And Suddenly There Was....Nothing: 2013 Momentum

It started off with a kiss and a profession of Love and closeness, Sincerity, promise.  Flirty relationships, fun, and likeability gave way to a creeping disturbance as reality came closing in. Conflict, jealousy, people's true colors started to glow faintly from within. Washing the floors every night started to become tiring and impossible. I was tired.

And then, the flirting was over, I cast off the chains of love and sex and attraction and was alone. I got a real job and thought things would start to look up. A uniform, a pay raise, promise to move through a prestigious institution. The beginning of moving up in the world, making new friends and feeling warm and appreciated. A sweet new friendship brought joy to my life. A sense of wonderment and excitement of the world around me. Walking through the glass walkway with the early evening sky streaming on my head and shoulders, I felt a vibration in my pocket. A text message, confusing, but serious sounding. In the hospital, not much time, didn't look good. I thought it was a wrong number. I didn't know any sick people. I didn't recognize the number. But I was wrong, I did know this person. Now, to wait excruciatingly for a great long life to end. Wrote the eulogy, drifted around teary and confused. My life seemed to be so full of death. Those long canvas boxes they wheeled past the lab at night burned permanently into my eyes and stayed even as I slept. The great doors of the morgue like a chasm into a silent hell, shutting on their own without a blink from anyone else. I couldn't seem to tear my eyes away, trapped in the stinking chemical, bloody organs, and the canvas box, pushing discreetly past by the man in his one purple glove.

I went home, steeled to support my family and read my speech for the great woman of ninety odd years old. I talked on the phone to my grandfather and told him I couldn't wait to see him again. I put on my shiniest shoes and took a deep breath in the hallway of the funeral parlor while I waited for the rest of my family. I heard screams. They had found him dead. I sat down on the ground winded. Visions of what should have been and what would never be danced in my head all day and all night. Even when I filled my life with hobbies and love and sexual intimacy the sound blasted in my ears constantly. While I slept I saw him, heard his voice, remembered his smell and the touch of the foil and velvet wallpaper in the house. It was as if someone had cut open my head and shook out my soul like a wastebasket of paper. I crawled around my job and life trying to make sense of it.

As the empty case once known as a person I worked hard to forge an identity. Worked hard to support my roommate, get hired permanently into my job, worked to be a supportive girlfriend to my new boyfriend, to save money, work on my sexual inadequacy, be friends with those I was once romantically involved in, conserve energy and be a fun and interesting person. But I was so tired. I lost so much support from the people I've known for years. By striving to be a strong and independent person, I did myself a disservice be de-emphasizing how much pain I was in. People simply forgot that I was grieving.I didn't cut myself slack, and no one else did either.

After months of working hard, what I thought was the rewards was nothing but a stealthily disguised knife to twist into me. Alienated from most people, receiving almost no payback, and then getting the news that I had been cheated on. I just broke. Me, the already broken down me, broke completely. Fell off the grid, I felt so angry. I just wanted silence. I hated everyone, and lacked the words to describe why. What I had wanted was the warm blanket of support and what I had received was virtually nothing. Stinky, putrid nothing.

But I wasn't ashamed to be myself. If anything, my broken sense of self only solidified. I was belligerently myself. Backhanding those with the idea of myself. My hair stood on end, but people were admiring and not put off. Somehow that made me even angrier. I was disgusted with the prospect of being desired. I hated it.

Then somehow along the way my angry turned to Productive Anger. I started to do things fearlessly. I mowed down my fears and insecurities and stopped taking bullshit. So productively angry I came into the new year, still mad, but less than before. Feeling better as things fell into place, and less tears fell from my eyes.

I have become someone that I do not yet know. I have mediated crises, tested positive for tuberculosis, been molested, watched an animal die in front of me, surprised by the callous insensitive way people speak of death, contemplated suicide and survived the most sentimental times of the year alone.

But I also completed all of my resolutions for last year. Learned to cook, and be useful to somebody. Went to the gynecologist. Asserted myself and my needs. Got a full time job. Tried online dating. Dried watermelon. Read books and sewed clothes and baked bread. And inspired people to do things. A lot of things. And really, what is a life but the imprint it leaves on others after all is said and done?

2014, don't disappoint me