted. “You’ll have to write mine,” I demanded. “You are not dying before me.” I needed. 

Death seemed so far out to me; it was an idea, a concept, a maybe someday. I thought, if I willed and wished it away, it would leave us alone. I have never been so painfully wrong. 

And so now I am here, trying to do as you asked-- trying to write something eloquent enough to describe you. The problem is that you meant something so extravagantly different to each person in your life. I suppose all I can do is write about the Dawson I knew. 

You were so alive. You wanted to run, to drive, to laugh and create and dance. You wanted to learn, to invent and believe. And you did all of those things so brilliantly. Sometimes you smiled so big, I swear I saw your soul spilling over your eyes. Sometimes, I could feel your heart beating next to mine; it was so loud and bright, I felt like it was singing me a song. Sometimes we would hold hands, swaying ever so slightly, and in those moments I felt like no one could ever hurt me again. 

You were a fierce protector. If someone caused those you loved pain, you would swoop in and save them from all evil. You were a hero. I told you once, I felt sorry for anyone who ever wronged Adyn, because they didn’t know what they had coming for them. You were her Guardian, her Savior, her best friend. And now you are her Angel. You were loyal to your last breath.

Your spirit was so positive. You inspired your whole community-- I don’t think you fully understood your impact. You demanded justice, you desired peace and love and all things good. You taught me that I could be and do and aspire to whatever I wanted. And I’ve realized that you gifted that lesson to nearly every person you met. You always asked, “What do you want to be when you’re older?” I always responded with “Happy.” And you would say “Then that is what you’re going to be.” I promise I will do that for you, Dawson. You never let anyone lose hope for their dreams. You left your beautiful little fingerprints on all of our hearts. 

Not everyone experienced the joy of your love, and I feel sorry for them. When I met you I felt small. I felt weak. I felt ugly. I felt incapable. You took my heart and you wrapped it in affection, in motivation, in beauty and light. You took my hands and showed me that in them, I held the world. You looked in my eyes and promised that one day I would see change, I would see glory and purity. 

I am struggling to accept that I can’t thank you. I am struggling to accept that we never had a Goodbye. I wish you had the time you deserved to explore and travel and grow-- but I have learned that no amount of willing or wishing can alter life or death’s course. So, rather than dwell on my heartbreak, or regret each mistake, I will hold onto these parts of you. I will keep your strength, your courage, your forgiveness, and your love. I will walk through life with you in my heart and soul and mind. I will carry you with me, through all of this darkness, until I can see the light again. 

All of my love,

Ana